This is an automatically generated transcript. Please excuse spelling and grammar errors.
Kate: Welcome to The Landscape, your show about America’s parks and public lands. I’m Kate Groetzinger in Salt Lake City.
Aaron: And I’m Aaron Weiss in Denver. Normally, we start with a little news update, but this is one of those all news episodes. We are here to discuss the results of the 2024 election and the implications for public lands. We’ve got our executive director at the Center For Western Priorities, Jennifer Rokola, along with Curtis Huber. He’s a political consultant based in Colorado.
And before that, he was the editorial page editor at The Denver Post. Jen, first, welcome back to the landscape.
Jen: Great to be here. Thanks, Aaron.
Aaron: And, Curtis, thank you for being here again as well.
Curtis: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Kate: Alright. This first question is for Jen and Erin. What did it feel like last time Trump was elected? What kinds of conversations were you having at CWP, and how was it different this time around?
Jen: So the last well, when Trump was elected in 2016, I think we were all in shock, as was most of the country. So, I don’t know that we knew what to expect given that he didn’t run on public lands, whether it was energy development or conserving public lands. And so he was somewhat of a blank slate. I think, you know, we were hopeful because his son, Don Junior, is a sportsman and there was some outreach to him as a sportsman from other sportsman’s groups. But, but, at that point, we just didn’t know what to expect.
Aaron: And I think last time around as well, as that Trump transition came into being, it was much slower because not only did was his win a surprise to all of us, here, it was a surprise to the Trump team. They truly didn’t think they were going to win last time, so they didn’t have a transition infrastructure in place. And this time around, we are seeing this shock and awe, I think, is the best way to describe the cabinet appointments, as we see folks like Matt Gates come and go. We’re rerecording this on Thursday 21st. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon mountain time, and Matt Gates is gone already in less than a Scaramucci.
So I think the scope and the scale of what they’re trying to do with the transition feels remarkably different from last time. And I’m sure we’re gonna get into Doug Burgum and the implications there at Interior, but, Curtis, I’m curious about you. You work obviously in the political space. How is this on the national level different from last time? And what do you make of this talk of that there’s now a Trump mandate for conservative leadership or policies?
Curtis: Yeah. I’ll take the last bit first. I mean, as far as a mandate goes, I don’t think that that is the case. I mean, it was a closer election than a lot of people realize. Yes, he won the popular vote.
Yes, He won the swing states, but it was still by margins of in the tens of thousands. And there are still, you know, close to 49% of voters who are on the other side of the issue, and so I think that’s something to watch, going forward. But they do, as you mentioned, have plans for what they intend to do, moving forward. And we saw many of those despite the disavowals on the campaign in the project 2025 documents. So that is the playbook, and that is where we need to turn our attention first, for those of us who care about protecting and preserving the West’s public lands.
Kate: So, Aaron, back to you. What were some of the biggest attacks on public lands last time, and what strategies worked best for combating them?
Aaron: I think you have to start with national monuments. Right out of the gate, we saw Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary launch this review, quote, unquote, of national monuments across the west, and they were smart enough, foolish enough, I don’t know which, to ask for public comment on this idea. And, of course, the public comment on this idea of shrinking national monuments was universally opposed. We looked at the numbers, and 99% of the commenters told the administration, don’t touch national monuments. Of course, they did anyway, trying to shrink Bears Ears in Grand Staircase Escalante, but the attacks on monuments stopped there because they saw that that idea was so universally unpopular.
So after that, they really pivoted more to just greasing the skids for oil and gas and mining and coal and doing everything they could to advance fossil fuel development and exploitation of public lands. To that extent, they were fairly successful. Of course, they least offered up everything oil and gas companies could have ever wanted and far more than they knew what to do. In terms of what worked best combating those, yeah, it was hearing from the public. These folks are shameless, but not impenetrable.
They can, in fact, eventually be embarrassed into doing the right thing. And sometimes they’re embarrassed into losing their jobs by doing embarrassing things like Ryan Zinke did, trying to score himself a a brew pub back home in Montana in a meeting with the chairman of Halliburton.
Kate: Jen, can you say a little bit more about what worked last time to slow these attacks and also how the conservation community works to work together, to oppose these bad public lands policies?
Jen: You know, I’d say sunlight makes a big difference, and shining a light on what the first Trump administration was doing to public lands really made a difference. So the conservation community really came together as a force, to make sure that the public knew what they were doing. When Erin talked about the monuments review, we made sure that the 99% of comments that opposed monument shrinking monuments, we made sure that that stat was out there far and wide and that people understood how unpopular those potential decisions and how unpopular the shrinking of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase were. And so really mobilizing the conservation community with accurate information, with facts that that you know, we worked with reporters. We worked with conservation allies in congress, and it was a full PR campaign, to make sure that people knew what the administration was doing and also to show the administration how unpopular their decisions were.
Aaron: Curtis, do you think there are any lessons there from what happened in the public land space that could be applied more broadly in terms of tactics that are helpful in stopping some of this bad stuff?
Curtis: Yeah. I think Jen mentioned Sunlight, and it’s a see something, say something situation, where it’s critical, that we look at what’s being done, look at the federal register, FOIA requests that, your organization is great at at filing and and pouring over, to show the public exactly what’s going on, exactly who has influence. As mentioned earlier, contacting your elected officials, speaking up, there really is, you know, let’s call it multi partisan support for protecting our public lands. And it’s an issue that across the West in particular, voters feel strongly about. And I think that’s important, to remember that, you know, regardless of where we may stand on other issues, social issues or fiscal issues, the majority of us in the Western US are united around our love for and our willingness to protect public lands.
Aaron: One of the things that’s different this time around is Trump World was much more transparent on the front end about what they plan to do. Project 2025, we’ve talked about on this show, the Heritage Foundation wrote it. President Trump claimed he had nothing to do with it. And now, of course, he is appointing folks who had everything to do with project 2025 up and down his administration, and the folks at Heritage are doing cartwheels, because they’re so excited about this. Kate, you’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at project 2025, what it could mean for public lands.
What attacks now do we know are coming?
Kate: Yeah. So you mentioned that, Trump tried to distance himself from project 2025, but now is cozying up to it. And I think on public lands, there was barely any distance to begin with because project 2025, the interior department section basically just says do everything that Trump did the first time around, but better. You know? The first time around, they didn’t really know what they were doing.
They weren’t as successful at a lot of these things, but this time, we know what attacks are coming. In project 2025, the recommendation to the Trump administration is to give extractive industries basically unfettered access to public lands to repeal the antiquities act. Of course, that would require congress, but the antiquities act is in the crosshairs of this administration, and, you know, they have Congress on their side. It’s to do another one of those monument reviews that you mentioned was so unpopular the first time around. It looks like they’re gonna do that again.
Folks working within the transition team told the New York Times that Bears Ears will likely be recent or, shrunk again as well as Grand Staircase. Project 2025 also touches on the endangered species act, the National Environmental Policy sorry. Excuse me. NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act, which is the environmental reviews that are required for all federal projects. It essentially wants to gut NEPA, gut the endangered species act.
And the forest service is not under the interior department, but we do also care about those public lands. And project 2025 recommends just increasing logging in forests in order to, you know, reduce fire risk, which the science is not clear on, and the science does not support their idea that logging reduces fire risk.
Aaron: Certainly not the kind of commercial logging that Right. That timber companies wanna see.
Kate: Right. Right. The science is clear that that does not help. It just creates these, these uniform forests that burn really quickly. And then finally, I wanna bring up Alaska because project 2025 really takes a hammer to all of the protections that the Biden administration has put in place for Alaska.
It would reinstate oil leasing inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Extractive access to all of Alaska is on the table in project 2025. Did I miss anything? I feel like there’s just so much to say.
Aaron: Well, the other one is the location of the Bureau of Land Management. Jen, president Trump, and William Perry Pendley, who wrote that project 2025 chapter, have said they wanna move Bureau of Land Management headquarters out of DC back to Grand Junction yet another flip flop. It was this huge mess the first time around. 87% of the staff that was told to relocate ended up quitting or finding other jobs. We’ve talked about how that was a feature, not a bug.
And if they wanna do that again, Jen, what does that do to BLM’s power within Washington DC?
Jen: Well, look. Their goal is moving the headquarters to Grand Junction and I’ll say Grand Junction’s a great place, but the BLM headquarters should be in DC. And their goal is just to gut BLM, and they have animosity towards career employees. But these are people with expertise, who understand, who have years and decades of experience, and there’s a small percentage of BLM employees who are in DC. 95% of BLM staff are out in the field.
And so there are a lot of people on the ground, land managers on the ground who are doing the work but you really need a headquarters to, interact with congress, to interact with the other agencies within DOI like the Fish and Wildlife Service, like the National Park Service, the secretary. And so it’s just their thinly veiled threat to make employees quit because people have lives and they have families, and it’s just their way of eliminating the expertise at BLM.
Kate: Right. And I actually jogged my memory. Another thing that is in project 2025 is this, bringing back this program called schedule f, which was instated at the end of the Trump and the first Trump administration. And it basically is like a, a policy that allows the the president to fire career employees and hire political appointees and and replace a bunch of folks whose job is to, you know, implement policy on the ground and management, of our public lands and and across the rest of our government, with with political, allies of Trump who maybe don’t have any expertise in the policy they’re implementing. It would be terrible for our government, and it would also really be bad for our public lands because, you know, this is 20% of the US landmass that’s owned by the federal government, and that needs active management.
And active management can only happen if there are employees in the office making decisions. The small silver lining here is that if there are no employees at BLM to implement drill baby drill or, energy dominance or any of the other policies mentioned, that we’ve just mentioned, the administration may have been less effective. So I guess there’s a tiny silver lining there, but, really, it would be bad for public lands to have the BLM offices empty. Curtis, do you have anything to add on that? I know you brought up project 2025 earlier and said we need to focus on it.
What do you think is most likely out of this laundry list to actually come to fruition?
Curtis: Yeah. That’s a great question. I mean, I think first and foremost, it’s the, the quid pro quo right to the, extractive interest that donated to the campaign to give them their wish lists. I think as you all have pointed out while the oil and gas industry has been complaining about a slowdown in leasing under the Biden administration, they have all the high potential lands by and large locked up already. I think one of the things to look at is delisting or rolling back protections for some of the iconic endangered species, whether that’s the grizzly bear or the, our gray wolf.
That’s something to watch. And I think one of the things, as conservationists, that we need to remember is that the outdoor recreation economy in this nation is a force. $1,200,000,000,000 nationwide. Those figures largely derived from western states. And that’s an important argument for us to make moving forward, particularly for some of the rural communities that are looking for economic diversity to kinda get out of the boom and bust cycle of the 20th century economy and move into a new century economy.
So those are things that I will be looking for as we move forward.
Aaron: Question here for Curtis and Jen. Republicans are gonna be controlling both the house and the senate. The house was pretty narrow this time around. And, of course, now we’ve got a 63 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Which of those keeps you up more at night right now?
Jen: What keeps me up? I would say certainly, the Supreme Court keeps me up. I think what we’ve witnessed over the last few years is that this majority is shamelessly political. And when it comes to the environment, I’ll say the Chevron case is a perfect example in that they won’t hesitate to undo decades of precedent. And, when it comes to the congress, when we think about public lands, public lands have bipartisan support.
And so while there are gonna be some members of congress, members in the house, and members in the senate who are not gonna support, protecting public plans in the way that we would like to see it. There are gonna be some places that are too special that Republican members of congress, like to recreate, like to visit, and so I think there are probably more opportunities in the Congress, but, I would love to hear what Curtis has to say about this.
Curtis: Yeah. So near term, it’s control of Congress. What we typically see is that the president’s party when they control congress tends to lose seats in the midterm. So these first two years are important to watch to see what they try to get done. Long term though, it’s certainly for me, the Supreme Court, right, with the 6 to 3 conservative majority that you mentioned with a Republican majority in the senate, meaning that they control nominations to the federal bench moving forward.
That’s obviously concerning because this current court has shown itself to be so politically driven.
Kate: So, Aaron and Jen, what will CWP focus on in the next 2 to 4 years? We don’t litigate or lobby. So how will we work to stop Trump’s attacks on public lands?
Aaron: So number 1, as it already mentioned in this show, Sunlight. It’s keeping track of what they’re doing. It’s looking at every document that comes out and is posted to the federal register. It’s looking for those Friday trash dumps that they’re gonna try and sneak past the American people because they know they’ll be unpopular, and making sure that folks are aware of what’s happening at the administrative level and how that is going to affect people’s access to public lands. Because every pump jack, every mind that gets developed is somewhere you then can’t also go hunting and fishing and hiking and camping.
And it’s important that everyone realize that is the trade off that’s at stake here, even more so with this Utah lawsuit that we haven’t even talked about here, and the prospect of just getting rid of national public lands wholesale, millions of acres at a time. At the same time, I think it’s important to remember that all is not lost, the future is not entirely bleak, and the best defense is a good offense. There are going to be lots of opportunities to still do good things to protect and conserve public lands. Some of that is gonna be leadership at the state level. We’re already seeing, say, California convening a special session to try to Trump-proof the state.
But it also means remembering things like the Great American Outdoors Act that passed during the 1st Trump administration because there were several vulnerable Republicans who recognized they had to demonstrate their appreciation of public lands and good public lands funding and policy in order to get reelected. And that becomes from a political standpoint, and Jen, I’d love your thoughts here, I think that becomes even more possible in a case where Republicans control both chambers.
Jen: Yeah. I think that’s right, Erin. And I know, you know, we’ve got members of congress. I’m gonna point out Senator Wyden from Oregon has had legislation to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands as a national monument. And we’ve heard that he’s, you know, working with Senator Barrasso from Wyoming because Senator Barrasso has legislation that he wants passed.
And so there may be opportunities. I mean, stranger things have happened, but maybe congress will come together, and actually pass some pro conservation legislation. You mentioned the great outdoors, the Great American Outdoors Act. Also, during the first Trump administration, they passed the John Dingell Act, which was a number of public lands conservation and public lands packages. So, you never know.
There I don’t think all hope is lost, but it’s gonna be tough. And so I think, you know, we’re in a position to help both inform and make sure that people have the information and are energized to defend our public lands.
Kate: So sticking with you guys, Jen and Erin, Trump has announced North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as his pick for interior secretary. We’ll note that North Dakota is not a public land state. Why do
Aaron: you Or a western state.
Kate: Or a western state. Why do you think Trump picked Burgum, and do you think he’ll be confirmed ultimately?
Aaron: I mean, the obvious answer is because he’s an oil millionaire who helped other oil oil millionaires raise $1 billion for Trump’s campaign. So the why is pretty obvious there. The question of will he be easy to confirm, I think demonstrates just how much this senate is going to be grading on a curve. Because on paper, compared to other interior secretaries from either party, Doug Burgum is really not qualified for this job, not from a western state, not from a public land state, and doesn’t really have the qualifications on paper to do this job. But relative to a Fox News talking head who hasn’t washed his hands in a decade, relative to a former world wrestling entertainment executive running the education department, Doug Burgum, looks like a genius in this cabinet.
So I guess from that perspective, yeah, he will probably be pretty easy to confirm. The question is, what kind of secretary will he be, and what kind of leeway, if any, will he have to apply those sorts of management skills that by most accounts he had in the private sector, to an agency that obviously needs strong leadership, or is he just gonna be ordered to do what he’s going to do by president Trump and or someone like David Bernhardt, who we still don’t know where he’s gonna land in this administration. Jen?
Jen: No. I I think that’s right. I mean, I think Doug Burgum’s agenda is energy dominance. And what we’re gonna see is, the interior department, it’s not gonna be a balanced effort between protection and multiple use of public lands. It is gonna be drill, baby, drill, and that’s gonna be Doug Burgum’s marching orders.
Kate: So, Curtis, were there any positive election outcomes that we can pay attention to and learn from down ballot ballot measures? I know you were tracking a lot of these in the west. Were there any bright spots we can celebrate?
Curtis: Yeah. So there’s a couple. So, while Trump was able to flip Nevada and Arizona, 2 US senators there, who are friendlier to public lands in, Ruben Gallegos and Jackie Rosen. 1. Gallegos is a first termer.
Rosen was reelected. And then I think it’s important to remember, where we came from, right, that Harris was a Hail Mary, for Democrats.
Aaron: A 100 day hail Mary.
Curtis: Yeah. Looking at how poorly Biden was performing, and so to do as well as she did in that 100 day window, I think is something that we shouldn’t lose sight of. And then as we said earlier, on this podcast, there is support at the local level for land protection, land conservation, and we increasingly see, those local initiatives, for open space, for parks and outdoor recreation continue to perform well because people understand the importance, not just from an economic standpoint, from a recreation standpoint. And so we continue to see that, across the west.
Kate: Awesome. And another follow-up for you on reasons for hope. I’ve heard people throwing around the phrase that the midterm map is more favorable to Democrats who, of course, are more favorable for public lands. Is that true? What do we know about that in the west?
Curtis: So we know if we start with the senate, we have 2 senators up, in blue states, senator John Hickenlooper here in Colorado and Ben Luhan in New Mexico. Both should, barring surprises, work toward reelection and be reelected. And then we have John Barrasso up for reelection in Wyoming and Steve Daines up for reelection in Montana. Those all should be pushed. I mean, I think the one thing to look at is just what kind of a blowback or bounce back might there be in Montana.
It’s a state where Trump won by 20 points, but Jon Tester only lost his race by 8, the last time I checked. So, you know, could Tester mount a comeback, in the midterms? That’s certainly a possibility if you were looking at candidates who you might run against, Danes up there, that’s one to look at. But it’s then you look at the house and it’s gonna be neck and neck again, and it’s really gonna depend on what the next, you know, 18 months look like as far as did voters get the economic relief that they were looking for? Are they going to be overwhelmed by cronyism and the clown car and say, jeez.
We want some adults in the room again.
Aaron: Kate, put this election in perspective in light of Utah’s lawsuit that we mentioned earlier with the state trying to seize control of 18,000,000 acres of national public land? How does the election change the calculus there?
Kate: Right. So the lawsuit, as we’ve discussed on this podcast, is sort of a Hail Mary. The legal theory. It’s shaky. We’re taking it seriously as a threat, but it’s not a slam dunk.
I think that Republicans controlling both chambers and congress as well as the executive branch does elevate the risk level a little bit that public lands do get transferred to the states, and that the states then are able to sell off public lands and privatize them. That’s really the ultimate risk here. You know, the majorities in each chamber, as we mentioned, they’re they’re it’s a small majority in the house, and this would be extreme this would be an extreme measure to turn over federal public land to the states. And just some background for our listeners, congress does have the power to do that. The president cannot take federal lands and give them to the states, but congress can.
So the risk is elevated, but I, again, I think it would be hard to pass. And I’m curious, you know, Curtis, Jen, you guys have more experience with congress than I do. How do you see this threat? Is it much bigger, or is it just a little bit bigger?
Jen: Well, I think it’s a threat. At the same time, the congress is so evenly divided that, I think getting something like this through would be very difficult. And let’s remember for the past 3 years, we’ve put out a report called congressional gridlock or highlighting the congressional gridlock in congress. And so, you know, I think the beauty of congress is that it doesn’t move that quickly most of the time. And so, I think it is less likely that they would pass such legislation.
Curtis: Yeah. And I would say that, on face value, it’s a partisan move. It’s an effort by Republican states, Republican attorneys general, and it’s one that I think when people look at how their constituents feel, ultimately, they will see that their constituents value public lands, and they will realize that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
Aaron: Jen, I don’t wanna leave this episode on a down note. So what right now is giving you hope?
Jen: So, yeah, it’s been a tough couple weeks, and the prospects of what’s gonna happen to, you know, the lands, the public lands that we care about, it’s been tough. But, you know, I think there are a lot of people out there who are very passionate about our public lands and are gonna be ready to defend them. And that’s from, you know, grassroots citizens all the way up into, you know, federal elected officials. But I was reading a piece by Jonathan Thompson, who writes a newsletter called the land land desk this week, and he writes about a camping trip in Bears Ears, and he describes Bears Ears and just the beauty of Bears Ears at sunset, at sunrise. And he’s talking about the threats that this administration poses to Bears Ears, especially, you know, we know that Trump is likely to shrink the monument again.
But he ended the newsletter with this sentence, and he said, the future is uncertain, but this much I know. Beauty will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. And I thought that was just a really beautiful sentiment to talk about the landscapes that we all love and are here to defend.
Kate: Well, we’ll leave it on that positive note. Jennifer Rokola, executive director of CWP, and Curtis Hubbard, Colorado based political consultant. Thank you both for breaking this down with us.
Curtis: Thank you. You bet.
Kate: Well, that’s all for our episode today, friends. Thanks again for listening. And as always, if you need to reach us, podcast at westernpriorities.org. Thanks again to Jen and Curtis for their time today, and thank you for listening to the landscape.