Interior Department job cuts spark conflict with DOGE appointee

Politico

24-05-2025

DOGE-driven staff cuts inside the Interior Department have set off a turf battle over how to deploy personnel at the Bureau of Land Management — raising concerns the vacancies would undermine President Donald Trump's promise to boost domestic fossil fuel and minerals production.
A memo issued this month by a DOGE appointee at Interior set off a tussle over how employees at BLM should fulfill the duties for the thousands of jobs that now sit empty, but which people inside the agency say are critical for its day-to-day operations.
The May 2 memo, obtained by POLITICO, was signed by Stephanie Holmes, a former staffer for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency who is now embedded as Interior's acting chief human capital officer. It ordered most staff to stop doing 'detail' work — temporarily filling in for vacant positions — and return to their official permanent positions by May 18.
But BLM Deputy Director for Administration and Programs Michael Nedd, a 30-year veteran of the bureau, instructed career staff to ignore the Holmes memo, saying it would have resulted in fewer positions being filled, three people familiar with the situation told POLITICO.
The bureau oversees the 245 million acres and the oil, gas, coal and minerals produced on that land, making it a critical player in fulfilling Trump's pledge of rapidly expanding the nation's fossil fuel and mineral production.
BLM employees said Nedd's direction to staff marked a boiling over of career staff distress over the steep loss of bureau personnel after DOGE first attempted to fire agency employees, a move that courts ruled to be unlawful. Interior has since offered deferred buyouts and early retirements and is now planning a potentially massive reduction in force to be carried out in coming weeks. A bureau spokesperson declined to comment on how many people have left so far.
Nedd told staff 'to ignore the email from HR' because 'the work is too important and these people in detail are doing the work of the Administration,' said one person familiar with Nedd's directive who was granted anonymity to discuss internal department affairs.
A second person working at BLM confirmed Nedd's direction to staff, as did a person outside the agency who interacts with the bureau. Those people were also granted anonymity to protect working relationships.
'It's a battle of HR versus Mike Nedd,' one of the people inside the agency said. The administration is 'shooting themselves in the foot,' this person said of the Interior HR memo. 'We're running out of people.'
Nedd did not respond to inquiries. A BLM spokesperson declined to comment.
An Interior Department spokesperson said Nedd did not tell people to ignore the memo.
Lawmakers of both parties have criticized Interior's overall staffing cuts, saying the steep headcount reductions were leaving critical positions unfilled.
Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree, the top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee for Interior's budget, said the department has lost more than 10 percent of its staff through buyouts and early retirements offered by the Trump administration.
'I am very worried about the state of Interior,' Pingree told Interior Secretary Doug Burgum during the subcommittee's hearing Tuesday on the department's proposed budget. 'There's been a stunning decline in its ability to do its mission.'
Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei also said he was concerned that an exodus of staff from Interior would hurt efficiency.
'I don't know how you can sit there and hold people's feet to the fire when you've got so many empty desks,' Amodei said during the hearing.
Burgum defended the department's overall efforts to cut its staff at the hearing, saying the goal was to peel away layers of bureaucracy and move more staff to the local level.
If BLM were run like a private company 'you wouldn't have five layers between headquarters and the front lines' Burgum told the committee. 'We're trying to streamline, to get more people out there to get it done.'
The BLM's roughly 10,000 employees manage vast swaths of land in Western states such as Utah, New Mexico and Alaska. Bureau staff are in charge of processing applications to drill for oil and natural gas, mine for coal and uranium, develop wells for geothermal energy and carry out other energy-related projects on federal land.
But BLM still doesn't have a director after Trump's first nominee, Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her nomination last month following the surfacing of an essay she wrote years ago criticizing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a throng of the president's supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
Interior's human relations staff told employees at the end of April to upload their résumés in preparations for job cuts that could see hundreds or thousands pushed out. The reductions are coming even as Burgum has pledged to slash the time the department takes to process permits — reducing it from years to in some cases less than a month.
The DOGE-led staff reductions have led to a growing number of vacant positions that more employees have to fill in to perform basic jobs, according to three bureau employees granted anonymity to discuss internal bureau affairs. So far, they said, Burgum has been content to let Holmes and Tyler Hassen, a former oilfield services executive and former DOGE staffer who is now Interior's acting policy chief, run the department's staffing policy.
BLM leadership has been forced to assign temporary roles to staff, as shown by another email bureau leadership sent to employees in early May and obtained by POLITICO.
Among the changes in duties added to several people's existing roles laid out in that email, BLM's main chief of staff, Jill Moran, was named as the temporary chief of staff for the assistant secretary of land and minerals. Mitchell Leverette, the bureau's director for its Eastern States office, was named to also serve as assistant director for energy, minerals and realty management, a position that became vacant after the previous person took a buyout. Karen Kelleher, who had served as another deputy director of state operations after working as Idaho state director, was named as temporarily working as acting Alaska state director after that position became vacant.
The temporary work isn't just for high-level staff, employees said. With more senior staff being given temporary assignments, mid- and lower-level staff have had to take on more work to backfill leadership responsibilities, employees told POLITICO.
'Most of the folks I work with are juggling at least two offices at the moment without any extra incentive,' said an employee at one of the bureau's state offices who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.