02.12.25

Ranking Member Huffman Statement on Trump Nominating Big Oil Insider to Lead Agency Responsible for Protecting Public Lands

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released a statement regarding the President’s nomination of Kathleen Sgamma—a lead architect of Project 2025—to lead the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management:

"The fox is in the henhouse. As a lead architect of Project 2025, Ms. Sgamma designed the blueprint to hand over our sacred public lands to polluters. Now, after decades of working for the fossil fuel lobby to gut environmental, public health, and taxpayer protections and push for drilling in special places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she’s being nominated to manage nearly 250 million acres of America’s public lands,” said Ranking Member Huffman.

“The Trump administration and its fossil fuel allies are gearing up to shortchange the American people by selling off our treasured landscapes to pad the pockets of Big Oil barons. They want to rewrite the rules to benefit the wealthiest oil and gas CEOs, while taxpayers foot the bill and communities lose access to lands that should belong to all of us. Natural Resources Democrats won’t stand by while they plunder our lands and rob the American people blind."
 

BACKGROUND

Ms. Sgamma currently serves as President of the Western Energy Alliance, a fossil fuel lobbying group that proudly calls itself a “strong, unified voice” for the oil and gas industry in the Western United States. 

As a lead author of the Interior section in Project 2025, she helped write the playbook for an all-out assault on conservation, climate action, and public land protections. Now, under Trump, she’s poised to turn that extremist agenda into reality. Last year, she told The Hill the blueprint was “all about increasing [oil and gas] development and production from federal lands,” despite the fact the United States is already the number one producer of gas and oil in the world.

In the 118th Congress alone, Sgamma testified for the Natural Resources Committee six times, championing Republican efforts to weaken environmental safeguards, fast-track drilling on public lands, and block commonsense fiscal reforms that would hold polluters accountable.

A list of hearings in which Sgamma testified for the Natural Resources Majority follows:

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