How Corporate Cronies Corrupted the Department of the Interior Under Trump
With the president sucking up the country’s attention, the DOI has quietly become a haven for corporate interests and right-wing ideologues
Earlier this year, a top official at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) was caught on tape praising President Trump’s ability to distract the American public.
“One of the things I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration,” said Assistant Secretary Joe Balash during a speech to fossil fuel executives in February, “is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.”
Balash resigned his post at the DOI in August to take a job at an oil firm, but before he left the agency he served on a team of political appointees that have put the president’s penchant for distraction to good use in recent years. As Trump’s inflammatory statements and divisive behavior attract nonstop media coverage, his appointees at the DOI have quietly turned one of the nation’s most powerful regulatory agencies into an avatar of corporate interests and right-wing ideologues.
