The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall,who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming,as well as two locations in California,to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies,Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison,but no one was convicted of paying the bribes.
Gale Ann Norton is an American politician and attorney who served as the 48th United States Secretary of the Interior under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. A member of the Republican Party,she previously served as the 35th Attorney General of Colorado from 1991 to 1999. Norton was the first woman to hold each of those posts.
The Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge was an artificial wetland environment,created using agricultural runoff from farmland in California's Central Valley.
Westlands Water District is a water district in central California,a local-government entity formed in 1952,that holds long-term contracts for water supplied by the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project.
Thomas Lee Strickland is an American lawyer who was formerly chief of staff to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in the Interior Department. Strickland served as United States Attorney for Colorado and was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate for Colorado in 1996 and 2002. He joined WilmerHale as a partner in September,2011.
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP is a lobbying and law firm based in the United States with 250 attorneys and policy consultants in 13 offices across the western U.S. and in Washington,D.C.
Ryan Keith Zinke is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative for Montana's 1st congressional district since 2023. A member of the Republican Party,Zinke served in the Montana Senate from 2009 to 2013 and as the U.S. representative for the at-large congressional district from 2015 to 2017. He served as the United States secretary of the interior under president Donald Trump from 2017 until his resignation in 2019 following a series of ethical scandals.
Rick Palacio is an American political executive who served as Chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party from 2011 to 2017.
Donald Trump assumed office as the 45th president of the United States on January 20,2017,and his first term ended on January 20,2021. The president has the authority to nominate members of his Cabinet to the United States Senate for confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.
The environmental policy of the first Donald Trump administration represented a shift from the policy priorities and goals of the preceding Barack Obama administration. Where President Obama's environmental agenda prioritized the reduction of carbon emissions through the use of renewable energy with the goal of conserving the environment for future generations,the Trump administration policy was for the US to attain energy independence based on fossil fuel use and to rescind many environmental regulations. By the end of Trump's term,his administration had rolled back 98 environmental rules and regulations,leaving an additional 14 rollbacks still in progress. As of early 2021,the Biden administration was making a public accounting of regulatory decisions under the Trump administration that had been influenced by politics rather than science.
Jeffrey Adam Rosen is an American lawyer who served as acting United States attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021 and as United States deputy attorney general from 2019 to 2020. Before joining the Department of Justice,he was a senior partner at the law firm Kirkland &Ellis and was the United States deputy secretary of transportation.
David Lutz Norquist is an American financial management professional and former government official who served as the 34th United States deputy secretary of defense from 2019 to 2021. In May of 2022,Norquist was selected as the president and chief executive officer of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).
Makan Delrahim is an Iranian-American attorney and lobbyist. From 2017 to 2021,Delrahim served under President Donald Trump as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
Andrew R. Wheeler is an American attorney who served as the 15th administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2019 to 2021. He served as the deputy administrator from April to July 2018,and served as the acting administrator from July 2018 to February 2019. He has been a senior advisor to Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin since March 2022. He previously worked in the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels,representing coal magnate Robert E. Murray and lobbying against the Obama administration's environmental regulations. Wheeler served as chief counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and to the chairman U.S. senator James Inhofe,prominent for his rejection of climate change. Wheeler is a critic of limits on greenhouse gas emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Jason R. Dunn is an American attorney,who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado from 2018 to 2021. He was previously an attorney in private practice in the Denver office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
William Perry Pendley is an American attorney,conservative activist,political commentator,and government official who served as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management from 2019 to 2021.
Katharine MacGregor is an American political advisor and lobbyist who served as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Interior in the final year of President Trump's first term. She assumed office in February 2020,succeeding David Bernhardt,who was confirmed as Secretary of the Interior. In January 2025,President-elect Trump announced his intention to nominate MacGregor as Deputy Secretary of the Interior again for his second term.
P. Daniel Smith is a longtime United States government administrator who is a former acting director of the U.S. National Park Service in the first Trump administration.
Margaret Everson is an American lawyer who served as the acting director of the United States National Park Service for six months and the acting director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for 15 months during the first Trump administration. She is the only person to have headed both the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.
