Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced late Saturday that he was pulling a plan to sell up to more than 1 million acres of federal land from the Trump-backed ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’
A controversial plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public land across Western states — including California — was axed from the Republican tax and spending bill amid bipartisan backlash, prompting celebration from conservationists.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who spearheaded the proposal, announced he was pulling the provision on Saturday night on the social media platform X. Lee had said the land sale was intended to ease the financial burden of housing, pointing to a lack of affordability afflicting families in many communities.
“Because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, I was unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock and not to any foreign interests,” he wrote in the post.
For that reason, he said, he was withdrawing the measure from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump has said he wants passed by July 4.
Lee’s failed measure would have mandated the sale of between roughly 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in 11 Western states, including California.
