President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management appeared to ease through his confirmation hearing Wednesday with little pushback over his past support for selling federal lands.
Democrats at the Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing pressed Steve Pearce — a former seven-term Republican congressman from New Mexico — to explain his support while in office for selling some BLM and Forest Service lands to raise money.
But Pearce mostly deflected the issue, arguing that if confirmed, he will follow the law, and the law does not allow for the bureau to sell large-scale public lands without congressional approval.
He said the statements made in 2012 supporting the sale of some public lands do not indicate he supports selling off “large swaths of land” today.
