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A land grab in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — which would put 250 million acres of public lands at risk of being auctioned to the highest bidder — has been judged out of bounds by the Senate’s in-house rulekeeper.
Trump’s lard-the-rich legislation is being pushed through Congress as a “reconciliation” bill, which means it is not subject to the Senate filibuster and only needs a simple majority to pass. But such budget legislation must adhere to the “Byrd rule,” which bars extraneous provisions from being tacked on. On Monday evening, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the privatization of nearly 3 million acres of treasured, wild spaces did not clear that bar.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee is the chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and the architect of the provision requiring “mandatory disposal” of the public’s property. Lee is an ideological foe of public lands. He proclaimed in a February post on X that “the U.S. government should never be the largest landowner in America.” He argued the feds should only “keep the national parks,” its “military bases,” and “maybe some of the most historically and environmentally sensitive properties.” It should then, Lee insisted, “sell the rest — not all at once, but steadily.”
Lee is an extremist even in his own party. And his provision faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, top Democrats, a former Trump Interior Secretary, and even the Republican senators from Idaho, where more than 20 million acres were at risk. (Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch put out nearly identical statements over the weekend saying they “do not support” the provision to “sell public lands.”)
Despite the political and parliamentary blowback, Lee is not giving up. In a post on X Tuesday, he wrote that he is “doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward.” He wrote that his next version of the bill will take steps to protect “farmers, ranchers, and recreational users.” Lee would take all Forest Service land out of the mix, limiting the selloff to Bureau of Land Management lands, and only those properties within 5 miles of “population centers.” Doing a second-rate Trump impression with all-caps, Lee vowed to establish “FREEDOM ZONES” to “ensure that these lands benefit AMERICAN FAMILIES,” asserting that the move would address “crushing” housing prices. “Stay tuned,” he wrote. “We’re just getting started.”
To better understand the state of play regarding Lee’s contentious proposal, Rolling Stone reached out to Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who used to chair Lee’s committee. Nearly half of the land in Wyden’s home state of Oregon is owned by the federal government, with the BLM managing nearly all of the southeast quadrant of the state, bordered by Nevada and Idaho.
In addition to being a longtime champion of public lands, Wyden is currently the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee where he is seeking to blunt the Big Beautiful Bill’s giveaways to the “gazillionaires.”
The transcript that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
What are you hearing from your constituents about the public lands selloff?
Just last weekend I had four town hall meetings in the state, open to everybody. Three were in places where Donald Trump got 70 percent or more — Ontario, La Grande, and Baker City. In these bright-red communities, there was very substantial opposition to the question of selling off public lands.
They’re alarmed about what privatizing lands means for drinking water and the air. They’re worried about big developers coming in and destroying the lands that they enjoy — for hunting, fishing, camping and more. And they’re worried about what it means for rural jobs that are supported by public lands.
This is in our DNA. The reality is, when the federal government owns much of your state, you feel strongly about treasures that are emblematic of what’s important to you. Protecting public lands is in Oregon’s DNA.
What does Monday night’s procedural ruling mean?
What the parliamentarian did was to strike Lee’s proposal. So, boom, struck. But Lee has come back already with something that basically keeps the BLM aspects of this, because he thinks that’ll be easier than the [selloff of land managed by the] Forest Service.
He wants to make it near the population areas. But that makes the people in populated areas close to recreation particularly vulnerable. As far as I’m concerned, this is at least as bad as the earlier version, and potentially worse, because it’ll affect bigger groups. More people, close to population centers. Prescription for trouble.
By the way, this is also an invitation to extremists to set up camp in rural areas.
How so? Connect the dots for me.
Because there are no ground rules. If you’re one of these extremist outfits and you want to get outside any kind of government accountability and scrutiny and oversight, this is your opportunity.
So the danger is that it’s not just the BlackRocks, the private equity funds, or the golf resort developers that might get in on the land grab, but you could have extremists looking to set up an encampment?
That’s what I asked about this weekend. I mentioned big economic interests and hedge funds and all that. But I said, “How many of you remember the Rajneeshees?”
You’re referring to the dangerous cult that infamously made a compound in rural Oregon in the 1980s.
There’s no limits on those kind of people.
To your broader point, there doesn’t seem to be any process spelled out by Lee. A lot seems to depend on how connected you are to the Interior Secretary or Trump’s Cabinet.
It’s made for interest groups who want to hot-wire the process. None of this is backed up by accountability. What really makes this a political farce is that Montana is excepted. How’d they get a free ride? They went to Trump early on. There’s been connections with a lot of those [Montana] folks and the Trumps. And they got it, right?
Do you see Lee as committed to this privatization effort?
This didn’t come to him in the last couple of months. I was chairman of the committee, so I know the members. This has been his position for years. What’s different here is that he thinks he’s got an executive branch that’ll help him.
Lee is talking about “FREEDOM ZONES” to benefit “AMERICAN FAMILIES.” Is it your sense that that means the freedom for rich folks to buy lakeside chalets?
There’s been repeated claims that selling off public lands will address America’s housing affordability crisis. We need more affordable housing. But you aren’t going to get that by helping the people at the very top get even wealthier, while the poor get poorer.
Nothing in this bill does anything to ensure that there’s going to be affordable housing for people of more-modest means. But you can be sure that the people who are going to benefit are the wealthiest Americans who can find a new luxury vacation home.
Norms are flying out the window. Do you expect that the Republicans are going to honor the parliamentarian’s rulings on this?
I hope so. We’ll have to see. The Republican Senate proposals are consistently about giving people at the top more benefits. What I want as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee is to give everybody in America the chance to get ahead.
We have two tax codes in America. The firefighter pays taxes with every paycheck. If you’re a gazillionaire you can pay what you want, when you want to. The [Trump] bill starts with the fact that the rate [cuts] are for the multi-millionaires and the billionaires. That’s paid for by cutting [services for] people in modest means.
Final thoughts about the land grab?
This is particularly important to Westerners. I want to protect our treasures. I want people to be able to make a living. I was chairman of the committee. I know from 1,100 open-to-all town hall meetings [that I’ve done in the state], this is personal. This is deeply felt. This is what Oregon and Western-land states are all about. What are we gonna say, when people bring up these policies? “No way.” Not complicated. “No. Way.”
