We Will Never Forgive or Forget Those Who Sell Our Public Lands
A record of betrayal. A call to remember. A warning to those still selling.
There is no forgiveness for those who sell the soul of a nation for profit. No forgetting, either.
When public land is handed off to corporations, carved up for drilling, or fenced in for those who can pay, something fundamental is lost. Not just acres. Not just access. But a shared belief that this country still belongs to its people.
To sell off what was meant to be held in common is not a policy decision. It's a betrayal. And betrayals like that don’t get to be quietly buried in the footnotes of history.
So we’re making a promise.
We’re keeping track.
Every lawmaker who moves to dismantle the public estate will be named. We’ll post the receipts. We’ll make the record permanent. Because forgetting is complicity. And we intend to remember.
What follows is not a list of grievances. It’s a ledger of loss and a warning to those who would keep dealing.
This isn’t just a record. It’s a warning shot. Read it, share it, and make sure they know we’re watching.
The Promise They Betrayed
“Laws change. People die. The land remains.”
That was Abraham Lincoln in 1864, when he signed the Yosemite Grant – the first time in the history of the world that land was formally set aside not for profit, but for posterity.
Even in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln understood that preserving a landscape could be an act of national unity. That there was power in declaring – this place belongs to everyone, and to no one. That idea was radical then. It still is.
What began at Yosemite became a uniquely American principle – that the highest use of a canyon, a forest, or a desert might be no “use” at all. That freedom meant more than owning property – it meant the freedom to roam a place that could never be owned. The freedom to pass something down, untouched. The freedom to stand on a ridge at sunset and know that no one, not even Congress, had the right to sell it out from under you.
That principle shaped our national character. It wasn’t carved into law all at once. It was carried forward – by Teddy Roosevelt, who called conservation the great moral issue of his time. By FDR, who saw parks as proof of democracy’s promise. By Jimmy Carter who preserved the unfathomable expanses of Alaska for all time. By every generation that chose to protect instead of extract.
But that inheritance is now under threat from the very people sworn to uphold it.
Not by accident. Not quietly.
They are writing laws to undo Lincoln’s.
They are treating the land not as a legacy, but as leverage.
They think we won’t notice.
They think we’ve forgotten what this land was meant to be.
But we haven’t.
Because the land remains.
And so does the duty to defend it.
Naming the Sin
Let’s not mince words.
To sell off public lands – piece by piece, clause by clause, backroom deal by backroom deal – is nothing short of looting. A civic crime. A form of treason.
And it’s being done in suits and ties, with drafted amendments and polished press releases, by people who have convinced themselves that patriotism means selling the country off one acre at a time.
They don’t say they’re selling it, of course. They say they’re “unleashing potential.” “Increasing opportunity.” “Balancing stakeholder interests.” Euphemisms, all of them. We’ve heard the language. We know what it means.
It means miles wide craters in sacred deserts.
It means timber sales in roadless forests.
It means grazing leases priced below market while streams run dry, native species are extirpated, and sagebrush disappears.
It means using the false language of crisis to drill our lands into oblivion.
This is not stewardship.
It’s extraction dressed up as governance.
And the sin isn’t just what they’re doing, it’s how quietly they do it.
Through riders tucked into omnibus bills. Through late-night land swaps. Through reservation systems that turn access into a commodity. Through federal contracts that funnel public dollars to private vendors while calling it “no-cost” to the government.
It’s a long, slow theft.
And they’re counting on the rest of us being too distracted to stop it.
They know that if we see it for what it is we will not forgive them. Nor should we.
But we see it clearly.
And we’re naming it for what it is.
Because until we do – until we stop treating this as politics-as-usual and start calling it out as the coordinated dispossession that it is – they will keep doing it.
All while their corporate overlords cash in on our national disinheritance.
The Names We Must Remember
These are the lawmakers who are trying to sell out your birthright.
One vote at a time. One deal at a time.
Each name a signature on the ledger of betrayal.
We will be following up with a dedicated post to serve as a living list of those who betray our national inheritance.
Please send us any names we left out and we will update to include.
The Names We Must Remember
These are the lawmakers still in office as of 2025 – voting, drafting, and dismantling. This is the record.
Senators Against Public Lands
Sen. Mike Lee (R‑UT)
Leading efforts to repeal the Antiquities Act and transfer federal lands to the states.
Sen. Steve Daines (R‑MT)
Promoting land sell-offs, expanded motorized access, and wilderness study area rollbacks.
Sen. John Barrasso (R‑WY)
A fossil fuel loyalist pushing expanded drilling and weakened methane rules.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R‑WY)
Advocating drilling in protected areas and stripping public land safeguards.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R‑AK)
Backing Arctic Refuge drilling and efforts to weaken protections for Tongass and Bristol Bay.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R‑KS)
Supporter of Keystone XL and efforts to gut climate and wildlife regulations.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R‑WI)
Proponent of permit streamlining for fossil fuel infrastructure and cutting clean energy incentives.
Sen. Rick Scott (R‑FL)
Backed cuts to conservation funding and promoted fossil fuel development fast-tracking.
Representatives Against Public Lands
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R‑AR)
As Chair of Natural Resources, steering extraction bills under the guise of forest health.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R‑AZ)
Driving the Oak Flat land transfer to a foreign mining company despite tribal opposition.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R‑CO)
Advocating federal land transfers, dismantling BLM, and erasing wilderness protections.
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R‑WI)
Pushing mining in northern forests and undermining tribal land rights.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R‑WY)
Using her post to gut NEPA and fast-track industry access to public lands.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R‑CA)
Opposes monument expansions and environmental reviews for logging operations.
Rep. Cliff Bentz (R‑OR)
Supporting grazing expansion and weakening of water and habitat protections.
Rep. Pete Stauber (R‑MN)
Trying to open the Boundary Waters to sulfide-ore mining.
Rep. Blake Moore (R‑UT)
Supports shrinking monument boundaries and limiting tribal co-management.
Rep. Russ Fulcher (R‑ID)
Backing mining access at the expense of Idaho forest protections.
Rep. Mike Collins (R‑GA)
Co-sponsoring legislation to weaken Endangered Species Act enforcement.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R‑NV)
Tried to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Nevada.
Rep. Celeste Maloy (R‑UT)
Co-sponsored emergency land-sale language in reconciliation legislation.
Our Wild Cannot Be Replaced
A wild river does not run twice.
An old-growth tree does not grow back in a congressional term.
A sacred site does not survive excavation.
When they sell off public land, they don’t just trade acres.
They erase time.
The forests being logged today took centuries to stand. The desert springs being drained once fed whole ecosystems. The rock art being blasted away held stories that lasted longer than any lawmaker's career. Once gone, these places do not return. Not next year. Not next generation. Not ever.
You can’t replace a thousand-year-old Sitka Spruce.
You can’t replicate the hush of a canyon with frack wells and drilling pads.
You can’t bulldoze a ceremonial site and expect ancient culture to bloom elsewhere.
This is the lie they keep selling –
That land is a renewable commodity. That wilderness is interchangeable. That beauty, silence, and belonging are things that can be moved, copied, rebuilt.
They are not.
There are places in this country that cannot be substituted.
Places that carry memory in their soil.
Places that remind us who we were, and who we’re still supposed to be.
That’s what they’re trying to sell.
And once it's gone,
not even regret will bring it back.
The Refusal
The land remains. That was Lincoln’s promise.
Not the policy. Not the politician. The land.
And when that land is handed off – not preserved but priced, not protected but partitioned – something deeper is broken. Not just trust. Not just law. But the thread that ties a people to their place.
We refuse to let that thread be cut.
We refuse to believe that a nation can be sold out acre by acre without consequence.
We refuse to treat silence as neutrality.
We refuse to call this inevitable.
Because it isn’t.
Because the damage is still being done – and the line is still ours to draw.
So here it is –
We will not stand by while the ground beneath us is carved into units and sold off in hearings we’re not invited to.
We will not let their votes be forgotten.
We will not accept a future where the only wilderness left is behind a paywall or beneath a pipeline.
We owe more than that – to the past that gave us this inheritance, and to the future that will ask what we did to keep it.
What You Can Do
Share this post.
The people responsible for this are counting on you not to notice. They’re counting on you to move on. Prove them wrong. Let the record travel.
Call their offices.
Whether you live in their district or not – your voice matters. Public lands belong to everyone. That means every member of Congress answers to you.
Call Script
“Hello – I’m calling to urge Representative/Senator [Name] to oppose any legislation that sells off, weakens, or opens up public lands to private industry.
These lands are part of our national trust. They are not for sale.
This isn’t a local issue – these lands belong to all Americans, and we are all watching.
Please tell [him/her/them] to vote no on any bill that compromises the integrity of our public lands. I will be keeping track and voting against anyone who votes to sell off our lands.”
Until next time,
Will
Addendum graphic thanks to a member of this community!
The following graphic was made by a member of this community
in response to this post. Many thanks Eileen! Feel free to share.
Isn’t it interesting that this list is entirely made up of republicans.
I thought they were supposed to be conservative. They don’t even understand what that word actually means.
Regrettably and unfortunately we have something similar happening here in New Zealand, with our current government (also “conservative”) passing legislation in the dead of night to allow companies building roads and digging holes and extracting resources to get away with “the accidental killing of protected species” without penalty. This includes our national bird, and symbol all around the world of New Zealand, the delicate and endangered kiwi. So another restraint on exploitation of the land is removed, without any consultation and in order to favour economic expansion. Habitat destruction is just fine if you have money to make.
I just don’t understand this world.
It would be great to have a shareable graphic (or two) with the names of the reps and senators and the reasons.