President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s largest land manager has withdrawn her name from consideration during the confirmation hearing on Thursday.
Kathleen Sgamma, an oil and gas lobbyist, had been picked to head the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees roughly 247 million acres of federal land. The agency is critical, particularly in rural swaths of the country, given it leases parcels for livestock grazing, issues permits for mining and manages lands used for recreation.
“It was an honor to be nominated by President Trump… but unfortunately at this time I need to withdraw my nomination,” Sgamma, who previously served as president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, said in a statement provided by the White House.
“I will continue to support President Trump and fight for his agenda to Unleash American Energy in the private sector.”
No official reason has been provided for Sgamma’s withdrawal by the Trump administration.
“We accept her withdrawal and look forward to putting forth another nominee,” White House spokesperson, Liz Huston, said Thursday.
Trump administration critics, however, were quick to spotlight that Sgamma’s extensive experience contrasted with her previous criticism of Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.
A day after Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021, she wrote a memo to alliance members saying she was “disgusted” by the Jan. 6 riot and that Trump had “besmirched” the agencies that worked for him during the first administration.
“In Trump’s authoritarian universe, the only thing that matters is loyalty, and his nominees must keep their sane instincts private,” Alan Zibel, a researcher for Public Citizen, said in a release Thursday. In the memo
“In a normal environment, a federal nominee might withdraw for saying something outlandish, controversial or insensitive,” Zibel added. “But this nominee appears to have withdrawn for saying something completely obvious – that a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was morally repugnant.”
This story will be updated.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s nominee for largest land manager withdraws from consideration
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