GOP Sen. Mike Lee Forced To Revise Plan To Sell Public Lands After Major Backlash

Source: Huff Post

Jun 24, 2025, 09:02 AM EDT | Updated 6 hours ago


Sen. Mike Lee announced intentions to rework his plan mandating the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of public land in the American West after bipartisan backlash and an unfavorable ruling by the Senate’s rules referee. “I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward,” the Utah Republican wrote Monday in a post online. “Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.”

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough advised late Monday that Lee’s plan to allow the sale of millions of acres of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, which was included in the GOP’s massive tax-and-spending package, violated the chamber’s rules governing the budget reconciliation process that allows a majority to pass budget bills by side-stepping the filibuster.

Earlier this month, the Lee-led Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released the draft proposal as part of President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. Lee argued the sale of public lands would increase affordable housing, emphasizing that it would exclude national parks, national monuments and designated wilderness areas.

But critics on the left and the right savaged Lee’s plan, contending that much of the federal land is uninhabitable, and would result in the loss of prized public spaces for Americans to enjoy and be replaced with vacation homes, ski villas and other luxury real estate. Hunters and people in the fishing industry were particularly outraged by the proposal, urging Lee to drop it entirely.

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/public-lands-mike-lee-gop_n_6859a60be4b0b13879324859