GOP Senator Faces MAGA Backlash Over Plan To Sell Millions Of Acres Of Public Land

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee is facing harsh criticism—including from Team MAGA—over his proposal to sell off millions of acres of public land in the American West owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to supposedly create more affordable housing.

Lee claimed in his proposal that there is an "extensive process for interested parties like States and local governments to nominate land for disposal to meet housing and community needs," noting that it specifically exempts national parks, monuments, and federally designated wilderness areas from potential land sales.

Critics, however, remain doubtful that the measure would meaningfully address the housing shortage, arguing that it would primarily limit public access to lands currently open for recreation and conservation.

And there's pushback within the GOP, including from Montana Representative Ryan Zinke, who said the following in a post on X:

"I don’t yield to pressure only higher principle. I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells public lands. I am still a no on the senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands. We did our job in the House. Let’s get it finished."

You can see his post below.

Conservative radio host Patrick Payne said that Lee "recently told me in a group chat that he would rather have Blackrock own our public lands than keep them under federal management."

Lee pushed back, however, criticizing Tracy Stone-Manning, the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, for her opposition to the plan:

"The Senate bill does not authorize the sale of national parks, monuments, or wilderness. It identifies unused, garden-variety federal parcels for potential disposal—nothing more. Don’t fall for [Tracy Stone-Manning’s] disinformation campaign."

A Community Note beneath his post points out:

"No parcels are explicitly identified in the bill. It delegates enormous discretion to governors and local governments to decide what counts as “suitable,” and that discretion is not limited to obviously “unused, garden-variety” parcels."

You can see his post below.

He has been harshly criticized in response.

The Wilderness Society, a conservation group, released a map illustrating areas it believes could be subject to sale under the proposal. While the bill authorizes the sale of up to 3.3 million acres, it does not specify which lands would be affected. The organization identified more than 250 million acres of federal land as the broader pool from which those parcels could potentially be selected.

Lee dismissed the Wilderness Society’s map as “misleading,” arguing that it includes areas explicitly exempt from the bill. But Julia Stuble, the organization’s Wyoming state director, defended the map in an interview with Cowboy State Daily, saying the bill’s language leaves all the lands shown as potentially eligible for sale.