The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning (Executive Calendar)” mentioning James Lankford was published in the Senate section on pages S5091-S5092 on July 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, a few weeks ago, President Biden nominated Tracy Stone-Manning to be the leader of the Bureau of Land Management. Many people in my State don't know much about the Bureau of Land Management. We don't have a lot of areas actually managed in our State by BLM. It has more than 10,000 employees. It manages roughly an eighth of the Nation's land, including 65 million acres of our forests. The land holds 30 percent of our minerals. Whoever leads this entity leads the issue of how we are managing our forests, how we are handling our minerals, how we are handling our energy development, livestock grazing, recreation, and, yes, timber harvesting.
The individual President Biden nominated we now know was an Earth First! ecoterrorist. She actually typed out, as she has admitted in the past, a threatening letter that was sent out to leaders who were doing forestry in Idaho, saying in her letter that she typed out--and she has admitted that she typed out the threatening letter--that ``we,'' as she put it, drove 500 pounds of spikes into the trees in the Idaho forest and then threatened them, to say: If you harvest those trees, it will not be good for you.
The challenge that we have here is that we have an individual who has admitted that she actually was a part of a group to do tree spiking. Now, what we don't know is if she actually drove a spike. We have no idea. But we do know that she turned evidence on the other people who did and admitted as a part of her plea bargain that she is the one who actually did the letter from a rented typewriter to be able to make sure she couldn't be traced and even in the letter said: If you find me, it would be ``your worst nightmare.''
So what do we do about this? Typically, when you are going to deal with the person who handles forestry for the United States and the Bureau of Land Management and you find out this person has been involved in tree spiking, which actually is designed to injure or kill people who are logging or people who are actually harvesting the lumber in the sawmills and actually processing that lumber, it would cause a pause.
I cannot imagine what it is going to be if she is actually confirmed in this position, and the individuals who come to her to get a permit to be able to do any kind of forestry work, because they would have to actually come to her office, what they would think when they actually walked through the door, because the Bureau of Land Management notices timber sales and signs off on timber sales for the country. The Bureau of Land Management is the one that makes forest product sale plans. The Bureau of Land Management is the one that develops, maintains, and revises the plans for all public management, including identifying areas for timber sales. In fact, the Bureau of Land Management is also the group who sends in the firefighters to the wildfires to be able to put out the fires, which could be including some of these same trees in the days ahead that apparently still have the spikes in them from decades ago. Understanding this is not just a loose issue. Individuals from the Biden administration just recently have talked about how timber harvesters and haulers are critical to forest management across the country. We need these individuals to help with our forest management. We have wildfires in the areas that individuals in the Biden administration have testified because we are actually not maintaining our forest management enough. We are not doing enough harvesting and thinning in those areas, and so it is actually a problem.
In fact, Christopher French, the Deputy Chief of the National Forest System, recently testified the Forest Service research indicates we need to dramatically increase the extent of impact of fuels treatment, such as thinning, harvesting, planting, and prescribed burning across all landscapes.
But yet the leader for the Bureau of Land Management who has been recommended is an individual who has been outspoken in opposition, so much so that she has been active in actually promoting spiking trees.
And it is not just spiking trees. It has also been her environmental issues about grazing land--understanding the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for millions of acres of grazing pastureland across the West. Because the Federal Government owns so much land across the West, many ranchers actually then lease out some of that land for grazing. She has been outspoken as an opponent against this. That is not going to help our ranchers across the West.
And what was most stark to me was this presentation that she had years ago, where she designed several of what she considered to be environmental-focused advertisements, this being one of them where she has a picture of a young girl, and the heading is: ``Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?''
And then she lists out at the bottom of it: ``That's right. It's the cute baby that's the environmental hazard.''
With this statement below that, she wrote: ``We breed more than any other industrialized nation.''
Listen, I understand every President has the right to pick their team, but when the leader of the Bureau of Land Management considers this little girl to be an environmental hazard, have we not crossed a threshold of saying our problem with our environment is that we have too many little girls?
Honestly, is anyone else disturbed by this as a possibility to lead the Bureau of Land Management, to make a decision about how we are going to manage our forests, how we are going to handle our grazing land, and what is going to be the general attitude about permitting and people?
Because, apparently, from what she wrote, one of the biggest environmental hazards we have as a country is we breed too much.
I don't think that little girl is a hazard. I think it is a little girl. And I will absolutely oppose Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management. And I would ask my colleagues, even one of my colleagues on the other side, to say: Do you not see a problem with this nominee?
If so, let's find another person. Surely there is another Democrat out there who doesn't have this set of views, who can lead our forestry, our grazing area, and our mineral rights. Surely there is one more Democrat who is out there somewhere who does not share these views, because I don't think that little girl is a hazard. I think she is a blessing.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to speak for 5 minutes and, following me, the Senator from Wyoming be able to speak for 8 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
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