Doug Burgum’s Fail-By-Design Checklist is Coming For Americans’ Wallet and Land
Memorandum: Doug Burgum’s Fail-By-Design Checklist is Coming For Americans’ Wallet and Land
To: Interested Parties
From: Save Our Parks
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026
Contact: Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks Spokesperson
Donald Trump brought Doug Burgum into his administration with a promise that the former governor and businessman had the chops to help bring down the cost of living for the American public. But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who also chairs the National Energy Dominance Council, has failed to deliver. Instead of concerning himself with checkbook issues, Burgum is all-in on the ideological project laid out in Project 2025. For over a year now, he has doubled down on Project 2025’s fail-by-design checklist for America’s national parks and public lands, which has become a drag on the American economy.
Burgum is not just failing at his job; he’s an albatross for an administration that’s failing to lower costs across the board. It is probably why he refuses to take questions or be interviewed by reputable journalists and news outlets, opting only to appear on the MAGA-friendly networks, like Fox News, Breitbart, and Newsmax.
Save Our Parks reviewed what Burgum has checked off on his fail-by-design wish list, exposing how it’s costing the American people and putting communities at risk as he continues to undermine our parks and public lands in his push to privatize and sell them off.
☑ Fill the Interior Department With Cronies. Burgum has handed Interior to a roster of industry insiders with glaring conflicts of interest. Karen Budd-Falen, the department's third-highest official, is facing calls for an investigation after failing to disclose her family’s financial ties to a mining company whose federal permits she helped oversee. His BLM nominee, “Selloff Steve” Pearce, co-signed a letter in Congress calling for a public lands sell-off, then admitted at his confirmation hearing he’s “not so sure” he’s changed. And, despite clear inadequacies in his ethics agreement, like simply transferring the ownership of his oil servicing company to his wife, his nomination advanced to the full chamber on a party-line vote. Next up in Burgum’s crony pipeline is conflicted and unqualified corporate concessionaire executive Scott Socha and wealthy investment banker Kevin Lilly. This corruption and mismanagement is being paid for by taxpayers, rural communities, and small, recreation-based businesses that depend on well-managed public lands and parks for their livelihoods.
☑ UnAmerican Censorship, Erasing History, & Silencing Science. Burgum has earned the moniker of Secretary of Censorship, and for good reason. He’s not only the least transparent Interior Secretary in recent history, but Burgum’s overseeing a sweeping purge of science, history, and culture from our parks and public lands, acting as the self-annointed arbitrator of information. In Utah alone, Burgum’s staff recently flagged almost forty items for removal under Trump’s executive orders. Exhibits are being altered, scientists silenced, and whole chapters of American history are being removed, altered, and/or whitewashed. That’s on top of Trump and Burgum’s influence-peddling scheme, Freedom 250, whose Propaganda Trucks are making their way into communities across the country as no-bid contracts are being awarded to connected corporations ahead of our 250th anniversary. Now, agencies under Burgum’s control have been ordered to blacklist an entire news outlet — a worrying authoritarian decision that should alarm journalists and the public.
☑ Mismanage Parks & Public Lands Into the Ground. America’s national parks and public lands are a $1.3 trillion economic engine, one Burgum is uninterested in maintaining. In just the last year, Interior has shed thousands of rangers, scientists, and maintenance crews. It’s increasing risks and costs across the nation. The economic damage fans out directly to the small businesses and gateway communities that live and die by park visitation. Last year, the Canadian boycott of the U.S. economy cost an estimated $4.5 billion. With other countries and international visitors choosing to avoid travel to our national parks after Burgum instituted a new $100 per-person surcharge at certain parks, combined with entrance gate employees being forced to verify citizenship, expect more severe economic impacts this season.
☑ Set Up Parks & Public Lands to Be Sold Off. Burgum is laying the groundwork for his ultimate goal of privatizing America’s parks and selling off public lands. Pay-to-play arrangements like Trump and Burgum’s shady “Freedom 250” celebration raise serious questions about who is setting Interior policy, and what they’re getting in return. Recent Republican congressional proposals to offload federal lands make the endgame clear. From Alaska to Texas and Hawaii to Virginia, including everything in between, America’s 640 million acres of public lands are under an unprecedented assault by Burgum and this administration. Whether it’s transferring ownership, giving them away to extractive industries, or entirely disposing of federal public lands, once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
☑ Skyrocketing Energy Prices. America is the world’s leading producer of oil and gas, and Burgum has made a full throated ‘energy dominance’ promise that gas and energy prices would drop under his tenure at Interior. But the exact opposite has happened, and no one, including the president, is happy with how unprepared Doug and his counterpart at the Department of Energy were. To make matters worse, at every opportunity, Burgum has blocked clean energy projects that would have provided economic opportunity and growth, created good-paying jobs, and lowered electrical costs. And, instead of meeting the moment of higher prices, the administration and Burgum are floating a one billion dollar taxpayer-funded settlement to cancel leases of new wind development that would’ve helped defray rising costs, while inking export deals that will only drive prices higher for Americans.
It’s all adding up to empty wallets and a stagnant economy, in part, due to Burgum’s failures. Expect Burgum to attempt a desperate pivot and use this administration’s self-inflicted wounds as an excuse to justify more public land and resource giveaways to extractive corporations as they meet with oil and gas lobbyists today.
Affordability is one of the defining issues of this political moment. The last thing Americans need is a secretive Interior Secretary, like Doug Burgum, who is degrading a massive public asset, stifling clean energy projects, eliminating federal jobs and killing private sector ones, harming small and outdoor businesses in rural communities, and turning America’s great outdoors into a tool of private enrichment as he undermines working Americans’ financial well-being by forcing them to pay more for less.
Doug Burgum isn’t “unlocking America’s economic potential.” He’s locking Americans out of it, and making them poorer in the process. Burgum’s mismanagement, lack of preparedness, and failures have been costly – politically and economically. The open question everyone should be asking is this: how much longer can this administration and Americans afford to keep Burgum at Interior?
###
