For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the Billionaires
Republicans are selling your land to wealthy corporations
During the early months of the first Trump presidency, I held a small private meeting with Ryan Zinke, who was then the Secretary of the Interior. We met in a grade school library in Whitefish, MT and sat awkwardly, knees high in miniature chairs around tables built for 2nd graders. Despite the comical setting, the topic of discussion was not at all funny. Zinke was on a mission to carry out Trump’s anti-public lands order to roll back national monument protections. I knew that meant he was about to gut the Antiquities Act. “You know rolling back the monuments is bullshit, right? Teddy Roosevelt would have never done this.” He laughed, slapped me on the shoulder, and then used one of his canned lines, “Never yield to pressure, only higher principle.” I responded angrily by explaining that “higher principle” had nothing to do with attacking bedrock environmental laws or removing monument protection for the first time in American history.
Zinke went on to roll back the monuments and then to be forced from the cabinet because of his widespread corruption.1 I was right to be angry with him then and now. His actions not only removed protections from millions of acres, but they also set the stage for these current direct attacks on the personal wealth of every American.
That’s right; if you are a U.S. citizen, you are very rich. You are part owner of a vast 640 million acre estate2 that includes places like Bird Woman Falls in Glacier National Park, The Grand Canyon, Pelican Island in Florida, Isle Royale in Michigan, vast seashores in North Carolina, lakes in Tennessee, mountain ranges in Wyoming and New Mexico, incredible canyons in Utah, miles of high-desert ridges in Nevada, grasslands in Kansas, granite domes in California and entire wilderness river systems in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. You even own almost 3 million acres in Texas.
The bad news is that at this very moment, Republicans across the country are executing their plan to sell our land right out from underneath us.
They are moving faster than they did in the first term. Within days of taking office, Elon Musk attacked the federal agencies responsible for managing public lands and then announced his support for privatizing those lands. Trump’s new Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, celebrated Trump’s sweeping executive orders reversing protections for millions of acres. Then last week, he announced a dangerous plan for selling public lands across the Nation.3 MAGA Republicans in Congress, including now Rep. Ryan Zinke, have cheered it all and have done their part by dutifully passing budget rules greasing the skids for those sales.4
This system of land ownership and our long tradition of managing these places for the well-being of our diverse nation is perhaps the best example of American exceptionalism. We have something unique in the world: lands that are open to us all, supporting hundreds of communities, including ranchers, fishing guides, miners, restaurant owners, and loggers. These places equalize billionaires and poor kids, are racially blind, and don’t require family pedigrees or Ivy League college degrees. Unlike the written promises in our founding documents, which we often fail to execute fully, our public lands are real, tangible proof of equal opportunity. No DEI needed; equal access is built into their very existence. As writer Wallace Stegner said, they are “America’s Best Idea.”
It makes sense that a uniquely American character like Teddy Roosevelt played such a massive role in establishing our public land system. During his presidency from 1901 to 1908, Roosevelt protected 230 million acres, including 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national refuges, five national parks, and 18 national monuments.5
Roosevelt was a Republican but hated by the Elon Musks, Jeff Bezos, and Zukerbergs of his day. Scores of right-wing Republican oligarchs fought him tooth and nail over his progressive ideas and eventually drove him from the party.
Nowhere was the fighting more fierce than over his insistence that America should contain lands owned by all of us. Wealthy industrialists and their political allies opposed Roosevelt because they sought to reap short-term profits from timber, mining, and real estate for themselves. But Teddy, a fighter who famously engaged in boxing matches in the White House, was not deterred. A plaque on the Roosevelt Arch in Yellowstone National Park summarizes Teddy’s insistence on his winning egalitarian policy: "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people."
Teddy won the early rounds, but the oligarchs never gave up. Generation after wealthy generation continued the war to take our land. They strategically funded right-wing think tanks, bought state Republican parties, and weakened federal agencies.
Today, the oligarchs are back with a vengeance. They rightfully sense their moment. They own an entire party and have officially enlisted Trump, DOGE, and MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate. Those of us who have been fighting for public lands will tell you it’s been a long time coming.
During the Reagan years, oligarchs realized it would be much easier to take lands from states than to try and wrest them from the federal government. All they had to do was examine the ample historical precedent of most states that once held extensive public lands and sold them off to corporate interests as budget constraints and management costs became too cumbersome. Talk of sale produced political blowback, but if federal lands were transferred to states, wealthy interests and their enablers in the Republican party knew sales would quickly follow. So, they started speaking of “transfer” to soften the sale idea.6
Today, the “transfer of federal public lands” is proudly codified in the platforms of many state Republican parties, including those in Montana, Oregon, Wyoming, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and Nevada. This rhetorical trick allows Republicans like Zinke to claim he is for “public lands in public hands” because the transfer technically avoids immediate sales and transfers the responsibility to the states.
When Donald Trump Jr.’s favorite senator, Mike Lee, and his Republican colleagues in Utah recently sued the federal government in a brazen attempt to transfer control of millions of acres of public land, 12 states, all of which are Republican-controlled, rushed to sign amicus briefs in support of the effort.7
Defunding federal management agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management, has been a part of the long-term Republican effort as well. They knew that degrading government effectiveness would make it far easier to convince the public their lands were just not worth keeping. Hence, these agencies struggled to maintain their budgets and services even before the thoughtless chain sawing of DOGE. Now MAGA Republicans cheer as Musk haphazardly dismantles our management agencies. It’s all in furtherance to make it easier to sell our land. As we anticipate a summer of closed campgrounds, long lines, shuddered national park facilities, and raging fires without staff to fight them, it must feel like a victorious final blow for Republicans.
We knew this was coming. Trump clarified his intentions for public lands in his first term with appointments like Zinke and William Perry Pendley at the BLM. Pendley, a longtime opponent of public lands who once wrote, “the founding fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” also crafted portions of Project 2025, which is being enacted right now.8
There is no doubt. Republicans are coming hard for your public land, and Montana is ground zero. Zinke is back in Congress, once again doing the bidding of Trump and the oligarchs, having recently voted for a budget resolution that allows public land transfers. Montana’s new junior Senator, Tim Sheehy, is a board member at PERC, a private land organization that has loudly called for the sale of public land.9 Montana Senator Steve Daines, a longtime opponent of federal public lands management, recently facilitated a land swap in the Crazy Mountains, which transfers the best land from the public to billionaires at the Yellowstone Club.10 Montana Governor Greg Gianforte publicly endorsed land transfer last month.11 They’ve all been very supportive of Musk and his DOGE cuts. Unsurprisingly, every one of these men is very wealthy, and all have strong ties to others who are also exceptionally wealthy. Perhaps they do not need public lands, but we do.
These attacks on our birthright should anger any patriotic American. Why would we purposefully degrade the very things that make us exceptional? Why would we opt to sell the marvelous places owned by all citizens? The answer is that we would not, but the same powerful forces that once confronted Teddy Roosevelt would gladly force this evil upon us, and it's time to take it seriously.
I don’t agree with Donald Trump often, but I agree with him on one crucial point: We are in a pitched battle for the country's soul.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/zinke-recommends-shrinking-least-six-national-monuments
https://www.gao.gov/managing-federal-lands-and-waters
https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/feds-plan-sell-public-lands-affordable-housing/
https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/federal-land-sale-movement/
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Blog/Item/Public%20Land%20Legacy
https://nmwildlife.org/everything-need-know-public-lands-transfer/
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/10/28/12-states-get-behind-utahs-lawsuit-to-take-over-millions-of-acres-of-federally-controlled-land/
https://perc.org/people/tim-sheehy/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/yellowstone-club-real-estate-public-land-montana-crazy-mountains.html
I hope we can win back some senate seats so we can expel these assholes! Daines is out in 2026! I will make it my mission, however I think he has plans to be the ambassador to China. Either way we need to get out ahead of this and run a good outspoken democrat to take his seat! Either way.
Great article, enjoyed the history lesson. It’s very frustrating knowing that Zinke, Sheehy, Daines and others are “on the take” but yet so popular in our state. Who will we rally behind now? Where are our champions? What more can we do? Letters and protests tall on deaf ears.