Toward the eastern edge of Big Bend National Park lies a stretch of Texas public land that sprawls across the rugged Chihuahuan desert. Black Gap Wildlife Management Area is home to bighorn sheep, black bears, mule deer and quail. At more than 100,000 acres, it is the state’s largest wildlife management area, or WMA. In a state that is 95 percent privately owned, it’s one of the most remote public parcels that hunters can freely roam in search of small game.

The Trump administration’s planned border wall threatens to cut right through it.

Since February, Customs and Border Protection has drawn furious backlash from the public over constantly shifting plans to expand its border wall infrastructure into two cherished west Texas wildlands — Big Bend National Park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park.

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But the wall expansion is also likely to impact several public parcels held by the state that have attracted less attention, including unique public hunting grounds in a state where pay-to-play access dominates. The Trump administration’s plans appear to impact two large walk-on properties, and several more that conduct a limited number of coveted big game hunts by lottery.

“We have some great public hunting opportunities in Texas, but it’s limited and hard to come by,” Texas Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Policy Chair Jake Walker wrote in an email. “Losing these areas would be a huge step back for sportsmen and women looking for that rugged sense of adventure you typically have to leave the state to find.”

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists were caught off-guard by the sweeping border wall expansion when CBP first contacted them to ask for access to state holdings for construction in January, according to communications that Public Domain obtained through an open records request.

Some Texas Parks and Wildlife officials appeared unaware that Congress had stuffed a walloping $46.5 billion into Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill last year to expand the border wall. Some staffers appeared to find out only after the superintendent for Kiewit Infrastructure Co. wrote to them on Jan. 15 to ask logistical questions about road building on state park land, “blasting and material for fence alignment,” and access to the Rio Grande for construction water usage.

Wall construction was slated to begin in August, the infrastructure company wrote in an email to TPWD.

“This came to my attention today,” TPWD’s state regional parks director for west Texas wrote to colleagues in a Jan. 15 email in reference to the infrastructure company’s queries. “We don’t have much if any background on what this entails but wanted to ensure that everyone was aware and see if others are read in. It appears from the message that some work may be imminent.”

“We were not aware,” the Texas State Parks natural resources program director responded. “This is quite the surprise.”

Most of the discussions between Texas and federal officials centered on Big Bend Ranch State Park, the Lone Star State’s largest park, at 300,000 acres.

Border Patrol official Paul Enriquez wrote to Texas Parks and Wildlife officials on March 6 to tell them that the Big Bend parks were both “currently low priorities for the Border Patrol.” The letter was first reported by Inside Climate News.

“Once all our border wall contracts are awarded and the higher-traffic areas are addressed, we will review our plans for these areas to evaluate operational requirements that dictate barrier, roads, and/or technology,” Enriquez wrote. “However, at this time, we are placing our construction efforts on hold adjacent to TPWD land and the Big Bend National Park.”

CBP also made clear, however, that it intends to push the wall expansion through several other state-held public lands. The agency said in a series of letters that it may attempt to use eminent domain to secure access to Texas-owned properties if the state won’t provide it.

TPWD did not respond to a request for comment for this article. In the past, the agency has referred Public Domain to CBP for questions about the wall expansion.

The planned wall expansion through Texas public hunting lands has raised concerns from conservationists about both hunter access and the health of wildlife populations. Roughly 14 miles of Black Gap WMA run along the bank of the Rio Grande. The river offers key habitat and water for wild ungulates, black bears, quail and other wildlife. But an interactive wall map posted to CBP’s website over the last few months showed that the agency has contemplated walling off river access — likely with 30-foot tall steel bollard fencing. CBP started reaching out to Texas Parks and Wildlife officials in February to discuss its intent to build border wall infrastructure there, the records show.

Such an imposing wall would block hunters from one of the most fertile grounds in the WMA. It also would disrupt river access and wildlife migration for the large mammals found in the region, including a state-threatened black bear population and desert bighorn sheep — a species the state has spent millions of dollars trying to restore.

Those trade-offs might be worth considering if the region presented security threats or unlawful migration problems, according to Texas Wildlife Association’s Chief Executive Officer Justin Dreibelbis. But the 500-mile border stretch that CBP classifies as the Big Bend sector, which includes Black Gap, has long seen low numbers of migrant apprehensions. The roughly 3,000 Border Patrol apprehensions in the Big Bend sector last year accounted for less than 2 percent of arrests on the southwest border.

“If there’s a need for it, I think it would be a good thing to show people what that need is based on — I just haven’t seen it,” Dreibelbis told Public Domain. “We just don’t think the Big Bend region is one of those high-traffic areas. The risk is far higher than the reward when we’re talking about some of these pristine landscapes and some of these affected species like bighorns.”

CBP also appears to be considering expanding the border wall through Lake Amistad National Recreation Area, a National Park Service property at the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Devil’s River.

Public hunting grounds account for less than 1 percent of Texas land. Because demand far exceeds supply, hunters can only access many of those properties by drawing a special permit that allows them to hunt for a few days.

Lake Amistad is the only public land property where Texas bowhunters can chase aoudad, an exotic sheep common in the state, without drawing a permit. The area also offers walk-on hunting access for whitetail deer, hogs and small game. CBP is considering wall plans in the area that would block access to large chunks of the hunting grounds at Lake Amistad, according to map files posted in recent months to CBP’s website.

“The first map we saw from DHS had [Lake Amistad NRA] public hunt area 1 completely behind the wall,” Walker, from Texas BHA, wrote. “That’s a third of the public hunting land in the whole park, and the hunting area with the most shoreline. The worst part is that the more this drags on, the less we seem to know about it.”

CBP’s plans have consistently confused and enraged environmentalists, public land users and even Texas elected officials. The agency quietly revised an interactive map of the border wall on its website in February, showing that it planned to erect large segments of “primary wall border system” in Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park.

Facing widespread opposition from the public and across the political spectrum, the agency appeared to backtrack, revising the map multiple times. Later iterations showed that CBP planned only “detection technology” in the two parks — an unclear term that can include everything from underground sensors to roving, lighted towers.

Publicly, CBP has only said that it is weighing its options and talking with local stakeholders. The agency removed the interactive map from its website this month.

The Friends of the Ruidosa Church, river guide Billy Miller and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Department of Homeland Security last week, alleging that DHS violated federal law by hastily waiving a slew of environmental and historic preservation laws in February in order to fast-track border wall construction in the Big Bend region.

“The Department of Homeland Security has unconstitutionally gutted our nation’s bedrock environmental laws to build a wildlife-killing wall that would permanently lock away the Rio Grande,” a public land advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in a statement.

The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 on Thursday to roll back a mining ban on land adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a move that will primarily benefit a foreign mining corporation.

It is an unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act — a little-known law that allows Congress to rescind regulatory rules — and slashes protections for an iconic Midwestern wilderness area prized for its canoeing, camping and fishing. Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta Plc, has for years angled to establish a copper-nickel mine on national forest land near the wilderness area. Among other things, the company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire influential Trump-aligned lobbyists in D.C. to push its agenda.

In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) warned that the GOP move “would have far-reaching consequences not just for the beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, but public lands across our country.” An emotional Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called it “a dark day” for the Senate and a “boondoggle.”

The House of Representatives passed the measure back in January. It now heads to the White House for Trump’s signature.

Environmental and conservation groups have staunchly opposed the rollback of the mineral withdrawal that has shielded a quarter million acres in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest from mining development in order to protect the watershed from pollution.

But Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress have repeatedly tried to undo the Boundary Waters protections as part of their development-first agenda that prioritizes mineral, energy and timber development over conservation.

To learn more about the controversy over the Republican campaign to strip conservation protections from the Boundary Waters, see Jimmy Tobias’s story below.

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Chris D’Angelo contributed to this report.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s committee consulted with the Trump administration the day before Lee introduced his wildly unpopular bill to force a sell-off of up to 3.2 million acres of federal public lands across the West, Public Domain has learned.

Internal emails show that President Donald Trump’s Interior Department shared research with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Lee chairs, and helped craft talking points that Lee used to pitch his controversial proposal.

Lee introduced his measure in June as an amendment to Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” budget bill and pitched it as a common-sense solution to America’s housing crunch. Many treated Lee as a lone actor pushing an extremist public lands privatization agenda, though the Trump administration launched a task force months earlier to study selling off as much as 400,000 acres of federal land for housing development.

As public backlash to Lee’s proposal reached a boiling point, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum attempted to distance the Trump administration from Lee’s effort.

“I don’t think anybody is really spending much time thinking about it up there,” Burgum told Scripps News in front of the White House in late June, adding that “it doesn’t matter to me at all if it’s part of this bill because that wasn’t part of the president’s agenda to be part of the bill in the first place.”

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a former Trump Interior secretary who was widely credited with helping block a House effort to sell off federal lands weeks prior, applauded Burgum’s comments in a June 27 post to X, writing “the great Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says public land sales are not part of the Trump agenda.”

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But two weeks earlier, Burgum’s team provided Lee’s committee with technical data about the impact of his proposal and offered feedback that Lee ultimately used to downplay the significance of his proposal.

On June 10, Chris Prandoni, Lee’s legislative assistant on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, emailed two Interior staffers with draft language for their review.

“This is the quote I’ve been working up with your guys to accurately reflect your research: ‘The Department of the Interior estimates that the Bureau of Land Management has about 1.2 million acres of land within 1 mile of a population city center and another 800,000 acres within 1-5 miles of a population center. Much of this land may qualify for disposal under this section,’” Prandoni wrote. “We also are going to dedicate five percent of the revenue to maintenance backlog.”

The subject of the email — “[EXTERNAL] DRAFT / PRE-DECISIONAL RE: land disposal for housing--new question” — suggests Interior’s engagement with Lee’s staff went beyond what is detailed in the exchange.

DOI/Sen. Lee federal land disposal

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Greg Wischer, a former critical minerals consultant who was tapped last year to serve as Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, signed off on the quote later that evening.

“Good to go on the quoted content. Thanks for running it by us!” Wischer wrote.

That talking point appeared verbatim at the top of an FAQ that Lee released the following day alongside his public land sell-off proposal.

In that same email chain, Jeremy Arendt, Interior’s deputy assistant secretary of natural resources and infrastructure, encouraged Lee’s’ staff to “include a % of total acres this represents for BLM, which is about 0.7% of the total, or about 30% of lands within 5 miles of population centers.”

The committee’s FAQ dismissed the idea that the proposal is “a massive sell-off of federal land,” noting that it “requires disposal of only 0.5%-0.75% of the [Bureau of Land Management] and [Forest Service] estates. It leaves the remaining 99.25% untouched.”

The communications also indicate that several Interior employees were scheduled to meet with Lee’s staff on June 11, the day Lee unveiled his proposal.

“Thanks, guys. See some of you all tomorrow,” Prandoni wrote after Wischer approved the draft quote.

“Thanks Chris, looking forward to it!” replied Matt Schafle, a former National Rifle Association employee and current congressional and legislative affairs director at Interior.

The Wilderness Society, an environmental organization, obtained the emails through a public records request related to the Trump administration’s housing task force and shared them with Public Domain.

Michael Carroll, the BLM campaign director for the Wilderness Society, said the documents “paint a troubling picture.”

“Rather than engaging the public or pursuing real housing solutions, the administration appears to have spent that time coordinating messaging with the same members of Congress who pushed large-scale public land sell-offs last summer,” he said in an email. “That’s not problem-solving — it’s laying the political groundwork to sell off America’s public lands.”

The Interior Department and a spokesperson for Lee’s committee both characterized the internal conversation as routine.

“The Bureau of Land Management has, for decades, used Congress’s existing land‑disposal authorities to address local needs—including creating opportunities for affordable housing—through a careful, public process that includes land‑use planning, environmental review, and appraisal,” an Interior spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “Providing routine, factual briefings to Congress about how these long‑standing authorities work is standard, non‑partisan practice and does not indicate support for any particular legislation.”

“Committees regularly seek input from subject-matter experts across the executive branch to ensure proposals are informed by existing law, program experience, and a clear understanding of potential impacts,” a spokesperson for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee wrote in an email. “President Trump has consistently supported using underutilized federal land for housing, including pledging in Nevada to open new tracts for large-scale development and directing the Departments of the Interior and Housing and Urban Development to stand up a joint task force to identify suitable federal lands for housing.”

Neither the Interior Department nor Lee’s committee responded to questions about the meeting referenced in the emails.

“This shows Doug Burgum’s top people were literally writing talking points for Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off America’s public lands,” Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group, said in an email after reviewing the documents. “This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Burgum has been clear that he only sees our lands as dollars on a balance sheet, not a promise to be kept for future generations. The fish rots from the head, and these emails make it crystal clear: Doug Burgum is only here to degrade, exploit, and eventually sell off America’s public lands. Our parks and park rangers deserve so much better.”

Interior was also in touch with the American Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank that advocates for selling federal lands to private sector developers, the emails show.

In May, Ed Pinto, a senior fellow and co-director of the housing center at AEI, sent Interior officials AEI’s analysis of Reps. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) and Celeste Maloy’s (R-Utah) amendment to the House’s sweeping budget bill to sell off thousands of acres of federal public lands in their states for home development. AEI found that selling off 544,000 acres of BLM land in Nevada and Utah “could yield $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury” over the next ten years and emphasized that the House amendment “could be the first step toward further BLM land release in nine other Western states (AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NM, OR, UT, and WY).”

Ryan Hofmann, an advisor at the Interior Department, thanked Pinto for sending the document.

“This analysis is very helpful to have on hand, going forward,” Hofmann wrote.

AEI/DOI federal Land Disposal

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In the months since the GOP’s failed public land sell-off attempt, the Interior Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have said little about their own push to privatize federal acres.

The joint task force, which launched in March, was charged with identifying “underutilized federal lands suitable for residential development.” The memorandum that Burgum and HUD Secretary Scott Turner signed gave the two agencies until April 15 — last year or this year, it did not say which — to submit a report to the White House’s National Economic Council “detailing the number of land parcels identified, the number of housing units developed, infrastructure progress, and any policy recommendations for improving the program.”

Asked for an update on the administrative effort, an Interior spokesperson said it would share information “once the interagency process concludes and any materials become publicly releasable.”

Disclosure: Public Domain has received funding support from The Wilderness Society.

Note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Chris Prandoni’s last name.

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AUSTIN, Texas — Thousands of protesters gathered at the steps of the Texas Capitol Saturday to protest against the construction of a border wall through Big Bend, in a show of bipartisan opposition to the White House’s plans.

More than 2,000 people attended the rally, according to Texas Public Radio, holding signs with slogans like “No Big Bend NP Wall,” “Big Love for Big Bend” and “No al Muro” — Spanish for “No to the Wall.” Organizers gathered postcards from protesters to deliver to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has yet to weigh in publicly on the border wall expansion plans at Big Bend.

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State Sen. César Blanco, a west Texas Democrat, said his office had been flooded with messages from constituents sharing stories of their love for Big Bend and their opposition to marring it with a border wall.

“There’s nothing like that region anywhere in the world,” Blanco said. “It’s a place where families make memories together.”

“We all agree that border security matters,” he added. “But we don’t have to harm our communities in the process. We don’t have to destroy the ecosystem to achieve it. We can do it the right way. We can do it thoughtfully with the people that live in those communities.”

Brandon Herrera, a rightwing gun YouTuber running for the congressional seat that includes Big Bend, described opposition to the wall there as “something we can actually agree on.”

“Democrats don’t want this wall in Big Bend,” Herrera said. “Republicans don’t want this wall in Big Bend. Independents don’t want this wall in Big Bend. Sheriffs don’t want this wall in Big Bend. The tourists don’t want this wall in Big Bend. Nobody wants this wall in Big Bend.”

Former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Republican, led the crowd in a chant of “no damn wall.”

“I have found no one, Republican or Democrat, who wants a wall in the Big Bend,” Patterson said. “I almost wanna find somebody so I can talk to ‘em. But I can’t.”

Other speakers raised concerns about a border wall’s impact on the bighorn sheep and black bears that need access to the river. Several described wall construction as a form of federal overreach. Anthropologist Carolyn Boyd said current plans threaten to wall off or destroy dozens of rock art murals.

“These are not just archeological sites,” Boyd said. “They are sacred landscapes. They are libraries of human knowledge. They are the voices of 175 generations preserved on canyon walls. And many of these places remain sacred to Native American communities today.”

Big Bend National Park is the largest single chunk of public land in Texas and widely loved in the region for its desert landscapes, dark skies, river rafting and hikes through the Chisos Mountains. Many of the protesters had deep personal connections to the region.

Brenner Burgess proposed to his wife, Sara Reid, three years ago atop a mountain in Terlingua, just outside Big Bend National Park. They married at Sotol Vista Overlook in Big Bend last year in a small ceremony with close family.

“It was perfect,” Reid said in an interview. “And it was $60. It’s the best wedding venue in Texas.”

The “big, beautiful” spending bill that President Donald Trump pushed the GOP-controlled Congress to ram through last year includes a staggering $46.5 billion for border wall construction. (The total National Parks Service budget, for comparison, stands at $3.3 billion — which the White House says is too much.)

In February, CBP updated an online map of the border wall to show new plans that appeared to include steel bollard wall through portions of both Big Bend National Park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park. That month, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem waived a slew of environmental and historic protection laws to speed the construction of a physical wall through parts of CBP’s Big Bend Sector, a 500-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in west Texas.

In the face of widespread condemnation from the public, as well as local law enforcement and political leaders, CBP has since repeatedly updated the map on its website — first indicating that the planned barrier through the national park would rely on technology only, and later making a similar adjustment for Big Bend Ranch State Park. CBP has said little on the subject, other than it is working with local partners to determine the wall strategy.

The unannounced changes have caused a perpetual state of confusion. Opponents have largely cheered the redrawing of the border wall map as a sign that public pressure is making an impact. But many also continue to view CBP skeptically.

The agency has yet to state definitively that it will spare the parks. Even if it did, there would be no way for opponents to hold the agency to its word — leading some wall opponents to press Congress to write a prohibition on building a physical wall through the parks into legislation. And no one knows for sure what the “detection technology” CBP envisions will look like.

CBP started discussions with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department back in February to obtain easement rights at three parks, including Big Bend Ranch State Park, according to records obtained by Inside Climate News. The agency told TPWD the next month that the plans had been put on hold, the report says.

Big Bend Sector Chief Lloyd Easterling retired last week, according to CBP. The retirement was pre-planned, the agency said. But some conservationists are concerned about losing a Border Patrol official who had sought to assure locals in a recent closed-door meeting that the Trump administration’s border wall expansion plans would not include steel bollard walls in Big Bend Ranch State Park.

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It took the Trump administration 15 minutes to wipe our crucial environmental safeguards in the Gulf of Mexico. It took them 15 minutes to condemn an endangered animal to possible extinction. It took them 15 minutes to play God.

This morning, sitting around a long table at Interior Department headquarters, Secretary Doug Burgum, with help from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, convened the so-called “God Squad,” a rarely-used committee empowered to waive Endangered Species Act protections under exceptional circumstances. In this case, Burgum gathered the committee to exempt federally-sanctioned oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico from the ESA on national security grounds after receiving a request to do so earlier this year from Hegseth.

It was an unprecedented move of immense magnitude. The God Squad has not been convened in more than 30 years. And never before in the 50-year history of the ESA have national security justifications been used to waive endangered species protections and over such a huge area.

The committee members present at the meeting included Burgum, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, the Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, and others, including Hegseth, who was there as a non-voting guest.

The six-member committee voted unanimously Tuesday to grant the exemption. Not a single member voiced serious concern or protest about what the move could mean for imperiled species, and particularly the Rice’s whale — a critically endangered animal in the Gulf threatened by oil and gas activities, including boat strikes. There are perhaps 50 Rice’s whales left in existence.

Last May, the federal government issued a finding under the ESA concluding that ongoing oil and gas activity in the Gulf threatens to jeopardize the continued existence of the Rice’s whale. Environmental groups subsequently sued in federal court to strengthen protections for the whale. Hegseth specifically cited such lawsuits as his rationale for calling on Burgum to use the God Squad to exempt Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling from the ESA.

“Considering this litigation, it is essential to our national security to exempt all Gulf oil and gas activities from the Endangered Species Act requirements,” he said, adding that such litigation risks halting or severely compromising oil and gas activities in the Gulf. He highlighted the threat that Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz pose to global oil and gas supplies, and the need for robust domestic oil and gas production in the United States.

During the meeting, Burgum condemned “those that seek to slow or halt energy production in the United States with the weaponization of regulations.” It was a notable statement from an Interior Secretary who has spearheaded the Trump administration’s relentless attempt to block offshore wind development.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin characterized ESA rules and litigation as a threat.

“Application of the ESA to oil and gas activities in this critically important location threatens energy independence and resilience,” he said. “In my judgement, it is critical to our national security to remove that threat without delay.”

The convening of the God Squad was announced earlier this month in a Federal Register notice signed by Christopher Danley, a top Interior Department political appointee who previously worked as a lawyer with many oil and gas clients. The announcement of the meeting sent shock waves through the conservation community, which feared a wholesale undoing of endangered species protections in the Gulf. Those fears seem to have borne out.

The use of the God Squad in such a sweeping and hasty manner could set the stage for a broader undoing of the ESA. If Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Burgum can waive away ESA protections in the Gulf, they could use similar methods to undo ESA protections on the huge swath of federal land across the country where oil and gas and other mineral development occur.

The ESA lays out a specific process that the God Squad (officially known as the Endangered Species Committee) must follow before exempting activities from the ESA’ strictures. Section 7(j) of the law does provide national security exemptions to the ESA, but whether the God Squad’s ruling is legitimate and followed the proper procedures, including a mandate to make all proceedings and documentation open to the public, is as yet unclear.

The activities of this MAGA God Squad will almost certainly face fierce legal challenges in the months to come.

​​“This amoral action by Pete Hegseth and Trump’s cronies is as horrific as it is illegal, and we’ll overturn it in court,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement following the meeting. “Americans overwhelmingly oppose sacrificing endangered whales and other marine life so the fossil fuel industry can get richer. This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Trump and his lackeys kowtowing to Big Oil.”

The Interior Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Corporate lobbyists, meanwhile, cheered the God Squad’s decision:

Last month, the Trump administration announced Scott Socha as its new nominee to lead the National Park Service, the most prestigious public lands agency in America, though much diminished since it was gutted by DOGE personnel cuts last year. As with many of the political appointees at Trump’s Interior Department, Socha comes directly from a corporation with abundant business interests before the agency he is slated to lead. He has worked for more than 20 years as a corporate executive at Delaware North, the hospitality and food services giant that controls lucrative concessions at national parks around the country.

Delaware North runs 11 general stores at Yellowstone National Park. It operates the Yavapai Lodge and related food and beverage concessions at Grand Canyon National Park. It manages “lodging, food and beverage, and retail stores” at Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park in California. It runs the Kalaloch Lodge in Olympic National Park, and has myriad commercial interests in Shenandoah National Park. It also owns a slew of hotels in national park gateway communities and in recent years was enmeshed in an acrimonious trademark dispute over naming rights at Yosemite National Park. With a sprawling array of business interests, the privately-held company generates billions in revenue each year.

After Trump took office, Delaware North hired The Bernhardt Group to lobby for it in Washington D.C. Founded by David Bernhardt, an interior secretary during Trump’s first term who remains a major figure in Trump World, The Bernhardt Group has taken $140,000 from Delaware North since last summer to lobby the Interior Department and Congress on “issue related to concessions contracts.”

When Socha was nominated to lead NPS, The Bernhardt Group publicly gushed about their friend’s good fortune.

Corporate interests have long been seen as a key threat to the democratic purpose of the national park system. Since the very earliest days of the national parks, private corporations have sought to influence Park Service policy for their own profit. This was the case as far back as 1882, when the Yellowstone National Park Improvement Company tried to obtain a monopoly over thousands of acres within the park’s boundaries to develop hotels and other commercial infrastructure. The company was run by a controversial New York stockbroker and his partners and its plans for Yellowstone aroused fierce opposition from prominent park conservationists, including the writer and naturalist George Bird Grinnell and General Phil Sheridan, a key figure in the destruction of the Confederacy and later an architect of the scorched-earth Indian Wars.

Sheridan, who had many influential political allies, wrote after a tour of Yellowstone in 1882 that he “regretted exceedingly to learn that the National Park had been rented out to private parties…. It has now been placed in the hands of private parties for money making purposes, from which claims and conditions will arise that may be hard for the government and the courts to shake off.”

Grinnell, writing in his magazine Forest and Stream, declared that “Yellowstone Park is not to be put into the pockets of a few speculators without some resistance of the representatives of the people … The Park is for rich and poor alike, and every one should have an equal interest in it.”

These men and their allies worried that Yellowstone would become the next Niagara Falls, a marvel of nature that had been ruinously commercialized for the sake of tourism. Working with their allies in Congress, they managed to effectively kill the Yellowstone National Park Improvement Company’s efforts to obtain monopolistic leases on some 4,000 acres within the park while also working to combat poachers and vandals that were killing off the park’s big game and defacing its geysers. Ultimately, Sheridan sent his cavalry into Yellowstone, and the military assumed control of the park’s administration for three decades.

The Niagara threat, the threat of commercialization inside the parks, re-emerges frequently even in our own day, as it did during President Trump’s first term. Many national parks are already highly developed, featuring fancy privately-managed hotels, cellphone towers, traffic jams and hefty fees. But there are those who want more.

In 2018, Trump’s Interior Department assembled an outdoor recreation advisory committee to make recommendations on national park management and related matters. The committee was dominated by representatives of corporate interests, including top executives from park concessionaires like Delaware North and Aramark, and sparked concerns from Interior Department staff about potential conflicts of interest. In October 2019, the advisory committee unveiled its recommendations to then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Unsurprisingly, the committee called for more private management of National Park Service campgrounds. It called for more commercialization at national parks by bringing food trucks, mobile stores, and other amenities to some campsites. It lauded the expansion of WiFi within national parks. It even sought to reduce senior discounts at some national parks during peak tourism season.

As The Los Angeles Times reported at the time, the committee also called for “‘categorical permissions’ to sidestep environmental impact reviews for campground expansion and development, and new policies to ensure that concessionaires be compensated for investments and assets when a competitor is awarded its contract.”

The recommendations sparked an outcry, with conservationists denouncing this latest effort to commercialize the parks. Senior citizen advocates, including the AARP, also slammed the proposal. The advisory committee was disbanded shortly thereafter, in November 2019.

Scott Socha attended the first meeting of Trump’s outdoor recreation advisor committee in July 2018, according to Interior Department records. In a draft document, he was also listed as participating in a November 2018 meeting of the committee. Socha’s nomination has stirred fears among some conservationists that he will promote more commercialization and privatization within the national park system.

“He’s made a career out of extracting maximum profit from our national parks, not protecting them, making it abundantly clear he’ll be doing the bidding of special interests and corporate interests,” said Jayson O’Neill, a spokesperson for the conservation campaign Save Our Parks. Delaware North, incidentally, is headquartered in Buffalo New York, not too far from Niagara Falls.

The Interior Department, in response to questions about Socha’s nomination, said that the “President has nominated highly qualified individuals to serve in key roles across the Department of the Interior. We respect the President’s authority to select leaders who will advance his agenda and serve the American people.”

Before he can take office Socha must be confirmed by the Senate. His nomination hearing has not yet been scheduled.

UPDATE: Ethics officials at President Donald Trump’s Interior Department granted Karen Budd-Falen, the agency’s No. 3 official, a waiver on March 11 — the very day that Public Domain inquired about her recent work on grazing issues — that provides her wide latitude to work on grazing policy and permitting, despite her family’s vast personal holdings in the public lands grazing industry.

The waiver is a stunning reversal from her stint at Interior during the first Trump administration, when she was barred from working on or even discussing federal grazing matters.

“These waivers will allow you to participate in particular matters of general applicability that may have a direct and predictable effect on your direct and imputed financial interests in the Budd-Falen Ranch and Cattle Interests or the BLM grazing permits that are either attached to any of the Budd-Falen Ranch and Cattle Interests,” reads the waiver, issued by Heather Gottry, director of Interior’s ethics office. “These waivers are being issued because of the level of experience and expertise necessary to perform the position of Associate Deputy Secretary and reflects the determination by Department leadership that your background, leadership, and skill set are critical to the work of the Department.”

The waiver goes on to note that Budd-Falen advised ethics officials that recusing herself from grazing matters had become restrictive.

“You have advised us that, although recusal was initially successful and workable, it is limiting your ability to fully engage in policy discussions related to grazing permits and other relatable policies,” Gottry wrote. “Further, recusal has become overly burdensome and deprives the Department of your knowledge and expertise.”

As detailed below, Public Domain reached out to Interior last week about Budd-Falen’s recent involvement in an ongoing dispute over cattle grazing at Point Reyes National Seashore and the agency’s recent overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act that stands to benefit public land ranchers across the country. The waiver first appeared on the U.S. Office of Government Ethics disclosure database on March 12, but is dated March 11 — the day Public Domain sent its inquiry to Interior. Interior’s ethics office provided the document to Public Domain on Friday afternoon, March 20, 2026, noting that it was releasing “requested records to include the most recent documents in our possession that were received more than 30 days ago.”

Notably, the waiver does not appear to be retroactive to cover Budd-Falen’s work on grazing issues in recent months. Instead, it contains foward-looking language like “will permit your participation…”

The Interior Department did not immediately response to Public Domain’s request for comment.

Budd Falen, Karen Limited Waiver Pursuant To 18 Usc 208(b)(1) And 5 Cfr 3501

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Public Domain will be digging deeper into the document in the coming days. Check back for updates.

PREVIOUSLY: When self-proclaimed “cowboy lawyer” and rancher Karen Budd-Falen stepped into the first Trump administration in 2018 as a high-ranking legal official at the Interior Department, she promptly signed ethics documents that barred her from working on or even discussing grazing issues.

“I will recuse myself from any discussion of grazing matters or the Department’s process for issuing grazing permits for the duration of my appointment,” reads a disqualification statement that accompanied her ethics recusal, both of which are dated Nov. 5, 2018.

Budd-Falen is now back at the Interior Department, serving as associate deputy secretary, the agency’s third highest-ranking position. While her Interior work portfolio is broader than during her first stint in the Trump administration, her potential conflicts of interest tied to ranching remain largely the same, as her 2025 financial disclosure details.

Yet Budd-Falen has been actively working on grazing-related issues since returning to Interior, including a longstanding dispute over beef and dairy cows at Point Reyes National Seashore and the agency’s recent overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act that stands to benefit public land ranchers across the country.

As a private attorney, Budd-Falen represented numerous ranching interests in fights against environmental regulations and the very public land management agencies she now oversees. Budd-Falen and her husband have stakes in multiple ranching operations, some of which maintain federal permits to graze cattle on public lands. One of those ranches is at the center of a lucrative financial deal that Budd-Falen’s husband struck with the developer of a Nevada lithium mine — a deal that Public Domain first revealed and that has triggered calls for an investigation.

There is no clear evidence that Budd-Falen has signed an updated ethics recusal covering her current tenure. And if there is an updated recusal that allows for her to work on grazing policy, the question is why — again, the ranching assets listed in her most recent financial disclosure closely mirror those she had during the first Trump term.

A batch of documents that Interior released late last month to the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group, included only her 2018 ethics filings, standard ethics guidance materials that she received early in her current tenure and a “draft”, blacked out list of her recent legal clients.

Karen Budd Falen Written Disqualification Statement

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The Interior Department has repeatedly ignored Public Domain’s questions about whether Budd-Falen’s 2018 ethics documents are still binding, but said last month that she filed all the appropriate paperwork and that her relevant ethics filings “have been supplied.” On March 11, Public Domain asked Interior about Budd-Falen’s involvement in grazing-related issues since returning to the department, given the clear language in her 2018 ethics filings. Again, an Interior spokesperson did not respond. The following day, a “conflict of interest waiver” for Budd-Falen suddenly appeared in the U.S. Office of Government Ethics disclosure database. Public Domain has requested but not yet obtained that document, and Interior did not respond to questions about what the waiver covers.

Patrick Kelly, the Montana and Washington state director for Western Watersheds Project, an environmental group, told Public Domain that “if Budd-Falen is indeed still bound by her 2018 ethics recusal, then her recent conduct plainly violates it.”

“That agreement barred her from participating in matters involving federal grazing because she refused to divest her own grazing interests, and no replacement ethics disclosure has surfaced suggesting the restriction has been lifted,” he said. “Her recent and very public involvement in grazing disputes—including the ranching settlement at Point Reyes—would place her squarely in violation of the prohibition against participating in grazing-related discussions. This represents a glaring conflict of interest and raises profound questions about whether federal public-lands decisions are being shaped in the public interest or at the behest of the livestock industry.”

Budd-Falen was already facing mounting scrutiny after Public Domain and High Country News first revealed in December her deep financial ties to a massive Nevada lithium mine that was approved during Trump’s first term. In 2018, shortly after she joined the first Trump administration, her husband sold water rights from Home Ranch, LLC, one of the family’s ranching operations, to Lithium Nevada Corp., the developer of the controversial Thacker Pass mine. Budd-Falen never publicly disclosed that water sale in her annual financial disclosure forms. And while she received a waiver in 2018 to retain her financial interest in Home Ranch and other family ranching assets, she agreed not to participate in matters that involve or could financially benefit those operations. House Democrats have called on Interior’s internal watchdog to investigate the matter.

In its press release last month announcing its NEPA reforms, the Trump Interior Department noted that the changes will “reduce delays and costs for projects across public lands, including energy development, critical minerals, livestock grazing approvals” and other activities on the federal estate. Budd-Falen is quoted in the announcement, describing the Trump administration’s action as “a decisive step toward fixing a broken permitting system.”

“Interior is restoring NEPA to what Congress intended — a procedural law that informs decisions, not a regulatory maze that delays them for years,” she said. “These reforms will help unleash American energy, strengthen rural communities and deliver real results faster for the American people.”

Budd-Falen has also waded into a longstanding dispute over grazing at Point Reyes National Seashore in California. In January, in the waning days of the Biden administration, environmentalists and ranchers struck an agreement to end most grazing at the preserve, with affected ranchers receiving compensation. But as E&E News reported in October, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intervened in an apparent effort to upend the deal. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later tapped Budd-Falen to “broker a Point Reyes solution,” according to the publication.

Earlier this month, Budd-Falen traveled to Point Reyes to meet with stakeholders, including park leaders, environmentalists, affected ranchers and “a motley crew of ranching advocates who have spent over a year attempting to unravel the deal,” The Point Reyes Light reported.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist and ethics expert at the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, said ethics rules carry over if someone exits and then reenters government, until they are specifically changed or nullified. He stressed that the main problem isn’t Budd-Falen’s ethics recusal, but rather the lack of enforcement.

“Literally, all the agencies charged with enforcing these ethics rules have been dominated by Trump loyalists who do not believe in the rules,” he said. “Trump personally finds ethics restrictions as obstacles to his interests and has revoked the presidential ethics executive orders. More importantly, he has neutered the very agencies charged with enforcing governmental ethics.”

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In a map update posted last month to U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s website, the agency charted a major expansion of the border wall. It included terrain belonging to one of America’s most iconic wild areas, Big Bend National Park, an 800,000-acre desert landscape that includes the entire Chisos mountain range and more than 100 miles of the Rio Grande.

A few steeply cliffed sections, including the famed Santa Elena Canyon, were marked “detection technology.” The rest of the park’s southern border, which touches Mexico, was designated “primary wall border system.”

Click here to download the map file, which was saved by the Center for Biological Diversity and shared with Public Domain.

CBP’s map, which appeared to call for a towering wall across a beloved national park, elicited fury from local politicians, law enforcement officials and conservationists across the country. CBP has since quietly altered its map, with an updated version limited solely to “detection technology” within the national park — though the proposal still appears to call for a physical wall within neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park.

Opponents of a Big Bend border wall have welcomed CBP’s map tinkering as evidence that the public outcry has forced the agency to back down. But Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, has said little to re-assure conservationists.

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Public land defenders are now instead urging Congress to step in. A group of more than 100 conservation groups and local businesses signed on to a letter Thursday asking the federal lawmakers currently wrangling over the DHS budget to block the agency from using its $46.5 billion border wall budget from building physical barriers, roads or lighting through the two parks.

“Building a border wall through one of the nation’s crown-jewel national parks and Texas’ largest state park would be wholly unprecedented, and the resulting damage to public recreation, wildlife, rural economies, cultural resources, and the integrity of our natural heritage would be irreversible,” the letter reads.

Big Bend Appropriations Letter 3.12.2026

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The groups are hoping that shielding national treasures will cut through the partisanship that typically plagues Washington. Former Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bob Krumenaker is currently on Capitol Hill, meeting with environmental leaders and lawmakers.

“I have not found anyone that is saying they think a wall in the park, or even the state park, is a good idea,” said Krumenaker, who now heads the group Keep Big Bend Wild.

A Constantly Shifting Plan

Part of the reason Homeland Security’s Big Bend wall plans have drawn so much outrage is that the agency has done little to explain itself, even as big changes are clearly taking place.

Prior to her departure from the Department of Homeland Security on March 5, former Secretary Kristi Noem used her authority last month to waive a slew of environmental regulations to speed along construction of the border wall in the Big Bend sector. The sector stretches roughly 500 miles across southwest Texas. Shortly after her order, CBP made the controversial changes to the “smart wall” map on its website, with portions of the border wall proposed within the national park and the state park.

But the waiver that Noem signed applies only to a roughly 155-mile section bracketed by a pair of GPS coordinates that includes a portion of Big Bend Ranch State Park. It does not include land within Big Bend National Park, raising questions about whether the department has the legal authority to build there without abiding by the regulations mandated by major federal laws Noem waived, like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act or the National Historic Preservation Act. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

CBP’s only public statement on the issue so far is a pair of unsigned paragraphs issued late Friday saying that the border barrier project through the parks remains in its planning stages. The agency will “continue to coordinate with the National Park Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and other federal and state agencies, throughout the planning of border barrier and technology deployments, in order to achieve Border Patrol’s operational priorities,” the statement said.

“Nobody has any confidence that they even know what they’re planning,” Krumenaker said. “We do know that contractors are on the ground.”

Many are also concerned that even detection technology may be too intrusive for protected public lands valued for their wildness. In Arizona, detection technology includes large towers that emit loud noises, said Laiken Jordahl, a public land advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We have no assurance they’re not going to completely destroy our landscape,” said Billy Bartko, whose Far-Flung Outfitters guides river and ATV trips at Big Bend. “One of my biggest concerns, whether it’s a physical wall or technology-only, is whether they’re going to light it up at night. If they light it up, our dark skies are gone. Our astro tourism is gone. Our birds. The lights in my opinion will be the most destructive of all.”

Local political and law enforcement officials from both parties have panned the wall proposal, partly because the sector sees so little illicit activity. The geography of the desert region, with its cliffs and mountains, makes it unattractive for jumping the border. Neither side of the border features large cities that draw people. The Mexican side is sparsely populated.

“Border security is not a one-size-fits-all proposition,” a group of five Big Bend border sheriffs wrote in a joint letter this week. “Strategies that may be appropriate in high-traffic urban sectors are not necessarily appropriate in geographically remote regions such as ours. Sound policy must be informed by local terrain, operational realities, and fiscal responsibility.”

Border Patrol has apprehended 734 people across the entire 500-mile long Big Bend sector since October — a figure that amounts to just 2 percent of apprehensions across the entire southern border. Within Big Bend National Park itself, Border Patrol made between 100 and 125 arrests annually in 2023 and 2024, according to data obtained by Krumenaker. Those numbers likely continued to drop since last year, following the Trump administration’s border crackdown.

CBP said it could not provide arrest data within the boundaries of Big Bend National Park.

But despite the fact that the Big Bend National Park sees relatively little immigration pressure, Trump’s border fixation incentivizes DHS to consider walling the park. Much of the existing wall in the west is built on federal public land. Texas is 95 percent privately held. Historic attempts to put up border wall in the state have repeatedly caused disputes with private land owners, slowing the process.

“If you’re just looking at a map and thinking, ‘what lands do we control, where we can build a wall because we want to say Trump built 200 miles of wall in his first year’ — that would be the place to look,” Jordahl said.

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When we officially launched Public Domain a year ago, we had no idea what to expect. Would going independent on Substack work? Would we be able to land major scoops and make an impact? Would anyone subscribe to an investigative newsletter about the Interior Department? Would people still care about public lands and wildlife amid the violent chaos of a second Trump administration?

It has been a wild ride, with twists and turns and ups and downs. But as Public Domain celebrates its first year since launch, we can report that the answer to all of those questions is yes.

From the very start, with help from confidential sources inside the U.S. Interior Department, we landed a significant scoop when we uncovered the name of the top DOGE operative at DOI, Tyler Hassen, an oil industry executive who helped oversee the mass exodus of civil servants during the early months of Trump’s presidency. That first Public Domain story, which was cited by ProPublica and other national outlets, opened Hassen to media scrutiny and, in the end, he didn’t last long at DOI. He left the agency last fall.

Indeed, the coterie of lobbyists and right-wing operatives who are running Trump’s Interior Department have provided a target-rich environment for journalists looking to expose malfeasance and publish hard-hitting investigations in the public interest. Public Domain was the first outlet to publish a comprehensive list of those lobbyists and right-wing operatives, who we have closely monitored ever since. They have been the focus of many of our stories.

In April last year, Public Domain published another major scoop when we obtained a leaked copy of the Interior Department’s draft strategic plan, a blueprint of the Trump administration’s plans to slash conservation protections, boost extractive industries and reduce federal land holdings. The Interior Department was furious. The story, meanwhile, made major headlines and was picked up by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg and other outlets.

Shortly thereafter, a grave threat to public lands emerged in the form of Senator Mike Lee and his compatriots in the House, who put forward bills to sell off by large swaths of public land across the West. Public Domain persistently covered Lee’s scheme, and highlighted the fierce bipartisan backlash to his efforts. His sell-off plan ultimately met with ignominious defeat. Public lands, it turns out, are one of the few things that can unite Americans in this polarized time.

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Public Domain went on to publish a June 2025 investigation into Matt Giacona, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees the federal government’s massive offshore oil and gas leasing program. Our story showed that Giacona, a former lobbyist for the offshore oil industry, had entered government and quickly started working on policy issues that had previously been the focus of his lobbying work. Not long after we published our story, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee asked the Interior Department’s Inspector General to open an investigation into Giacona for potential ethics violations and cited our work.

Though we mostly report on the Interior Department, public lands and federal environmental policy, it is not our only focus. Public Domain also cares deeply about the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, wildlife as a public trust, and the health of game herds and endangered species. Our series on the scandals surrounding the state of Texas’ struggle against chronic wasting disease has been popular with readers, and led to several notable scoops.

The other major stories we wish to highlight here center on Karen Budd-Falen, who is currently serving as the No. 3 political appointee at the Interior Department. Budd-Falen, a long-time Republican political operative and lawyer for ranching interests, also served at DOI in the first Trump administration. In December, Public Domain was the first outlet to uncover financial ties between Budd-Falen and the massive Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. Our story showed that Budd-Falen’s husband finalized a lucrative deal to sell water rights from one of the family’s ranches to the Thacker Pass mine shortly after Budd-Falen joined the first Trump administration in 2018. Budd-Falen failed to disclose this financial entanglement on numerous government financial disclosure forms and she also met with executives from the mine’s parent company while a political appointee in 2019. The mine later received fast-track approval from the Interior Department in January 2021. Our coverage was highlighted in The New York Times and featured on Rachel Maddow. In January, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee officially asked the Interior Department to open an investigation into Budd-Falen over potential ethics violations, citing our work.

And there is much more to come. We have filed two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against Trump’s Interior Department, with more in the works. We will continue to cover the GOP’s war on the beloved Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We will continue to scrutinize political appointees at the Interior Department, including Scott Socha, a former executive at Delaware North who Trump appointed to lead the Park Service, and Steve Pearce, a former hard-right Congressman who is Trump’s appointee to head the Bureau of Land Management. Like many of you, we are also alarmed by the Trump administration’s plans to build a border wall through Big Bend National Park in Texas and plan to dig into that story. We will continue to do original, hard-hitting reporting on public lands and wildlife, using public records to produce stories in the public interest.

To date, we have amassed more than 4,000 subscribers – from influential politicians, conservation leaders, and prominent journalists to everyday Americans who care about public lands and wildlife. Our readers come from every state in the country, with the bulk concentrated in the American West. We deeply appreciate your support. We also appreciate the support of our partners, particularly High Country News, which has offered invaluable guidance and encouragement over the last year.

It has been an incredibly rewarding journey and we want to continue to build and grow. In an ideal world, we could even make this our full-time focus and hire freelancers or staffers. If you are a free subscriber and appreciate our work, please consider upgrading to paid. We also offer discounted group subscriptions to organizations that want to support us. And if you are someone in a position to provide information, tips, or documents that could inform our coverage, please reach out. You can find our contact information, including our Signal handles, on the “Reach Us” page.

Thank you Public Domainers! We couldn’t do this without you.

This story was co-published with High Country News.

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History has a funny way of repeating itself.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly invoked America’s conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt. He called himself an “unapologetic admirer” of the 26th president and pledged to “create a conserv…

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As federal agents last month gunned down American citizens in the streets of Minneapolis, President Trump’s GOP operatives and allies were waging another sort of war on Minnesota — a ferocious legal and legislative attack on the North Star State’s most important wildlands and the environmental advocates fighting to protect them. A central player in this ongoing effort is Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), with help from political figures tied to Trump’s Interior Department.

Late last month, just days before masked federal agents shot ICU nurse Alex Pretti in the back, the House of Representatives, at Stauber’s urging, voted to roll back a ban on mining in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. The 20-year “mineral withdrawal,” first implemented during the Obama years, had been reestablished by the Biden administration to protect the crown jewel of Midwestern federal lands — the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The GOP vote to rescind the ban relied on an arcane legal maneuver and was a handout to one primary beneficiary — the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta Plc and its subsidiary Twin Metals Minnesota, which are seeking to build a copper-nickel mine on national forest land just outside the borders of the Boundary Waters. Conservationists see the mine as a major pollution risk that could contaminate the region’s interconnected waterways, including the lakes and rivers within the wilderness area itself.

The Boundary Waters wilderness is a pristine landscape of glacial lakes and forests along the Canadian border of northern Minnesota. At more than a million acres, it is one of the nation’s largest and most popular federal wilderness areas, a refuge for wolves, bears, loons, eagles and more. The wilderness area sits in a region which contains a major complex of copper, nickel and other platinum-group minerals. As AI data centers, electric vehicles and the like drive up copper prices, Twin Metals Minnesota wants those riches, and has worked the levers of power in Washington D.C. for more than a decade to get its way.

At a cost of $260,000, Twin Metals recently retained the services of The Bernhardt Group, a lobbying shop founded last year by former Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and staffed with former government officials. Bernhardt’s firm has been pushing the foreign mining company’s priorities in both houses of Congress, at the Justice Department, the Interior Department, USDA and at the Executive Office of the President, according to lobbying disclosures.

While the company pours money into lobbying efforts, it has found numerous energetic allies on Capitol Hill, chief among them Rep. Stauber. Last summer, he and his fellow Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee introduced a provision into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that could have provided Twin Metals with mining leases in perpetuity, while blocking judicial review of those leases. That provision ultimately failed, but Stauber is back for another round of political maneuvering.

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Last month’s House vote to rollback the 20-year mining ban in Minnesota was accomplished using a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, which allows Congress to rescind regulatory rules issued by federal agencies. The 1996 law was rarely used before Trump’s first term, but Congressional Republicans have in recent years relied on it with increasing frequency to gut regulations that they dislike.

The use of it in this case — to roll back a mineral withdrawal on federal land that was issued three years ago — is unprecedented. The CRA, per the language of the law, has traditionally been applied within a very limited timeframe that begins when Congress is first informed of a new regulatory rule taking effect. And the CRA has not previously been applied to mineral withdrawals on federal land, which are governed by a specific process laid out in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. But this case is pushing both of those boundaries.

Though Congressional representatives were informed of the mineral withdrawal roughly three years ago, Trump’s Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor, a long-time ally of the mining industry who served in the first Trump administration under former Interior Secretary (and current lobbyist) David Bernhardt, sent a letter to Congress in early January this year effectively submitting the mining ban for review under the CRA. Stauber and his allies took her up on her unprecedented offer and, after heated debate in the House, voted to rescind it along party lines. The mining ban revocation now heads to the Senate, with a vote expected as soon as this week. If approved there, the Biden-era protections will fall, and future administrations would be prohibited from issuing similar regulations to safeguard the Boundary Waters. Foreign-owned Antofagasta will be poised to finally get its mine.

The use of the CRA in this unprecedented manner — to target years-old public lands protections — has disturbed conservationists, who worry that the GOP will use similar maneuvers to target all sorts of long-standing environmental rules, regulations and designations that they oppose. Indeed, Republicans in Congress have already used the CRA to rescind resource management plans on federal lands across the West, and have taken steps to target national monuments in a similar manner.

“This legislative scheme to overturn protections for the Boundary Waters – protections that are supported by science, the law, and the people – is an outrageous attack on one of America’s most iconic and unique landscapes, and must be rejected by Congress,” said Ingrid Lyons, the executive director of Save the Boundary Waters. “Using the Congressional Review Act to attack these protections also creates a reckless precedent that would allow Congress to retroactively target virtually any public land action as a ‘rule.’ If this maneuver succeeds, no established land management decision would be safe.”

Stauber’s office, the House Natural Resources Committee, the Interior Department and Twin Metals did not respond to request for comment.

But it’s not just the Boundary Waters that are under threat from the GOP’s agenda. Conservationists working to protect the wilderness area are themselves being targeted by Stauber and his allies. In December, Stauber and other Republican members of the House Natural Resources Committee sent letters to The Wilderness Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Earthjustice accusing them of playing a “backroom role” in Biden’s decision to implement the mining ban and cancel two mining leases that the first Trump administration issued to Twin Metals. Those leases had been the subject of a lawsuit by The Wilderness Society and other environmental groups.

Among Stauber’s allegations is that The Wilderness Society held “private, off-the-books meetings” with high-ranking members of the Biden Interior Department while it was in active litigation over the Twin Metals’ leases. Basing their allegations on a set of public records first obtained by a shadowy Trump-aligned conservative group, Stauber and his Republican colleagues claim the meetings were potentially improper and unethical and amounted to collusion. They demanded the three environmental groups hand over their internal records related to the matter.

In a response to the Committee’s allegations, Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, highlighted the hypocrisy of Stauber and his allies, noting that lobbyists for Antofagasta and Twin Metals held private meetings with Trump administration officials while the companies were engaged in their own litigation over mining in the Superior National Forest back in 2017.

“As the Committee professes to be very concerned about lobby meetings taking place during active litigation, it should be extremely interested to know that The New York Times and independent researchers have documented at least 18 meetings between Twin Metals and Antofagasta execs and lobbyists with federal employees at DOI, the State Department, and the White House while it was in active litigation challenging the denial of the Twin Metals lease,” wrote Suckling in a response letter to Stauber and his colleagues.

Those meetings included a summer 2017 confab between a Twin Metals’ lobbyist and Kate MacGregor, a political appointee at the Interior Department during Trump’s first term who is now serving as Interior’s Deputy Secretary. Attorneys with one of Twin Metals’ law firms also met with the Interior Department’s solicitor and his team in June 2017. Notably, the House GOP did not seek to investigate those meetings.

The committee’s investigation into Boundary Waters defenders, added Suckling in a statement to Public Domain, is “pure bunk. It is nothing but a poorly-attempted effort to intimidate and scare people and it is not working. It won’t work.”

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Democratic lawmakers are calling for a federal ethics probe into Karen Budd-Falen, the long time conservative operative who is serving in the No. 3 position at President Trump’s Interior Department. In a letter sent Tuesday to Interior’s acting Inspector General, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) said Budd-Falen “failed to come clean to Congress about her financial and ethical dealings” and that new evidence of “an undisclosed conflict of interest … demands immediate investigation.”

“It appears Ms. Budd-Falen may have used her power in the Interior Department to give her family a $3.5 million windfall by fast-tracking a mining project and letting a multi-billion-dollar corporation skip an environmental review designed to keep communities safe from polluting projects,” wrote the lawmakers, who both serve on the House Natural Resources Committee.

“Recently uncovered evidence … raises additional serious questions, including whether Ms. Budd-Falen’s financial interests and official activities may have implicated federal ethics and conflict-of-interest restrictions, and possibly violations of federal criminal law,” they added.

The letter, which directly cites Public Domain and our co-publishing partner High Country News, comes in the wake of an investigation this outlet published in December that revealed Budd-Falen’s husband struck a deal in 2018 to sell water rights from one of the family’s ranches to the developer of the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. The lucrative arrangement was finalized not long after Budd-Falen joined the first Trump administration as a top legal official at the Interior Department in early November 2018. Budd-Falen failed to disclose her family’s financial entanglement with the mine on numerous government financial disclosure forms between 2018 and 2021. And in November 2019, she met with executives from the mine’s parent company while working as a top Interior Department appointee during Trump’s first term, according to documents first obtained by Public Domain. The first Trump administration ultimately fast-tracked approval for the mine shortly before leaving office in January 2021.

You can read a key portion of the lawmakers’ letter here:

Asked about Tuesday’s letter, an Interior Department spokesperson called Budd-Fallen “an invaluable member of the Interior team” and dismissed what she described as “baseless accusations.”

After Public Domain and High Country News published the investigation into Budd-Falen in December, our reporting was cited in a subsequent story by The New York Times, which revealed that Lithium Nevada Corp. paid Budd-Falen’s husband $3.5 million for water rights from their family ranching operation — a deal that was contingent on federal regulators approving the mine. In January 2021, in the waning days of Trump’s first term in office, the Bureau of Land Management approved the project, which includes some 5,700 acres of public land.

Our reporting was also featured on Rachel Maddow’s evening newscast.

The New York Times first reported the letter demanding an ethics probe into Budd-Falen.

Conservationists slammed Budd-Falen’s conduct following the release of the lawmakers’ letter.

“The internal documents in this letter are incredibly damning. At the very least, Secretary Burgum must suspend Karen Budd-Falen pending the outcome of any investigation,” said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “Her lack of candor to ethics officials casts a shadow on anything that crosses her desk today, and on everything she has worked on during the Trump administration.”

Public Domain continues its efforts to obtain records related to Budd-Falen, including her ethics agreement, which the Interior Department has yet to release publicly.

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UPDATE: After publication, a spokesperson for the Republican Study Committee denied that the policy proposal targets federal public land.

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Happy New Year, dear readers!

To kick off 2026, Public Domain late last week sued President Trump’s Interior Department — again. Like the lawsuit we filed last September, this one is meant to force the agency to release public records.

Since Trump took office, we have filed scores of Freedom of Information Act reques…

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