Plan to sell 5.4 million acres of public lands dropped from ‘big beautiful bill’ Senate OK’d

The U.S. Senate, with help from Vice President J.D. Vance, passed President Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill, but Washington’s public lands will not be up for sale.

Advocacy groups and a few Republican congress members pushed to prevent a proposal that would have listed 250 million acres of public land for sale. In Washington state, the proposed legislation would have backed the sale of 5.4 million acres of public land, including in the Olympic and Snoqualmie national forests.

However, in a victory for Washington’s environmental advocates, the Senate’s “big beautiful bill” will not include a federal lands sales provision. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah announced his decision to withdraw the proposal in a June 28 X post.

“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 (investment management company), and not to any foreign interests,” he wrote.

“For that reason, I’ve made the decision to withdraw the federal land sales provision from the bill.”

In the same post, Lee said that community members, local leaders and stakeholders’ concerns influenced his decision to rescind it.

Lee’s announcement came after the proposal faced bipartisan opposition from representatives in western states where millions of acres of public lands would have become available for private purchase.

Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington’s 4th congressional district, alongside four House Republicans representing Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California, announced they would not support the bill if it included the plan to sell federal public lands.

“If a provision to sell public lands is in the bill that reaches the House floor, we will be forced to vote no,” they wrote in a June 26 letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Washington’s Democratic Senators also voiced their opposition to the proposal, citing the impact it would have on tourism and recreation.

In a June 28 statement, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said, “Let me be clear: I will not stop fighting until this proposal is dead and buried. Americans will not stand to have the hiking, climbing, and hunting spots we love put up for sale.”

Environmentalists said public lands are still under threat

While Rep. Lee’s decision to abandon public land sales comes as good news for many Washingtonians, the president’s budget still threatens public lands, according to Western Watersheds, a non-profit group dedicated to the protection of public lands in the American west.

The non-profit wrote, “Despite overwhelming public opposition, the Senate has narrowly passed what we’re calling the ‘One Big Betrayal Bill’ — a sweeping reconciliation package that guts environmental protections, weakens agency oversight, and gives fossil fuel and industrial agriculture a green light to plunder public lands.”

The bill cuts funding from agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and National Park Service.

In an earlier conversation with The Olympian, a spokesperson for the Washington Trails Association, Anna Roth, said under-funding of key environmental agencies might limit Washingtonians’ future access to well-maintained public lands.

“We are a nonprofit organization that works with agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. We also work with state agencies like Washington State Parks, Department of Natural Resources, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and we work with agencies even down to the city and county level, and all of those agencies have park lands that they manage for the people that they serve,” she said.

“And those agencies, as they are underfunded, have less and less money to manage the trails and the parks that they have under their jurisdiction, and so as that funding evaporates, the condition of those trails and parks deteriorates, even with volunteer help.”

From sustainable energy to outdoor recreation, advocates across Washington state continue to rally against the president’s tax and spending bill. The bill passed the Senate in a 51-50 vote on July 1 following over 24 hours of debate, but it will land in the House for another vote in the coming days before its provisions can become law.

In a July 1 statement reacting to the bill’s passage in the Senate, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said, “When it comes to the all-out assault on clean energy in this bill, even Elon Musk understands the plain facts of the matter — Republicans’ cuts are ‘utterly insane and destructive’ and will ‘destroy millions of jobs in America.’ Republicans are also ripping away tens of millions of dollars for critical N.O.A.A. facilities in Washington state as part of this bill.

“This fight is not over — this bill is not yet law and I am not going to stop raising my voice and making sure the American people know exactly what is in it,” she said.