This Week: Interior Department Halts House Committee Oversight Trips

Interior Department at war with House committee: The Interior Department announced on Thursday that it would suspend department-funded trips for staffers on the House Appropriations Committee. Officials at the Interior Department claim that they nixed the trips after a House staffer was “overly aggressive and unprofessional” toward a Bureau of Land Management official. However, House Democrats are crying foul. The committee claims that the Interior Department’s blew the interaction between the House staffer and BLM official way out of proportion. The House Appropriations Committee has charged that the decision to suspend the trips was actually due to the committee’s dispute with the Interior Department over its plans to move many agency employees out of Washington, D.C. “Senior staff at Interior have concocted this entire incident to stymie the House’s critical oversight work,” Evan Hollander, a spokesman for the committee, said in a statement to NBC News. “Fabricating a story to block Congressional oversight is another example of the Trump administration’s trampling…