Steve Daines Is Stealing Your Land

Here’s his phone number

Despite recent promises that he would never sell off public land, Steve Daines (R-Montana) is reportedly conspiring with Mike Lee (R-Utah) to write a land sell-off provision into the Senate’s budget reconciliation package. Daines faces a tough re-election fight next year, so there’s actually a good chance that you can help change his mind.

You can find previous coverage about the Great Public Land Heist here. The very brief review is that, faced with an order from their boss in the White House to find trillions of dollars in budget savings in order to pass tax cuts for billionaires using a legislative workaround called budget reconciliation, Republicans in Congress are turning to selling off public land—land you and I own and which the federal government manages on our behalf—to raise the necessary cash.

Those lands are the places where we camp, hike, hunt and fish, and they’re the reservoir of unspoiled nature on which the entire country relies for clean air, clean water, and abundant wildlife. Our system of public lands is also enormously profitable, offsetting the taxes normal folks like you and I pay by huge amounts. Every dollar taxpayers invest into the Bureau of Land Management, for instance, generates $194 for the economy.

But if Republican legislators want to cut taxes for billionaires using budget reconciliation, they have to make that money up elsewhere. This is the first time we’ve seen a serious, concerted effort to sell public lands just to give the richest handful of Americans a tax break.

As recently as April 2nd, Daines promised voters he wouldn’t do this.

“Senator Daines has never and will never support the sale of public lands,” one of his aides texted E&E (a subscription newsletter for wonks created by Politico).

She’s sort of a chaotic texter, I had to block her number a few years back when they were trying to bully me into profiling the Senator, but that’s a story for another time. I feel for you E&E reporters.

“But Daines suggested to media this week that he is negotiating an unspecified deal that may include some ‘microscopic’ land sales,” The Wilderness Society warned in an emailed statement this afternoon.

The problem here isn’t just that Daines’ definition of “microscopic,” might differ from yours or mine, it’s that any sale, especially one being done in order to give billionaires a tax cut, creates precedent that could be expanded on in the future. 547,678 acres now could very well be 5.4 million acres next time.

And, before long, you’ll be paying to pitch a tent in what used to be a national park, since Trump himself is working to sell those, too.

Republicans hold a three-seat majority in the Senate. Since Vice President JD Vance (pictured above) can vote to settle a tie, and since the Democrats are ideologically opposed to selling our country’s future in order to cut taxes on billionaires, only four Republicans need to be convinced that they’ll lose their seats next year if they vote for it. As we saw when this budget was with the House, that is an effective strategy. There, Ryan Zinke (R-Santa Barbara) felt his odds at re-election were so threatened by the sell off, that he and several other Republicans withheld their votes approving it until the provision was removed.

Voters in Montana care about public lands. Support for them is so important here that Daines goes through the trouble of making up entire pieces of legislation that he uses to greenwash his image ahead of every election cycle. (His current bullshit is called the “America the Beautiful Act.” He’s lying about this obviously, but it would reduce public lands funding, as I explained here.)

If enough of you call Daines’ office, and tell his staff that if he doesn’t withdraw his support for selling public lands you’ll either vote against him in 2026 if you live here, or donate to his Democrat opponent Reilly Neill if you don’t, I bet we can scare him into changing his mind. The number is: (202) 224-2651.

Top photo: BLM

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports independent journalism and gives you personal access to his expertise and network, which he’ll use to help you plan trips, purchase gear, and solve problems. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link.