No, Yellowstone Is Not Up For Sale, Senator Leading Charged Public Lands Bill Says
'This is not the crown jewel land'
Is there a sinister GOP plan to destroy Yellowstone and our national parks?
The "one big, beautiful bill” received a draft proposal last week from the Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee-led Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which would mandate the sale of between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service in the American West.
While Lee has framed the proposal as a means to increase affordable housing, critics claim it would do little to aid in the housing crisis and instead would just bar the public from beautiful land they now still can enjoy.
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck doesn’t share their critique.
“What we mean by ‘affordable housing’ is if you take a look at the percentage of land that is owned in some of these states, you can’t live in a house in some of these states, close to anything, for less than a million dollars. Because there’s no land,” Glenn explains on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“Can we just look at the perspective here? The federal government owns 640 million acres. That is nearly 28% of all land in America. How much land do we have? Well, that’s about the size of France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined,” he continues.
“They own and hold pristine land that is more than the size of those countries combined, and most of that is west of the Mississippi, where the federal control smothers the states, shuts down opportunity, and turns local citizens into tenants of the federal estate,” he adds.
With less land available for citizens, there are higher prices and less state taxes paid on land.
“We’re not talking about selling Yellowstone or paving over Yosemite or anything like that. We’re talking about less than one-half of one percent of federal land that is remote, hard to access, or mismanaged,” Glenn says.
“This is really important,” he continues. “The federal government is, what, $35 trillion in debt, or are we $45 trillion now? I’m not sure. Our entitlement programs are all strained, infrastructure crumbling, and yet we’re still clinging to millions of acres of land that the federal government can’t maintain.”
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No, Mike Lee isn’t paving over Yellowstone for condos
The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.
Here’s what’s really happening.
Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.
The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.
Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.
Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.
Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.
Failed management
Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.
Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.
So what do they do when the herd gets too big?
They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.
And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?
Biden’s federal land-grab
Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.
The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.
That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.
You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.
Land as collateral
Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.
What happens if America defaults on its debt?
RELATED: Why California’s ‘model state’ is a warning, not a goal
Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.
This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.
The American way
There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.
Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.
Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?
Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.
This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.
So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.
Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.
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Democrats vote overwhelmingly to allow illegal aliens to continue voting in key district
The House passed another bill Tuesday night protecting election integrity, but Democrats are once again digging their heels in.
The bill repeals a Washington, D.C., ordinance known as the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 that allows noncitizens to vote in local elections. Just 56 Democrats joined 210 Republicans to bar noncitizens from voting in these American elections, while 148 Democrats voted to continue allowing illegal aliens to vote in D.C.
'It is a national embarrassment that foreign citizens can vote in America’s capital city.'
Republican Rep. August Pfluger of Texas, who led the bill in the House, said the legislation was "common sense" and that "only American citizens should be able to vote in U.S. elections."
"Last night, 148 Democrats voted against my bill to prohibit noncitizens from voting in D.C.," Pfluger said. "Let me be clear: Every vote against this bill was a vote for the transfer of political power away from the citizen voter."
🚨 I just spoke on the House floor in support of H.R. 884, my legislation to stop noncitizens from voting in DC elections.
Congress must exercise its constitutional right and duty to restore commonsense and accountability in our nation's capital. Watch my full remarks: pic.twitter.com/61s8nKaC67
— Rep. August Pfluger (@RepPfluger) June 10, 2025
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) echoed Pfluger's sentiment, saying "foreign actors" are being given the same privileges as American citizens.
"Only American citizens should decide the outcome of American elections," Johnson said. "Yet the D.C. City Council has made it clear they actually want noncitizens and even foreign actors to have an equal say in choosing a mayor and other local public officials in our nation’s capital. As the constitutional authority overseeing the District, House Republicans stand firm against this un-American decision which undermines the rule of law and the core principles of our republic."
RELATED: Republicans clash with Democratic lawmakers defending violent anti-ICE rioters
Other Republicans like Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah came out against the D.C. ordinance, calling it an "embarrassment" and "grotesquely unjust."
"For decades, Democrats slandered conservatives as conspiracy theorists for exposing their strategy to import illegal alien voters," Gill said. "But that’s exactly what they are doing right now: fighting to allow illegal aliens to vote. This is not only grotesquely unjust, but it waters down the meaning of American citizenship."
"It is a national embarrassment that foreign citizens can vote in America’s capital city," Lee said.
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If Only Ukraine-Loving Senate Republicans Put Americans First For Once
While Senate Republicans rush to punish Putin, they dither on cutting taxes, shrinking government, and securing the border.Lawmaker flat-out admits Democrats regularly discuss 'legal strategy' to thwart Trump administration
President Donald Trump and his administration have long been the targets of lawfare motivated by leftists, stretching back to his first term. Although Democrats have played semantic games to categorize these attacks as anything other than politically motivated, one lawmaker finally said the quiet part out loud.
Democratic Rep. Laura Friedman of California told town hall attendees Monday that she and her colleagues regularly gather in closed-door meetings dedicated to plotting legal attacks against Trump and his administration.
While this practice has become commonplace within the Democratic Party, congressional Republicans are doing what they can to put a stop to it.
"Every single week we have a litigation working group where a large group of us, and I'm talking there's maybe 75 members of the House, sit down every single week with the [attorneys general] to talk about legal strategy," Friedman said. "This is all going on every single week behind the scenes. It is nonstop."
Friedman quickly diluted the severity of her admission by mentioning additional and more common avenues politicians use to attack each other.
"It is nonstop introduction of bills and legislation, nonstop being on social media as much as we can without being throttled, without the, you know, crazy analytics, and doing all these things," Friedman said.
Friedman finally confirmed that Democrats are in fact coordinating behind closed doors to weaponize the justice system against their political opponents. While this practice has become commonplace within the Democratic Party, congressional Republicans are doing what they can to put a stop to it.
In light of Friedman's remarks, it's clear that these safeguards are more important than ever.
In recent weeks, numerous federal judges have blocked many of Trump's executive orders in an attempt to stifle his administration. Most notoriously, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg blocked the administration's deportations of illegal migrants from Venezuela despite their affiliation with the violent gang Tren de Aragua.
As a result, both House and Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to combat these rogue judges.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Restraining Judicial Activists Act in late March, which would establish a district court with three judges to check rulings made against the executive branch. At the same time, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act, which limits district judges' power of imposing nationwide injunctions. Issa's bill passed the House in early April and is now on its way to the Senate.
In light of Friedman's remarks, it's clear that these safeguards are more important than ever.
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