Haaland is a Cabinet Pick to Inspire All of Us

President-elect Joe Biden made history this week by nominating Rep. Deb Haaland, a Native American from New Mexico, to be secretary of the Department of the Interior. She will be the first Native American cabinet secretary, and preside over a sprawling agency that manages one-fifth of America's land mass, leases public lands and waters for oil and gas and mining, oversees our national parks and Wildlife refuges and houses the scientific expertise at the U.S. Geological Survey.

She is extremely qualified for the role. Since her election to Congress in 2018, Haaland has been a quick study and a strong leader — not only on major Native issues such as health care, suicide and the disappearance and abuse of Native women, but also on the science, public lands, climate change and biodiversity issues that the Trump Administration has tried to torpedo.

She'll have a lot to clean up at Interior. Her predecessors, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, have done their best to hand the keys of our public lands over to oil, gas, and mining interests. They marginalized scientists and experts, cut the American public out of decision making, and presided over the largest reduction in public lands protection in U.S. history....