Biden’s public lands nominee, once linked to eco-saboteurs, advances with key Senate vote

 

Republicans say Tracy Stone-Manning’s past affiliation with eco-saboteurs make her unqualified to run the Bureau of Land Management.

Tracy Stone-Manning moved one step closer to becoming Biden’s top public lands manager on Thursday as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced her nomination solely with Democratic support.

For weeks, Republicans have adamantly called on Biden to withdraw Stone-Manning’s nomination due to her decision as a University of Montana graduate student in 1989 to send a letter on behalf of eco-saboteurs who drove metal spikes into trees in Idaho set to be cut down — an act designed to make it more dangerous for loggers to chain saw through the trunks.

“None of her actions show any sort of remorse,” Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Stone-Manning’s home state of Montana, said in a floor speech this week. “They didn’t then, and they still don’t now.” He was among the 10 Republicans on the panel who voted against her nomination.