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riversedge

(70,362 posts) Tue Dec 26, 2017, 12:53 PM Dec 2017

The Daughter Of An Ex-Coal Executive Helped Lead Trumps National Monuments Review!!

POLITICS 12/23/2017 04:29 pm ET
The Daughter Of An Ex-Coal Executive Helped Lead Trump’s National Monuments Review

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/coal-trump-monuments-review_us_5a3dbe56e4b06d1621b46552
Downey Magallanes, a top aide of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, met with senior officials of her father’s longtime employer, Peabody Energy, in June.
By Chris D’Angelo

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Brian Snyder / Reuters

WASHINGTON — This month, on the recommendation of his Interior secretary, President Donald Trump gutted a pair of protected national monuments in Utah, including coal-rich Grand Staircase-Escalante. The decision followed the controversial review of more than two dozen national monuments ― a process that public records reveal to have been overseen by the daughter of Frederick Palmer, the former executive of coal giant Peabody Energy and a current senior fellow at the conservative Heartland Institute.

Downey Magallanes, Palmer’s daughter, is a 2012 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center who worked for seven years as a staffer for Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and now serves as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Magallanes was at Zinke’s side throughout his months-long monuments review. And her personal calendar shows she had several one-on-one meetings with Zinke to discuss the review in the days before Aug. 24, when Zinke submitted his draft report to the White House.

A version of that report was leaked to the media in September, and the Interior Department released the final version earlier this month. It calls on Trump to shrink or otherwise weaken protections for 10 monuments. On Dec. 4, Trump signed a pair of proclamations to reduce the size of the two Utah sites by a combined 2 million acres. The 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the largest land monument in the country, was cut roughly in half. The boundary of Bears Ears National Monument, a 1.35 million-acre landscape named after a pair of buttes and home to thousands of Native American archeological and cultural sites, was shrunk by about 85 percent.

The move, which opens the door for mining, drilling and other industrial development on public land that has been off limits to such activities, was quickly met with numerous lawsuits from Native American tribes and conservation groups. Meanwhile, groups like the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that’s loaded with climate change deniers and furiously promotes the use of fossil fuels, rejoiced.

Interior Department schedules and visitor logs make clear that Magallanes was a key figure in the agency’s review. She was on hand during a press call in April, when Zinke first announced details of Trump’s executive orders that initially threatened the future of 27 national monuments. During the briefing, Zinke introduced Magallanes as his adviser and said she was there to “help me answer questions if I cannot field them.”

Magallanes traveled with Zinke to several monuments, including Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, as part of his monuments “listening tour.” While at Grand Staircase-Escalante, Zinke tweeted a photo of himself and others gazing at an exposed coal seam. ........................................

.............In early April, just over a month into Zinke’s tenure, the Interior Department came under fire when it temporarily changed the banner image on the Bureau of Land Management’s website from a picture of two boys enjoying nature to a towering coal seam at Peabody’s North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming.................