Senate Republicans narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” yesterday. Many dangerous provisions made it into the final text, but one didn’t: a selling spree of public lands. An earlier proposal sought to sell millions of acres of public lands across 11 Western states. An unexpected bipartisan coalition helped convince senators to cut the provision entirely.
The proposed legislation, which is now under debate in the House of Representatives, is by no means environmentally friendly. But many advocates see the withdrawal of this public lands sale as a win. Could nature and wildlife be the political turning point that helps the left and right reach across the aisle to better protect the planet, together?
That’s what Benji Backer hopes. He founded the environmental organization Nature Is Nonpartisan last year to rebuild a bipartisan coalition committed to defending American forests, mountains, streams, and wildlife. The budget reconciliation bill put the group’s mission to the test.
“There is this underbelly of America that is aligned on a core group of values around environmentalism and the environment,” Backer said. “I hope that this shows Americans who are skeptical of what’s possible on conservation and the environment that this is possible.”
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it is formally called, was first introduced into the House in May. The bill’s deliberations were messy, but representatives passed it by one vote along party lines. By June, the bill was in the Senate, where its 940 pages went through even more changes. This is where the public lands issue heated up.
The House version of the bill initially proposed selling more than 450,000 acres of public land, a measure that Speaker Mike Johnson removed after a public outcry and internal pressure, including from Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican who served as Trump’s Interior secretary during the president’s first term. With that piece gone, Zinke voted in support of the bill. He’s expressed excitement to support it again when the House votes as early as this afternoon.
In the Senate, Republicans tried once more to sneak in a public lands sale. Speaker Mike Lee reintroduced the provision, offering to auction 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres. The people did not like that—on the left or the right.
Backer heard about the public land sale’s revival just before leaving Washington, D.C. to spend a weekend with his family in Wisconsin. Looking at Lake Managua, he wondered what he could do. He knew he had to act fast to inform the public about what was at risk. He began by tweeting. First to his followers, then directly to Lee, who shot back.
“Immediately, the world just kind of blew up,” Backer said. “All the conservative influencers and liberal influencers, everyone started to hear about it.”
“There is this underbelly of America that is aligned on a core group of values around environmentalism and the environment. I hope that this shows Americans who are skeptical of what’s possible on conservation and the environment that this is possible.”
Benji Backer
Founder, Nature Is Nonpartisan
There was right-wing personality Mike Cernovich, who has over 1 million followers on X, writing: “Selling off our federal lands should be a no-go. We haven’t even done mass deportations. Men better than any of us died exploring these areas. They are the birthright of Americans. Selling them off for a bowl of stew would be heresy.”
Braxton McCoy, a right-wing author and veteran with 96,000 followers on X, repeatedly wrote, “Not for sale,” next to images of public lands.
Backer believes the Senate wouldn’t have cut the provision if not for the outcry from conservative voices: “If it was just the left, it wouldn’t have worked. It’s important that the left had its voice there just as it was important that the right had its voice there.” He hopes this victory could signal the start of further collaboration between left- and right-wing environmentalists.
Across the West, a vast majority of voters (including those who support Trump) want to see elected officials prioritize the protection of public lands over fossil fuel development. Three-quarters of voters surveyed oppose funding cuts on national public land agencies, according to a poll from Colorado College released in February. Some people care because they hunt and fish, others because they hike and kayak. The point is: A wide range of people want to keep their public lands pristine and wild so that they—and future generations—can continue to enjoy them.
Unfortunately, the bill still includes hefty cuts for public lands: The National Park Service would lose $267 million to support rangers, scientists, emergency responders, and staff, as well as another $12 million that would have made parks more resilient to storms, floods, and fires. Former President Joe Biden allocated these dollars to the agency through his landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, explained Saad Amer, adviser to the National Parks Conservation Association, which crunched these numbers. He worries that the bill will hurt the Service’s ability to meet basic needs, especially as it enters the busy season. Still, Amer, a progressive, is glad that a bipartisan effort came together to stop the public lands sale. Such collaboration is core to American policymaking, he said.
“Public lands and national parks are beloved by Americans,” he wrote in an email. “Regardless of political party, people feel a sense of pride and connection to places like the Grand Canyon and the Everglades. There’s a spirit of understanding that these lands belong to us and should be shared for generations to come. Some love them because they inherently fend off climate change. Others love them for recreation or pride in America. For these reasons, we often see Democrats and Republicans willing to work together to protect these natural spaces.”
Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970 by former Republican President Richard Nixon. He enshrined the Clean Air Act into law, a bedrock environmental policy that has survived Washington politics. Long before Nixon, former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt established five new national parks during his presidency in the early 20th century.
“There’s no question that the long history of public lands protection in the United States has been a bipartisan effort,” said Dr. Jay Turner, an environmental historian and professor at Wellesley College.
“Regardless of political party, people feel a sense of pride and connection to places like the Grand Canyon and the Everglades. There’s a spirit of understanding that these lands belong to us and should be shared for generations to come.”
Saad Amer
adviser, National Parks Conservation Association
However, the story of bipartisanship is not wholly idyllic. Roosevelt was a white supremacist, and his policies led to the forced removal and displacement of Native Americans, who are still fighting for the right to their ancestral lands today. Roosevelt once said in a speech: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian. But I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
That legacy of exclusion echoes even in this modern-day victory. The Senate bill aims to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, which helps low-income people access health care. As the planet’s rising temperatures lead to more wildfires, extreme heat, and storms, Americans need good health care more than ever. While nearly 40% of people with Medicaid in 2023 were white, the majority were Black and Latine. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 12 million Americans will lose their health care coverage should the bill become law as is. In 2023, Latines and Indigenous people saw the highest rates of being uninsured.
The bill also includes a $170 billion boost to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Current ICE efforts have resulted in at least 10 deaths since January, as well as the unlawful detention of several U.S. citizens. Many families coming to the U.S. fled their countries as a result of poverty or unrest made worse by climate disasters. The climate crisis will continue to create refugees who need a safe place to go.
Advocates are calling the reconciliation bill a “fossil fuel giveaway” for its attack on clean energy tax credits while subsidizing oil extraction and dubious carbon capture technologies. A last-minute proposal for a “killer” tax on renewable energy was nixed after bipartisan pushback in the Senate, but the Senate-approved rollback of federal subsidies could still tank solar and wind installations by 72% over the next decade, per Rhodium Group, a research firm.
These measures that delay a green transition and harm the most climate-vulnerable people complicate bipartisanship, especially as party politics grow more polarized. For instance, on the same pages where conservative influencers denounce the reconciliation bill, they spout anti-immigrant rhetoric. While the mainstream environmental movement has a long legacy of excluding people of color, many organizations have attempted to address those historical harms in recent years.
Environmental historian Dr. Benjamin Johnson of Loyola University Chicago doesn’t see much potential for conservative environmentalism because the right wing doesn’t generally critique capitalism. “You have to see that there’s a problem with unregulated capitalism, that it causes environmental destruction,” he said. “I don’t see any evidence that there’s a constituency for that line of thinking in the Republican Party. I would like to be wrong.”
And perhaps he is. Last month, Backer met with the CEOs of several Big Green organizations, including The Nature Conservancy and The National Wildlife Federation. Let’s hope that the coalition they’re building includes everyone, regardless of where they were born, what they look like, or whom they love. That’s the great outdoors all Americans deserve.
Biome
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