House GOP to Probe Alleged Influence of ‘Extreme’ Environmental Groups

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House Conservation In Action Summit at the U.S. Interior Department in Washington on March 21, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

A panel of House lawmakers is set to examine the alleged influence of “extreme environmental activist groups” at the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior (DOI), according to a newly published internal memo.

The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations—which oversees multiple federal agencies, programs, and policies— will hold a hearing regarding the issue on April 30.

According to the memo, which was sent to members of the subcommittee, the alleged influence of “extreme” environmental activist groups over policy and politics in the United States has increased under President Joe Biden’s administration.

The White House is “beholden” to activist nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and “those aligned with leftist social and environmental justice agendas,” Republicans said in the memo.

“Despite rigorous compliance and ethics requirements, NGOs’ growing influence in the federal rulemaking process is significant and often occurs outside of the public eye,” the memo states.

During the upcoming hearing, Republicans will examine DOI’s alleged “questionable communications with extreme activist groups” under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

The department has cultivated “intimate and potentially improper relationships with radical NGOs” that are “driving the Biden administration’s extreme environmental agenda,” the memo states.

They include the Pueblo Action Alliance, a Native American grassroots organization that addresses environmental and social impacts in indigenous communities.

According to The Washington Times, Ms. Haaland had a relationship with the organization before joining the Biden administration and has coordinated with its members to advocate excluding more land in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, from new oil and gas leasing and mining claims.

The Department said in a June 2023 press release that Ms. Haaland had taken action to “protect the cultural and historic resources surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park” from natural resource development.

The action followed “extensive public engagement, including significant consultation with Tribal Nations,” the release said without mentioning Ms. Haaland’s alleged interactions with the Pueblo Action Alliance.

Citing information obtained from various media reports, and documents produced in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, along with oversight by the House Committee on Natural Resources (Committee), Republicans said there were “serious concerns” about the department’s relationship with several NGOs and organizations.

In particular, the subcommittee, led by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), is concerned about alleged “undisclosed ex parte communications” and “off-the-record meetings between high-ranking DOI officials and nonprofit staff,” the memo states.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland at a press briefing in Washington on April 23, 2021. Alex Wong/Getty Images

“Notably, information in the public domain suggests that senior DOI officials worked with radical anti-use nonprofits to implement natural resource withdrawals in New Mexico and Minnesota, negatively impacting the economies of local communities, killing jobs, locking up access to American resources, and increasing domestic demand for foreign sources of the same resources,” the memo states.

Concern Over Possible CCP Ties

“Moreover, there is significant concern that some of these extreme activist groups have ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other foreign entities,” it adds.

A string of experts will testify at the April 30 hearing, including Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, and Richard Painter, the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, and former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

According to Republicans,  Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, which is based in Washington, D.C., declined to testify at the hearing, as did Julia Fay Bernal, the executive director at Pueblo Action Alliance in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The latest hearing comes after a government watchdog organization said late last year that it had obtained internal documents showing that the Biden administration waived development fees for a wind energy company just one week before the company’s attorney began working with the DOI.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), an agency within the DOI, waived the development fees for the Vineyard Wind project after the latter requested a payment deferment because it was “unnecessarily burdensome for lessees because, at that point, they have not begun receiving project income,” Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) reported.

Tommy Beaudreau, an attorney who represented Vineyard Wind, LLC, was later sworn in as deputy secretary of the Interior, according to the watchdog.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of the Interior for further comment.

Matt McGregor contributed to the report.