04/10/2025 at 10:00AM
Full committee nomination hearing.
Nominees:
- Preston Wells Griffith III to be Under Secretary of Energy
- Dr. Dario Gil to be Under Secretary of Energy for Science
- Kathleen M. Sgamma to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior
During the first Trump term, Wells Griffith served as the Senior Advisor to the CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, Senior Director for Energy and Environment on the National Security Council, as well as Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Department of Energy. Previously, he was executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party.
Gil currently chairs the National Science Board and is the director of IBM Research. In its present form, the role of under secretary for science and innovation oversees DOE’s applied R&D programs and the Office of Science, which is the steward of 10 national labs.
Kathleen Sgamma has been the head of the Western Energy Alliance since 2006, working to protect the interests of oil and gas producers amid an international embrace of cleaner energies. Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance have been a vocal critic of former President Joe Biden’s increased regulation of the oil and gas industry. Her nomination to helm a 10,000-person agency responsible for vast swaths of the country’s landscapes sent shockwaves through Western environmental groups. Sgamma was a contributor to the interior department section of Project 2025.
In 2009, after natural gas production caused a spike in smog in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley that exceeded air quality standards, Sgamma complained that proposed ozone regulations under consideration by the state “would create undue burdens and complexities for industry.” In the winter of the following year, the smog in Pinedale, Wyoming exceeded the worst air pollution in Los Angeles, and local residents were warned to stay indoors to protect their health.