Next Interior Memos weekly digest, 2025-10-09

We’re now into week two of the federal government shutdown. That’s because the Republican majority doesn’t have enough votes on its own to pass the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations, yet refuses to compromise with the Democratic minority to get enough votes. Further, Senate Republicans could end the shutdown today by getting rid of the filibuster for funding bills—they just did that for bulk Presidential appointments. But if they do that, then they own every unpopular thing that comes with the bill; further, they will undo a key mechanism for protecting some minority power, which will come back to haunt them.

Recall that the core issue is the fact that the Executive Branch has demonstrated—so many times I’ve lost count—that it will simply ignore Congress’s direction as laid out in law. Illegally terminating federal employees that Congress paid for; dismantling programs and even departments created by Congress; refusing to spend funding that Congress directed to be spent; the list goes on. The looming, extremely damaging health care funding cuts are part of the equation, sure, a political pinch point. But underlying it all is the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration and its supporters on the Hill. 

Of course, the shutdown has significant implications for Interior and its mission:

• Some national parks are closed, some are open without services, some are open with others—like states—funding operations. It’s a mess. The situation for national wildlife refuges is largely unclear at the moment since they don’t get nearly the attention that parks get, but presumably closures are rampant. The state of play with the public lands system managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is also unclear, but probably mostly accessible given how they operate. 
• The status of Western water operations with Reclamation is completely opaque at this time. E&E reported yesterday that “some staffers involved in oil and gas and mining activity at the bureau [BLM] who had been working were recently reclassified into a different category called “excepted on-call””. On the oceans side, a judge told the Department last week that they can’t pause litigation on the (illegal) offshore wind permitting cancellations because of the shutdown, but otherwise I haven’t heard updates on activities there.
• The attacks on science are sustained in the shutdown. But for USGS, glad to see Senator Hirono of Hawai’i advocating for the Ecosystems Mission Area!
• The impacts to Indian Country from the shutdown are likely to be extensive. Some impacts may be through Indian Health Services at the Department of Health and Human Services, some may be through the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Interior. Fortunately, the Bureau of Indian Education is funded ahead a year, so they are not being directly impacted. Of course, this is on top of the extensive—and perhaps illegal in some cases—cuts by the administration from the FY 2025 appropriations. See the National Congress of American Indians’ call for bipartisan talks to end the shutdown.

If you or someone you know is furloughed or otherwise recently separated from federal service, please be sure to share this crowdsourced compendium of support resources. It’s grown just in the past couple of days since its release; you can contribute to it too!

Other key items

• The joint webinar I was part of with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Environmental Protection Network (EPN) on Tuesday went well; we had about 500 people attend. If you weren’t able to make it, you can watch the recording here, and my remarks are here if you prefer to read.
• As noted above, the Senate switched a couple of weeks ago to a confirmation process where batches of nominees are voted on, rather than individuals, and only require a majority vote rather than 60%. This is not a great solution to the very real problem of the Senate’s advice-and-consent role for appointments, but here we are. Some key appointments relevant to Interior this week included:
  • Lanny Erdos to head the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement. He comes from a reclamation background in the business sector, was the OSMRE director during the first Trump administration.
  • Ned Mamula to head the US Geological Survey. He’s a fossil fuels geologist and mining cheerleader, so you know where this is going.
  • Billy Kirkland to be the Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs, overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education. His confirmation hearing was really discomforting in that he seemed very unprepared for some basic questions. Here’s to hoping he catches up and is ready to serve Indian Country.
  • Michael Boren was confirmed as undersecretary of Agriculture for natural resources and environment. Since he is / was the acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget while awaiting confirmation, that means the position opened up. Who is making those decisions now that Boren is going back to the Department of Agriculture? No idea! And since there are no updates to doi.gov because of the shutdown, we can’t find any updates to the Secretary’s Order to learn who is carrying out those duties.
• While there’s plenty of other news that’s also important—see below for more on that—it’s really important to call out the Senate’s passage of a Congressional Review Act resolution overturning a BLM Range Management Plan (RMP). They have another such resolution to do the same to an RMP in Alaska that would be devastating to rural subsistence users. 

That's not a very long list of news this week because we're testing a slightly different way to present other snippets of Interior-related news. I've recently switched bookmarking tools to raindrop.io, which I use to collect links for news and web resources throughout the week to share with you in the digest. The previous tool was fine, but didn't allow me to either collaborate with others in collecting and collating links, nor could I just publish the collected links for people to peruse.

Now I can share the bookmarks, so here is a raft of other stories that may be of interest! Some have 1-sentence snippets to provide context, but not all. And if you’re in the market, be sure to check out the jobs collection. If you're reading this just in your email, then click here to go to the collection.

If you're reading on the Next Interior Memos web page, then you should see the page embedded below. If you click on any of the labels (with icons) or hashtags (#) then it will take you to the collection page with other, related topics. You can also click on a headline to go right to a story / resource.

Let me know what you think of this: memos@nextinterior.org.

Coming up and opportunities for action

• Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day; hope you’re able to get out and celebrate it and learn more about the Tribes and other Indigenous Peoples, wherever you are! 
• Action item: Call your elected officials and tell them to leave BLM’s RMPs alone, like the one targeting the Central Yukon RMP, House Joint Resolution 106.
• Action item: Are you interested in federal statistics? Want to help track what’s happening with them? Consider joining this effort organized by the American Statistical Association!
• There’s nothing scheduled that I know of, but permitting reform is still lingering / festering out there. Consider this from Senator Mike “I want to take away public Lands” Lee (R-Utah): 

• Looking way ahead, the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society is already starting work on next year’s annual meeting, May 4-7, 2026 in Verona, New York. Find out more here: https://www.nafws.org/product/2026-annual-national-conference/

Closing cuteness

No, this is not Interior-specific—I could make an argument about ducks and their management through the US Fish and Wildlife Service, but that’s not really legit—it’s just cute and fun (via Reddit):

May you have someone who will throw you into your favorite puddle repeatedly!