Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sun editorial:

Zinke’s actions emblematic of Trump team’s hostility toward people of color

As suggested by several actions, including a series of personnel moves involving a disproportionate number of people of color, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is having no problem following President Donald Trump’s bigoted lead.

This past spring, it was reported that a third of the 33 senior career Interior Department staffers who had been dislodged from their positions and transferred to new jobs at that time were Native American, while a number of other staffers in that group were black or Latino.

That report came a month after a CNN story in which several unnamed Interior officials said Zinke had told staffers that “diversity isn’t important” or “I don’t care about diversity.”

Those were just two items out of Interior suggesting that Zinke is at best racially insensitive and at worst is engaging in discrimination.

He recently came under fire for seeming to suggest in a speech that Robert E. Lee was as much of an American hero as Martin Luther King Jr., and he has vowed not to remove any Confederate statues from federal land.

He used a slippery slope argument in explaining himself on the monument issue, raising the possibility that Native Americans might call for the removal of statues of others who’d committed violence against their ancestors.

“If you’re a native Indian, I can tell you, you’re not very happy about the history of Gen. (William Tecumseh) Sherman or perhaps President (Ulysses) Grant,” he said.

That certainly may be true. Sherman, in particular, embraced ruthless strategies against Native American tribes in his post-Civil War role as general commander of the U.S. Army, such as eradicating the buffalo and attacking encampments during winter, when the tribes’ supplies and mobility were extremely limited.

That’s not to say Sherman and others who fought for the Union but later engaged in the genocidal campaign against Native Americans shouldn’t be remembered. They absolutely should, but with full context of their actions. That’s why Confederate landmarks are ending up in museums in some parts of the country, where they can be fully explained as opposed to being presented as tributes.

But while it appeared at one time that joining Trump in his hard line on monuments and other issues might have been enough to buy protection for Zinke in a turnover-happy administration, that may not be the case. That’s because of Zinke’s massive issues with possible corruption, which has become a common theme in the Trump Cabinet.

Zinke has become the target of nearly 20 federal probes, including one that has been forwarded to the Justice Department by the Interior Department’s internal watchdog.

The investigations include a review of Zinke’s decision to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent, a move that has drawn strong protest from Native Americans. The area is home to thousands of Native American archaeological and cultural sites, which tribes in the region consider sacred.

Put it all together, and what emerges smells strongly like another example of Republican Party racial extremism that has run rampant under Trump.

The top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, has said that Zinke would be called to testify about his many “failures and scandals” if the Democrats were to retake control of the House in today’s election.

Here’s hoping that’s exactly what happens.

It’s time to hold Trump and his gang accountable, and try to stop the stain of bigotry that is emanating from this administration.