An Interior Department Veteran Looks to the Future
Jacob Malcom, founder of Next Interior, shares his fears for the agency and his hopes for a post-Trump reconstruction.
This story was originally published at High Country News and is republished here with permission.
Love for the land and for public service broke Jacob Malcom’s heart on Valentine’s Day 2025. That Friday, Feb. 14, he was ordered to terminate probationary employees at the U.S. Department of the Interior as part of sweeping layoffs throughout the federal government. In response, he resigned in protest.
Malcom, who led Interior’s Office of Policy Analysis, has since founded a new group, Next Interior, whose mission is to build public awareness of Interior’s many roles and support the agency’s past and present employees.
“Longer term, past the Trump administration, we’re thinking very much about reconstruction,” he said. “We’re not going back to Jan. 19, 2025, as the target for what Interior is. Instead, we’re asking what Interior looks like in the future.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
High Country News: Tell us about your career at Interior. What did you find most satisfying about it, and why did you decide to leave?
Jacob Malcom: The people who make Interior run are just a joy. Given my background in natural resources, in particular with wildlife, I just loved the mission. That’s why I wanted to work there and provide policy analysis to support broad decision-making that affects how our natural and cultural resources are managed and protected. It was exactly the kind of thing I enjoy engaging in, with people who are dedicated to serving the country.
Why did I leave? In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, it was clear that there was going to be a push to terminate a bunch of staff from across the federal government.
On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the senior political official I reported to gave us the rundown: We were going to be carrying out the terminations that day. About 7 p.m., I got the paperwork. The paperwork said that these people had not been performing, or their skills weren’t in line with the department’s needs.
There was no evidence of either of those things. For several of them, I happened to know their work and know that they were among the best performers that were in these offices. There was no opportunity to provide any factual feedback. We were given the direction that we would execute these letters that evening.
All that I could do was to include a note in the files for these staff to say that there was no evidence that this was true, and that we just had to carry out the terminations at the direction of political leadership.
I decided that evening that I was going to resign. Monday was a holiday. I cleaned out my office and resigned the next day.
HCN: In the 30 days after you left, what did you learn?
JM: The changes that were happening, that I could see from the inside — no senior career folks had any say in trying to shape those decisions. Those just continued apace.
During that second 30 days, there were days when there were as many as five secretarial orders, orders that focused largely on energy dominance and resource extraction and use. Those started to go into implementation.
It’s still unclear how some of these policies are going to play out. We need to keep an eye out and understand: When there’s an executive order and a secretarial order — first from the president, second from the secretary — to “unleash” Alaska’s resources, what does that mean for people who live in Alaska?
I think a lot about the Office of Subsistence Management. Their job is to help ensure that Alaskans who live off the land have plants and wildlife available across the landscape. How are (those Alaskans) going to be impacted if priority is placed on other activities that could harm those plants and wildlife? I don’t think we know yet.
HCN: How do you view the department today?
JM: I view it in a couple of different ways. On the positive side, I think about my former colleagues, the career staff of the department, who make it work.
I think a lot about their dedication, their ability to continue charging ahead and doing the work that they’re asked to do. Even if, in many cases, it’s undoing previous work that they had done at the behest of previous administrations. Their ability to keep that work going in the face of all of these changes is pretty amazing.
It’s a testament, I think, to the strength of the civil service and why we need a dedicated civil service.
The flip side to that is, you know, there’s just been this continuing effort to degrade public service and public servants, who are the ones that make our departments, our agencies and our federal government work.
The department’s leaders say they support parks, but they’re going to aim to cut park staffing and park resources and park programs to the bone and beyond. They say they support wildland firefighting, but then they disparage all of the civil servants who are out there and create an environment where it’s not the least bit appealing to go and work for the federal government.
How do they expect these things to work out? How do they expect to have parks that serve people, or address wildfire needs, or fulfill trust and treaty obligations to tribes?
These require people. And if those people are all being run off, if they’re being forced out, if they’re being illegally terminated, there’s not going to be any way to advance the department’s mission. There’s a massive contradiction between what’s being said and what’s being done.
HCN: Can you describe how public lands are being used to advance President Trump’s policies?
JM: The big one is the boost of fossil fuels — the further subsidization of fossil fuels. The administration loves to deride renewable energy subsidies, never mentioning that the fossil fuel subsidies that have been enjoyed for decades continue today to the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Public lands are part of that, because if the public lands are put up for lease at unreasonably low rates and the taxpayers never benefit from the royalties, they’re being used to underwrite energy activity.
HCN: Are public lands playing any role in President Trump’s immigration policies?
JM: They are in a variety of ways. I worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service on the Arizona-Mexico border for several years, and chunks of those federal lands are being used to increase the militarization of the border and put up new walls, which have all sorts of effects on the landscape. The Alligator Alcatraz travesty out in Florida is located (within Big Cypress National Preserve).
HCN: Any more examples of Homeland Security using public lands to advance President Trump’s agenda?
JM: Most likely, we’re just going to see past practices on steroids. The REAL ID Act of 2005 allowed the waiver of all sorts of environmental and historical laws by the Border Patrol and other agencies. We’re just going to see this allowed to continue.
They’ll use the authorities of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to say, “We’re authorized to do whatever we want, and we’ll just waive whatever we want. We’ll use our public lands in any manner we want for immigration and other purposes.”
HCN: How does Next Interior see its role in the public lands debate under the Trump administration?
JM: One of the big challenges facing the Department of the Interior is that there is no set of people ready to advocate for Interior — for all of it.
Most people don’t know what Interior does. Most probably don’t realize that it provides for our parks and our wildlife. It’s responsible for water and energy development in all forms. It produces science and other forms of knowledge that people depend on to identify natural hazards and manage ecosystems. The Department of the Interior also has particular responsibilities to tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education.
We have to educate people about what the department does, and how things like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act intersect with what Interior does. Part of the act rescinded about $250 million from the National Park Service that was supposed to be used to pay for rangers or other staff who help manage resources. I don’t know how many people know that rescission happened, but it did. Part of Next Interior’s job is to educate people about those kinds of changes and advocate for Interior.
Another piece that’s especially important during the Trump administration is supporting public servants. A lot of people, thousands and thousands, are leaving the department. They’re looking for the next phase in their careers or their lives. Having additional support is going to be valuable. Former Environmental Protection Agency staff can turn to the (nonprofit) Environmental Protection Network for support. We need something like that for the people of Interior, so we’re working on that as well.
Longer term, past the Trump administration, we’re thinking very much about reconstruction. We’re not going back to Jan. 19, 2025, as the target for what Interior is. Instead, we’re asking what Interior looks like in the future.
Our vision is a strong and supportive Department of the Interior that’s really serving current and future generations. That’s a big task. So, we’ll start working on it now.
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
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Great to hear from a great hero without a cape
Thank you for posting this