North Dakota’s Environment Lawsuits and Doug Burgum’s Rise

Doug Burgum is the 55th U.S. Secretary of the Interior, confirmed by the Senate on January 30, 2025, in a 79–18 bipartisan vote after being nominated by President Donald Trump.¹ A Republican who served as governor of North Dakota from 2017 until December 2024, Burgum now runs the federal agency his home state sued at least five times during his tenure. In office, he has moved quickly to expand oil, gas, and coal leasing on federal land, rescind Biden-era environmental rules, and cut the department’s workforce by roughly a fifth, while facing continued ethics scrutiny over his energy-industry ties.

Who He Is and How He Got the Job

Before politics, Burgum built and sold the software company Great Plains to Microsoft and spent six years as a Microsoft senior vice president running its business solutions division. He later co-founded Arthur Ventures and sat on the boards of several software companies, including Atlassian and SuccessFactors.² Elected governor of North Dakota in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, he launched a short-lived 2024 Republican presidential campaign centered on energy policy and dropped out in December 2023.³ Trump nominated him for Interior in November 2024.

Critics flagged early that North Dakota is not a public-lands state. Less than 4 percent of its territory is federal, and the Center for Western Priorities questioned whether Burgum had the experience to manage the roughly 20 percent of the nation held in trust by Interior.⁴

Suing Interior Before Running It

By the time Burgum left the governor’s office, North Dakota was a named plaintiff in nearly 40 federal lawsuits, including at least five against the Department of the Interior.⁵ The disputes map closely onto the agenda he has pursued since taking office.

In April 2024, North Dakota led a coalition with Montana, Wyoming, and Texas challenging a Bureau of Land Management rule requiring oil and gas operators on federal and tribal land to reduce methane venting and flaring, repair leaks, and pay royalties on wasted gas. The state estimated the rule would cost it $38 million a year.⁶ In September 2024, Judge Daniel Traynor granted a preliminary injunction in five states, calling the rule a “direct affront to state sovereignty.”⁷

A January 2023 suit over the cancellation of seven quarterly federal oil and gas lease sales alleged violations of the Mineral Leasing Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and other statutes, with the state claiming roughly $9 million per month in lost revenue.⁸ In February 2025, Attorney General Drew Wrigley sued over last-minute Biden-era amendments to the state’s Resource Management Plan that barred coal development on more than 90 percent of known federal coal deposits in North Dakota. Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution nullifying the amendments on December 11, 2025, and the case was dismissed as moot.⁹ North Dakota also joined litigation against the Public Lands Rule, which placed conservation on equal footing with energy and grazing; the BLM formally rescinded the rule on May 11, 2026.¹⁰

In a separate line of litigation, North Dakota sued the Army Corps of Engineers for law enforcement costs tied to the 2016–2017 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. On April 23, 2025, Judge Traynor found the federal government liable and ordered it to pay approximately $27.9 million, writing that the Army Corps “abandoned the rule of law” and “encouraged the DAPL protesters and their violent and tumultuous behavior.”¹¹

Ethics Agreement and Conflicts

Burgum’s move from plaintiff to agency head raised immediate conflict questions. As governor, he held personal royalties from oil and gas leases involving Hess Corporation (a Chevron subsidiary) and Continental Resources, including $50,000 in 2023 royalties from a Continental lease on family farmland that he had not disclosed publicly before his presidential run. As chair of North Dakota’s Industrial Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, he voted on matters favorable to Continental at least a dozen times; Continental founder Harold Hamm contributed $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Burgum’s presidential bid.¹²

Under an ethics agreement signed January 13, 2025, Burgum committed to resign from several companies, divest from energy-related stocks and oil and gas leases within 90 days, and recuse himself for one year from matters in which North Dakota was a party or represented a party.¹³ At his confirmation hearing he testified he had “no outstanding conflicts of interest” and described regulations like those his state had fought as an “existential threat” to energy and agriculture. The watchdog Accountable.US said his “blatant conflicts with the oil industry cast doubt on his ability to fairly manage our public lands.”⁵

What He Has Done as Secretary

On his first working day, Burgum signed six secretarial orders under the banner of “American Energy Dominance,” directing the agency to expedite oil and gas leasing, revoke Biden-era ocean drilling withdrawals, rescind Endangered Species Act regulatory packages from 2024, begin dismantling the Public Lands Rule, and roll back protections under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. One order established a 10-for-1 deregulation requirement: ten existing rules eliminated for every new one introduced.¹⁴

Energy and Mineral Leasing

In 2025, the BLM held 22 oil and gas lease sales generating over $356.6 million and approved 6,027 new drilling permits, a 63.7 percent increase over the comparable Biden-era period. The agency ended the requirement for environmental impact statements on roughly 3,224 oil and gas leases covering 3.5 million acres.¹⁵ In Alaska, the department reopened 1.56 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain to leasing and made nearly 82 percent of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve available for development. A March 2026 lease sale in the reserve generated nearly $164 million from 187 leases.¹⁶

The department opened 13.1 million acres for coal leasing, rescinded a 2016 coal leasing moratorium, and reduced coal royalty rates from 12.5 percent to 7 percent under the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Onshore oil and gas royalty rates were returned to 12.5 percent after the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act had raised them to 16.67 percent.¹⁵

Regulatory Rollbacks

Beyond rescinding the Public Lands Rule and the methane rule his state had fought, Burgum adopted 80 categorical exclusions to speed permitting for mineral, forest, fire, and wildlife management. The BLM updated greater sage grouse habitat plans to expand energy access in areas previously set aside for conservation, and the department proposed merging two offshore bureaus into a single “Marine Minerals Administration” to streamline offshore development.¹⁷

Budget and Workforce Cuts

Burgum’s fiscal year 2027 budget request proposed cutting the department’s funding by nearly 13 percent and eliminating thousands of positions. Over the previous 15 months, Interior had already lost roughly 20 percent of its workforce, about 13,000 employees, largely through initiatives tied to the Department of Government Efficiency. The National Park Service faced an 18 percent cut and the elimination of 2,920 positions; the BLM faced a 27 percent reduction, including a $110 million cut to wildlife habitat management and the loss of 2,148 positions. Water conservation grants, including WaterSMART and drought-response programs, were slated for elimination.¹⁸

Controversies in Office

Public Land Sales and Senator Lee

Although Burgum stated publicly that a federal land sell-off “wasn’t part of the president’s agenda,” internal emails obtained by The Wilderness Society showed his staff provided research, data, and draft talking points to Senator Mike Lee’s office in the weeks before Lee introduced a June 2025 bill to sell up to 3.2 million acres of public land for housing development. Greg Wischer, Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, approved quoted language that appeared verbatim in materials released by Lee’s committee.¹⁹ Lee withdrew the proposal after public backlash.²⁰ The Interior Department characterized the exchanges as “routine, factual briefings.”

Ethics Waivers and a Vacant Inspector General

In March 2026, the department granted a partial ethics waiver to Karen Budd-Falen, the third-ranking official at Interior, allowing her to work on BLM grazing policies despite her family’s ranching operations in Wyoming and Nevada. Congressional Democrats requested an investigation into a separate multimillion-dollar water deal involving Budd-Falen’s husband and a lithium mine developer.²¹ Interior Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt was among 17 inspectors general fired by President Trump on January 24, 2025, and the position remains unfilled. Burgum’s budget proposed cutting the Office of the Inspector General by nearly $20 million.²²

Park Signage Review and Freedom 250

Under Secretarial Order 3431, the department began reviewing and removing educational materials and signage at national parks that reference slavery, racism, or Indigenous history, citing a mandate to review content that “disparages Americans past and living.”¹⁸ Burgum also directed staff to adopt the branding of “Freedom 250,” a public-private partnership that replaced the bipartisan America250 commission Congress established in 2016 to plan the nation’s 250th anniversary. Employees were instructed to use Freedom 250 logos, colors, and taglines across materials, email signatures, and visitor centers.²³

Reactions and What Comes Next

Major environmental organizations have been broadly critical. The Sierra Club called Burgum a “climate skeptic” whose “ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep” and predicted he would “sell out our public lands to his polluter pals.” The Center for Biological Diversity described him as a “disastrous secretary of the interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits.”⁴ Sarah Vogel, a former North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner, told Courthouse News, “I don’t think he had a regulator’s mindset. He had a promoter’s mindset.”¹²

Not every assessment has been uniformly negative. The Wilderness Society acknowledged Burgum’s advocacy for technological responses to climate change, including his 2021 pledge to make North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030 through carbon capture and storage, while expressing concern that his close working relationship with Energy nominee Chris Wright signaled fossil fuel priorities.²⁴ Tribal leaders in North Dakota were reported to have “lauded Burgum as an ally” during the confirmation process, and several tribes submitted letters of support.¹

As of mid-2026, Burgum faces his first congressional testimony cycle since taking office. Lawmakers on both sides are expected to press him on the scale of workforce reductions, the department’s internal role in the Lee land-sale proposal, and the still-vacant Inspector General position.¹⁸

1
Arkansas Advocate. Former North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum Confirmed as Interior Secretary
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U.S. Department of the Interior. Secretary Doug Burgum
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MPR News. North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum Ends 2024 Republican Presidential Bid
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The Guardian. Doug Burgum Interior Department Trump
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ProPublica. North Dakota Governor Who Sued Interior Department Is Now Set to Lead It
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North Dakota Monitor. North Dakota Sues Federal Agency Over Methane Regulation
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E&E News. Judge Blocks Interior Methane Rule in Five States
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WDEA. North Dakota v US Dept of Interior
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Climate Case Chart. North Dakota v U.S. Department of the Interior
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Capital Press. BLM Rescinds Public Lands Rule
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Courthouse News Service. North Dakota Wins 27.8 Million Judgment Against Federal Government Over Pipeline Protests
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Courthouse News Service. Big Oil Wants a Lot From Trump It Has an Ally in Doug Burgum
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U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Burgum Doug Ethics Agreement
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U.S. Department of the Interior. Secretary Doug Burgum Signs First Round of Secretarys Orders to Unleash American Energy
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Bureau of Land Management. Progress on Public Lands BLM 2025 Trump Administration Accomplishments
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U.S. House of Representatives. Written Testimony of Secretary Burgum, House Appropriations Subcommittee
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U.S. House of Representatives. Written Testimony of Secretary Burgum, House Natural Resources Committee
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Center for Western Priorities. Trumps Interior Secretary Is About to Face Congress for the First Time in a Year
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High Country News. Interior Department Crafted Talking Points for Public Lands Sell-Off Agenda
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Center for Western Priorities. Interior Helped Mike Lee With Talking Points for Public Land Sell-Off
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E&E News. Interior Official With Ties to Lithium Mine Granted Rare Ethics Waiver
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Public Citizen. Undoing Accountability
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Center for Western Priorities. Interior Department Becomes Conduit for Influence Peddling and History Erasure
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The Wilderness Society. 4 Top Conservation Issues Facing New Interior Secretary Doug Burgum