Overview
- Campaign for Accountability located a public video and asked congressional committees to investigate whether Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen violated ethics rules.
- In the December recording from a Senate Western Caucus event, she said grazing policy is part of her job and described easing limits through “categorical exclusions,” which let agencies skip detailed environmental reviews and speed permits.
- Her disclosures show she and her husband own at least five ranch businesses in Wyoming and Nevada and hold federal grazing allotments on Bureau of Land Management land that could gain from looser rules.
- The Interior Department said she complies with all ethics requirements, and outside reporting says she received a waiver allowing work on grazing policy despite earlier recusal language.
- Ethics scrutiny has grown this year, including a January request from two House Democrats for an inspector general probe into her ties related to a lithium mine, separate from the grazing issue.