Doug Burgum is Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, confirmed by the Senate on January 30, 2025 in an 80–17 bipartisan vote.1Congress.gov. PN11-3 – Douglas Burgum – Department of the Interior 119th Congress He also chairs the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, a second role that gives him influence over federal energy policy well beyond the Interior Department’s own lands and waters.2The White House. National Energy Dominance Council Paves Way for Unleashing American Energy
Who Doug Burgum Is
Burgum served as North Dakota’s 33rd governor from December 2016 through December 2024, winning reelection in 2020 by a wide margin.3U.S. Department of the Interior. Secretary Doug Burgum Before politics he built a career in the technology industry. As governor, he oversaw North Dakota during a period of significant energy sector growth tied to the Bakken oil formation, and he chaired a state commission that approved the state’s first injection well for geologic storage of carbon dioxide.
The 80–17 confirmation vote reflected his reputation as a pragmatic governor who worked across party lines on energy and land use. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources reviewed his financial disclosures and professional background before advancing the nomination to the floor.4U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
A Second Job at the White House
Burgum’s chairmanship of the National Energy Dominance Council is the feature that most distinguishes his tenure from past Interior Secretaries. The council is a White House body created to coordinate energy policy across agencies, and it lets Burgum work with the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others on permitting, regulation, and production targets nationwide, not only on federal acreage.2The White House. National Energy Dominance Council Paves Way for Unleashing American Energy The administration frames energy production as a cross-cutting priority rather than the work of any single department, and Burgum sits at the coordinating point.
What the Department Runs
The Interior Department manages more than 500 million surface acres, roughly one-fifth of the country’s landmass.5Performance.gov. Department of the Interior The Bureau of Land Management is the largest piece, overseeing nearly 250 million surface acres and 700 million subsurface acres, mostly across the western states and Alaska, and handling leases for oil, gas, coal, grazing, timber, and renewable energy.6U.S. Department of the Interior. BLM Lands Leasing The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management runs offshore leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf. The National Park Service manages 433 units covering more than 85 million acres.7National Park Service. National Park System The Fish and Wildlife Service enforces the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Bureau of Indian Affairs manages the federal relationship with 575 federally recognized tribes and roughly 55 million acres held in trust.8Bureau of Indian Affairs. About Us Nearly every decision Burgum makes runs through one of these bureaus.
What Burgum Has Done in Office
Burgum moved quickly. His policy record so far is dominated by expanding energy leasing, rolling back Biden-era rules, and speeding up permitting.
Secretarial Order 3418
One of Burgum’s first official acts was signing Secretarial Order 3418, “Unleashing American Energy.” It directs every Interior bureau to align with President Trump’s Executive Order 14154 by unwinding actions tied to revoked Biden-era orders and reviewing any agency activity that could burden domestic energy development.9U.S. Department of the Interior. Secretary Doug Burgum Signs First Round of Secretarys Orders to Unleash American Energy It also requires a review of spending under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to check alignment with administration priorities.
Offshore Leasing Expansion
The department is developing a new five-year leasing program for the Outer Continental Shelf. The first proposal, released in November 2025, includes 34 potential lease sales across Alaska, the Gulf of America, and the Pacific. That is a large expansion over the Biden-era program, which scheduled three sales in the Gulf of Mexico.10Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program The Alaska schedule alone includes 21 lease sales starting in 2026.
End of the Coal Leasing Moratorium
In April 2025, the department officially ended the federal coal leasing moratorium that had been in place, in various forms, since 2016. The BLM published a Federal Register notice terminating the environmental impact statement connected to the original Obama-era moratorium and said it would not perform further environmental analysis on that program.11U.S. Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior Moves to Restore Coal Industry Resource management plans in Wyoming and Montana are being amended to remove restrictions on coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.
National Monument Reviews
Secretarial Order 3418 also tells Interior staff to review existing national monuments and consider whether any should be reduced or opened to resource extraction. The review draws on the Antiquities Act (54 U.S.C. § 320301) and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (43 U.S.C. § 1714). The administration maintains that the president has legal authority to modify or eliminate monument designations. That position is contested. Most prior administrations treated designations as permanent, and no court has definitively resolved whether a president can revoke a predecessor’s monument. Specific monuments targeted for changes have not been publicly identified.
Endangered Species Act Rollback
In November 2025, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed four rules to restore Endangered Species Act regulations to their 2019 and 2020 framework, reversing changes the Biden administration finalized in 2024. The proposals reinstate earlier definitions of “effects of the action” and “environmental baseline” for interagency consultations and remove provisions that allowed conservation offsets when evaluating project impacts.12U.S. Department of the Interior. Administration Revises Endangered Species Act Regulations to Strengthen Certainty, Reduce Burdens and Uphold the Law The department cited the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, as further justification.
Migratory Bird Treaty Act
The department restored a legal opinion from the first Trump term holding that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits only intentional killing of protected birds, not incidental deaths caused by industrial activities like oil drilling, wind turbines, or power lines. That reverses the Biden-era interpretation, which treated incidental kills as violations. In practice, the department will not pursue enforcement against companies whose operations unintentionally kill migratory birds. A federal court in New York previously struck down this same interpretation, creating a jurisdictional split that remains unresolved.
Faster Environmental Reviews
In February 2026, the department finalized new rules for how it conducts environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. Interior bureaus can now rely on categorical exclusions established by other agencies, combine multiple exclusions for complex projects, and skip documentation for many routine exclusions.13Federal Register. National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations A separate April 2026 proposal would expand a categorical exclusion for timber salvage from 250 acres to 5,000 acres, letting much larger post-fire logging projects proceed without a full review. Together, the changes are aimed at accelerating permitting for energy, mining, and timber projects on federal land.
How This Compares to the First-Term Secretaries
Trump’s first term had two Interior Secretaries, and the current agenda picks up where they left off.
Ryan Zinke (2017–2019)
Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman, was confirmed as the 52nd Secretary on March 1, 2017.14Bureau of Land Management. Ryan Zinke Sworn In as 52nd Secretary of the Interior He focused on expanding domestic energy production, most visibly through Executive Order 13795, which directed the department to open additional offshore areas to oil and gas leasing.15Government Publishing Office. Executive Order 13795 – Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy He also pushed to shrink several national monuments. Zinke resigned in December 2018, with his last day set for January 2, 2019, amid multiple federal investigations into his travel, political activities, and potential conflicts of interest. He attributed the scrutiny to politically motivated attacks; White House officials had reportedly pressured him to step down.
David Bernhardt (2019–2021)
David Bernhardt was confirmed as the 53rd Secretary on April 11, 2019, in a 56–41 vote.16The White House. David Bernhardt He had served as the department’s Solicitor from 2006 to 2009 and returned as Trump’s Deputy Secretary before moving up. His approach was more technocratic. He issued Secretarial Order 3362, directing western states and Interior bureaus to cooperate on winter range and migration corridors for elk, mule deer, and pronghorn.17Department of the Interior. Order No. 3362 – Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big-Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors He relocated the BLM headquarters from Washington to Grand Junction, Colorado. Of 328 positions transferred, only 41 employees actually relocated, and the Biden administration later reversed the move.18Bureau of Land Management. Secretary Haaland Outlines Next Steps to Rebuild Bureau of Land Management Bernhardt also changed how the Endangered Species Act was implemented; several of those changes were reversed under Biden and are now being re-proposed under Burgum.