Conservation groups have filed at least three separate appeals seeking to halt the Trump administration’s decision to evict more than 900 bison from large swaths of federal land in central Montana.

The administration’s decision in early May to rescind American Prairie’s bison grazing permits marked a victory for ranching groups who see the iconic native mammal as a threat to their livestock operations and way of life. Among those who advocated to remove the bison was the Montana Stockgrowers Association, a former legal client of Karen Budd-Falen, the third highest-ranking official at the Interior Department, which oversees grazing across millions of acres of federal public land.

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Late last week, American Prairie, a conservation nonprofit that is working to restore bison to thousands of acres of private and public lands in the state, appealed the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to revoke the nonprofit’s permits to graze the animals on at least six different federal allotments near Malta, Montana.

BLM justified the decision to cancel American Prairie’s grazing leases on the grounds that its buffalo are wildlife that do not qualify as “production-oriented” domestic livestock.

But neither federal laws like the Taylor Grazing Act nor agency rules impose that requirement, American Prairie argued in its appeal. Such a sweeping change would require BLM to go through the much longer and more tedious rule-making process mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act.

Even so, American Prairie contends that its bison herd does qualify as production-oriented livestock. The organization contributes animals to tribal food sovereignty programs and runs a public hunting program that has produced an estimated 75,000 pounds of meat, according to the appeal.

American Prairie received its first grazing permit for bison more than two decades ago.

American Prairie BLM Appeal

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Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group and vociferous critic of the cattle industry, followed up with its own appeal on Monday. The group argues that BLM’s new grazing requirement amounts to illegal rule-making. BLM’s change also should have triggered a National Environmental Policy Act analysis, the appeal says.

Both filings ask the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals to stop the Trump administration from canceling the grazing leases until their appeals are adjudicated. Defenders of Wildlife also filed an appeal last week challenging the Trump administration’s bison policy. Together, the appeals are the first step in what could become a prolonged legal battle.

Western Watersheds Project BLM Appeal

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The BLM was “confident in the legal and factual basis for its decision,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to Public Domain.

“While we do not comment on pending litigation, the Bureau of Land Management’s decision was firmly grounded in federal law and a thorough review of the administrative record,” the spokesperson wrote. “The agency determined that American Prairie’s bison operation does not satisfy the statutory requirements for a federal grazing permit under the Taylor Grazing Act because the herd is managed primarily for conservation purposes rather than livestock production.”

In its press release Monday, Western Watersheds cited Public Domain’s recent reporting detailing how Budd-Falen, as a private attorney, challenged BLM’s 2022 decision allowing American Prairie to continue grazing bison. The self-proclaimed “cowboy lawyer” represented three pro-ranching entities in the case — the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the North and South Phillips County Cooperative State Grazing Districts. She argued that allowing bison to graze public lands violated multiple laws and regulations, including the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, and caused “significant harm” to her clients.

“The political origins of this reversal are clear,” Western Watersheds wrote in its release. “As reported by Public Domain, the 2022 bison grazing decision was appealed by ranching groups represented by Karen Budd-Falen—now one of the highest-ranking officials at the Interior Department. Further, Secretary Burgum personally intervened to direct BLM to reconsider, ultimately producing the outcome Budd-Falen’s former clients sought.”

One of the grazing allotments affected by BLM’s recent reversal is the Flat Creek allotment in Montana. In her most recent financial disclosure, Budd-Falen lists the “Flat Creek Allotment” in Malta, Montana, as one of her former legal clients, Public Domain previously reported.

“Karen Budd-Falen has followed all ethical guidelines and recused herself from all matters involving her former clients,” a spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a previous statement to Public Domain concerning the bison eviction.

The battle over the grazing permits in central Montana has torched a rare opportunity for the American public to hunt buffalo.

American Prairie “had to make the difficult decision to cancel this year’s public bison harvest due to these efforts by state and federal officials to remove bison from public lands grazing,” the group’s Public Affairs Director Beth Saboe wrote in an email to Public Domain.

The organization had planned to issue 17 permits this year, according to its website.

Somewhere between 30 million and 60 million wild buffalo roamed North America when European colonization began. Around half a million remain, with livestock accounting for the vast majority of them.

Budd-Falen, herself a lifelong rancher, has become embroiled in scandal since re-entering the Trump administration, including facing mounting scrutiny over her work on grazing policy — an issue she was prohibited from working on or discussing during the first Trump administration. In March, the Interior Department’s ethics office issued Budd-Falen a sudden waiver that gave her wide latitude to work on grazing, despite potential conflicts of interest, as Public Domain first reported.

Months before receiving the waiver, however, Budd-Falen was openly talking about the Trump administration’s forthcoming rewrite of federal regulations that govern public lands ranching across the American West. In a December interview with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Budd-Falen described grazing regulations as an issue “closest to my heart” and boasted that “we went back to the Ronald Reagan years and are putting back in those regs.”

Last month, the BLM incorporated the “production-oriented” qualification used to revoke American Prairie’s bison permits into new proposed grazing rules published in the Federal Register. In addition to thwarting American Prairie’s operations, the new rules could eliminate tribal bison grazing on federal public lands, Inside Climate News reported.

Note: This story was updated to include reference to the appeal filed by Defenders of Wildlife.

Public Domain co-founder Jimmy Tobias joined WAMU’s 1A on National Public Radio this week to talk about the Trump administration’s dismantling of public land protections to clear the way for the White House’s “Energy Dominance” agenda.

“The administration is really pushing the boundaries of law and policy to promote the interests of their allies and donors, and particularly the oil and gas industry,” Jimmy told 1A’s Jenn White. “They’ve used pretty bare knuckle tactics to advance their interests.”

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The two discussed several issues Public Domain has covered over the last year and a half, including the Trump administration’s use of the “God squad” loophole to torch Endangered Species Act protections for the imperiled Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico, the unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act to undo mining restrictions that could impact Minnesota’s iconic Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the conflict-of-interest scandals surrounding the Interior Department’s No. 3-in-charge Karen Budd-Falen.

The show offers a multidimensional exploration of current threats facing public land and water. It leads with reporter Alex Hager from KJZZ public radio, who details the current fights playing out over how to divvy up the dwindling supplies of the Colorado River — a water source relied upon by seven states, several tribal nations and Mexico. It closes with an appearance from reporter Heather Hansman, who discussed her recent feature for Re:Public about how bots are gaming the Recreation.gov system that we depend on to draw limited permits for campsites, river floats and backcountry hikes.

Listen to the podcast above.

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Since launching his bid for Senate in mid-March, Montana Republican Kurt Alme has said little about his agenda for America’s public lands, other than promising to “protect” them. Outgoing Republican Sen. Steve Daines handpicked Alme as his replacement in an 11th-hour maneuver that some condemned as a “backroom deal” that circumvented a competitive GOP primary.

Shortly after Alme entered the race, the American Leadership Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based super PAC tied to Daines, began running TV and radio ads touting Alme as someone who would fight for President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies in Congress, including “protecting Montana’s way of life — our public lands, our guns, our conservative values.”

Although the American Leadership Fund is now boosting Alme as a public lands champion, it has a history of funneling money to land transfer and sale advocates.

Alme’s campaign did not respond to Public Domain’s questions about his agenda for public lands if he is elected in November. Alme, who previously served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana and as budget director for Gov. Greg Gianforte, does not mention public lands on his campaign website.

“Kurt Alme talks a big game about protecting public lands, but he has entirely failed to put his money where his mouth is,” Gus Nathanson, a spokesperson for American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal super PAC, said in an email statement. “Alme’s financial ties to groups that want to sell off public lands prove that he is uninterested in honesty, transparency, or the best interests of Montanans.”

In 2024, the American Leadership Fund gave $1.35 million to Advancing American Freedom Inc., a nonprofit policy shop founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, according to its most recently available IRS filing. In its policy agenda, titled “American Freedom,” Advancing American Freedom calls for the federal government to “sell or donate millions of acres of federal land to the states” and to “advance state and local authority over common shared resources, public lands, and water rights.”

Advancing American Freedom also voiced support for Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s controversial and failed attempt last year to sell off millions of acres of public lands under the guise of combating America’s housing crunch. John Shelton, the nonprofit’s policy director, told the National Review at the time that making federal public lands available for sale “isn’t a brand new proposal by any stretch of the imagination,” pointing to the 1862 Homestead Act which opened up millions of acres across the West to settlers.

The American Leadership Fund did not respond to a request for comment.

At a campaign event last month in Roundup, Montana, Alme told a crowd that “we need to continue to protect public lands and private property,” without elaborating. And in a social media post last week, Alme wrote that he is “so grateful for our public lands!”

Montana’s Republican congressional delegation was widely credited with blocking Lee’s sell-off scheme from making it into last year’s sweeping budget bill. The recent shakeup in Montana’s 2026 elections — the last-minute withdrawal of Daines and Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke from their respective races — has raised questions about whether the so-called “Montana firewall” against federal land disposal will survive the midterms.

As Public Domain previously reported, Aaron Flint, a longtime conservative radio host and Trump-endorsed veteran running to replace Zinke, is painting himself a champion of federal public lands, despite having a history of calling for federal lands to be transferred to state control.

Montanans deeply oppose federal land sales and transfers. A survey released last month and conducted by the University of Montana found that 84% of Montana voters support a ban on the sale or transfer of national public lands.

Yet, the Montana Republican Party platform still calls for “relinquishing federally managed public lands to the states in order to secure statehood equality and provide for better management of public lands.”

Alex Blackmer, a spokesperson for Wild Montana Action Fund, wrote in an email to Public Domain that Alme’s situation “represents something we see way too often in Montana: candidates saying one thing about their commitment to protecting public lands to get elected, and then doing the opposite once they’re in office.”

“Candidates know that publicly supporting privatizing public lands makes them unelectable … so they campaign on their commitment to protecting them,” Blackmer wrote in an email statement. “At the same time, they’re taking money from shady groups that want to sell them out from under us. They expect us not to notice. And once they’re elected, they’re indebted to these groups. Guess who they’ll listen to and take meetings with?”

The Senate on Monday narrowly confirmed Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico congressman with a long history of pushing for federal public land sell-offs, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management.

The vote, entirely on party lines, puts a man who has argued that “we do not even need” most federal lands in charge of overseeing nearly 250 million acres of them. It also lays bare the extent to which public lands remain wildly partisan in the halls of Congress, despite overwhelming public support.

Pearce’s nomination was widely seen as a major test for the Senate Stewardship Caucus, which formed in October with the stated goal to advance efforts to “protect and expand access to public lands.” But instead of speaking with one voice on their issue, the caucus’s membership fractured along party lines.

On Monday, three of the four Republican members of the caucus — Sens. Tim Sheehy (Mont.), Steve Daines (Mont.) and Katie Britt (Ala.) — voted to confirm Pearce to the powerful post. Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), the fourth Republican caucus member, did not vote.

All four Democratic caucus members — Sens. Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.) and Chris Coons (Del.) — voted against him.

Pearce’s confirmation to helm the largest federal public land agency was included in a bill advancing a bloc of dozens of nominees that passed 46-43. Eleven senators did not vote.

“It’s telling that Senate leadership had to package Pearce’s vote with nearly 50 other nominees in order to get him confirmed,” Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, a public land advocacy group, said in a statement. “We will not allow self-proclaimed pro-public lands senators to shirk responsibility for this vote. The Senate Stewardship Caucus had a chance to stop Pearce from becoming BLM director, and they failed.”

At his confirmation hearing back in February, Pearce was pressed about his public lands record. He did not disavow his past positions, telling senators, “I’m not so sure that I’ve changed.”

Anna Peterson, executive director of The Mountain Pact, a public land advocacy coalition, said she was “deeply disappointed” in Monday’s vote.

“Pearce’s confirmation will be a disaster for our communities, and puts precious natural landscapes, and irreplaceable cultural resources, in serious jeopardy,” she said in a statement.

Pearce will enter BLM following an exodus of agency leadership. Only four of BLM’s 12 state offices currently have a permanent director, E&E News reported Monday.

At least seven BLM state directors or associate state directors, including Nevada state director Jon Raby, a 37-year veteran of the agency, left last month after accepting the Trump administration’s latest round of buyout and early retirement packages, according to a list compiled by the Center for Western Priorities. The group confirmed many of the recent departures through autoreplies from the former BLM officials’ government email addresses.

In August 2022, Karen Budd-Falen, a private attorney at the time who now serves as the third highest-ranking official at the Interior Department, sent a 53-page appeal challenging a Bureau of Land Management decision to allow a conservation nonprofit to continue grazing bison on public land in central Montana while expanding its access to new areas.

The nonprofit, American Prairie Reserve, seeks to restore bison to many thousands of acres of private and public lands in the state. A July 2022 decision by the BLM authorizing it to maintain its herds on numerous parcels of federal land furthered that effort. The prairie reserve however, has drawn fierce opposition from ranching groups in the state, who see its bison restoration mission as a threat to their livestock and way of life.

Budd-Falen, a self-proclaimed “cowboy lawyer,” filed the appeal on behalf of three pro-ranching entities: the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the North and South Phillips County Cooperative State Grazing Districts. In it, she argued that the BLM’s authorization of bison grazing on the Montana allotments had violated multiple laws and regulations, including the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, and caused “significant harm” to her clients.

The appeal was filed with the Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) — an administrative law body within the Interior Department that normally has the power to issue its own rulings. But in a rare move, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum personally intervened, overriding OHA’s authority over the case.

On December 9 last year, Burgum assumed jurisdiction over three separate appeals challenging American Prairie Reserve’s federal grazing permits, including the appeal Budd-Falen filed. Shortly thereafter, Burgum directed the BLM to reconsider its decision and “take into account the arguments raised” by Budd-Falen’s former clients and other appellates. By then, Budd-Falen had been serving as one of Burgum’s top deputies for approximately nine months.

At the Office of Hearings and Appeals, the administrative law judge whose authority Burgum was overriding emailed a colleague on Dec. 10, 2025 to flag the “high-profile” nature of the bison grazing cases. The judge explicitly highlighted the involvement of Budd-Falen’s long-time law firm in the administrative battle.

“I wanted to alert you to the fact that Falen Law firm (formerly the Budd-Falen law firm) represents one of the parties to the administrative proceeding,” Dawn Perry, an administrative law judge at Interior’s Office of Hearings and Appeals wrote to Amy Sosin, then the acting director of the appeals office. (Budd-Falen divested her interest in her namesake law firm in March 2025. Her husband, Frank Falen, remains at the firm.)

The judge’s email and other case documents were obtained by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and exclusively shared with Public Domain.

Last week, the BLM — an agency that Budd-Falen helps oversee as Interior’s associate deputy secretary — finalized its decision to revoke American Prairie’s permits to graze bison on at least six different federal allotments, fulfilling the very request that Budd-Falen and others made of the agency back in 2022. Among the grazing allotments affected is the Flat Creek allotment in Montana. In her most recent financial disclosure, Budd-Falen lists the “Flat Creek Allotment” in Malta, Montana, as one of her former legal clients.

The Montana Stockgrowers Association did not respond to Public Domain’s request for comment Thursday. In a press release last week, the association applauded BLM’s reversal and touted its 2022 appeal

“Since the initial 2022 decision, MSGA has consistently argued that BLM failed to properly apply the law and overstepped its statutory authority by allowing bison grazing outside the production livestock framework required under the [Taylor Grazing Act],” the organization wrote. “This final decision validates those concerns and marks a significant precedent for public lands grazing policy across the West.”

The Interior Department, in a statement, said that “Karen Budd-Falen has followed all ethical guidelines and recused herself from all matters involving her former clients.”

“Karen Budd-Falen is a highly qualified, principled public servant who brings the utmost expertise to her role at the Department,” the statement continued. “Frankly, your attempt to smear a successful woman who is passionate about her work and dedicated to improving life for the American people is an insult to every hardworking woman across this country.”

At the time of this story’s publication, the Falen law firm had not responded to Public Domain’s queries.

The American Prairie case isn’t the only time Burgum has intervened in an appeal that involved Budd-Falen’s clients. In February 2025, the month before Budd-Falen joined Interior, Burgum assumed jurisdiction over a large number of OHA appeals related to grazing permits in Idaho. One of the appellants involved was a grazing association represented by Budd-Falen herself. She withdrew from the case the same month she joined DOI.

Burgum’s intervention in the Idaho cases in February 2025 also involved Josephine Creek Ranch, which is tied to Mike Boren, a multimillionaire conservative donor. Boren’s name is listed in one of the cases that Burgum took control over. Boren currently serves as the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment at the Department of Agriculture. Last year, he also served a stint at President Trump’s Interior Department.

A Department of Agriculture spokesperson, in a statement, said that Boren has never “conversed with” Burgum about the case and follows his ethics guidance. “Mr. Boren is a minority shareholder of Josephine Creek Ranch, Inc., and gave up any management of the ranch before he entered the administration,” the spokesperson said, adding that “to the best of Mr. Boren’s knowledge, this settlement of the lawsuit has had no impact on the practices of Josephine Creek Ranch, which has always been managed with conservation in mind, although it is likely to be detrimental to the income of several environmental activist attorneys.”

Doug Burgum’s apparent pattern of delivering policy changes that involve or benefit Budd-Falen’s former clients has raised concerns among conservation groups.

“Public lands should be managed for the long-term benefit of all Americans, not for the short-term personal gain of Karen Budd-Falen or her clients,” said Landon Newell, staff attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “Recent news coverage,” he added, “makes clear that an investigation into her actions at DOI is warranted.”

Since joining the Interior Department last year, Budd-Falen has become embroiled in major ethics scandals. As Public Domain has extensively reported, Budd-Falen is facing calls for investigations over potential conflicts of interests stemming from her personal financial ties to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine. She is also facing scrutiny over her work on grazing policies — an issue she was barred from even discussing during the first Trump administration. Her influence on grazing has the potential to benefit her family’s sprawling ranching operations. In March, amid questions from this outlet over her involvement in several grazing policies, the Interior Department’s ethics office granted Budd-Falen a partial waiver that gave her wide latitude to work on grazing, despite her large ranch holdings.

This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

A top Interior Department official is under renewed scrutiny as growing ethics scandals engulf the powerful public lands agency.

Over the weekend, Campaign for Accountability, a government watchdog group, sent letters to the House and Senate seeking Congressional investigations into Karen Budd-Falen, the third highest-ranking official at the Interior Department and a longtime rancher and attorney. The letters, which extensively cite Public Domain’s reporting, detail what the Campaign describes as “serious and escalating ethics violations” and the Interior Department’s “apparent failure” to address them.

“The evidence now available — including on-camera statements by Ms. Budd-Falen herself, financial disclosure records, and ethics documents obtained through public records requests — establishes that she has been actively directing federal public lands policy in ways that benefit her family’s extensive ranching operation, in apparent violation of both the specific ethics commitments she made in the first Trump administration and the federal conflict of interest statute,” the letters read.

As detailed in her latest financial disclosure, Budd-Falen and her family have major financial holdings in western ranches, including permits for grazing on federal land. During her tenure at the Interior Department in Trump’s first term, she was strictly barred from working on or even discussing grazing policy given her potential conflicts of interest. But shortly after reentering the Interior Department early last year, she began working on a variety of grazing-related matters even though she and her family retained major financial stakes in ranches in Wyoming and Nevada. As Public Domain previously reported, her work on grazing-related issues has included involvement in the Interior Department’s recent overhaul of National Environmental Policy Act regulations. That overhaul stands to benefit public land ranchers across the country.

The Campaign for Accountability, in its letter, particularly highlighted a video posted on YouTube in December in which Budd-Falen described working on grazing policies that could directly benefit her family’s large ranching holdings.

“There are around 1,300 vacant allotments for the [Bureau of Land Management] right now,” Budd-Falen told Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) in the video. “By the end of next year, every single vacant allotment will be filled by a rancher, who will be able to get their cattle in there grazed. We’ve added some categorical exclusions so that if you have places like in northern Nevada, where my father-in-law’s place is … We added categorical exclusions so you can move cattle in there temporarily, get some of this grass grazed off, that will also really help the wildfire situation.” What Budd-Falen didn’t mention in the video is that her father-in-law passed away several years ago, and that his long-time ranch is now owned in part by her own husband.

Budd-Falen also described grazing regulations as an issue “closest to my heart” and discussed her excitement about the Interior Department’s work to rewrite the federal regulations that govern public lands ranching in the American West.

“You want to know what put the public ranchland out of business — it was Bruce Babbitt’s regulations,” she told Lummis, referring to the Clinton-era Interior secretary. “By the first of next year, you will see fully new regulations that don’t just fix a few of the Babbitt things — we went back to the Ronald Reagan years and are putting back in those regs.”

The Interior Department is releasing its proposed revisions to federal grazing regulations this week. The Washington Post was the first to report on the YouTube video.

On March 11, amid questions from this outlet over her involvement in grazing policy, the Interior Department’s ethics office granted Budd-Falen a partial waiver that provided her wide latitude to work on grazing issues, despite her large ranch holdings. Since issuing the waiver, Interior has openly touted Budd-Falen’s work in the grazing space. The ethics waiver, however, does not appear to retroactively cover her participation in grazing issues during the first year of her current tenure. The waiver does not appear to have been in effect, for example, when Budd-Falen spoke with Sen. Lummis in December.

Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog organization, wrote in an email to Public Domain that “the major red flag” with the waiver is that “while Budd-Falen had a very broad recusal in the first Trump administration, when her role was more narrow and unlikely to touch matters related to her financial interest, she is now allowed to participate in specific policy matters affecting her financial interests when she is in a more senior role with decision-making powers related to those interests.”

“The waiver acknowledges that the issues related to grazing require hyper-specific knowledge precisely because they impact a niche area of law and a very limited class of landowners, of which Budd-Falen is a member,” Marsco wrote. “These factors seem to make recusal or sale of the financial interest even more, not less, critical, because of the high chance Budd-Falen’s actions in these matters could affect her own bottom line. At the very least, her participation in grazing matters would raise the appearance of a conflict of interest and could impact the public’s trust in the work of the Interior Department.”

The Campaign for Accountability, in its letter, condemned the ethics waiver that Budd-Falen was granted in March. It called on the House and Senate to investigate whether ethics officials at the Interior Department had failed to prevent or address ethics violations.

In an email statement, an Interior spokesperson said Budd-Falen “has complied, and continues to comply, with any and all legal requirements, ethical standards and ethics guidelines.” The statement said Public Domain’s reporting attempted to “smear a successful woman who is passionate about her work.” Frank Falen, Budd-Falen’s husband, did not respond to a request for comment.

Public Domain recently obtained further proof of Budd-Falen’s involvement in grazing-related matters. Emails from July 2025 between Budd-Falen and Bureau of Land Management officials show her weighing in on policy changes sought by the American Sheep Industry Association, a trade industry group that represents sheep producers, including producers that use federal lands for grazing. Public Domain obtained the emails from a FOIA request.

All this comes atop the scandal surrounding Budd-Falen’s financial ties to the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. As Public Domain first reported, Budd-Falen’s husband struck a deal to sell water rights from one of the family ranches to Lithium Nevada, the company behind the controversial mine, shortly after Budd-Falen joined Interior during the first Trump administration. Budd-Falen repeatedly failed to disclose the deal in her required financial disclosures, and the recent waiver giving her permission to work on grazing policy notably makes no mention of it. The New York Times later reported that the Budd-Falen family ranch sold the water right for $3.5 million. Congressional Democrats asked the Interior Department’s inspector general to investigate Budd-Falen over her family’s ties to the lithium mine.

Aaron Weiss, director of the Center for Western Priorities, said you’d have to go back to the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, which involved the Interior Department issuing secret oil leases in Wyoming, to find such an egregious level of self-dealing.

“A $3 million water rights deal with a lithium mine wasn’t enough the first time around, so she went back to re-write grazing regulations that benefit her personally,” said Weiss in a statement about Budd-Falen. “This stuff makes [former Interior secretary] Ryan Zinke’s quest for a brewpub look quaint.”

In a post to X over the weekend, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, called Budd-Falen’s recent actions on grazing policy “brazen” and said the situation “cries out for investigation.”

This story was supported by a grant from The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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This piece was produced in partnership with Fieldnotes, a watchdog organization that investigates the oil and gas industry.

On April 23, 2025, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s aide received a text message from an employee at Continental Resources, the oil and gas behemoth founded by billionaire Harold Hamm. The Continental employee was writing to confirm the details of a get-together between the two powerful men at Oklahoma City’s Skirvin Hotel. Burgum, who runs a federal department that controls vast oil and gas resources, was at the hotel to attend a summit on energy and artificial intelligence hosted by the Hamm Institute for American Energy.

“The secretary will be meeting with Mr. Hamm at 5 PM in the Pearl Mesa room,” Burgum’s aide later confirmed.

Few Americans have such access to top government officials, but Hamm and Burgum have tight ties that go back to Burgum’s tenure as the governor of North Dakota. During the 2024 election cycle, Continental donated $250,000 to support Burgum’s run for president. Burgum has earned up to $50,000 in royalties since late 2022 from a lease his family signed allowing Hamm’s Continental to develop oil and gas on 200 acres of the family’s farm. (When he became Interior Secretary, Burgum was required to divest from his financial ties to Continental.) Burgum even blurbed Hamm’s memoir.

Hamm has not been shy about trumpeting his relationship with members of the Trump administration — particularly Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who he has called “a dream team of unimaginable proportions.”

It is unclear what exactly Hamm and Burgum discussed at their hotel room meeting. Burgum, however, made a major announcement that same day, telling the summit of tech leaders and energy executives that he planned to open more federal lands to oil, gas and mineral extraction while speeding up the issuance of permits.

Since then, the Interior Department has delivered a series of policy changes that have been favorable to oil and gas companies in the Western United States. Continental, which is controlled by Hamm and his family, has directly benefited. Public Domain and Fieldnotes obtained public records that show how Hamm’s company has used its access at the Interior Department to shape the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas oversight and obtain permits for new wells on federal land. Continental’s influence is particularly evident in Converse County, Wyoming, where Hamm’s company has staked much of its future.

Hamm’s company wanted federal drilling permits in Converse County, despite a court injunction that had halted BLM oil and gas permitting across much of the county. Emails show that a Continental staffer last summer contacted a top political appointee at Burgum’s Interior Department, providing a “roadmap” that laid out how the BLM could issue the permits anyway while effectively skirting the court injunction. The Interior Department and the BLM largely obliged. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, the BLM has granted Continental permits for 71 new wells across the county.

“This reminds me of days of the Bush-Cheney administration’s massive push to drill the West, when it was obvious that the oil industry was calling the shots when it came to public land management,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Projects, a conservation group involved in litigation over oil and gas drilling in Wyoming. “But we never had such direct and obvious proof that oil corporations were giving the orders, and BLM officials at the highest levels were obediently carrying them out.”

In a statement, an Interior Department spokesperson said that “Secretary Burgum has complied with all federal ethics requirements and remains committed to protecting America’s ability to responsibly use and care for our federal lands for the profit and benefit of future generations.”

A ‘roadmap’ around an injunction

Converse County, rich in federally-owned oil and gas resources, is critical for Hamm and his company. The county sits at the southern end of the Powder River Basin, which along with the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, is one of the few U.S. regions where Continental believes it can grow oil production.

North Dakota’s Bakken is “tapped out,” said Hamm at an industry conference in Texas last May. “The only ones that really got a lot of growth is the Permian and the Powder.

In 2020, the final year of the first Trump administration, the BLM greenlit up to 5,000 new oil and gas wells across 1.5 million acres in Converse County. Soon after, conservation and local landowner groups sued over the landscape-scale environmental impact statement underlying the decision. In the fall of 2024, a federal judge found that the BLM in its environmental review had relied on flawed modelling that overestimated available groundwater by a factor of 10,000. The judge issued an injunction that led BLM to temporarily pause the approval of new federal drilling permits across much of the county.

This caused a headache for Continental. At the same industry conference that Hamm spoke at in Texas last May, CEO Doug Lawler said that the company expected to run out of approved permits in the area by the end of the year. “In the Powder River Basin, the issue with the BLM and the speed with which permits have been approved is a major, major issue to us,” he told the crowd.

Last summer, things started to change. A couple months after the Hamm-Burgum confab in April 2025 in Oklahoma, a top Interior Department appointee received an email from an employee at Continental.

Continental was seeking permits for three wells in Converse County, some 30 miles northeast of Casper. In a June 3 email, the Continental staffer asked that the BLM review the company’s applications in accordance with the Interior Department’s new emergency permitting procedures. Continental also specifically requested that the BLM complete its environmental analysis of the applications “without tiering to or otherwise using the Environmental Impact Statement prepared for the Converse County Oil and Gas Project” (emphasis in original). In other words, the company explicitly did not want its permits associated with the environmental review that was the subject of the court injunction. Continental attached a six-page memo laying out a “roadmap” for how the BLM could do that.

The morning after receiving Continental’s email, Adam Suess, a former oil and gas executive then serving as Interior’s acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management, reached out to the BLM’s leadership seeking fast action on the request. “Please let’s talk today about the path forward,” he wrote.

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When the acting BLM director suggested they follow the normal procedures, Ryan Hofmann, an advisor to Suess, agreed. “We would want to follow our established process if possible, and ensure that the WY office does the first stage in vetting,” Hofmann wrote.

Still, Suess sought to keep close tabs on Continental’s permits as they moved forward. “If you don’t mind, please keep us up to speed so that we can aid in your efforts,” he wrote to the BLM Wyoming office’s leadership in early June.

In August, the BLM began approving a flood of permits in Converse County, within the area covered by the 2020 environmental review that conservationists had sued over. Continental and other companies have since received approval to drill and frack hundreds of new wells.

The BLM had closely followed Continental’s suggested course of action, basing the approvals on an 18-year-old environmental impact statement as well as a pair of environmental assessments finalized in August and September last year. The agency, per Continental’s request, did not base the new permits on the 2020 environmental impact statement that was tied up in court. In following this strategy, the agency effectively circumvented the judge’s 2024 injunction that had hindered a slew of new federal drilling permits in Converse County.

Conservationists were confused to see permits getting approved, then frustrated when they learned about the workaround. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a bedrock law that mandates environmental reviews for major federal actions, including drilling projects on federally-owned land — is being undermined, they believe.

“Continental effectively handed the agency a playbook for sidestepping the new NEPA analysis, and BLM was all too willing to follow it,” said Sarah Stellberg, a lawyer with Advocates for the West, which represents the conservation groups involved in the lawsuit over Converse County oil and gas drilling. “The priority was clear: Move permits out the door and sideline environmental safeguards.”

Continental Resources did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘A changed world’

Maria Katherman, a local who has lived in Converse County for 30 years, says what the BLM is doing is “dishonest.”

“We have regulatory protections that if you have a landscape-level development, then you also have a landscape-level environmental analysis of its impacts,” said Katherman, who is on the board of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a group involved in the lawsuit. Now, the BLM is allowing oil and gas development to surge ahead without the proper analysis, “but it still is having those landscape-level impacts to the water, to the wildlife,” she said.

In contrast, Hamm seems elated. “It’s a changed world, all of a sudden,” he said, speaking in October 2025 at a summit hosted by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. “You can get permits in Converse County, Wyoming for the first time.”

In February 2026, the federal judge threw out the disputed 2020 environmental impact statement for oil and gas development in Converse County because it didn’t consider alternatives that would have slowed the pace of development and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. It was a win for the conservation groups who challenged the project. The state of Wyoming, Continental, and Devon Energy are now appealing that decision.

Despite the court’s ruling, the BLM continues to sign off on new drilling permits in Converse County using workarounds. Since Trump took office for a second time, the agency has approved a total of 511 wells within the county — 482 of them within the area covered by the now-vacated environmental impact statement. The majority of the drilling permits have gone to Anschutz Exploration, Devon Energy, Continental, and Anadarko Petroleum. These totals don’t include wells drilled on private land to access privately-owned minerals.

As the drilling boom continues, it’s changing the landscape irrevocably. Katherman used to ride her horse in the area where much of the oil and gas development is occurring. She’d see antelope, eagles, and sage grouse on the windswept steppe.

“One of the great beauties is the open sky, because you can stand there and you can see for miles and miles,” she said. Now, “you see flares, you see well pads, you see a tremendous amount of truck traffic.”

Hamm, on the other hand, seems pleased with the changes the Trump administration has made to public land policy.

“Some of the regulatory hurdles that was there before, they’ve been removed,” he said at an event in Washington, DC in January. “And that does lower our cost of doing business.”

Ted Auch contributed to this report.

The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to the resumed use of so-called “cyanide bombs” on Bureau of Land Management parcels across the country, according to an internal April 2026 memo. The memo shows that BLM has effectively abrogated a Biden-era ban on the deployment of the controversial devices on the agency’s land.

M-44s, also known as “cyanide bombs”, are poison traps — spring-loaded devices that spray a powder of sodium cyanide when triggered. They are used by USDA’s Wildlife Services — a federal agency that conducts predator control programs — to kill coyotes and other animals that interfere with ranchers and other industry groups.

M-44s gained national notoriety in 2017 when 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield and his dog were sprayed by a cyanide bomb that had been placed in the hills behind the Mansfield family home in Idaho. The dog, Kasey, collapsed and died while Mansfield was rushed to the hospital and survived.

In 2023, the Biden administration barred Wildlife Services from deploying M-44s on BLM lands, a move that was cheered by conservation groups.

The new memo between BLM and Wildlife Services appears to abolish the Biden-era directive. It no longer contains the Biden-era language that prohibited M-44 use on BLM land. Rather, the new memo specifically contemplates their revived deployment on BLM land, directing Wildlife Services to provide notice to local BLM offices prior to use “of restricted-use pesticides such as … M-44s that deliver sodium cyanide.” The memo will remain in effect until 2031.

You can read the April 2026 memo here.

“These devices are indiscriminate killers and cannot be used safely,” said Brooks Fahy, the executive director of Predator Defense, who has long campaigned against M-44 use and first obtained a copy of the April memo. “We are going to fight this tooth and nail.”

The Interior Department, in a response sent to Public Domain after publication, stated that the April 2026 memo between BLM and Wildlife Services “identifies restricted‑use pesticides—including M‑44 devices—as tools that may be considered under existing law and environmental review. The MOU does not itself authorize or expand use of M‑44s; any proposed application requires advance notification to BLM, compliance with NEPA and other statutes, and must conform to all laws and regulations. BLM will continue to evaluate proposals case‑by‑case and may prohibit or restrict such tools where warranted to protect public safety, pets, wildlife, and designated lands.”

In a video announcing his Congressional bid in Montana last month, longtime conservative radio host Aaron Flint bemoaned the prospect of “public lands being fenced off.”

Flint, the Trump-endorsed veteran running to replace outgoing Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, has been quick to paint himself as a champion of federal public lands — a smart move for anyone seeking elected office in The Treasure State, where polls show that federal lands are wildly popular.

“Public lands in public hands,” Flint told Northern Ag Network radio in a mid-March interview. “I’m so proud of our Republican congressional delegation who led that charge to protect our public lands. I stood with them then and I will stand with them defending our public lands moving forward.”

Montana’s Republican delegation — Zinke, Sen. Steve Daines, Sen. Tim Sheehy and Rep. Troy Downing — was widely credited with helping block a GOP effort last year to sell off millions of acres of public lands under the guise of combating America’s housing crunch. Zinke and Daines both announced in early March that they will not seek reelection.

But if Flint wins the election, it is unclear whether he will fortify or undermine this so-called “Montana firewall” against federal land divestment. Flint enters his race with a history of voicing support for transferring federal lands to state control — a move that would forever strip them from the broader public’s hands and could ultimately lead to privatization.

"If the state of Montana is doing a better job managing their land, then why do we want the federal government to own the land,” Flint said during a 2014 interview with fellows at the Property and Environment Research Center, or PERC, a Montana-based nonprofit that has a history of advocating for the privatization of federal acres. “If you really were an environmentalist, you would be supporting efforts to get some of this federal land back into state hands because the federal government is failing right now.”

In a 2015 post to X (formerly Twitter), Flint declared that “many Montanans want to transfer it from the bankrupting fed govt to state owned public land.”

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In another post from 2014, he argued money from the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses oil and gas revenue to acquire and protect lands and water resources, “should be used to transfer more fed lands into state lands.”

Here are a few other things Flint has had to say about federal public lands over the years:

In response to Flint’s pro-public-lands social media post last month, a Public Domain reporter noted in a post to X that the current Montana Republican Party platform, adopted in June 2024, calls for “relinquishing federally managed public lands to the states in order to secure statehood equality and provide for better management of public lands.”

Heather Swift, a longtime spokesperson for Zinke, swooped in with a Trumpian defense of Flint.

“Let me introduce you to a wild concept that the liberal brain can’t comprehend: differing opinions,” Swift wrote on X. “In 2016 Zinke resigned as a delegate in protest of the party plank to sell public lands. In 2025 Zinke defeated GOP attempts to sell public lands. And candidate Flint opposes the sale of public lands. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

But Flint’s past pronouncements, issued back in 2015 long before voters were paying attention to him, align with that of the Montana GOP platform.

“Arguably the members of the federal delegation should be leading the Montana party not ‘differing’ with it,” Dave Chadwick, a former executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation, wrote in an email to Public Domain. “Either they are brazenly misleading their own party grassroots leadership by including transfer language which they then oppose, or they are misleading the rest of us by saying that they oppose it.”

“If Flint wins the primary, he will also be a voting delegate to the 2026 Montana GOP platform convention,” Chadwick added. “Will he support transferring federal public lands to the state or will he disregard the Montana GOP platform?”

Montana Republicans have a history of running away from pro-land-transfer positions once they come face-to-face with their state’s voters. Polls show Montanans deeply oppose federal land sales and transfers. A 2026 survey conducted by the University of Montana found that 84% of Montana voters support a ban on the sale or transfer of national public lands.

Sheehy called for federal lands to be “turned over to state agencies, or even counties” in a podcast interview shortly after launching his bid for Senate in late 2023, as Public Domain co-founder Chris D’Angelo previously reported for HuffPost. Sheehy spent the remainder of the campaign working to distance himself from those comments and PERC, where Sheehy served as a board member.

Flint was among those who came to Sheehy’s defense at the time. In an interview with Sheehy on his Montana Talks radio show, Flint railed against “BS” TV ads “lying” about Sheehy’s public lands agenda. Flint’s radio show guests over the years also included William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during the first Trump administration and has a long history of advocating for federal lands to be sold off.

Flint’s campaign did not respond to queries about whether he disavows his past pro-land-transfer statements. Have his views changed? If so, why? The aspiring Congressman did not answer these and other questions.

Flint’s Democratic opponents, meanwhile, slammed his past statements.

“Western Montana needs representatives who will fight like hell to defend public lands and oppose public land transfer and privatization,” said Sam Forstag, a progressive Forest Service smokejumper who is running in the Democratic primary for Zinke’s old seat, “that’s exactly why I’m running.”

Ryan Busse, a Democrat from Kalispell and former gun industry executive who is also running for Zinke’s seat, said “the veneer that the Republicans and Democrats are the same on public lands is pretty much gone here.”

“I think this is going to be a big, big moment for public lands here,” Busse added. “This will be an election where it finally is front and center.”

This story has been updated with comments from Flint’s interview with PERC in 2014.

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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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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