Trump Interior Department nominee has record of supporting DEI in energy industry

President Donald Trump’s nominee for a top post in the Interior Department spent years in the private sector advocating for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies at odds with the president’s goal to eliminate such standards and practices from the federal government.

“Developing diverse talent is imperative for the energy technology and services sector as it continues to develop new and innovative technologies to lead us into a lower carbon future,” nominee Leslie Beyer said as CEO of the Energy & Technology Workforce Council, an energy industry trade association. The 2022 statement coincided with the publication of her organization’s Workforce Diversity Toolkit – designed to help partner companies make progress towards their DEI goals. 

Now, Beyer is President Trump’s nominee to serve as the Interior Department's assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management, a post that oversees four of the department’s agencies with more than 12,000 employees and a $1.5 billion budget. 

The official is responsible for helping the Interior secretary manage more than 245 million acres of federal lands, 700 million acres of mineral interests, and the 1.7 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf, according to the Center for Presidential Transition. 

But Beyer’s championing of DEI measures while head of her trade association stands in stark contrast to Trump’s efforts to root out such programs from the behemoth federal agencies under his command. 

The president called the federal DEI initiatives “​​forced illegal and immoral discrimination” in his January 2025 executive order directing all federal agencies to terminate any such programs. The new administration believes such DEI programs undermine “meritocracy” in the federal and private workforce. 

“Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump said in a January 2025 press conference addressing his administration’s efforts to roll back those same DEI programs in the federal bureaucracy. “Woke” became a catch-all term in the wake of the 2020 riots that conservatives used to describe radical, progressive policies, especially on racial issues. 

Republicans have widely criticized the increasing prevalence of DEI programs, arguing that beyond undermining meritocracy, they also promote reverse discrimination, create divisions between people of differing characteristics and lower standards in order to boost representation. 

For example, the president earlier this year criticized changes to hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration that appear to have lowered standards in order to prioritize increasing minority representation among air traffic controllers. 

U.S. universities have also faced pushback from the administration on affirmative action policies that critics say disadvantage Asian and white applicants based on their skin color to boost the admissions of desired minority applicants. 

The White House and the Interior Department defended Beyer's nomination. 

"Leslie Beyer has dedicated her private sector career to Making America Energy Dominant Again and unleashing our country’s abundant natural resources. She is extremely qualified to serve as Assistant Secretary at the Department of Interior, and the Senate should quickly confirm her," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Just the News. 

Interior Department spokeswoman Kathryn Martin told Just the News: “Leslie Beyer is the perfect nominee to get President Trump’s American Energy Dominance Agenda accomplished. She is a very qualified nominee who understands how important it is for America to be energy independent. We look forward to her confirmation and her work here at the Department to make life more affordable for the American people."

Beyer did not respond to questions from Just the News about her support for DEI when she led the Energy & Technology Workforce Council.

Beyer’s support for and promotion of DEI policies in the industry association persisted throughout her tenure and continued even after she officially left her position in July 2023, a review of her public statements in the media, podcast interviews and company policy announcements show. 

Before becoming the head of the trade association, Beyer worked as a legislative aide to Texas GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a White House staff member during the George W. Bush administration, and in consulting, her public LinkedIn profile shows. 

Beyer’s drive to improve the diversity and inclusion of the industry began early in her tenure running ETWC, she previously said in an interview. She started at the trade association in 2014, according to her resumé.  

“When I came on seven years ago, there weren’t a lot of women in leadership roles. About 15 percent of our sector are women. There were times when I was the only woman in the room,” Beyer told the Houston Chronicle in 2021. 

“One of my first agenda items was to seek out diversity for our board," she continued. "We do have much more of a diverse board now, which is fantastic but also reflective of our sector."

“Diverse thinking is what’s going to get us to the next step in the energy transition,” she also said, using the common phrase to describe the transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources, like wind and solar. 

“If everyone looks and has similar backgrounds, you’re all going to think the same and that’s not what will help us achieve success,” Beyer also said. 

In June 2022, ETWC released an Energy Workforce DEI Toolkit, which the organization said it created to “support Member Companies as they drive cultural change in their organizations.” Per the summary on ETWC’s website, the toolkit included a “maturity index” to help companies assess their progress on the “DEI journey.” The complete toolkit is available only to member companies and is not provided publicly. 

During Beyer’s tenure, ETWC also lobbied government officials on its policy priorities, which included goals like energy security and market access for oil and gas products, but also increasing workforce diversity in the energy sector. 

In February 2023, during Beyer’s final months at the trade association, ETWC released its policy priorities for the year, which touted “promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the energy workforce” as key to “workforce development.” 

In a podcast interview later that year, Beyer explained how ETWC advanced those priorities through policy advocacy at the federal and state levels, including meetings with elected officials and regulators. She said that part of the emphasis was on diversity in the energy sector. 

“But we speak a lot on Washington. We go to Washington. We do things at the state level … helping educate elected officials, regulators, on what energy services companies do, what the energy workforce means, what it looks like, what our diversity is like, how we are becoming better, what tools we’re using and that we need to become better in diversity,” Beyer said on the Energy Crue podcast in September 2023. 

That year, ETWC’s President Tim Tarpley was named one of The Hill’s top lobbyists for his work on behalf of the association. The trade association said that Tarpley held “more than 100” meetings with lawmakers. 

Beyer’s work at EWTC to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the energy workforce did not go unnoticed. In June 2022, Beyer accepted an “Outstanding Diversity Helping Hand” award from the Houston Business Journal for the trade association’s efforts. 

The Journal “recognizes for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have shown dedication to promoting and championing diversity and inclusion in the business community or are supplying diversity-related resources, such as job sites, diversity training programs and e-learning,” according to an article announcing the 2022 recipients. 

While Beyer was promoting DEI in the energy sector, the Interior Department under President Joe Biden was also working to incorporate similar programs throughout its workforce. 

In February 2022, then-Secretary Deb Haaland established the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) Council at the agency. The council’s goal would be to “[embed] DEIA principles and actions into everything the Interior Department and its bureaus do to fulfill [its] mission,” per a press release published by the department. 

The department was responding to a series of executive orders by Biden for all federal agencies to diversify the workforce, install chief diversity officers and reform policies that may present “structural obstacles” to “under-served groups.”

However, the new leadership at the department immediately moved to end these policies at the agency after Trump reversed his predecessor’s orders. The department terminated the DEI council and rescinded any related orders, removed any employees working as diversity officers, and terminated any related grants or contracts. 

Trump instead stands by “the Constitution’s promise of colorblind equality,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a May press briefing. 

“DEI seeks to divide and pit Americans against each other based on immutable characteristics. President Trump put an end to it,” Leavitt said. “In President Trump’s America, individual dignity, hard work and excellence are the only things that will determine if you get ahead.”