{"id":52005,"date":"2020-08-17T15:21:53","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T21:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/white-house-withdraws-nomination-for-bureau-of-land-management-head\/"},"modified":"2020-08-17T21:21:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T21:21:53","slug":"white-house-withdraws-nomination-for-bureau-of-land-management-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/white-house-withdraws-nomination-for-bureau-of-land-management-head\/","title":{"rendered":"White House withdraws nomination for Bureau of Land Management head"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"William
William Perry Pendley, who has been leading the Bureau of Land Management in an acting role, is no longer being considered as the agency\u2019s permanent director.<\/span>Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Trump administration withdrew its nomination of William Perry Pendley to lead the Bureau of Land Management on Saturday after both Republican and Democratic senators said he would face tough questioning in a confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n

Pendley will continue to lead the agency in an acting capacity, drawing ire from conservation groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithdrawing William Perry Pendley\u2019s nomination confirms he couldn\u2019t even survive a confirmation process run by the president\u2019s allies in the Senate,\u201d Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement. \u201cKeeping him on the job anyway shows the depth of disdain Secretary (David) Bernhardt and President Trump have for the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pendley was one of two agency directors within the U.S. Department of the Interior appointed by President Donald Trump last year who has come under scrutiny. Eight days before Pendley\u2019s nomination was withdrawn, David Vela, acting director of the National Parks Service, announced he would step down next month.<\/p>\n

Both Pendley and Vela, along with Bernhardt, have been named in a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of repeatedly redesignating the two directors to lead their respective agencies in an acting capacity. The lawsuit alleges the officials and the Trump administration violated the law by skirting the Senate\u2019s role in confirming executive appointments.<\/p>\n

Peter Jenkins, senior counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said his agency will \u201cramp up\u201d its lawsuit to have Pendley removed. He also lauded the Senate for pressuring the White House to withdraw Pendley\u2019s nomination, saying it showed the power of the confirmation process to \u201cweed out fringe candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe White House clearly recognized the drag the Pendley controversy was having on Republican political candidates in the West,\u201d Jenkins said in an email. \u201cHopefully, they also recognized that a nominee for a position cannot also serve as the de facto acting official in that position at the same time under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who serves on the committee tasked with confirming appointments within the Interior Department, had previously said Pendley would face \u201ctough questions\u201d for his controversial opinions, which included calling the Black Lives Matter movement a cancer in 2017 and arguing that the federal government did not have the right to own public lands in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll continue fighting to ensure the Bureau of Land Management\u2019s headquarters move to Grand Junction is fully completed and that the future leadership of the BLM will commit to ensuring Colorado remains the home of the BLM headquarters,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n

The campaign of former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, who is running to unseat Gardner in the 2020 election, also released a statement decrying Pendley\u2019s nomination and saying Gardner should have opposed Pendley\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWilliam Perry Pendley doesn\u2019t believe public lands should exist, but he\u2019s been in charge of our public lands for a year,\u201d Hickenlooper said. \u201cAnd now, thanks to Donald Trump\u2019s latest stunt, Senator Cory Gardner can avoid taking a vote on his nomination. That\u2019s outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob Wallace is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Decision takes pressure off Republican senators in the West<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1137,28,29,195],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-bureau-of-land-management"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52005"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}