Taft further alienated his supporters (and his friend Teddy Roosevelt) when he fired Gifford Pinchot, the head of the forestry division in the Department of Agriculture, for insubordination.

Pinchot, a progressive, a personal friend of Roosevelt, and a popular conservationist, had angered Taft by opposing Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger’s decision to sell public wilderness lands in Alaska and the Rocky Mountains to corporate developers.

Taft refused to reinstate Pinchot even after Roosevelt and several prominent Republicans appealed on his behalf. The 1910 Ballinger-Pinchot Affair thus blackened Taft’s public image and earned him many enemies within his own party.