Will These Republicans Break With Their Party Over Public Lands?

The next day, a press conference convened outside of the U.S. Capitol Building. Behind the podium stood Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM), Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), and Rep. Troy Downing (R-MT). Behind the lawmakers, a line of people held signs with phrases like “Public Lands Unite Us” and “Public Lands Forever.”

At the press conference, lawmakers announced the creation of the bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, something conservation, environment, and outdoor recreation advocates consider a glimmer of hope in what has been a bleak few months for federal land management.

“There are well-established criteria and processes for disposing of public lands, and reconciliation legislation is not the proper venue for such decisions,” Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership president and CEO Joel Pedersen said in a press release. “Any proposed sale of public lands must involve a transparent public process, all transactions should serve the public interest, and proceeds should be reinvested in new public land access and habitat conservation. TRCP looks forward to working with the Caucus to ensure any land sales are supported by the sporting community.”

A caucus is a group of lawmakers that unite over a shared identity or outlook on a particular issue or industry. Usually, they work to educate fellow lawmakers, organize votes on legislation that impacts whatever issue unifies them, and they often co-sponsor bills. It remains to be seen what the Public Lands Caucus will actually be able to accomplish, other than maybe putting extra weight behind Zinke and Vasquez’ Public Lands in Public Hands Act, which has sat in the Forestry and Horticulture subcommittee since Feb. 28. But in Wednesday’s press conference, members painted the group as diverse, unifying, and action-oriented.

It could also offer more Republican lawmakers skeptical of the party’s growing support for selling federal public lands a safe haven.

The widespread belief among policy experts seems to be that wholesale public lands disposals are highly unlikely to pass out of Congress. (Part of the reason why the Utah lawsuit has caused so much concern in the public lands advocacy community is because judicial action tends to face fewer roadblocks than legislation.) But it’s also hard to tell where in the GOP majority the line on this issue is actually drawn. So far, only a handful of Republican lawmakers have been willing to come forward and openly denounce such transfers. They just so happen to be Zinke, Simpson, and, more recently, Downing and Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA).

For now, the list seems to stop there. In the aftermath of the committee markup, some policy analysts point to the land transfer amendment as proverbial dynamite strapped to the chest of the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” something that could blow up any chances of it passing in a Congress where the GOP holds a thin seven-member majority.

But more than just potentially souring the budget bill, both the amendment and the bipartisan response to it reveal something else, something that has been stirring in D.C. since the inauguration. Federal public lands — their boundaries, uses, operating budgets, staffing, management, names, even their Constitutionality — seem to be one of the issues most ripe for the first open fracture in a Republican party that has maintained a united public front in the wake of President Trump’s election.

When it comes to public land management, lawmakers from Western states must balance a diverse array of constituent interests, much more diverse than such places are often made out to be. From obsessive public land hunters, anglers, and recreators, to multi-generational ranching families with federal grazing leases, to wildlife photographers, watchers, and enthusiasts, to tribal members with indigenous use rights, to scientists conducting research and informing management decisions, to natural resource extraction employees, a dramatically large population of the West bases some portion of their identity, security, and joy on accessible public lands managed under a multiple-use framework.

But at a time when GOP leadership condemns anything that smacks of dissent, very few safeguards prevent the party platform from prioritizing short-term economic gain above all other public land considerations. This is why federal public land transfer is such an uncomfortable topic of discussion for Republicans right now; even though such a move would enrage the majority of Americans who polled against federal land sales (including two-thirds of the respondents who also “supported the Make America Great Again agenda”), it is also the final stop on the current economy-first swing of federal land management policy. This amendment is at once inconceivable and inevitable, a potential destroyer of Western political careers and the ultimate test of party fealty.

Whether they want to admit it or not, that puts Western Republican lawmakers in a really crappy spot.

The notion of federal public land transfer is rooted in Sagebrush Rebellion sentiments that stretch back to the late 1970s, in response to the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. Sagebrush Rebels found one of their first major political allies in Ronald Reagan, who called himself a Rebel during his third trip down the presidential campaign trail in 1980. (Ironically, it was also his first successful presidential campaign.) But since then, a series of what can only be described as legislative failures have shown time and time again that, for the most part, the right side of the aisle rejects the notion of wholesale federal public land transfer, even if individual lawmakers refuse to be vocal about their opposition.

At first, the Sagebrush Rebellion mostly revolved around a handful of angry ranchers prone to overdue grazing fees and armed standoffs. For the last few years, the movement has worn a different face, and an overwhelmingly relatable one at that: the frustrated Western homebuyer. But even the rage-bait veneer of the housing shortage in the West wasn’t enough to motivate Congress when Rep. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the HOUSES Act in 2022. When he reintroduced it again in 2023, it still went nowhere.

(Plenty has been written about the recent reinvigoration of the federal public land transfer sentiment across the West. Read MeatEater’s original coverage of the HOUSES Act here. I also recommend Andrew McKean’s coverage of recent events at Outdoor Life.)

It’s hard to ignore the feeling that whatever safeguards have protected large tracts of federal public lands from Congressional disposal for the last 50 years are starting to fail. Something in that committee hearing on Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, depending on whose account you read) moved all 25 Republican members and standalone Democratic supporter Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) to vote yes. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they knew this was coming and made up their minds ages ago. Maybe for some of them, the amendment was a fair price to pay for other must-pass components of the bill, one they could confidently defend to their constituents as “worth it.”

But for the House Republicans who, despite never asking to be counted as Rebels, have yet to outwardly denounce such a label, voting for the amendment reads like sticking another brick in the polarized ideological fortress. Furthermore, they did so under the guise of concern for hot-button issues like affordable housing and wildfire, despite a lack of visible concern about billionaires buying up whole valleys or the tightening grip of climate change.

Then there’s Zinke, Simpson, Downing, and Kiggans — four “rebels” in their own right. Sure, the proceeds from these land sales would allegedly fund a presidential agenda they all seem to support. But for whatever reason, they also seem unwilling to take the bait and risk this type of Western political suicide at a time when every hunter’s two favorite things to complain about are overcrowded trailheads and new upscale housing developments.

In establishing the Public Lands Caucus, these lawmakers might have just given other skeptical Republicans a soft landing from the same runaway train. It could serve as an offramp that, if taken all the way, could lead right back to where they were pre-inauguration; having heated-yet-intelligent debates about how to most responsibly steward America’s widely beloved federal public lands, what Vasquez referred to as the nation’s “great equalizer.”

“We will use this caucus as a platform to discuss future legislation, public lands resource management, administrative actions, and other issues on which we collectively agree, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, who understand the importance of the value of the special places that we are privileged to represent,” Vasquez said. “This will be a working caucus, meant to bring us together, that we will grow over months and years.”