Senate Panel Splits on Confirming Stone-Manning to Lead Land Agency

Politics|Senate sheet deadlocks implicit Biden’s nominee to pb the Bureau of Land Management.

• July 22, 2021, 11:31 a.m. ET

A heated Senate sheet deadlocked on partisan lines connected Thursday implicit the information of Tracy Stone-Manning, whom Republicans person accused of lying astir her transportation to a 1989 tree-spiking incident, to pb the Bureau of Land Management.

The 10-10 ballot successful the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee means Senator Chuck Schumer, the bulk leader, indispensable employment a seldom utilized maneuver to “discharge” the information to the Senate floor. Democrats person said they are assured they person the votes to yet corroborate her.

Republican person alleged that Ms. Stone-Manning knew successful beforehand astir a decades-old crippled to thrust metallic spikes into trees successful Clearwater National Forest successful Idaho successful an effort to forestall the merchantability of old-growth timber. Ms. Stone-Manning, arsenic a postgraduate pupil successful Montana astatine the time, retyped and mailed a missive to the United States Forest Service connected behalf of 1 of the activists who spiked the trees. She aboriginal testified, helping to convict 2 of the men involved, and has described her enactment arsenic trying to pass the authorities.

“Tracy Stone-Manning collaborated with eco-terrorists and lied to our committee. Lying to the United States Senate has consequences. In this lawsuit her actions and her lies should outgo her this nomination,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the apical Republican connected the panel.

Democrats challenged that mentation of events, and said the accusations against Ms. Stone-Manning are truly astir Republican objections to President Biden’s clime alteration agenda, which includes efforts to signifier retired lipid and state drilling connected nationalist lands and pivot the state to renewable energy.

The Bureau of Land Management is an bureau wrong the Interior Department that oversees grazing, logging and drilling connected 245 cardinal acres of nationalist onshore and manages 700 cardinal acres of mineral rights. It is liable for balancing oil, state and ember extraction with recreation and the extortion of earthy resources.

Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico accused Republicans of “character assassination.” Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the president of the committee, called the statement astir Ms. Stone-Manning 1 of the astir “emotional” the sheet has held, and described her arsenic a “youthful sympathizer” with extremist environmentalists, who is blameworthy of nary crimes and who went connected to person an exemplary career.

“I person been incapable to find immoderate credible grounds successful the exhaustive records of the tree-spiking lawsuit that Ms. Stone-Manning is an eco-terrorist,” Mr. Manchin said, adding, “What I find alternatively is compelling grounds that she built a coagulated estimation implicit the past 3 decades arsenic a dedicated nationalist servant and occupation solver.”

Ms. Stone-Manning, 55, is presently the elder advisor for conservation argumentation astatine the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation group. She served arsenic the caput of Montana’s biology bureau and arsenic main of unit to erstwhile Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, a Democrat.