The American public fought tooth and nail over the summer to preserve public lands after Utah Senator Mike Lee included a sell-off in the proposed "Big, Beautiful" reconciliation bill. And we won. After weeks of public pressure, with folks calling and writing and showing up to their representatives' offices, the provisions were stripped from the proposal.
Everyone came together, all the granola-eating hippies, grungy off-roaders, and armed-to-the-teeth hunters, and we won. We did it by coming together, and we're going to have to do it again, as while those sales were removed, state and federal officials have devised a new tactic to ensure the endgame of public land sales is implemented no matter what: cutting the public out of the process.
And that's already occurring in Utah, which has become the epicenter of the public lands sell-off movement, something I just don't understand given how much the state makes off having it. It's almost like our politicians are bought and paid for and don't actually care about the revenue derived from those outdoor activities because it's not hitting their bank accounts as donor money does...
