WASHINGTON (AP) — A bitterly divided Senate has approved President Joe Biden’s choice to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West, despite Republican objections that she is an "eco-terrorist.''
Tracy Stone-Manning, Biden’s choice to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, was approved, 50-45.
Republicans sharply criticized her over links to a 1989 environmental sabotage case.
Democrats defended Stone-Manning, noting she was never charged with a crime and in fact testified against two men who were convicted of spiking trees to sabotage a timber sale in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest.
Utah Senators Mitt Romney (R) and Mike Lee (R) both strongly opposed the nomination.
"Tracy Stone-Manning's history of aiding ecoterrorists—and her attempt to conceal it from the Senate—make her unfit to serve as Director of The Bureau of Land Management - National," Romney said. "Utahns deserve to have our 23 million acres of public lands managed by someone we can trust—and Ms. Stone-Manning isn't it."
"I speak for a lot of people back home today, who are insulted by President Biden’s nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to run the Bureau of Land Management - National," Lee said in a tweet.
