Related Articles
Every Summer, my wife and I pack up our three kids and the family dog and drive an hour-and-a-half from our home in Portland, Oregon, to the forested shores of Timothy Lake for a camping trip. The lake is technically a reservoir — with a small dam at the western edge. But it is a gem, bordered by U.S. Forest Service land on three sides. The Pacific Crest Trail hugs its shoreline, and thru-hikers bathe in its clear waters. There are few motor boats, mostly anglers casting for rainbow trout and kokanee, a freshwater salmon. They compete with ospreys for their catch. Hop on a paddle board on a calm day and you can bob out to the center of the lake and behold the glacier-capped splendor of Mount Hood, the highest peak in Oregon.
The federal land surrounding this awe-inspiring place would be put on the auction block for developers under the Senate’s version of President Donald Trump’s tax-cut-and-spending legislation known as the “Big Beautiful Bill.” A provision unveiled this week would open nearly 250 million acres of public lands in the West, for sale to the highest bidder. The legislation would require that at least 3 million acres — an area about half the size of Vermont — be privatized in the next five years.
The ugly provision was introduced by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who recently made himself notorious for shitposting about a political assasination in Minnesota. Lee’s committee touts this “mandatory disposal” of federal lands as a way to “fulfill President Trump’s agenda” by “unlocking federal land” to “increase the supply of housing,” while generating at least $5 billion. Speaking to fellow conspiratorial loon Glenn Beck, Lee defended the initiative as a “common-sense solution to a national problem.” Lee’s provision has the support of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board which alleges that “Uncle Sam” is “typically a poor steward of the land.”
This Senate provision creates a direct conflict with the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill. Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) successfully fought to strip a similar provision from the House bill. The former Interior Secretary described privatization of public lands as his “red line,” noting: “Once the land is sold, we will never get it back. God isn’t creating more land.”
The Senate provision applies to 11 western states, but notably exempts Montana. If this was meant to appease Zinke, he is not impressed. The congressman posted on X on June 18: “I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells public lands. I am still a no on the Senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands.”
Environmental groups are sounding the alarm, with 113 organizations — including the Sierra Club and Scenic Utah — writing an open letter to Senate leadership warning that the lack of meaningful restrictions in the provision would open sold-off public lands for development as “golf courses, luxury resorts, strip malls, [or] private vacation homes.”
The Wilderness Society decries the Senate provision, insisting it would spark “the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history” and sacrifice “ordinary Americans’ access to outdoor recreation for a short-term payoff.” It has produced a map of federal lands that would be available to private developers under this land grab. The group writes that the provision “masquerades as a way to provide more housing, but it lacks safeguards to ensure land is used for that purpose.” It nominally requires consultation with the states and calls for an exclusion of lands with “valid existing rights” — a provision that appears to apply to extractive industries like mining and drilling. (According to the map, my family’s go-to campground at Timothy Lake could be sold off for lakefront villas.)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has called the proposal “insane” and a “non-starter,” adding: “Hell no.” Democrats are calling on citizens to fight for their treasured public spaces. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that Lee chairs. “Our public lands hold our shared identity: They are where we gather, fish, hunt, and hike,” he writes. “We can’t let Republicans take them from us.”
He adds a battle cry to voters: “Now is the time to raise your voices and join our fight to keep public lands in public hands — before we lose these lands forever.”
Selling off common lands is wildly unpopular. In a recent poll, 71 percent of American adults oppose selling public lands to the highest bidder. Only 16 percent of Trump voters support such a move.
According to an inventory of public lands compiled by the Wilderness Society, the states most at risk are Alaska, where nearly 80 million acres would be up for grabs, followed by Nevada with 34 million acres, and Idaho and Oregon with 21 million acres apiece. In Lee’s home state of Utah, nearly 19 million acres would be on the block for land speculators.
The GOP led Senate aims to pass its version of the Big Beautiful Bill by the Fourth of July.
