We Can Beat Them

Public Lands sell-off stripped from House budget amid immense public pressure

Early this morning, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to approve its budget package. The measure will now be sent to the Senate. Republican leaders say they hope to pass it there by Monday. And while the measures contained in it still represent a massive redistribution of wealth from normal Americans to billionaires, still blow up the deficit, and still visit unprecedented harm to public lands, the measure to sell off more than 500,000 acres of our land has been removed. Is that a cause for celebration? Not so fast.

Update: Senate GOP leaders say they plan to take a few weeks to consider the budget.

Just in case you somehow missed it, the background here is Republicans in Congress have been busy building their budget for fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Because they intend to use it to wreak unprecedented harm on both the American people and our economy, they’re forcing themselves to rely on a procedure called “budget reconciliation.” That allows them to avoid the filibuster in the Senate, and pass the legislation with a simple majority vote, but it also means they can only make it about dollars and cents.

Because they won’t be able to pass any other major pieces of legislation this term, that’s forcing Republican politicians to not only wrap all their policy goals into a single bill, but also to try and achieve them through budgets, rather than express language. So, if Republicans want to pass a measure that, say, condemns poor people to die horrible, painful, expensive deaths, they can’t come out and just write that expressly, they have to instead kick seven or eight million Americans off medicaid, and tell 40 million Americans (including children) they’ll no longer be able to afford food.

I’m not kidding, those are their actual legislative priorities, and that stuff will be caused by this budget. Because those measures aren’t exactly popular, Republicans have begun holding votes on this stuff during the middle of the night, when American television sets aren’t tuned in.

The first of those late night hearings came on May 6. After stalling all day, claiming they didn’t have a final budget ready to debate, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee suddenly unveiled a 33-page, full-written budget that contained intentionally-confusing language describing a plan to sell off thousands of acres of land you and I own in Nevada and Utah.

That measure was disguised so well that it wasn’t until this morning that we actually knew the exact total for the acreage. Initial reports started at 11,000 acres, I was first to report that it was actually over 500,000, yesterday mapping app OnX suggested it might be as much as 1.5 million acres, but now we finally have the actual total of what they tried to sell: 547,678 acres, which you can see mapped out at this link.

These measure are obviously unpopular. And while it’s proven difficult for opponents of Medicaid or food stamp cuts, or people who just want a stable economy to coalesce resistance to tax cuts for billionaires into meaningful opposition, people who care about nature got enough practice during the original Trump administration that we were able to come out hard against this effort. Resistance to the public land sell off was bipartisan, loud, and targeted at a small group of Republican politicians uniquely vulnerable to this issue. And because the Republican majority in the House is so slim, we only needed to make three of them fear for their chances at reelection to win.

The most vulnerable of those Republicans is Ryan Zinke (R-Santa Barbara). After being fired by Trump in 2018 for rampant penny grifting, Zinke mounted a successful campaign for one of Montana’s two house seats in 2022. During that campaign, Zinke capitalized on two advantages: mid-term frustrations with the Biden presidency, and an ineffective, poorly-funded, tone deaf challenge from Montana Democrats, who have failed to organize an effective operation as politics have changed dramatically in the state in recent years.

But Zinke knows that if that changes, then the same anti-administration sentiments that led him to victory in 2022 and 2024 could spoil his chances against a strong challenger in 2026. Especially since he still wears the stink of presiding over the largest reduction in protections to public lands in American history during his time as Secretary of the Interior, and has struggled to shake the smell of corruption. Perhaps more than any other state, voters in Montana care about public lands.

Zinke came under more pressure around this land sell off than any other Republican politician. And we forced him to cave.

“Zinke Strips Public Lands Sales out of House Budget Reconciliation,” reads the first line in the subject of a press release his office distributed as soon as the measure was removed yesterday.

“Today, after unrelenting effort from Congressman Ryan Zinke (MT-01), a provision selling more than 450,000 acres of public land has been stripped from the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ also known as the House budget reconciliation,” the release begins. You’d think the man responsible for such an achievement would know the total acreage he’d just “saved.”

The reality here is that the effort to sell public lands was led by Republican politicians using Republican ideology and Republican lies. Opposition to it was led by conservation non-profits and grassroots organizing from groups like Resistance Rangers. Zinke was not the only Republican politician who opposed the land sale measure, he was just the one most prepared to take credit for it. Were those Republicans not vulnerable in the mid-terms, and had they not been under so much pressure from those voters, they would not have withheld their support.

The public land sell-off failed because it’s easy to message opposition to it. That does not mean that other significant harms to public lands are not still in the House budget.

“In a bid to cut taxes for billionaires and provide a grab bag of goodies to Big Oil, the majority in the House took a sledgehammer to clean energy tax credits and to the protection of our public lands,” reads a statement from the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This bill also contains the most dangerous attack on public lands in a generation. It guts environmental safeguards, shuts out the public from decision making, and turns over millions of acres to drillers, miners, and loggers. It even would allow them to pay to get their project rubber stamped. That’s not just wrong, it’s un-American.”

While the sell-off is gone, measures retained in the House budget would: Force drilling in the country’s largest wildlife refuge, a measure championed by Zinke. Open a mine that will dump toxic waste into the country’s most popular wildness areas. Cut 7.5 percent of the National Park Service’s budget (remember that Senator Steve Daines is campaigning on further cutting funding for national parks). Reduce the royalties paid by extraction operations on public lands. Limit public challenges to extraction permitting on public lands. And, allow extraction companies to sue the government to expedite permitting.

The Wilderness Society calls the budget, “The most extreme legislative attack on public lands in our nation’s history.”

Zinke says he, “fully endorses,” these remaining measures, and the rest of the budget.

Ryan Busse, who last year mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Montana Governor points out that applause Zinke is receiving from right-leaning voices in the conservation world is, “fucking insane.”

“This is like a madman kidnapping your entire family and telling you he’s gonna kill you all,” says Busse. “Then, when he says, ‘Ok, I’m feeling magnanimous, I’m only going to kill your two daughters,’ you tearfully and happily hug him and tell the world what a glorious human he is.”

“Until a politician cares enough to stand for reversing all declines [in public land protections], until someone cares enough to risk their own personal politics to stand up for something bigger, we will have less every year,” Busse continues. “That is what these guys are celebrating. What they should say is, ‘Good, you did your job. Now do the rest or you are done.’”

It’s also important to note here that the House’s rejection of its own land sale measure doesn’t mean the provision is done. Senate Republicans (like Utah’s Mike Lee, who has a stated goal of privatizing all public lands) could re-introduce it, and send the budget back to the House for a final vote. If that happens, and significant pressure is applied by Trump in an effort to force home this administration’s signature piece of legislation, it’ll be interesting to watch who caves.

Still, this is the first major victory for and by Americans against this second Trump administration’s legislative priorities. The fact that it came from grassroots organizers rather than established politicians or power centers is remarkable, and points an encouraging path forward. Messaged correctly, coalitions can be built that transcend polarized political identities. Public lands are one thing all Americans can agree on. Find others, and we can begin to build an effective opposition.

Top photo: NPS

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.