OPINION: Deb Haaland owes the public answers about Biden’s decline

As former President Joe Biden’s mental decline becomes impossible to ignore — now even chronicled in newly published accounts like “Original Sin,” a book that lays bare the White House’s efforts to conceal the president’s condition. Understandably, questions are rapidly turning toward those who were closest to him.

Among them should be former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who served from Biden’s first day in office to his last. And now wants to be New Mexico’s next governor.

If the American people could see Biden’s struggles in primetime speeches and public appearances, surely a Cabinet official who met with him regularly should have seen it too. Yet Haaland never raised a concern. Never went public. Never even whispered doubt. The public deserves to know: What did Haaland know about Joe Biden’s decline, and when did she know it?

The silence is damning. But the abdication of responsibility doesn’t end there. As Interior secretary, Haaland wasn’t just a passive observer to Biden’s presidency — she was a leading figure in implementing the administration’s radical climate agenda. The same agenda that has driven up energy prices, strangled American energy independence and handed more power to far-left activist groups behind closed doors.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) exposed how Haaland’s department was holding meetings with dark-money environmental groups — without her knowledge, or so she claimed. That’s not just bureaucratic incompetence; that’s an admission that unelected, unaccountable actors were setting the agenda in a major federal agency while Haaland nodded along.

Now, as Haaland becomes the first former Biden Cabinet member to run for elected office, her silence becomes even more troubling. While other former officials like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have at least acknowledged that Biden’s re-election bid may have been a mistake, Haaland continues to act as if nothing was wrong. That’s not leadership. That’s complicity.

Joe Biden’s mental decline is the most significant political scandal of our time, and the cover-up was carried out not just by aides and staffers, but by Cabinet officials who had a duty to the country, not just to the Democratic Party. Haaland had a front-row seat. She should have known — and if she didn’t, that’s its own indictment.

If Haaland wants the people of New Mexico to trust her with a new job, she must first answer serious questions about her old one. Who was actually in charge at Interior? Was Biden making the decisions, or were faceless activists running the show? Her record shows she either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Either way, the voters deserve the truth before casting a single ballot.