Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last week raised the stakes of the Trump administration’s overhaul of that agency, signing an order handing sweeping control of his department’s budget and workforce to an official affiliated with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The order to consolidate Interior’s sprawling administrative functions across the country gives unprecedented power to Tyler Hassen, 42, a former oil field services company executive who was also a member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team. Hassen, who was recently named Interior’s named acting assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, started at the department as part of the DOGE strike force tasked with cutting the agency’s costs, contracts and employees.
Hassen’s latest role also suggests that what began as an outside-of-agencies strategy to reshape the federal government is now an inside job.
“It’s the smarter path to follow,” said a former official in the first Trump administration who worked on Interior issues regarding Hassen’s official role within the department, along with his reorganization assignment.
“I think the President recognizes that … maybe DOGE isn’t the best vehicle,” said the former Trump official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the agency’s internal deliberations. “So, maybe the best vehicle is actually putting people inside.”
Musk, a polarizing figure that’s been the public face of the president’s massive downsizing of the federal government, said Tuesday he will reduce his role at DOGE, calling the team’s work “mostly done.” But Hassen’s growing influence at Interior underscores the administration’s ongoing commitment to reshaping the department and repurposing the existing channels of power to do it.
Burgum last month named Hassen to his acting assistant secretary post, at least temporarily giving him a key leadership position overseeing Interior’s budget shop, IT and human resources that requires confirmation by the Senate. President Donald Trump has not yet nominated someone for the job.
Interior defended Hassen’s role in a statement.
“The Secretary’s Order directs the [assistant secretary for policy, management and budget] to ensure that President Donald J. Trump’s executive order to restore accountability to the American public is carried out,” the statement said. “Through this optimization effort, the Department will continue to prioritize retaining first responders, parks services and energy production employees.”
The order spells out that Hassen will lead the consolidation of staff who work in IT, communications, financial management, contracting, human resources, and grants in the various Interior agencies and bureaus across the country.
But the reorganization, and Hassen’s new authorities, have raised eyebrows, especially as it comes amid Interior’s plan to dramatically cut staff, in keeping with the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink federal agencies.
Two Democratic appropriators who oversee Interior’s budget slammed the Hassen-led reorganization in a statement Tuesday night as hasty, reckless and infringing on congressional authority.
“Given the Administration’s ongoing illegal funding freezes, assault on the federal workforce, haphazard cancellation of building leases, and other efforts to throw agencies into total chaos and paralyze the federal government, we cannot take any such reorganization as a serious attempt to improve efficiency,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the ranking member of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.
Hassen or Burgum?
Hassen has flown mostly under the radar even as he’s grown in influence within Interior. A Washington newcomer, Hassen held a series of executive roles at oil and gas services companies, including at the Canadian company Wenzel Downhole Tools and Texas-based Basin Energy.
A Princeton graduate, Hassen also formerly worked as an associate in the Global Energy Group at Morgan Stanley.
As part of an interview on Fox News in March with Musk and other members of the DOGE team, Hassen cast his work for DOGE as “giving back to the country.”
“I was running five businesses in Houston, and I left that. I left great people to do this,” he said.
But Hassen’s prominence at Interior has unleashed a hail of criticism from environmental groups and Democrats who say DOGE is circumventing the authority of Burgum — who soared through confirmation with little Democratic pushback because he was viewed as a moderating force in the Trump circle.
“If Doug Burgum doesn’t want his job, he should quit now,” said Jennifer Rokala with the Center for Western Priorities in a statement. Rokala accused Burgum of abdicating to Hassen and implied that DOGE now runs America’s public lands.
Interior shot back at the Center for Western Priorities in a statement, characterizing the group as an “anti-Trump organization that advocates against practical and affordable energy development.”
“It’s not surprising that they would join radical liberal groups in opposing government efficiency efforts that lower costs for the American people,” the statement said.
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Burgum, who is often seen on conservative media or at the elbow of the president, is unlike the more hands-on Interior secretaries of the first Trump administration.
Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, for example, was steeped in Interior policy and history, he noted.
“I don’t think he has much of his own agenda,” Hartl said of Burgum. “He’ll do whatever DOGE and Musk demand of him.”
Those criticism are baseless, countered Casey Hammond, who served in senior Interior political positions during the first Trump administration.
“We do what the president tells us, and that’s what Burgum is doing,” he said. “I think it’s funny that people make it so complicated, ‘Like, oh, the power is being usurped.’ Well, however the president decides to delegate power is how it goes. This is how he’s decided to delegate power.”
‘No specific headcount’
For his part, Burgum has been in lockstep with DOGE efforts in public statements since he was confirmed, characterizing cost cutting as necessary to make the government more efficient.
“We’re completely embracing the DOGE effort,” he said in a February interview on Fox News, calling the then-unnamed DOGE officials working at his agency evidence of transparent government. “Part of what DOGE is bringing is just awareness to the republic, to the people that are in our country.”
Burgum’s affinity to DOGE is in contrast to some other Trump Cabinet members who have clashed with Musk’s crew.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went so far as to fire a DOGE staffer. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has voiced support for DOGE’s work, but he has been more forthcoming about his views on overhauling that agency, broadcasting specific targets that he wants met, such as a 65 percent reduction of the EPA budget.
Less so Burgum. The former North Dakota governor who made a short-lived bid for the presidency in 2023, has shied away from providing details about administration’s plans for firings. At an all-hands Interior meeting earlier this month, the secretary encouraged staff to be “humble” and accept change but did not directly address looming layoffs.
“The goal is to make sure that we’re doing a great job at the task that we have, the missions that we have, and so there is no specific headcount number that we’re targeting,” Burgum said in a Wall Street Journal podcast earlier this month when pressed on cuts. “What we’re targeting is the right balance between revenue and cost.”
Interior has twice promoted a deferred resignation program tied to DOGE for federal employees that promises several months of pay to workers who agree to quit. Interior staff have also been encouraged to take a voluntary retirement program.
The combined efforts to cut the size of the workforce voluntarily are preludes to a broader reduction in force that’s underway at the order by the president. Those firings would begin a cutthroat process in which employees would have to compete against each other for remaining positions based on attributes like whether they are military veterans and the length of their service.
Burgum’s plan for layoffs has not been made public. It’s also unclear how much the Hassen-led consolidation effort will shrink the agency’s ranks, potentially making subsequent layoffs less severe. But a White House document viewed by The Washington Post suggested the more than 60,000-strong Interior Department could see the elimination of one in four positions .
Delegated duties
Hassen’s rise in the acting position could be seen as unsurprising given the slow pace of confirmations of top officials at Interior. Aside from Burgum, who was swiftly confirmed in January, the agency’s top brass of deputy secretary, top lawyer and other nominees for key positions have yet to clear the Hill.
The job of assistant secretary for policy, management and budget is also likely the right home for the planned reorganization of the agency’s sweeping administrative and workforce services, experts said.
But David Hayes, who served as Interior deputy secretary during the Obama and Clinton administrations, said the person carrying out an administrative overhaul should be confirmed by the Senate.
“If it’s a major reorg, it should be completed in consultation with, and under the accountability of, the Congress. That’s the point of having a Senate-confirmed job,” Hayes said.
Delegating official duties of a political post is common at the start of the administration. But both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration faced criticism for pushing the limits of that practice.
The first Trump administration came under fire for repeatedly assigning William Perry Pendley as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management until a federal judge questioned the legality of his decision-making without Senate confirmation.
The Biden administration also faced heat for giving Laura Daniel-Davis, who had been nominated to serve as assistant secretary of the Interior for land and minerals management, a new title doing largely the same job after Republicans indefinitely delayed her confirmation as a protest of President Joe Biden’s energy policies.
