Senate approves Biden land-agency pick over GOP opposition
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bitterly divided Senate late Thursday approved President Joe Biden’s choice to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West, despite Republican complaints that she is an "eco-terrorist.''
Tracy Stone-Manning, Biden’s choice to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, was approved, 50-45.
Republicans sharply criticized her nomination during an often acrimonious Senate debate, with several holding up a metal spike similar to one used in a 1989 environmental sabotage case.
Democrats defended Stone-Manning, noting she was never charged with a crime and in fact testified against two men who were convicted of spiking trees to sabotage a timber sale in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called Stone-Manning a “dangerous choice to be put in charge of our public lands'' and said she ”continues to hold very dangerous views" against oil and gas drilling, logging and other commercial activity on federal lands. The land management agency oversees energy production, grazing, recreation and other activities on nearly a quarter-billion acres of public lands, primarily in the West.
Democrats called Barrasso's claims outrageous.
"The truth is, Tracy Stone-Manning did nothing wrong. And in fact the people who went to jail went to jail because of Tracy Stone-Manning,'' said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. Stone-Manning was a senior Tester aide from 2007 to 2012.
Tester accused Barrasso and other Republicans of unfounded “character assassination” and said the real reason GOP lawmakers opposed her nomination was because she was a top aide to former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat who lost a closely contested race last year to Sen. Steve Daines,...
