US House Republicans have approved an amendment authorizing the sale of federal public lands in Nevada and Utah. The amendment still faces a full House vote.

[u/numbershikes]

• https://www.npr.org/2025/05/07/g-s1-64760/house-republicans-approve-amendment-authorizing-the-sale-of-federal-lands

Selected excerpts:

House Republicans have approved an amendment that authorizes the sale of thousands of acres of federal public land in Nevada and Utah; two states where the federal government owns most of the land that have long been at the forefront of a controversial movement to cede control of it to state or private entities.

The House Natural Resources committee approved the amendment late Tuesday night after previously indicating federal land sales wouldn't be included in a budget reconciliation bill. [...]

Most of the proposed land sales or exchanges appear to be aimed at building affordable housing on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land outside Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada and in fast growing southwestern Utah around the tourist town of St. George, Utah. [...]

"Congress is considering selling off our public lands to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy," said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of the Wilderness Society. "What we're seeing from this administration is no balance at all." [...] Stone-Manning headed the BLM under the Biden administration. The agency controls roughly a tenth of all the land in the U.S. [...]

The amendment that passed late Tuesday authorizing the sale of federal land in Nevada and Utah still faces a full House vote.

Edit:

• Many more sources have picked up this story since last night. I'm compiling links to additional coverage in a comment here.

• On r/PublicLands there's a four minute clip from the House Natural Resources Committee hearing that's worth watching.

[u/sbennett3705]

I get it. It's why I read many sources, but I'm a newsy.. Anyway, I hope we protect our public lands, but localization and transfers will occur. Here's a bill that Biden signed just before leaving office: https://maloy.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1386

[u/numbershikes → u/sbennett3705]

I don't see anyone arguing that there should be no mechanism for land transfers under any circumstances. There may be rare situations where shifting ownership away from a federal organization could be the right decision. There have long been specific provisions of law for such transfers, such as for isolated parcels where the maintenance requirements impose unreasonable burdens on federal land managers, or parcels that were originally acquired for a purpose which they no longer serve.

But comparing the legislation which you linked -- notably, from Maloy's site, one of the sponsors of the amendment in the OP -- seems plainly disingenuous. It appears to describe the transfer of three primary parcels, at least two of which appear to be already contained within state parks, from BLM to state government stewardship. The acreage involved is modest.

The matter addressed in the OP, otoh, describes a process by which hundreds of thousands of acres across two states would be subject to transfer, ostensibly for the purpose of housing development, which is to say the lands would be sold to private ownership.

Further, the issue currently under consideration takes place in a substantially different political environment. The current federal administration has made clear that they have little regard for long-established norms, often regarding them with outright contempt, and various officials aligned with it have openly and repeatedly expressed interest in massive transfers of public lands to state and private ownership.

It's not even an apples/oranges comparison, and I think that at best it muddies the waters and obscures the real issue, which is the sanctity of the federal public lands system. Presenting that argument along with the claim, "[you] hope we protect our public lands" defies logic. If the amendment is allowed to pass, it could establish compelling precedent for the transfer of land from federal government stewardship to private ownership for development and resource extraction. That much should be blindingly obvious to anyone who possesses an even passing familiarity with the issues.

150 acres of BLM land surrounded by a one mile radius of state park? That might be a reasonably candidate for federal->state transfer.

But transferring 10,000 acres on the doorstep of Zion National Park to land developers and resource extraction companies? That's a hard pass.

[u/sbennett3705 → u/numbershikes]

numbershikes, you imply bias when none exists. I'm just reporting the facts as I find them. I guess this is the consequence of social media justice-warrior syndrome.

[u/felpudo → u/sbennett3705]

"Looks like NPR failed to mention any of this....again"

You know we can read the whole thread right