Our Best Work of 2025
Public Domain's Top Ten Stories of the Year
It has been a wild year at Public Domain. We launched this project in February 2025 with a promise to deliver hard-hitting news about America’s public lands and the agencies that manage them. We think we have fulfilled that promise, writing scores of stories that punched above the weight of our small publication. We’ve held the Trump administration to account, uncovered potential wrongdoing among top political appointees, and obtained documents that no other news outlet has published. We couldn’t have done it without your support, and we are planning for more hard-hitting coverage in the coming year.
Without further ado, here are Public Domain’s top ten stories of 2025:
In April, Public Domain obtained a leaked copy of the Trump administration’s draft strategic plan for the Interior Department. The document detailed the administration’s plans to squeeze revenue from the federal estate, open up new lands to drilling and other extractive development while reducing federal land holdings and slashing environmental regulations. The leak caused fury at the Interior Department, and was picked up by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg and other national outlets. It was a major scoop for our small team, and we were proud to give our readers exclusive insight into Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s vision for the agency.
This was Public Domain’s inaugural story, and it made a big splash. Our team was the first to uncover the name of the top DOGE operative at DOI — Tyler Hassen — and reveal to readers his botched efforts to influence federal water policy in California. The story was cited by ProPublica, and scooped major national outlets, including CNN.
A Top Trump Official Has Financial Ties to Controversial Nevada Lithium Project
This recent investigation delved into Karen Budd-Falen, one of the most powerful political appointees at Trump’s Interior Department. Public Domain partnered with High Country News to report on Budd-Falen’s financial ties to a controversial lithium mine in Nevada called Thacker Pass. Her government calendar shows that she had a lunch meeting with Lithium Nevada, the name of the company building the mine, during Trump’s first term, when she served as a top legal official at DOI. This was a significant scoop and there is likely more to this story. We plan to continue covering it in the new year.
She Covered Trump’s Interior Chief at Fox News. Now She’s His Flack.
The Interior Department’s press office has been clownishly unprofessional in its interactions with Public Domain, taking every opportunity to denigrate the work we do. So we dug into one of the key figures in that office, Aubrie Spady. She was a journalist at Fox News, who earlier this year wrote glowing stories about Doug Burgum. And what do you know? In March, she landed a job serving Burgum as his press flack. We also note that Spady’s father has close ties to GOP politicians. The story evoked a heated response from DOI.
Ted Nugent Has Waged a Years-Long Standoff Over CWD With Texas Officials
Roque, one of Public Domain’s co-founders, has been tenaciously covering the Chronic Wasting Disease outbreak plaguing his home state of Texas. CWD is a degenerative prion disease that is 100 percent fatal to deer and elk, and the disease has spurred concerns across the country about the potential risk it poses to human health. It is spreading rapidly and some states have taken aggressive measures to contain it. Some are not happy about those containment measures, including right-wing rocker Ted Nugent, who has resisted Texas’ authority to manage deer afflicted with the disease. The story featured colorful quotes from Nugent himself, who gleefully shared our reporting with his social media followers.
He Lobbied for Offshore Oil Drillers. Now He Runs the Agency that Regulates Him.
We investigated the top political official at Trump’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a DOI agency that regulates offshore oil drilling. And the story made a big impact. Matt Giacona is the guy running the show at BOEM on Trump’s behalf. Before joining DOI, he was a lobbyist for the offshore oil industry, pushing all sorts of pro-oil policies on Capitol Hill. Since joining BOEM, he has worked on many of the same issues that were the focus of his career as a lobbyist. The story drew on an extensive set of public records we obtained. Based on our reporting, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee asked the Interior Department’s Inspector General to open an investigation into Giacona for potential ethical violations.
Inside Utah’s PR Campaign to Seize Public Land
Co-published with High Country News, this investigation was based on public records obtained from the state of Utah. It detailed Utah’s long-running public relations campaign to build support for its efforts to seize federal public lands within its borders. The story uncovered the state’s use of actors, AI, NDAs, and tools to sway public opinion in its favor. The investigation was one of HCN’s top stories of the year.
Mike Lee’s Botched Plot to Sell-Off Public Land
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah wants to strip the American public of its ownership stake in federal public lands. He has been fanatically committed to this goal for years. And earlier this year, during the negotiations over Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, he slipped language into the legislation that would have forced the sell off of millions of acres of BLM and Forest Service lands across the West. The proposal sparked furious opposition from conservationists as well as many prominent conservatives, and Lee ultimately backed down. We covered his machinations, and his ultimate failure, in a series of stories. But be warned: Lee persists in his effort to destroy the federal land system as we know it. Just last week, he launched a new (if more modest) effort to dispose of public land in his home state.
Trump’s Interior Secretary Has Close Ties to the De-Extinction Company He Promotes
You likely recall the headlines earlier this year about Colossal Biosciences claiming to have resurrected the long-extinct dire wolf. When Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used his official platform to promote the biotech company and its “de-extinction” technology as the future of species conservation, we decided to dig into whether he had any personal ties to the company. Sure enough, our investigation found that while Burgum was governor of North Dakota, the state’s development fund awarded the company a $3 million equity investment and Burgum cultivated close ties to company leadership, event sending its CEO a gift basket. One of Burgum’s cabinet members went on to join the company as an unpaid advisor.
Early this year, Texas wildlife officials revealed a major investigation into what would become the largest deer trafficking operation in state history. Two dozen suspects allegedly smuggled live captive deer, while trapping and killing wild ones to remove their lymph nodes to falsify state disease tests. The operation aimed to skirt chronic wasting disease containment rules designed to control an unexplained CWD outbreak that has plagued Texas deer breeders and high-fenced game ranchers since 2021. Public Domain was first to report out many of the details of that ongoing investigation — including the fact that it netted a board member of the Texas Deer Association, the voice of the deer-breeding lobby, and that deer at his facility later tested positive for CWD.
Thank you again to our readers, and especially to our paid subscribers who help sustain this work. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider chipping in. Our team will be taking some time off over the holidays, but we have a lot in store for 2026. Happy holidays!
- Jimmy, Roque & Chris