Trump Picks Unwavering Loyalist To Head BLM After Sgamma Debacle
The main difference between Trump's two picks to helm the federal agency seems not to be policy, but their fealty to the man in the White House.
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management highlights the extent to which the president places loyalty above all else.
Pearce, a former New Mexico congressman with a long history of working to undermine public land protections, is Trump’s second nominee to lead the massive federal land management agency. His first choice, longtime oil and gas lobbyist Kathleen Sgamma, abruptly withdrew her nomination hours before her confirmation hearing in April, after a watchdog group surfaced a private memo in which Sgamma condemned Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I am disgusted by the violence witnessed yesterday and President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it,” Sgamma, then the president of Western Energy Alliance, wrote a day after the attack.
In Pearce, Trump seems to have found the unwavering allegiance that Sgamma lacked.
In the wake of the 2020 election, Pearce, then chair of the New Mexico Republican Party, parrotted MAGA talking points about potential voter fraud in an effort to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory. He supported Texas’s lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of what he dismissed as a “dishonest” election. When Congress certified Biden’s win on Jan. 7, 2021, Pearce claimed that “anomalies” in the election had left democracy “tarnished.” And in a Jan. 9 post to Twitter, which he later deleted, Pearce wrote that Trump “will be our President FOREVER and no one can take that away from us.”
In an episode of his podcast a little more than a week after the Jan. 6 riot, Pearce again came to Trump’s defense, using carefully selected clips of Trump’s speech that day to make the case that he did not incite any violence.
“From that point, many in the news media, Big Tech, the social media giants, they’re describing that the president incited people to riot,” Pearce said. “My listening on those words, [I] don’t quite hear it the same way.”
Notably absent from Pearce’s compilation was Trump’s statement that “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Pearce went on to blame the rioting on a handful of outliers and “a lot of stupid people” who followed along.
“I think the people who violated the law should be held accountable, they should be required to face the law that they broke,” he said. “But I also think that everyone who did the same in the [Black Lives Matter] and Antifa riots should face the same consequences.”
Upon being sworn back into office in January, Trump granted blanket clemency to Jan. 6 defendants — something Public Domain could find no record of Pearce weighing in on.
Asked about Pearce’s nomination, the White House referred Public Domain to the Interior Department. Pearce did not respond to a request for comment.
In terms of policy priorities, Pearce and Sgamma are closely aligned. Both have deep ties to the oil and gas industry, and promote the industry’s priorities. Both have worked to prevent Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled animals. Both have been critical of America’s federal land system, with Pearce going as far as to advocate for their divestiture, as Public Domain previously reported.
The difference between the two seems not to be policy, but their fealty to the man in the White House.
Asked about her nomination coming to screeching halt earlier this year, Sgamma pointed Public Domain to an interview with E&E News in which she detailed a phone call she received from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum informing her that she had failed the vetting process and needed to step aside. She told the publication at the time that she was “not bitter.”
As for Pearce, Sgamma sees him as “an excellent choice” for BLM director.
“He represented a district predominated by public lands and energy, and understands both deeply,” Sgamma said in an email to Public Domain. "I worked with him closely when he was Chairman of the House Western Caucus and the Representative for an important oil and natural gas area, and I think he’ll do a great job.”
When Sgamma withdrew her nomination, former Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt linked her downfall to the critical comments she made about Trump’s role in the January 6 attack.
“2 years ago, in my book, I explained that 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 wrote in an X post last April,. “Sad. Self-inflicted.”
Bernhardt, who now runs a lobbying firm and remains a power in Trumpworld, recently lavished Pearce with praise and called for his swift confirmation.
“Steve’s leadership on public lands issues and energy issues makes him uniquely suited for the role,” Bernhardt wrote on X earlier this month.
Bernhardt did not respond to a request for comment.
The Senate must confirm Pearce to the helm of the BLM, where he would oversee nearly 250 million acres of federal land. As of Wednesday, a confirmation hearing had not yet been scheduled.
Deb Haaland, who served as Interior secretary under Biden and is now running for New Mexico governor, called Pearce a “dangerous choice to lead the BLM.”
“Pearce has a record of threatening NM’s public lands, putting profits over people, and neglecting the needs of our state,” she wrote in a post to X.
This story has been updated with a response from Kathleen Sgamma.
trump is a sickness and curse on this country