TRANSITION
Interior boosts authority for new appointees
The Biden administration has temporarily beefed up the authority of some of its initial Interior Department appointees.
Michael has covered the Interior Department, the Fish and Wildlife Service and endangered species since 2017. He previously covered California and legal affairs for McClatchy's Washington Bureau. He is the author of three books, "The Ministers' War," "Radical Chapters" and "The Forestport Breaks." He graduated from Oberlin College and earned master's degrees from Yale Law School, where he was a Knight Journalism Fellow, and from Johns Hopkins University. He is an adjunct instructor at George Washington University and is a Virginia-certified EMT.
The Biden administration has temporarily beefed up the authority of some of its initial Interior Department appointees.
Citing problems with the Dakota Access pipeline, the Interior Department's new top lawyer has called for strengthening tribal clout in federal environmental decisions.
Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt quietly departed today after four years of putting an emphatic Trump administration stamp on the national landscape and on the department of some 70,000 employees.
The Biden administration wasted no time today in pledging a wholesale review and potential reversal of its predecessor's actions on the Endangered Species Act and other hot-button environmental laws.
On his way out the door, the Interior Department's top lawyer has undercut the Biden administration's legal authority to take land into trust for Native American tribes in Alaska.