President Joe Biden is promoting to the Interior Department’s number-two post an official who thrice failed to receive Senate confirmation to a lower position because of her climate activism.
According to a Tuesday Interior Department press release, Biden will name longtime Interior official Laura Daniel-Davis acting deputy secretary of the interior, effective immediately. Daniel-Davis, the current principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, will replace outgoing Interior Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau.
“There are few people who have been by my side more over the past two and a half years than Laura, and I am so grateful that she has agreed to step into this role as we work together to implement President Biden’s ambitious and historic agenda,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. “Laura has a depth of experience that will be invaluable in our work to build a clean energy future, honor our commitments to Indigenous communities, and leave our air, water and public lands better for future generations.”
“The work of the Department of the Interior touches all Americans, and I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as Acting Deputy Secretary,” said Daniel-Davis. “We will continue to work in partnership with states, Tribes, industry, non-profit organizations and academia to ensure that the best available science guides our decision-making as we deliver on our promises to the American people.”
That “best available science” seems to consist primarily of climate alarmism, which is why Daniel-Davis’ nomination as assistant secretary of the interior for land and minerals management could not clear the Senate despite Democratic control of that body.
Biden first nominated Daniel-Davis to the post in June 2021. Twice thereafter, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on party-line votes, refused to forward her nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.
“Laura Daniel-Davis is doing everything in her power to make American energy more expensive. During her tenure as assistant secretary for land and minerals, she has undermined our nation’s energy and mineral security. She has continually blocked access to important minerals and restricted oil and gas leasing on federal lands. She is totally opposed to unleashing American energy,” Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Fox News Tuesday.
“This extreme agenda is the reason that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee twice refused to confirm her nomination,” he added. “Promoting her to an even more influential position only shows the Biden administration’s blind devotion to a radical, anti-American energy agenda.”
Daniel-Davis’ allegiance to climate extremism at the expense of American energy security also tanked her third nomination, which was tendered in January.
A 2022 memo to Daniel-Davis from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) concerning oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Cook Inlet noted that a lower royalty charge for the leases “may be more likely to facilitate expeditious and orderly development of [offshore] resources and potentially offer greater energy security.”
“Nevertheless,” the memo argued, “because of the serious challenges facing the Nation from climate change and the impact of [greenhouse gases] from fossil fuels, BOEM is not recommending this option since it would not include an appropriate surcharge to account for those impacts.”
Daniel-Davis apparently agreed because she signed off on a higher royalty, stating that it represented “the most reasonable balancing of environmental and economic factors for the American public.” Fox News pointedly observed that “she didn’t mention the alternative would produce greater energy security as highlighted in the memo.”
After the memo was leaked in early March, Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) scuttled Daniel-Davis’ nomination. In a Houston Chronicle op-ed, Manchin pointed out that the royalty rate Daniel-Davis approved was “explicitly designed to decrease fossil energy production at the expense of our energy security.”
“Even though I supported her in the past, I cannot, in good conscience, support her or anyone else who will play partisan politics and agree with this misguided and dangerous manipulation of the law,” he wrote.
A few weeks later, two House committees announced investigations of Daniel-Davis’ energy-policy decisions, including the one referenced in the leaked memo.
Daniel-Davis is also the subject of a 2022 ethics complaint from the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT). Before returning to Interior under Biden, Daniel-Davis served as chief of policy and advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), which sued to block aspects of the Trump administration’s oil and gas lease program in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). “Within six months at Interior, Ms. Daniel-Davis had exercised her official authority to achieve practically all of the legal remedies sought by her former employer in court,” PPT alleged. “Even worse, the legal arguments she relied on to do so were strikingly similar to those developed for and included in her former employer’s legal filings.”
“This latest move tells you all you need to know about the priorities of Secretary Haaland and the Department of the Interior,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Tuesday.
“Rewarding someone unable to achieve confirmation by the Senate, who is also under the cloud of a current ethics complaint no less, with a promotion to an even higher position, seems like a slap in the face to the American public, its elected representatives, and the Constitution,” he added. “Members of Congress are already demanding an audit of the ethics office at Interior and rather than treading lightly they [the Biden administration] appear to be doubling down.”
