Science Friday - Deb Haaland is a politician, and proud of it

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, was the first Native person to hold a cabinet position. Now she’s running to be governor of New Mexico.  Haaland joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her new memoir, “A Voice Like Mine,” her time at the Interior Department, and why she thinks lawsuits are a good thing when it comes to the environment.  Read an excerpt from “A Voice Like Mine.” Guest: Deb Haaland served as Secretary of the Interior under President Biden. She is a member of Laguna Pueblo tribe and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, I'm Flora and you're listening to Science Friday. In 2020, Deb Holland was serving in Congress, representing New Mexico's first district, when she got a new job offer. Joe Biden had just won the election, and he wanted her to be part of his cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. She accepted and became the first Native American appointed to a cabinet position, a new chapter for a woman who already had been through many chapters. In her new memoir, a voice like, mine, Holland writes about that cabinet job, her path to politics, and how she's not like other politicians. No Ivy League education, no high-up connections. She's a recovering alcoholic who graduated from college at age 34, had a baby four days later, and went to law school as a single

mom, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe who ran her own business and managed a casino along the way. And now she's planning her next chapter. She's running to be governor of New Mexico. Deb Holland, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Flora. Thanks for having me. We're so happy to have you. These days, do you identify as a politician? Does that word sit right with you? I mean, you know, I am, I suppose I am a politician, right? I'm in politics. I love politics, quite frankly. I love it for likely different reasons than maybe other people do. But, you know, I feel more like an organizer. I love that title. I organized for a long time in New Mexico before I ever ran for office, helping to make sure people were registered to vote, getting out in underrepresented communities.

So I mean, I'm not offended if somebody wants to call me a politician, but I have a lot of other identities also. You write in the book that you have a rebellious streak. How did that manifest and how does manifest now? Yeah, you know, my rebellious streak was, and I was different from my siblings in this way, right? Like, I ditched class when I was in high school and I, you know, I did those kinds of things that frustrated my parents. When I was in seventh grade, you know, the dress code, you couldn't wear jeans or midriff tops. And so me and my friends wore jeans and midriff tops just to get under the skin of the principal and the folks at my junior high. And so, sure, I have a little bit of a rebellious streak because I kind of feel, and even now I'm feeling like, you know,

I don't want to go with the status quo a lot of times. I really want to do things differently and help people to feel different about politics and about elected officials and about government, right? I want more grassroots people to feel like they're part of the system and that it's something that's not out of reach for them. Well, I mean, even you're just saying that you love politics, I mean, that's kind of a radical thing to say. Yeah, it is, especially in this day and age, right? There's a lot of divisiveness. You know, I'm proud of my bipartisan work when I was in Congress and proud that I got bills across the finish line and had them signed into law by President Trump. I even implemented some of those bills when I was Secretary of the Interior.

Well, let's talk a little bit about some of your previous stints. You were Secretary of the Interior. You started in 2021. This seems like a big department. Very big. Yes. 70,000 career staff. 70,000 career staff and an $18 billion annual budget,

which I did for four consecutive years. What does the interior do? What's the job? Yeah, the top line, they manage all of our public lands, right? All the national parks, all the wildlife refuges, all the BLM lands. They're responsible. They have the United States Geological Survey. So that is responsible for the science.

The USGS does so many important things. They measure streams. They measure rain. They look at volcanoes and earthquakes and things of that nature. The department is also responsible for the trust responsibility for our 574 federally recognized tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It also has the Bureau of Indian Education, so they're responsible for a number of tribally run or BIE-I-E-run schools across the country. that was all under my responsibility. But it doesn't, you know, you end up having this really strong emotional connection

to so many things that the interior does, right? You know, my thought, I grew up outdoors. My dad grew up on a farm. My mom's dad was a farmer also. And so we were just outdoors all the time. And I grew up that way. And I have an affinity for everything outside. I'd rather be outside than anywhere.

And so I felt really dedicated. It's easy to be dedicated in that department to the people and the animals and the landscapes that we manage because it plays such a large role in just in American life. Right. Yes. Yes. I think that's so true. And also public lands, there are all these competing interests. Like they had different meaning and different value to different people, probably even within interior itself. You know, there's recreation and conservation and extraction. And I wondered how you thought about balancing those priorities. And if you learned anything or anything surprised you after you were in the post. So, yes. I mean, and it's interesting that you use the word balance because that's what I promised to do, and manage our public lands in a balance. And, you know, there's a multi-purpose mandate from Congress to manage our public lands. And not just one industry should be dictating what happens on our public lands. And so I really felt committed to that multi-purpose use and ensuring that people had a see. at the table to talk about these things, right? And in fact, we said that conservation should be one of the multi-use purposes, which I thought was a really great idea. Was that not true

before? Well, I mean, there's generally, during many administrations, there's generally one industry that essentially, you know, that essentially moved our public lands forward. Do you mean the oil and gas industry? Yeah, yes, the oil and gas industry. And everybody, they really, a lot of folks really feel like you should just give carte blanche to the gas and oil industry. And I mean, I think all industries, regardless of what the industry does, I think they all have a responsibility to our, communities, to our environment, to everything, right? So we need, especially now in this era of climate change, we need every industry to be sustainable.

I want to talk about climate change a little bit. From your time in Congress and at the Interior, what did you learn about what is actually effective in terms of making change? Like, do we need more lawsuits or science that quantifies the costs of climate? disasters. How do we move this forward? So we always need more lawsuits, I think, right? Because people want to play by the rules. And especially... Deb Holland. I love politics and we always need more lawsuits. Not exactly what I expected from this interview. I mean, we have an attorney general here in New Mexico. We sued the Trump administration like 43 times because or more because they're

living up to their obligations to our state. So I mean, when people want to harm the environment and they're breaking the law to do it, then they should be held accountable, right? It's about accountability. But we always need science, too. We need those experts to tell us what we need to do in order to have a future for our children. And so I believe in science. I believe in the law. Science and the law, those are two important things.

As we see right now, this administration is working to circumvent the law, to do away with the law, to reinterpret the law to their own desires. And when people try to do that, then they kind of deserve to get sued, in my opinion. Well, spoken like a true lawyer, you know. Well, I'm actually not a lawyer, though. I don't practice law, and I've never practiced law. And this is in the book, too. I didn't pass my bar exam. And so I'm law trained, and I respect lawyers because I think that that...

Hear that lawyers? I have immense respect for lawyers. I know that's not the status quo, but I told you I'm against the status quo. We have to take a break, but when we... come back, I want to ask you a little bit about your life outside of politics, if that's okay. Sure. Don't go away. You're so candid in the book, and you just mentioned you failed the bar, you're not putting on airs, which feels, you know, honestly, a little unusual for a politician.

Why did you choose to be open about all these things? Because I think the, I think the public deserves transparency. And I mean, I also feel, with respect to my alcoholism, I'm over 30 years sober. Can I be, can I be, can I set an example for folks who are struggling? Can I help people who are struggling to feel like they're not alone and that there's hope for them, right? if we are honest about who we are, then I just, I just, it, it helps me to feel like, yeah, I, I, I have nothing to hide so I don't have to worry about what I say, right? I can just be honest about everything. And, and that's, and I feel that's important.

Your dad was in the military and you moved around a lot as a kid. And also as an adult, I'm sure you had to reinvent yourself over and over. What did you learn from that? Well, I mean, I think when you're moving around a lot as a kid, you just learn to be resilient, right? Whenever we move, the Marine Corps would send the movers to our house. They'd pack everything up and then move it in a moving van to our new destination. And all the boxes would be labeled, right? Kids room, kitchen, blah, blah. So they dump all the kids' room boxes in our rooms, and we were responsible for unpacking. We were just kids, like five and six years old. My mom made us work. She made us be responsible for our things, right? And so I appreciated all of that. I appreciated not being coddled

and just knowing that I was responsible for myself and my self and my things. things and and as a result I was responsible for making new friends and to learning, you know, meeting new teachers and learning how to get along in school and so forth. And I think it taught me a lot, but definitely resiliency. You mentioned earlier that you'd always rather be outside. Do you have a favorite moment in nature or a favorite place? I mean, I don't know if I have a favorite moment. There are places where there are places that have made me cry because there's, they're so profound, beautiful, immense, right?

I cried the first time I went to Yosemite. I'd never been there before. And so I think when I, you know, I crewed for. for some runners for the Badwater Ultra Marathon the first time I crewed for this runner. We got to, it ends at the Mount Whitney Portal Road. It's 8,000 feet up. And so when I got to the end of the race, I looked up in the sky. It was like midnight or so.

And the sky was just the, I had never seen a sky like that. It was so dark and there were just stars. Like, it was crazy. Like, I was, it felt like I was in space or something, you know. And it's profound. I mean, yeah. Times like that, I, makes me cry. Why do you think it's so emotional?

Because I feel like, so I was at a reading. Linda Hogan was one of my favorite native authors. I went to one of her readings one time, and she said something like, not one drop of water has come into or left our planet in 4.6 billion years, right? Like, think about that. And what we have on Earth is what we have, right? Like, we're not bringing in new raw materials from Mars or the moon or anything like that.

We have what we have on this Earth. And so we have to watch out for these things. And you know, when I'm, when I was at the Mount Whitney Portal Road in that dark sky, I was like, my ancestors saw these stars, right? my ancestors a thousand years ago saw this sky or felt the way that we feel that I feel right now, right? Like we are, we're descendants of people who recognize the value of our natural resources and what our earth brings to us. And we like so many people have lost that along the way, right? And I just feel so profoundly committed to the fact that we should always appreciate that, that we should appreciate our earth and our natural resources,

because we're such a part of it, right? We're a part of that. People, I mean, feelings that well up in folks when, you know, you're standing at a waterfall or, you know, walking across an icy cold street, dream or, I mean, these things are, we should never take those for granted. I think that's the perfect note to end on. Deb Holland is the former secretary of the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration. Her new book, A Memoir, is called A Voice Like Mine.

Deb Holland, thank you for talking with me today. Thank you. It was really a pleasure. Annette Heist produced this episode. Do us a favor. Rate and review the podcast. I recommend five. Thank you for listening. I'm Flora Lichtman.