Individual Number One forces out Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior

Good rid­dance:

Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke, a key fig­ure in [Don­ald] Trump’s sweep­ing plan to reshape the nation’s envi­ron­men­tal frame­work, will leave his post at the end of the year, Mr. Trump said on Saturday.

Mr. Zinke’s depar­ture comes amid numer­ous ethics inves­ti­ga­tions into his busi­ness deal­ings, trav­el and pol­i­cy decisions.

Like Scott Pruitt, Zinke is so cor­rupt that his behav­ior while in office caused fif­teen inves­ti­ga­tions into his con­duct to be opened. Few in Trump’s cab­i­net aside from Bet­sy DeVos have gen­er­at­ed the kind of antipa­thy that Zinke did.

Of course, we can’t expect Zinke’s suc­ces­sor to pur­sue bet­ter policies.

Rather than an end to Mr. Zinke’s pro-fos­sil fuel poli­cies, the res­ig­na­tion quite like­ly sig­nals a pass­ing of the playbook.

Mr. Zinke’s deputy, David Bern­hardt, a for­mer oil lob­by­ist, is expect­ed to step in as act­ing head of the department.

Bern­hardt will con­tin­ue to do Trump’s bid­ding while mak­ing the news less often.

The like­ly replace­ment by Mr. Bern­hardt of his for­mer boss in an act­ing capac­i­ty echoes events that fol­lowed the res­ig­na­tion of Mr. Pruitt at the [Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency].

Mr. Pruitt, once a favorite of Mr. Trump’s for many of the same rea­sons as Mr. Zinke, was replaced in an act­ing capac­i­ty by his deputy, Andrew Wheel­er, a for­mer coal lob­by­ist with a low pro­file and a deep knowl­edge of the agency he ran and the reg­u­la­tions he sought to undo.

While Mr. Zinke spent his tenure as the face of many of the Trump administration’s efforts, many on the inside saw Mr. Bern­hardt as the effec­tive man­ag­er who was able to push poli­cies through.

Mr. Bern­hardt, with years of expe­ri­ence in the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and as a for­mer lawyer and lob­by­ist for some of the nation’s largest oil com­pa­nies, brings a deep insider’s knowl­edge to his job that Mr. Zinke lacked. His for­mer legal clients includ­ed the Inde­pen­dent Petro­le­um Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca and Halliburton.

Trump’s 2016 elec­toral col­lege vic­to­ry result­ed in some real­ly ter­ri­ble, immoral peo­ple being put in charge of this coun­try’s pub­lic agencies.

Instead of serv­ing the pub­lic like they’re sup­posed to, they’ve turned our gov­ern­ment into a weapon to use against us.

From their perch­es at Inte­ri­or, Zinke and Bern­hardt have been dis­man­tling envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions, ille­gal­ly shrink­ing Nation­al Mon­u­ments, and open­ing more land to oil and gas drilling. They’ve caused a lot of dam­age in a very short amount of time. And although Zinke is now leav­ing with his tail between his legs, he’s leav­ing Bern­hardt behind to con­tin­ue wreak­ing havoc.

Zinke, Pruitt, DeVos, and their ilk are cer­tain­ly bad… but so are their deputies. We can’t expect things to get bet­ter just because one of the bad faces of Trump’s regime has been pushed out by the impa­tient Nar­cis­sist-in-Chief. The bad poli­cies will con­tin­ue, just under the aus­pices of some­one who’s not as naked­ly corrupt.