Burgum starts job as Interior secretary

By Heather Richards | 02/03/2025 01:54 PM EST

President Donald Trump has also said the former Republican governor will lead a national council on energy.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shakes hands with Park Police officers outside Interior Department headquarters.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, on his first day Monday, shakes hands with Park Police officers outside the department headquarters in Washington. Interior Department/X

Doug Burgum was officially sworn in Friday as secretary of the Interior Department.

In a post Saturday on the social media site X, the former Republican governor of North Dakota said he would deliver on President Donald Trump’s promise of American “Energy Dominance — which is the foundation of American prosperity, affordability for American families, unrivaled national security, and world peace.”

In a subsequent post Monday, the Interior Department showed Burgum shaking hands with Park Police officers outside Interior’s headquarters in Washington.

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Burgum is the 55th secretary of the department, which oversees the country’s public lands and waters, agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, and a large swath of the country’s vast stores of minerals like oil and gas. He sailed through his confirmation in the Senate last week in a bipartisan 79-18 vote.

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