Public Domain Celebrates A Year Of Breaking Big Stories

In our first year, Public Domain helped shape the national conversation on public lands

The Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. It’s places like this that keep us motivated. Courtesy Jimmy Tobias

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.

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.