A senior official in the Biden-Harris administration whose ties to environmental extremist groups drew scrutiny during her Senate confirmation hearings was selected to lead the anti-fossil fuel nonprofit The Wilderness Society when she leaves her current post. The non-profit’s PAC has donated more than $50,000 to many progressive candidates, including Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Bob Casey. D-Pa., and Kamala Harris, according to public records.
Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the Bureau of Land Management, will assume the position of president with the nonprofit in February, according to the Associated Press. The news raises the possibility that other figures in the current administration may find new homes with influential environmental groups that worked closely with federal agencies under the Biden-Harris administration.
The ethically questionable, and sometimes illegal, movement of employees between federal agencies and nonprofits and companies that have either lobbied those agencies or been overseen by them is what’s often referred to as the “revolving door” of government.
Even though Trump has vowed to roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s climate agenda, these relationships will be maintained and could be strengthened as former federal employees under the current administration go to work for climate groups that will continue to lobby the agencies in support of the activists’ preferred policies.
Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog nonprofit Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), told Just the News that despite the Biden-Harris administration’s claims that it acted with a high degree of ethics and transparency, top officials acted completely contrary to these promises.
“The revolving door is spinning faster than ever. People who came from powerful special interest groups into the administration are now leaving the administration to go to powerful special interest groups,” Chamberlain said.
Friendly meetings
During the Biden-Harris administration, The Wilderness Society enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Department of the Interior, under which Stone-Manning’s bureau is housed. In 2023, the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) revealed that lobbyists with the Society brainstormed “legal and policy pathways” with DOI lawyers regarding the Twin Metals project in Minnesota.
The Wilderness Society was the lead plaintiff challenging the critical minerals project. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, FGI obtained records showing coordination between the nonprofit and DOI policymakers and lawyers. This included a high-level policy meeting with lobbyists from the Society and then-Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Deputy Chief of Staff Kate Kelly. This meeting was omitted from Beaudreau’s public calendar. In 2022, the DOI announced it was canceling the leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota, terminating the critical minerals project, as The Wilderness Society had demanded.
“The American public should be concerned when senior government officials and lobbyists of plaintiffs are not reporting meetings that appear to influence active litigation and major policy decisions,” Peter McGinnis, spokesperson for FGI, said in a statement last year.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grilled Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the matter in May during a fiscal year 2025 budget request hearing of the Senate Natural Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
In the course of the tense exchange, Hawley asked Haaland about meetings her staff had with The Wilderness Society, which Hawley described as a “left-wing environmentalist pressure group” funded in large part by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, “who has routed his money through all manner of dark money groups.”
Hawley asked Haaland if anyone in leadership at the Interior Department had met with the Wilderness Society. “I’m sure we’ve met with a lot of groups and organizations in the work we do when we’re discussing the environment,” Haaland answered.
In an interview in May, McGinnis said he was grateful that Hawley questioned Haaland about the information FTG’s FOIA request revealed.
“Unfortunately, the senator’s exchange with Secretary Haaland shows her determination to avoid accountability for what happened at the Interior on her watch. We’re no closer to knowing for certain whether secret, inappropriate and possibly illegal meetings took place and how they influenced DOI’s final decision on the Twin Metals project,” McGinnis said.
Career bureaucrats
Trump hasn’t nominated anyone to head the BLM yet, but he has nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to replace Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to replace Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Granholm achieved notoriety when her much-touted cross-country road trip in an EV went sideways. When the first wave of her fleet arrived at a local charging station, they discovered that one charger was broken and the others were occupied. When a working charger opened up, a staffer parked a gas car there to save the spot for Granholm.
Rick Whitbeck, founder of Power Performance Strategies, an industrial consulting firm, told Just the News that, while activists groups will lose these climate-friendly heads at agencies that oversee a lot of decisions impacting the oil and gas industry, they will still have friends at those agencies — leftovers from the Biden-Harris administration.
“There are career bureaucrats who are very committed to their ideology. Trump can’t get rid of them all,” Whitbeck said.
He said Trump can do a lot to claw back the excess of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but the deep state has a momentum that won’t end on a single administration.
“This isn’t going to be a scalpel approach, but Trump can’t just take a bulldozer to it either,” Whitbeck said.
Spiking agendas
Stone-Manning faced fierce opposition from Senate Republicans during her confirmation hearing. Her critics labeled her an “eco-terrorist.” In 1989 when she was a graduate student at the University of Montana, Stone-Manning sent a letter to Forest Service officials warning that metal spikes had been driven into trees in the national forests of Idaho.
“Tree spiking” is a tactic that has been used by anti-logging activists to stop timber harvesting. While activists often claim the practice is only intended to damage equipment, workers’ lives have been threatened when saw blades break on the spikes.
Stone-Manning maintained that she played only a peripheral role in the efforts of Earth First activists. She said she only retyped and mailed the letter and did so out of concern that the authorities be notified. An agent who investigated the incident disputed her account based on statements from one of the co-conspirators, but another denied she was involved with the tree spiking. Stone-Manning was granted legal immunity in exchange for testifying against the two men.
In 2021, prior to her confirmation hearings, PPT filed a complaint with the attorney for the District of Columbia, accusing Stone-Manning of lying about having never “been the target” of a criminal investigation in written testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Whether she was ultimately charged or convicted in the case is irrelevant; she was being investigated by federal authorities in the tree spiking case, and the fact of her immunity undeniably reinforces this point,” the complaint said.
During her confirmation hearings in 2021, the tree-spiking saga was a point of contention for her critics. “She conspired with eco-terrorists. She lied to the Senate. She still holds radically reprehensible views,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News at the time.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who recently switched parties from Democrat to Independent, defended her. The Senate confirmed her on a 50-45 vote.
Lingering influence
Under Stone-Manning’s leadership, the Bureau of Land Management oversaw a staggering decline in the number of oil and gas leases, increased royalty rates oil companies pay, and finalized a rule allowing lands to be leased for conservation, meaning the acreage prohibits almost all types of development.
Along with her ideological positions, Stone-Manning will bring to The Wilderness Alliance her connections to the Department of the Interior, an agency that has worked closely with the alliance and other environmental groups in the past. Haaland and Granholm, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, may also find their way to positions at organizations looking to maintain what they had under President Joe Biden.
“They may not be the exact same groups, but they’re still going into the same world and exerting the same type of influence on policy, or at least attempting to have the influence they had when they were inside the administration,” Chamberlain said.
Reprinted with permission from Just The News by Kevin Killough.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Most of the so-called non-profit organizations out there, along with a vast majority of NGO’s, are all either affiliated with or ideologically aligned with the Democrat Party since it has been America’s Socialist / Marxist Party for quite a few decades now. The same by the way can be said for most of higher academia as well, that also serves as a “safe space” for Democrat bureaucrats when they are occasionally displaced due to elections. So, it should come as no great surprise that there is a revolving door that exists between all these like-minded groups. This revolving door or game of musical chairs has existed since the so-called “progressive movement”, as America’s early socialists called themselves to avoid the fallout against communism once the atrocities in Russia first spilled out, first burrowed its way into academia in the early 1900s.
Whenever the Democrats lose the White House, those in the Executive Branch simply retreat to the safety and well-paid security of the non-profits, the NGO’s or to a position in academia until the American people are foolish enough, once again, to empower Democrats to control the country. This revolving door would cease to exist, if only the American people would stop giving Democrats another chance over and over again every few years. Even a 5-year-old learns not to play with fire after being burned once or twice. Yet nearly half the country keeps periodically sticking both hands in the fire and then wonders why nearly everything goes to sh*t.
The inability of the American people to learn this simple lesson, even after being burned multiple times from empowering Democrats to control the country time and time again, is why we keep squandering all the opportunities we’ve had to clean up the messes the Democrats have created for us over the years. The country desperately needs a smarter electorate that understands it needs to stop empowering Democrats every few years. The same can be said for RINOs by the way, as they are nothing but Democrats with an (R) after their name.
Until the special interest lobbies are eliminated, there will always be back door deals. Of course, politicians have never said no to a little something, to sway their decisions. Term limits for career lifetime politicians would help, but don’t hold your breath.
OK DOGE shut the revolving door here NOW
Rush
referred to these people as environmental wackos. He was correct in his assessment. RIP, Rush.
Eliminate lobby groups on both sides. Influence money should not be used to determine the dispersement of federal dollars for a specific cause. It the cause was legitimate, then it should stand on it own as long as it is legal, moral, and ethical and benefits all citizens and not just a few special interest groups.
The SCOTUS has to be involved to find that 80% of what the Federal Government does is unconstitutional.
make all employees sign to uphold the constitution/amendments or they are fired and not rehired. any violation is reason for termination and no rehire. period. get back to America being governed by those who love America and no others
THE MOST IMPORTANT election was 2008. When racist America choose a President based skin color. The “Deep State” has been getting worse ever since Obama was elected. After 8 years of his administration the Government was fully ingrained with far left Progressives who have damaged the country severally. Hopefully conservatives have many more terms to help clean out this cancer.
I am concerned about organizations operating as “non profits” getting all this money to donate to politicians and their ilk. I think every American taxpayer should do a deep dive into any non profit/charitable organization’s expenditures before donating another dollar. Keep in mind too that most, if not all, of these “non profits” are tax exempt too. Cut off their funding and see what happens to them.
Hopefully DOGE will help eliminate all funding to NGOs. If they can’t stand alone on the funding they solicit from membership and the general public, that means their mission is not supported by the American people and definitely should not be supported by the taxpayer’s money!
They need to put holders in those “revolving doors”, to keep the ‘woke’ Marxists and their ideas out
The mainstream press has to do their job and call these things out. Of course they will never do so in a fair and objective manner, having been “in the tank” for Democrats for many decades.
Hopefully DJT will be able to rid at least the top three layers out of each of the administration’s departments. That would settle things down quite a lot. Then his new DOGE with Musk & Ramaswamy can determine if those depts still have an unfilfilled mission; if not, disband it entirely. OR, if the dept is working against POTUS’s mission, also disband it.
I’m hoping DOGE downsizes all the depts & disbands those no longer doing what they were originally established to do. I think the majority of citizens agree with that. We want & need real change.
All these “non profits”are not a volunteer organizations, they must get money to operate and pay themselves a nice salaries if fed. gov.. is involved, it should stop any payments. Taxpayer should not be supporting non productive harm casing parasites who did not work a day in their lives.
I guess CNN and MSNBC aren’t hiring these days…
Fire,fire,fire every one of the obama,soros,biden”suck ups”.
“Democrats” influence propogates like Syphilis, but, sadly, it takes political influence that’s a lot stronger than penicillin to cure it. Thank goodness for our President Trump !