The Interior Department has reassigned around 30 of its most senior staffers to teams largely outside their areas of expertise, alarming lawmakers and federal government workers already worried about the Trump administration’s erosion of institutional knowledge at the agency.
The reassignments mirror an approach President Donald Trump employed in his first term, when the Interior Department, under then-Secretary Ryan Zinke, suddenly shifted around dozens of career Senior Executive Service personnel. The move was met with widespread condemnation from congressional Democrats and led to whistleblower complaints and lawsuits, which accused the administration of sidelining key staff working on climate change and other issues it disfavored.
A subsequent inspector general report faulted Interior for allowing political appointees to exclusively determine the assignments and for failing to justify the moves.