State Politics and Public Lands Management

The second Trump administration’s opening spate of executive orders targeted a wide range of issues, including environmental research and protections, under the name of government efficiency. But the policy changes were also in line with broader nationalist aims: some of the first executive orders signed declared a national energy emergency, reopened Alaska’s “extraordinary resource potential,” and established a National Energy Dominance Council.

As the executive order reopening Alaska for resource extraction suggests, many of the administration’s rollbacks mean turning federal responsibilities over to individual states or local governments, a tactic that the previous Trump administration had already explored with public lands management. A 2018 legal analysis by Michael C. Blumm and Olivier Jamin in Environmental Law demonstrates that the previous attempts at deregulation targeted federal management of public lands such as national parks, monuments, and other sites of cultural and social significance, often to redefine the “public” served by the lands as local industry elites.

Since the mid-twentieth century, many presidents—including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton—have invoked various legislative and constitutional clauses that granted presidential authority to declare national monuments, typically to protect natural landmarks such as the Grand Canyon or the Grand Staircase-Escalante. These designations frequently preceded congressional creation of national parks and historic sites.

In 2016, President Obama established Bear Ears National Monument to protect a cultural landscape sacred to numerous Native peoples: the Utes, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi, and the Zuni. In December 2017, however, President Trump substantially reduced the size of the Bear Ears as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments under the misleading premise that the expansions were against broad public support. Blumm and Jamin argue that, contrary to the administration’s claims, the expansion of Bear Ears had occurred through significant collaboration with—even at the request of—local and Indigenous communities, and the administration had received more than 685,000 public comments in favor of maintaining the size of Bear Ears. The president’s announcement signaled an agenda of the reduction, however, claiming the move would “restore the rights of this land to” state citizens because federal bureaucrats “don’t know your land, and…don’t care for your land like you do.”

Reviewing reports, legislation, and court cases, Blumm and Jamin found that the previous Trump administration systematically worked to reduce various public lands protections, including reversing national monument expansions and endangered species protections, while proposing an industry-friendly reorganization of the Bureau of Land Management. They argue that, in doing so, the president aimed to appeal to industrial interests, often contradicting requests from local residents and Indigenous nations.

The previous Trump administration also attempted to undo protection for the sage grouse keystone species, largely enabling oil and gas interests that had long opposed the extent of the grouse conservation efforts. The protections had been introduced in 2015 under the Obama administration in what Blumm and Jamin characterize as “an unprecedented federal-state collaborative conservation effort” that included bipartisan support. But in 2017, then-Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke commissioned a report that Blumm and Jamin argue promoted scientifically dubious arguments often made by fossil fuel-friendly interests against sage grouse protections, including support for a reduction of the conservation area size and the role of US Fish and Wildlife Service in species protection. The new restrictions were eventually overturned by a federal judge, but fossil fuel-friendly public lands management still appears to be a priority for the Trump administration.

Finally, Blumm and Jamin analyze the previous administration’s efforts to remove barriers to fossil fuel production by “streamlining” the Bureau of Land Management under the aegis of “Making America Safe Through Energy Independence.” These included relaxing restrictions on offshore drilling, methane emissions, and carbon emissions and various attempts through court cases to reduce the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. Many courts declined final rulings on these cases, but Blumm and Jamin argue that the attempts nonetheless encapsulate how the administration “consider[ed] parts of the public—those with substantial local clout in rural areas—to be more important than the numerous recreational and preservationist communities that public lands serve.”

In his final weeks in office in 2025, President Biden banned offshore drilling in most US coastal waters and bolstered the same sage grouse protections the previous  administration had tried to remove. Nevertheless, the executive branch and the president retain significant jurisdiction over public lands, which makes long-term protection uncertain. However, Blumm and Jamin conclude, the congressional process required to further institutionalize executive action by existing legislation could serve as a bulwark against executive overreach.

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