Proposal to sell public land, including 5M acres in WA, removed from ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
Jun 26, 2025, 3:35 PM | Updated: 3:43 pm
Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington. (Photo: Jeff Hollett via Flickr Creative Commons)
(Photo: Jeff Hollett via Flickr Creative Commons)
A plan to sell off hundreds of millions of acres of U.S. public land, including in Washington, is no longer on the table.
The Senate parliamentarian found the initiative violated the chamber’s rules and removed it from the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday.
Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, had proposed selling public land in western states for affordable housing. However, Republican support was split, and housing advocates warned that not all federal land is suitable for development.
Over 5M acres of public land in WA would have been for sale
The proposal would have left 258,673,128 acres across the western U.S., including 5,371,690 acres in Washington, vulnerable, according to a map by The Wilderness Society.
At a news conference Tuesday, Senator Maria Cantwell said people want to be able to hike and hunt on public lands, according to The AP.
“They don’t want these lands to be luxury resorts or golf courses,” she added.
The Wilderness Society stated on its website that the bill “sets a dangerous precedent that members of Congress can simply liquidate our public lands to fund their pet projects.”
Senate energy chairman still pushing plan to sell public land
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Although the plan was ruled out, Lee stated on X Monday that he will keep trying to reduce the amount of U.S. Bureau of Land Management acreage. He said he would establish “freedom zones” to help American families, but also protect farmers, ranchers, and recreational users.
“I’m working closely with the Trump administration to ensure that any federal land sales serve the American people—not foreign governments, not the Chinese Communist Party, and not massive corporations looking to pad their portfolios,” he stated in another X post Tuesday.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration said earlier this week that it plans to strip a decades-long rule that barred logging on national forest lands, The AP noted.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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