A House panel on Tuesday will examine the influence of “extreme environmental activist groups” at the Interior Department, setting the stage for a partisan row in the heat of election season.
House Republicans have repeatedly claimed left-leaning environmental groups have outsize influence over President Joe Biden’s climate policy, and they will use the hearing to try to make a link to wrongdoing at Interior. Democrats, who are fiercely defensive of Biden’s climate agenda, will forcefully push back.
A Natural Resources Committee GOP spokesperson told E&E News the hearing will focus on how the Biden administration is “beholden to activist nonprofit, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), particularly those aligned with leftist social and environmental justice agendas” and the rise of NGOs in the federal rulemaking process.
Republicans will also seek to show that Interior “has cultivated intimate and potentially improper relationships with radical NGOs driving the Biden administration’s extreme environmental agenda,” under the leadership of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
