President Trump’s Department of the Interior is cutting 43 partnerships with outside groups and eliminating more than $4 million in planned funding.

Fox News reported the move on June 11, 2026, after a department-wide review flagged agreements tied to DEI, environmental justice, and support services for illegal immigrants.

The department, led by Secretary Doug Burgum, said the agreements were operating in direct opposition to its mission.

That is the kind of housecleaning taxpayers actually asked for.

Why was the Dept of Interior funding this?

The Dept of the Interior is cutting 43 partnerships with outside groups, cutting more than $4 million in planned funding for programs tied to DEI, environmental justice & support services for illegal immigrants. https://t.co/lhK1uJM2XW

— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) June 11, 2026

The review started in March and found nearly 3,000 active agreements with roughly 2,000 outside groups.

According to Fox, multiple groups did not appear to provide a clear benefit or did not align with the department’s mission.

So Interior is terminating the flagged agreements and scrubbing references to those groups from its websites.

The terminated deals covered internships, conservation initiatives, research projects, and cooperative partnerships.

The named examples are worth seeing. They include the Hispanic Access Foundation, Latino Outdoors, the American Alliance of Museums, Conservation International, and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Fox reported Latino Outdoors has advocated against oil and gas development, and the department said it provided instructions on avoiding detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Read that again. A federal partner was reportedly coaching people on how to dodge ICE.

Fox reported the American Alliance of Museums had a contract with the National Park Service to build DEI programs across national parks as part of the agency’s Community Engagement initiative.

Conservation International got flagged over advocacy for a total phaseout of fossil fuels and support for environmental justice and equity-focused climate policies.

None of that has anything to do with managing public lands or conserving them.

This fits a broader directive President Trump signed earlier in the year aimed at DEI inside federal contracting.

The White House laid out the policy in a March 26, 2026 executive order on DEI discrimination by federal contractors:

My Administration has made significant progress in ending racial discrimination in American society, including so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) activities in which employees, applicants, or contracting parties are treated differently, separated, or singled out based on their race or ethnicity, rather than treated equally and objectively based on their merit and without regard to their immutable characteristics. Despite this progress, some entities continue to engage in DEI activities and often attempt to conceal their efforts to do so.

DEI activities are not only unethical and often illegal, but also cause inefficiencies, waste, and abuse within entities that engage in such practices.

It is therefore the policy of the United States to promote economy and efficiency in Federal contracting by preventing racial discrimination.

The order is the framework. Interior’s cuts are the framework being enforced.

The White House Wire amplified the Fox report the same day, a signal the administration wants this kind of accountability seen, not buried.

To be precise about it, the department is not accusing every terminated group of fraud or lawbreaking.

The stated reason is simpler and harder to argue with. These partnerships no longer fit the mission, and some never clearly benefited it in the first place.

That alone is enough to justify the plug being pulled.

For years agencies quietly piled up agreements with activist outfits and called it engagement. Burgum’s team finally read the fine print and started saying no.

More than $4 million and 43 partnerships are a start, not a finish. With nearly 3,000 agreements on the books, the cleanup has plenty of runway left.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.