Thread:Comments:US Interior Department approves Willow oil project in Alaska/US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland speaks about Willow project

Karen Heller interviewed Deb Haaland for the Washington Post (gated article). MSN.com has an article that includes the pertinent discussion regarding the Willow project.

In the interview, Secretary Haaland discusses the difficulties of first opposing the project as a Congresswoman and then supporting it as Secretary of the Interior. She describes how her consideration had to expand and evolve as she moved from a state representative to a federal cabinet member reporting to the President. The quote below is from the Interview but is also mentioned in the MSN article:

"As a member of the Green New Deal who pledged not to take money from fossil fuel companies, how does Haaland reconcile her beliefs working for a more moderate president? How does she reconcile those positions with the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow oil-drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope that she vehemently opposed in Congress?

"“I was very strong about that, but when you come here, you can’t be like, ‘I’m the Department of Deb Haaland,’ right?” said Haaland, who reportedly choked up in a March private meeting with environmental groups and Indigenous leaders trying to bar the decision. Yet, she became the administration’s public face of the project’s approval, made all the more potent by her Native heritage."