Hunters Now Have a Real Chance to Defeat the Public Land Sales Bill. Here's Why

Yahoo

a day ago

As Backcountry Hunters & Anglers mobilizes a nationwide 'Flood the Lines' day on Wednesday, June 25, and as Western congressmen and women come home to cranky neighbors, the movement to kill the provision to sell public lands has hit high gear.
Political insiders now say there's a real chance the intense opposition to the bill that requires the sale of 3 million acres of federal land in the West could result in it being pulled. Or, it could threaten to tank President Trump's entire One Big Beautiful Bill in which the president has invested so much political capital.
Contained inside the massive budget bill, which will influence national priorities for health care, taxation, agricultural policy, and defense spending, is a provision that would require the U.S. government to sell between 2 and 3 million acres of federal land over the next five years to help fill the budget hole created by tax breaks.
It's one of the first times since the Homestead Act that public-lands issues have had such influence over national politics. Killing the bill is the fight of a lifetime for advocates of public land, but victory is hardly guaranteed.
'This is the biggest threat to public lands and public land access in my lifetime,' says Randy Newberg, the influential podcaster whose Fresh Tracks platforms have been a rallying point for opponents of the land-sale bill. 'But I'm encouraged that if we can change the minds of at least four Republican congressmen, that we might be able to stop this thing.'
Newberg spent most of the last week in Washington, D.C., visiting Senators and the staff of many Western representatives, and he says the consensus on Capitol Hill is that no public lands issue in recent memory has resulted in as many phone calls, emails, and letters as the current proposal that could sell off hunting, fishing, hiking, and off-road lands to the highest bidder.
The author of the land-sale provision is Utah's senior senator, Republican Mike Lee, who has for years argued that the federal government is an 'absentee landowner' that was never intended to own and control so much land across the West.
As the influential chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is responsible for the budget of the Interior Department, Lee proposed the bill that he says is intended to allow fast-growing Western communities to buy 'underutilized' federal land that's constraining their growth. The surplussed BLM lands would be primarily used for affordable housing, he says in a video promoting his bill.
But public-lands advocates quickly noted that the language of the bill would enable a wide range of purposes of the disposed public lands, including enlarging private ranches, building data centers, and potentially privatizing entire mountain ranges. A map that shows the millions of acres of BLM and Forest Service lands in 11 Western states that would be eligible for sale has been circulated widely over the past week and has inflamed users of those lands.
Newberg was in Washington as the news of the implications of Lee's bill grew and spread, and he says it caused a palpable change on Capitol Hill.
'The tone changed almost 180 degrees in just a couple days,' Newberg said on the Outdoor Life Podcast. 'A lot of Senators and congresspeople are completely blown away by the blowback this has created. I had gone to Washington with a warning [to congressional delegations], that you are not reading the landscape correctly if you don't think this could blow up, and I was told early in the week that I was making something out of nothing.
'I left D.C. so excited about how motivated and engaged our community of hunters and public-land users is over this, but that extends to RV'ers and ATV'ers and the travel-trailer industry and backcountry skiers — people who seldom work together.'
To understand the pathway to victory for public-land advocates, which could be measured in either a withdrawal of the Lee amendment or a revision that drastically limits its scope, it's important to understand the political moment.
A smaller-scale land-sale provision originated in the House version of the budget bill. It was ultimately withdrawn after Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke (R) declared he wouldn't vote for the budget bill if it contained the land-sale amendment. After the lands portion was removed, the budget passed the House by a single vote.
The full bill is now in the Senate, where Lee's amendment was added as it passed his committee. In order to become law, the budget must pass the full Senate, then return to the House of Representatives for what's called concurrence, or working out any differences between the two versions. If the amended bill passes the House, it would go to the president for approval. President Donald Trump has indicated that he wants to sign the budget bill by July 4.
Knowing the fate of the land-sale amendment depends upon the House, Lee exempted Montana's federal land from his bill, and according to sources, in hopes that by sidelining Montana's influential senator Steve Daines (R), his bill might have a better chance of passage in the Senate.
The Republicans have a 3-vote majority in the Senate, which means Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S. Dakota) can't afford to lose many defectors. But Western Republican Senators, hearing from their constituents about their dislike for federal-land sales, are starting to squirm.
Here's the first line of defense, says Newberg. Call your state's two senators, whether you live in the West or not, and whether they're Republicans or Democrats.
'The Senate remains a very polite, deliberative body, almost the opposite from the performative politics of the House,' says Newberg. 'There's an unwritten rule in the Senate that you don't embarrass a committee chair, and so there's (likely) not going to be a floor vote over Lee's bill. Instead, it's going to be a quiet process where influential senators go to Thune and tell him that they can't vote for the budget if it contains the land-sale language.
'These Senators, they're going to be telling Thune, 'Do you really want President Trump's bill to be slowed down and screwed up by some little fringe issue that only one senator cares about' – this hill that Mike Lee is willing to die on?''
Here's where national politics is likely to intrude on the issue. Thune has committed to Trump and his advisors that he will produce a budget that contains items crucial to the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. In order to do that, he might be willing to cut a deal with Western senators to scale back Lee's land-sale provision.
That compromise might look like a small-scale land-sale of clearly defined lands around fast-growing Western cities. It could expand on the successful Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, in which designated BLM lands around Las Vegas can be sold, revenue from which goes to buy higher-value public lands nearby.
'Maybe a compromise applies this to St. George and Cedar City [Utah] or Carson City [Nevada], or other places that can satisfy Lee' but also keep off the auction block cherished parcels of public lands, says Newberg.
But Newberg says there's another line of defense that public-land users need to exercise.
'The action is not just in the Senate, it's in the House, too,' he says.
The reason is the conference committee to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions of the budget bill.
Say the Senate fails to amend Lee's proposal to sell off big swaths of the western United States. House Republicans also have only a 3-vote margin, and with Zinke and Idaho's Mike Simpson (R) both on the record as opposing the land-sale, the revised budget bill containing Lee's language could die in the House.
That's because the BLM and Forest Service lands most at risk of sale are in congressional districts held by vulnerable Republicans.
'We have to flip four Republicans, and there are some very attractive congressional districts that could come to our side,' says Newberg. 'Let's say you're freshman Congressman [Jeff] Hurd from Grand Junction, Colorado, the mountain-biking, rock-climbing, hunting capital of Colorado. Would you want to vote to sell these public lands? If so, you'd better polish up your resume,' says Newberg. 'If you're the congressman from Elkhart, Indiana [Rudy Yakym], the RV manufacturing capital of the world, where the overwhelming majority of your constituents are employed in the travel-trailer, motorhome, RV industry, and where the association that represents these industries issued a statement this week saying they do not support this, how are you going to vote?'
The wave of opposition to Lee's bill extends from Western hunting groups to rock-climbing and overlanding groups. A consortium of firearms, optics, and ammunition companies is also preparing a statement opposing the Senate's land-sale language.
Newberg says vulnerable Republicans in districts around the country are likely to be signaling to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) their unwillingness to pass a land-sale package in the House.
'I fully expect Johnson to go to Thune and tell him that Mike Lee's dream that the political planets have aligned to let him pull off what he's wanted his entire political career might just have been a mirage,' says Newberg. 'And that's my goal. That should be the goal of everyone in this fight.'
The way to win, says Newberg, is to redouble contacts with congressional delegations, to include both senators and representatives.
'You do it by being professional, persistent, and polite, and by not being partisan,' he says. 'You win with strategy, relationships, and by showing up, which our community has been doing over the past week.'
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is planning to amplify that contact on Wednesday, June 25. It's the 'Flood the Lines Day' in which BHA is calling on 25,000 people to take action by calling and emailing senators directly from BHA's website.
'The math is simple,' says BHA in a statement. '60 seconds. One message. 25,000 voices.'