{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases/interior-secretary-haaland-not-aware-her-department-suing-minor-league", "Interior Secretary Haaland is \u201cnot aware\u201d her department is suing a minor league baseball team", "2024-04-17", "2024", "2024-04", "Republican", "House", "MT", "Ryan K. Zinke", "Z000018", "zinke.house.gov", "zinke", "https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, DC - Today, former Secretary of the Interior and current Congressman Ryan Zinke questioned current Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in a House Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing about the Department\u2019s predatory litigation against the Range Riders, Kalispell\u2019s Pioneer League baseball team.\n\nLast year, the DOI solicitor\u2019s office sent a letter to the Glacier Range Riders alleging the team\u2019s logo violated trademark rights belonging to the National Park Service (NPS) and that the team\u2019s use of the logo would cause \u201charm or damage to the NPS,\u201d despite the U.S. Patent office\u2019s two rulings deciding the team was not in violation.\n\nIn the hearing where Secretary Haaland had just asked for a funding increase in the 2025 Interior Appropriations budget, Haaland said she was \u201cnot aware of anything with the Range Riders\u201d or the predatory lawsuit her department led that could cost a local business more than $500,000 to defend themselves.\n\n\u201cThe Interior Department suing a family-owned minor league baseball team is the worst case of federal overreach and predatory litigation by the government I have ever seen,\u201d said Rep. Zinke. \u201cThis is why people outside the beltway don\u2019t trust the bureaucrats inside the beltway. I can tell you that if I was Secretary and this came across my desk, I\u2019d fire the lawyer who thought it was a good use of tax dollars. Now a small business is forced to spend half a million dollars defending themselves against a frivolous and predatory lawsuit that has no merit and has been thrown out twice by the Patent and Trademark Office. The Secretary either has no idea what\u2019s going on in her own department or is allowing the abuse to happen. Either way, not good.\u201d\n\nWatch the hearing here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T20:47:55Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases/interior-secretary-haaland-not-aware-her-department-suing-minor-league"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7265090718865395, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}