The Senate will vote this week on a budget megabill, known as the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill," but the package they vote on will not contain any provisions mandating the sale of federal public lands.
Late Saturday night, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) who chairs the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee posted a statement to social media, saying that he would withdraw his proposal to sell over a million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.
"Because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, I was unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests," Lee wrote, saying this was the reason he was withdrawing the provision.
Steve Bloch, the legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), said this withdrawal indicates that Lee and other Republicans would respond to public pressure.
"I don't think people felt that was possible," he said. "They felt there would be some version of it that would pass with the Republicans holding all of the levers of power. And what we saw is that the voice of everyday Americans, of hunters and anglers and recreationists and small business owners matter."
How did we get here?
The House version of the spending bill passed on a razor-thin majority in May. Representatives Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) attempted to include a provision for the sale of federal public lands. The proposal would have sold over 10,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in southwestern Utah, and hundreds of thousands of acres of BLM land in Nevada. That provision was cut at the last minute, after it faced opposition from Western Republicans like Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) and Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.).
Senators have been working on the budget megabill, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill," for the past couple of weeks through a process called 'reconciliation.' This allows spending and revenue legislation to be passed on a simple majority of 51 votes rather than the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, brought forward a much more sweeping proposal than the one initially introduced in the House. In the original version of Lee's bill, the Department of the Interior would have been required to sell between 2 and 3 million acres of BLM and U.S. Forest Service land across eleven Western states. Lee said that was for affordable housing, but nothing in the bill's language mandated that housing, affordable or otherwise, be the purpose of such sales.
On June 23, the Senate parliamentarian, or the chamber's rule keeper, said Lee's provision violated the Byrd Rule, meaning the provision was not adequately related to the nation's budget and revenues.
Outlets including The Hill reported that Lee issued alternate versions of the proposal, taking out Forest Service lands, and mandating that the BLM land in question be sold for housing and within five miles of a "population center." Lee did not release any of these revised versions to the public, instead including his final proposal—down to a little over one million acres—in the full text of the budget bill.
What was the response to mandatory public lands sales?
The proposal drew swift, widespread, and bipartisan backlash. In the days leading up to the Senate's vote to move the budget bill forward, Republican senators from Western states said they would not support any public lands sale.
Despite Montana being the only Western state excluded from the mandatory sales, the state's senators said they would work to block the sales, and that it represented a threat to Montanans' way of life. Both of Idaho's Republican senators also said they would oppose the provision, according to the Idaho Statesman.
The sell-off would have faced an uphill battle if it made its way back to the House of Representatives as well.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) expressed his repeated opposition to any sale of public lands in the budget bill.
I agree with my colleagues that the federal government has mismanaged federal lands for decades. But I don’t agree with their solution.
— Ryan Zinke (@RyanZinke) June 26, 2025
The solution is not to sell public lands.
The solution is better management. Let’s send legislation to POTUS desk to improve management and…
Politico reported Thursday that Zinke was joined by four other Western Republicans in pledging to vote 'no' on the budget bill if the public lands sale remained in the version that went back to the House. The lawmakers are Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.), and David Valadao (R-Calif.).
In addition, Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) released a joint statement with Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), saying that Colorado's public lands were not for sale.
"They don't belong to political appointees or outside interests," the congressmen wrote. "Neither of our districts asked for this land sale, and any efforts to sell off these shared spaces are deeply unpopular with the hunters, ranchers, fishermen, recreationists, conservationists, and outdoor enthusiasts we are proud to represent in Congress. Republican or Democrat—representing red, purple, or blue districts—one sentiment continues to ring true: public lands are not for sale."
In addition, Hurd celebrated Lee's withdrawal of the proposal in a social media post.
I said from the start: politicians from outside #CO03 shouldn’t force Coloradans to sell off public lands. No one in my district asked for this. I stood firm against it, from being the lone GOP vote on Natural Resources against this kind of sale, to working hard behind the scenes… https://t.co/XP1JlwoOQE
— Rep. Jeff Hurd (@RepJeffHurd) June 29, 2025
What other threats are there for public lands protections?
Despite the cutting of the public lands sale, the megabill contains other provisions that public lands and environmental advocates find dangerous to protecting federal public lands.
It would reduce the royalty rates oil and gas companies pay to lease on federal public lands, implement a fee for the public to file protests against oil and gas projects, and would reduce judicial review over oil and gas projects if the public sued.
"It's going to be awful for federal lands and really awful for our most vulnerable Americans, looking to cut benefits… at every turn, at the same time, handing out kickbacks and windfalls to the oil, gas, and mining industry," said Steve Bloch with SUWA.
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities released a statement celebrating the withdrawal of public lands sales, but called out other aspects
"While the removal of Lee's language is a big improvement, the Senate budget bill still contains a number of attacks on our public lands — including a provision that would allow oil and gas companies to lock up over 200 million acres of public land through drilling leases with no public engagement, and open the door to oil and gas drilling across the Arctic," wrote Rokala. "The budget reconciliation process is far from over, and we'll continue fighting to protect the rights of all Americans to access public lands and have a say in how they are managed."
In addition, Bloch said he expects Sen. Mike Lee to continue to attempt to sell federal public lands outside of the reconciliation process, especially as long as Republicans have a majority in both chambers of Congress.
"I continue to believe the federal government owns far too much land — land it is mismanaging and in many cases ruining for the next generation," Lee wrote in his statement. "Under Democratic presidents, massive swaths of the West are being locked away from the people who live there, with no meaningful recourse. That has real consequences for Utahns — from raising taxes for schools and funding local search-and-rescue operations, to being able to build homes and sustain rural communities."
"He is just so wildly out of step with what Americans want," Bloch said. "His vision of the American West is one that's fundamentally, radically not like what we have now. He really envisions a future with very few federal lands, and large swaths of land that are privatized and in the hands of developers."
In addition, the threat of reducing or rescinding national monument designations across the West, like the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in Utah, has loomed large over the Trump administration's second term. Bloch said that's something SUWA will be keeping an eye out for in the coming weeks and months.
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