House and Senate Democrats are desperate to kill a provision in the House GOP’s tax, energy and national security megabill ordering the sale of hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands. Now, their hopes may rest on the resolve of an unlikely ally: Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, Donald Trump’s first Interior Secretary.
That their eyes have turned to the rock-ribbed conservative with a soft spot for federally owned lands is a remarkable turnaround. Democrats attacked Zinke with zeal before he was forced out of his job by Trump in 2018 under a cloud of ethics investigations. In 2022, he won a seat in the House.
But strange times make strange bedfellows, and the hope among Democrats is that Zinke will stand his ground.
“We will do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t move forward,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said of the lands provision. “I think it will require some folks like Zinke over in the House putting his foot down and hopefully others.”
