Karen Budd-Falen, an Interior Department official and Trump appointee, is facing renewed ethics scrutiny after remarks she made in December about grazing policy and her own ranching interests came to light. In the video, she said grazing policy is part of her job and added that the thing that was probably closest to her heart was grazing regulations.
She spoke before a Congressional Western Caucus event in December, and the comments are now prompting calls for Congress to examine whether she violated ethics rules. Campaign for Accountability said it plans to send a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee asking for an investigation into whether Budd-Falen broke ethics laws and whether the Interior Department’s ethics office failed to act as an independent check on her conflicts.
The remarks carry weight because Budd-Falen and her husband own at least five cattle or ranch operations in Nevada and Wyoming, each valued at more than $1 million, according to federal financial disclosure forms. Their companies also hold allotments that allow them to graze cattle on about one-quarter-million acres of federal land overseen by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. In the video, she discussed relaxing limits on grazing by using a categorical exclusion that also applies to land controlled by her husband after the death of her father-in-law, and she said she wants to increase the number of grazing allotments handed out to ranchers and no longer declare areas as critical habitat for endangered species.
That overlap between policy and personal finances is what has drawn the sharpest criticism. Michelle Kuppersmith of Campaign for Accountability said the situation with Budd-Falen seems “quite brazen” and added that she is, by her own admission, working on grazing policy that will likely directly affect her own financial interests. Richard Painter went further, saying that if Budd-Falen has received federal grazing rights from Interior, that would be “a pretty slam-dunk financial conflict of interest.”
The episode lands in the middle of a long-running fight over public lands. Ranchers have lobbied the Trump administration to ease environmental restrictions and expand access to federal land for grazing, while environmental advocates say more cattle grazing comes at the expense of wild animals and their habitats. Three independent ethics experts and two watchdog groups say the Budd-Falen matter fits a broader pattern of the Trump administration disregarding conflict-of-interest laws. The question now is whether congressional committees take up the challenge and force a closer look at how far an official can push grazing policy while her family’s businesses depend on the same land.
