Democrats and environmentalists on Wednesday continued their push to oust William Perry Pendley from leading the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), urging the White House to remove him from his post after his nomination to lead the agency was withdrawn.
The latest pushback from the Democrat-only panel comes as the Trump administration has struggled to justify keeping Pendley as the acting director of the BLM amid two lawsuits challenging his tenure and the derailment of his confirmation process.
Pendley, a controversial figure both for his history of opposing federal ownership of land and comments about the Black Lives Matter movement, has been in his post for more than a year through a series of different orders from the Department of the Interior.
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“Withdrawing the nomination was absolutely the right move,” Collin O’Mara, head of the National Wildlife Federation, said of the August announcement from the White House.
“There aren't that many nominees that have been so egregious they've had to be pulled back out of the United States Senate for fear of the political consequences of their appointment," he added. "But the White House doesn't get to simply leave him in charge of the Bureau of Land Management."
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), whose electoral survival is key to Republicans holding the Senate, had faced rising pressure on whether they would support Pendley.
While Democrats and outside groups were successful both in pushing for a formal nomination for Pendley and in sidelining his Senate confirmation, booting him from office may prove to be a tougher battle...
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