The Biggest Federal Land Heist in the History of the West?
The United States possesses a natural bounty of federal public lands, sprawling across the West and encompassing spectacular mountains, sagebrush basins, and cactus-studded deserts. It is a birthright of all Americans to have access to these lands, but they have long been coveted by commercial exploiters including real estate barons, oil executives, livestock associations, mining corporations. Today, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are joining forces for the latest land heist targeting the western public domain, and theirs is a multi-pronged offensive.
A Trump Executive Order to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund could be funded by the sell-off of public lands. In the budget reconciliation process, congressional Republicans are considering whether to sell-off public lands around cities and National Parks to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. In the budgeting process, Congress voted down a bill that would have blocked selling off public lands to prop up the federal budget. There are plans afoot to site artificial-intelligence datacenters on public lands. The State of Utah has chipped in by demanding that all unallocated federal lands in the state – totaling 18.5 million acres – be transferred to state ownership, despite the explicit provision in the Utah Constitution that “they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries” of the state.
President Trump is buttressing the land-seizure effort by undermining the federal land management agencies. His administration started by firing “probationary workers,” comprised of new hires and employees who had changed positions within the last year. The administration thought it could get away with firing all of these employees – tens of thousands in number – with a template letter stating they were being released for performance-related reasons (without actually checking their job performances). But unions and nonprofits (including, for full disclosure, Western Watersheds Project) initially turned them back in the courts. But now the injunctions blocking mass-firings have been removed. Meanwhile, Trump is plowing ahead with a new “fork in the road” offering payoffs in exchange for quitting (another round has just been announced), and “Reductions in Force” decisions aimed at eliminating not just the workers but their positions as well. To top it all off, Trump has announced his intention to eliminate entire Departments, such as the Department of Education and the research arm of the Environmental Protection Agency.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/14/the-biggest-federal-land-heist-in-the-history-of-the-west/
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