Amid Questions of Loyalty to Trump, a Longtime Oil and Gas Advocate Withdraws as Nominee to Lead BLM

Kathleen Sgamma, an oil and gas advocate, has withdrawn from consideration to be director of the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency responsible for managing one-tenth of America’s land base, after her loyalty to President Donald Trump came under scrutiny. Her decision was announced at the beginning of a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing earlier today, at which she was expected to face questions ahead of a vote on her candidacy.

Sgamma, a co-author of the chapter on the Interior Department in Project 2025, a conservative roadmap for the Trump administration, had spent the last nine years as president of Western Energy Alliance, a small but litigious trade group representing oil and gas companies across the West. Her nomination in February to take the top position at the BLM, which stewards public land all over the country but primarily in the West, was met with swift condemnation from environmental groups and applause by the oil and gas industry.

“We accept her withdrawal and look forward to putting forth another nominee,” Liz Huston, a White House assistant press secretary, told Inside Climate News. Sgamma did not return requests for comment on her decision, and the White House did not give a reason for her stepping down. 

In a LinkedIn post, Sgamma said she remains “a passionate advocate for our public lands and was honored to be nominated by President Trump,” but did not indicate why she withdrew herself from consideration. “I remain committed to President Trump and his unleashing American energy agenda and ensuring multiple-use access for all,” she wrote. 

Earlier this week, the news outlet Documented published a memo Sgamma wrote and privately distributed to oil and gas executives after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In it, she said she was “disgusted by the violence” that day and by “President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it.” She closed wishing President-elect Joe Biden “the best of luck in his goal to return to normalcy and moderation,” but signaled Western Energy Alliance’s opposition to many of his policies. 

David Bernhardt, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior during his first term, wrote that Sgamma’s memo cost her the position in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Individuals who know their views don’t align with the president, and yet seek political appointments hoping such divergence will not be noticed cause needless harm and conflict, hindering the president’s agenda,” he said, before calling Sgamma’s loss of the opportunity to lead the BLM sad and self-inflicted.

Environmentalists who opposed Sgamma’s candidacy found the way it ended telling.

“It would be ironic, if not fitting, if secrecy and her lack of candor with the White House ultimately cost her the nomination,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Denver-based conservation and environmental advocacy organization, in a statement. Weiss had been publicly calling for Sgamma to release a list of Western Energy Alliance members before her confirmation hearing.

Some groups took Sgamma’s decision as an indication that loyalty is the most important trait any Trump nominee must possess. “Sgamma’s unpardonable sin in Trump’s world appears to have been maintaining a connection to shared reality and rejecting Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” said Alan Zibel, a research director for the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, in a statement.

“In Trump’s authoritarian universe, the only thing that matters is loyalty, and his nominees must keep their sane instincts private.”

The White House will now have to look for someone else to oversee the BLM at a pivotal time for the agency and public lands in America. To help cushion the blow tax cuts that would largely benefit the wealthy would deal to the federal deficit, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have expressed an openness to selling public lands that since their creation have been held, maintained and available for every American. The Senate recently struck down an amendment to a budget bill that would have prevented such a sale, with only Republicans from Montana breaking with their party members on the vote. Trump has also vowed to expand oil and gas drilling, and revive coal mining, on public lands.

The White House did not respond to questions about whether its next nominee would also come from an oil and gas background. Environmentalists fear such a conflict of interest is inevitable. 

“There’s no doubt that Trump’s next nominee will also be a poisonous threat to our wildlife and wild places, but this speedbump gives senators a chance to ponder whether they really want to feed America’s public lands and monuments into the snapping jaws of the fracking and mining industries,” wrote the Center for Biological Diversity in a statement.

“The Trump administration should avoid nominating anyone else with massive conflicts of interest to lead the Bureau of National Management, and instead focus on implementing Congress’s multiple-use mandate for America’s public lands,” Weiss said.

It is unclear whether Sgamma will return to Western Energy Alliance. On April 2, the organization announced Melissa Simpson would replace Sgamma as president, a changeover Aaron Johnson, Western Energy Alliance’s vice president of public and legislative affairs, said is still on track to occur next week.