This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.
A proposal to sell 500,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management holdings in Nevada and Utah that’s generated political conversation and consternation in recent months reemerged last week.
The proposal was amended into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by the House Natural Resources Committee in early May, then stripped out by the House Budget Committee hours before the full chamber passed the package by a razor-thin margin. After that vote, public lands advocates thanked Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke for his leadership on the issue — he’d told Republican colleagues he wouldn’t vote for the 1,000-plus-page bill with the public land sale in it — and breathed a cautious sigh of relief.
That relief didn’t last long.
Last week, E&E News reported that Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, plans to add the public land sale back into the bill on the Senate side.
Supporters of the proposal argue that it will help fund the tax cuts in Trump’s budgetary megabill, which is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt. Opponents describe it as a short-sighted land grab that will rob Americans of cherished recreational opportunities.
On June 4, Montana Free Press emailed Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy to request interviews to learn whether Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Sheehy, the freshman Republican who won Democrat Jon Tester’s seat in November, would vote for the bill if the federal land sale is amended back in.
RELATED
Zinke, Downing line up behind Trump budget bill
Montana’s two congressional representatives are among a faction of Republicans backing President Donald Trump’s sprawling budget bill currently working its way through the U.S. House.
Communications staffers for the senators declined to grant MTFP’s interview requests, instead providing emailed statements that don’t directly address the question.
“Sen. Daines opposes public land sales,” spokesperson Matt Lloyd wrote, noting Daines’ June 4 appearance on Fox News. Asked in that interview to respond to Elon Musk’s scathing critique of the bill’s fiscal footprint, Daines praised Musk as “one of the geniuses of this economy” and then called for his colleagues to pass the proposal.
“Failure’s not an option. We must pass this bill,” Daines said on Fox. “We face a $4.5 trillion tax increase if we don’t.”
In the statement provided by his office, Sheehy described public lands access as a bipartisan issue.
“There’s no question that public lands belong in public hands. That’s not just a slogan, it’s a way of life and one thing most Montanans agree on regardless of party,” Sheehy said. “I will always fight to protect our right to hunt, fish, and recreate on our public lands.”
The conversation escalated another notch June 5, when E&E reported that Daines was pushing Lee for changes to a land sales amendment, urging consideration of sales that are “very, very narrow in scope,” and explicitly barring federal land sales in Montana.
The story generated a flurry of statements from public lands advocacy groups.
“Senator Daines: Giving an inch is taking hundreds of thousands of square miles. You’re either opposed to selling public lands or you’re not. There is no in-between. There is no ‘narrow in scope’ when it comes to selling off public lands in order to give tax breaks to billionaires,” American Hunters & Anglers Co-Chair Land Tawney said in a statement.
Daines staffers engaged in damage control after the E&E News story was published, issuing a statement later that day acknowledging “some confusion” about Daines’ stance. Spokesperson Gabby Wiggins insisted that Daines has been and remains against the sale of public lands and is merely “holding discussions with his colleagues in the Senate and bringing up his strong concerns.”
Wednesday morning will bring an opportunity to gauge the effect of Daines’ conversations with Lee. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to take up the Interior Department portion of the budget bill at 10 a.m.
LATEST STORIES
BLM nominee talks land sales, local management in Senate confirmation hearing
Steve Pearce, a New Mexico Republican who appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 25, 2026, has come under fire from conservation groups for formerly calling for the sale of federal land to reduce the federal deficit.
Report: Missoula housing prices down overall, affordability still limited
In 2025, the median sale price of a Missoula-area home decreased 2.2% to $550,000, according to the 2026 Five Valleys Housing Report. That includes sales of single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and manufactured homes on owned lots.
CWD is spreading in Montana. Will deer and elk populations decline as a result?
Chronic Wasting Disease was first detected in Montana in 2017. Now, the always-fatal disease has been detected in one-third of the state’s hunting districts. What does that mean for deer and elk?