President Biden will appoint a senior Inside Division official because the division’s No. 2 official on an performing foundation, an individual accustomed to the Biden administration’s plans informed The Hill.
The administration is anticipated to nominate Laura Daniel-Davis, Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary for lands and minerals administration, as performing deputy secretary of the inside. She replaces Tommy Beaudreau, who will depart his submit on the finish of October.
Daniel-Davis, a veteran of the Biden and Obama administrations, was nominated in June 2021, however the Senate Power Committee deadlocked on her nomination that yr and the following, sending it again to the president for reappointment. Biden nominated her in 2023, however in March committee chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) mentioned he wouldn’t advance the nomination.
Manchin, one of many Biden administration’s most outspoken critics on power coverage, cited an inner Inside Division memo that Daniel-Davis signed on refusing to chop federal oil and gasoline extraction charges, detailing the specter of local weather change was talked about. The West Virginia Democrat, who faces a troublesome re-election battle in 2024, mentioned on the time that he “won’t help anybody who agrees with one of these specious reasoning.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a Beaudreau ally, additionally vocally objected to that memo, saying she was “via the roof” on the time.
It’s unclear whether or not the Biden administration has thought-about Daniel-Davis as a everlasting substitute within the deputy secretary place. She would nearly actually face extra obstacles to Senate affirmation than Beaudreau, a preferred determine throughout celebration traces who acquired an 18-1 vote within the committee and an 88-9 vote within the full Senate.
Beaudreau was seen as a centrist, industry-friendly counterweight to Inside Secretary Deb Haaland, an ally of progressives and environmentalists, and his title, not hers, seems on one of many Biden Inside Division’s most controversial approvals: for Willow’s huge oil drilling venture. in Alaska.
The Hill has contacted the Division of the Inside for remark.
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