Voters dealt a major blow to Republican-led attacks on public land protections Tuesday, with Democrats surging back into power across the country — even in districts and states once viewed as uncontestable GOP strongholds.
For the last 18 months, Trump and his Republican Congress have dismantled environmental protections and approved industrial development on the federal estate at breakneck speed, often at the behest of MAGA supporters and donors, and in pursuit of what the White House calls its “energy dominance” agenda.
Voter concerns about public lands played a mostly peripheral role in an election widely viewed as a referendum on the economic chaos and corruption of the second Trump administration, which presided over rising prices, a draconian immigration crackdown and a disastrous war in Iran.
But public land issues likely helped shape the results in certain races. Take Montana Democrat Sam Forstag, a progressive Forest Service smokejumper who was inspired to enter politics by Trump’s DOGE cuts to federal land management agencies. Forstag took his Republican opponent, conservative radio host Aaron Flint, to task on the issue throughout the campaign, running numerous public lands-focused ads and dismissing Flint’s promise to “keep public lands in public hands” as empty.
Forstag declared victory early Wednesday, after Flint called to concede the race. Forstag will replace outgoing Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke and join a Montana delegation that was widely credited with blocking Republican attempts to sell off millions of acres of federal public land during last year’s budget negotiations.
Those sell-off schemes and Trump’s proposed rollback of the “roadless rule” have alienated public land hunters in the west, a conservative-leaning constituency.
And the administration’s ever-shifting plans to erect border security infrastructure on popular west Texas public lands including Big Bend National Park likely dampened the enthusiasm of some Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in the Lone Star State. Brewster County, where Big Bend National Park is located, went from favoring Trump by 12 percentage points in 2024 to helping elect Democrat Padilla Stout by a margin of more than 5 percent, Big Bend Sentinel reporter Sam Karas noted on X.
Come January, Democrats will take control of Congress with sizable majorities in both houses — wrenching away control from Republicans who had used their governing trifecta to ram through some of their most contentious measures.
“Americans may disagree about plenty of things, but protecting our public lands continues to bring us together,” Wilderness Society President Tracy Stone-Manning wrote in an email to Public Domain. “Poll after poll shows that these places are common ground across political divides, and the incoming Congress has an important opportunity to build on that shared commitment.”
The massive public land sell-offs that U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and others came so close to orchestrating last year are dead and buried. Instead, Republicans are likely to find themselves on the defensive.
Public land champion U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) is poised to take the helm of the House Natural Resources Committee, ousting the industry-friendly Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.). Democrats are chomping at the bit to investigate Interior Department officials, who have faced ethics scandals. In an interview Wednesday on CNN, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who is set to chair the House Judiciary Committee, said Trump’s exploitation of public lands will be an oversight priority for Democrats.
Democrats will not be able to quickly undo some of the Trump administration’s most consequential changes. Mandatory oil-and-gas lease sales included in last year’s spending bill will proceed. The Trump administration will likely continue its efforts to roll back land protections and boost grazing, logging and other extractive industries across the federal estate.
The Bureau of Land Management already scrapped a Joe Biden-era rule elevating the role of conservation at the agency, and is expected to issue rules curtailing the agency’s existing wilderness management practices.
Still, Democratic gains may translate to increased support for bipartisan proposals to shield public lands from sell-offs, like the Public Lands in Public Hands Act or the Public Lands Integrity Act. And advocates say a more balanced Congress will help them protect popular public lands that have faced encroachment from Trump’s development agenda.
“I am more optimistic than ever that we can see success with a ‘Protect Big Bend Forever Act’ in the new Congress,” said the park’s former superintendent Bob Krumenaker, who now chairs the non-partisan group Keep Big Bend Wild. “I also think the prospects of it being truly bipartisan just increased.”
Perhaps the biggest open public lands question for Congress is what the midterm elections will mean for the controversial permitting bill.
A bipartisan group of senators, including Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mike Lee, struck a deal ahead of the elections to speed permitting for large energy projects on public lands, including transmission lines and data centers. The bill makes it harder for future administrations to undo permits and would limit protections embedded in key conservation laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
Renewable energy companies are backing the proposed law, but it faces opposition from both environmental groups and tribes concerned about the bill’s limitations on tribal consultation and reduced oversight. The proposal appears increasingly contentious in an election where hostility against data centers played a key role in motivating voters.
“Any permitting deal passed under this administration must strengthen the guardrails that keep Burgum and Trump in check, not hand them a blank check,” Aaron Weiss, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, wrote in a statement last month. “Senator Heinrich should pump the brakes on this bill during the lame duck session and work with leaders in the next Congress to get it right.”
The permitting bill is scheduled for a Senate vote on Nov. 9.
Disclosure: The Wilderness Society has been a financial supporter of Public Domain, which earns its money through a combination of grants and reader support. Financial supporters play no role in our editorial decisions. See a list of our funders here.