Interior Cuts 43 Partnerships It Says Worked Against Its Own Mission. It Calls That “Decisive Action.”

The Department of the Interior has terminated 43 cooperative agreements with outside groups it says were “operating in direct opposition” to the agency’s mission — cutting more than $4,000,000in planned funding for programs the department tied to diversity initiatives, environmental-justice work, and support services for illegal immigrants. The list of severed partners reads like a who’s-who of mainstream conservation and cultural philanthropy: the National Wildlife Federation, the National Geographic Society, the Hispanic Access Foundation, Conservation International, and the American Alliance of Museums among them.

The cuts grew out of a department-wide review that Secretary Doug Burgum (R)ordered in March, which surfaced nearly 3,000 active agreements with roughly 2,000 outside organizations. Interior framed Wednesday’s terminations as housecleaning: agreements that “did not appear to provide a clear benefit” or “did not align with the department’s mission.” Critics call it ideological pruning — the federal government deciding which nonprofits hold the right politics to keep a seat at the table.

Either way, it is not happening in isolation. It lands amid a months-long administration push — an OMB proposal to filter grants for more than 100,000 nonprofits through a “national interest” test, a pending lawsuit over a separate $14 million round of Interior grant cancellations, and a department that asked its own employees to flag colleagues for “DEI discrimination.” The 43 partnerships are one visible edge of a much larger redrawing of who gets to work with the federal government.

• 43 agreements — cooperative partnerships terminated by Interior for operating in 'direct opposition' to the agency's mission · Source: Fox News Digital
• $4,000,000+ — in planned funding eliminated, tied to DEI, environmental-justice, and immigrant-services programs · Source: Fox News Digital
• ~3,000 reviewed — active agreements with ~2,000 outside groups surfaced by the department-wide review Burgum ordered in March · Source: Fox News Digital
• $14M / 79 grants — a separate September round of Interior grant cancellations now under challenge in Montana Wildlife Federation v. Burgum · Source: E&E News, Justia docket

The action was disclosed first to Fox News Digital, which obtained the department’s materials. Interior said it is “ending relationships with organizations whose advocacy for phasing out baseload energy, defunding law enforcement services, and promoting racially preferential programs directly conflicts with this administration’s priorities.” The line came from Matthew Middleton, the department’s principal deputy communications director and director of research — the same official who described the move as “decisive action.” The terminated agreements, the department said, had supported internship programs, conservation initiatives, research projects, and cooperative partnerships across Interior’s bureaus, including the National Park Service.

Among the named partners losing federal ties: the National Wildlife Federation, the National Geographic Society, the Hispanic Access Foundation, Latino Outdoors, Conservation International, the American Alliance of Museums, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, the Green Schools Alliance, the Doris Duke Foundation, the California Native Plant Society, and Clean Ocean Action. Several are household names in American conservation; none was accused of wrongdoing. Interior’s charge is narrower and more political: that the work no longer fits the mission, as this administration defines the mission.

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The phrase doing the heavy lifting is “direct opposition.” Interior’s framing folds three distinct policy fights into a single termination memo. The first is energy: the department casts groups that advocate “phasing out baseload energy” — coal, gas, and nuclear plants that run around the clock — as adversaries of an agency whose Trump-era priority is to “unleash” domestic production on public lands. The second is law enforcement, with the department invoking “defunding” rhetoric. The third is what the department calls “racially preferential programs” — the diversity, equity, and inclusion work that two of President Donald Trump (R)’s first-week executive orders ordered rooted out across the federal government.

Inside the building, the DEI posture is not abstract. In a March memo, Interior chief human capital officer Rachel M. Borrasaid the department had “eliminated (or are eliminating) any programs, practices, or policies labeled as DEI/DEIA,” and Interior renewed a campaign asking employees to report colleagues for suspected “DEI discrimination” — a federal agency soliciting tips on its own workforce. The 43 external terminations are the outward-facing companion to that internal purge: first the programs inside, then the partners outside.

“The Department is ending relationships with organizations whose advocacy directly conflicts with this administration's priorities.”

Matthew Middleton, Interior Dept. principal deputy communications director · June 2026

What did these partnerships actually do? By Interior’s own description, the severed agreements ran youth internship pipelines, funded habitat and conservation projects, and supported cultural and educational programming on federal land. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, for instance, partnered with the National Park Service on educational and cultural activities; Latino Outdoors and the Hispanic Access Foundation built bridges between public lands and communities that historically visit national parks at lower rates. The administration’s position is that those goals, however benign on paper, became vehicles for an ideology it rejects — and that the taxpayer should not fund a mission it does not share.

The groups, predictably, see it differently. Fox News reported it reached out to five of the named organizations and received no responses by publication. But the broader sector has been vocal: in a parallel case, a coalition led by the Montana Wildlife Federation and represented by Democracy Forward sued Secretary Burgum (R)over a separate September cancellation of 79 grant agreements worth roughly $14 million, arguing the cuts violated the First and Fifth Amendments and that “none of the terminated grants funded DEI initiatives, with some organizations never even having a DEI policy in the first place.” That dispute — over whether the department’s “DEI” label even matches what the money funded — is the one now headed for a courtroom.

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Interior is one front in a wider effort to reshape which organizations the federal government does business with. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed an overhaul of the grant system covering more than 100,000 nonprofits, installing a political appointee at each agency as a gatekeeper and adding a “national interest” test that would let agencies terminate awards more easily — with explicit carve-outs against groups that support DEI programs, undocumented immigrants, or transgender people. More than 1,300 organizations and over 20,000 public comments have lined up against it.

Separately, the administration earlier targeted dozens of left-leaning nonprofits — among them the ACLU, the National Urban League, and the Hispanic Federation — with demands for financial information, and aimed federal scrutiny at groups including Indivisible. Supporters call it accountability for how federal money flows; opponents call it viewpoint-based retaliation against civil society. The 43 Interior terminations sit squarely in that contested middle: a documented, named, dollar-quantified action that each side reads as proof of its own argument.

The legal and civic question underneath the headline is simple to state and hard to settle: who gets to define a federal agency’s “mission,” and how far can an administration go in cutting partners who don’t fit it? Cooperative agreements are not entitlements — an agency has broad discretion over whom it partners with, and a new administration is entitled to set new priorities. That is the department’s strongest ground. The Montana plaintiffs’ counter is that discretion has a constitutional floor: the government cannot terminate funding to punish a group’s viewpoint or its statements, including, in that case, language about Indigenous peoples as original inhabitants of the land.

The dollar figures sharpen the stakes. The 43 terminations announced here account for $4,000,000-plus; the separately litigated September round runs to about $14 million; and the OMB rule would reach a universe of more than 100,000 grantees. Each tier is larger than the last, and each applies the same essential test — does this organization’s work align with the administration’s priorities? — to a wider slice of the nonprofit world.

The immediate effect is concrete: 43 programs lose their federal partner and more than $4 million evaporates from internships, conservation projects, and cultural programming that ran on those agreements. The downstream effect is what everyone is watching. If the OMB “national interest” rule is finalized, the discretionary judgment Interior applied to 43 groups becomes a government-wide screen applied to tens of thousands. If the Montana suit succeeds, courts may narrow how freely an agency can cite “mission” to cut a disfavored partner.

For now, the record is what the record is: a named secretary, a named spokesman, a named list of organizations, a quantified cut, and an explicit rationale. Interior calls it decisive action to align taxpayer dollars with its mission. The severed groups, and the 1,300 organizations fighting the broader rule, call it the federal government picking partners by politics. Both descriptions fit the same documented set of facts — which is precisely why this fight is headed for OMB’s final rule and, in the parallel case, a federal courtroom. We will update this page as those resolve.

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