federal land

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday that it will open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining and provide $625 million to recommission or modernize coal-fired power plants as President Trump continues his efforts to reverse the yearlong decline in the U.S. coal industry.

Actions by the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency follow executive orders Trump issued in April to revive coal, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been shrinking amid environmental regulations and competition from cheaper natural gas.

Environmental groups denounced the announcement, which comes as the Trump administration has clamped down on renewable energy, including freezing permits for offshore wind projects, ending clean energy tax credits and blocking wind and solar projects on federal lands.

Under Trump’s orders, the Energy Department has required fossil-fueled power plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania to keep operating past their retirement dates to meet rising U.S. power demand amid growth in data centers, artificial intelligence and electric cars. The latest announcement would allow those efforts to expand as a precaution against possible electricity shortfalls.

Trump also has directed federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining and prioritize coal leasing on U.S. lands. A sweeping tax bill approved by Republicans and signed by Trump reduces royalty rates for coal mining from 12.5% to 7%, a significant decrease that officials said will help ensure U.S. coal producers can compete in global markets.

‘Mine baby, mine’

The new law also mandates increased availability for coal mining on federal lands and streamlines federal reviews of coal leases.

“Everybody likes to say, ‘drill baby, drill.’ I know that President Trump has another initiative for us, which is ‘mine baby, mine,’” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a news conference Monday at Interior headquarters. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Energy Undersecretary Wells Griffith also spoke at the event. All three agencies signed orders boosting coal.

“By reducing the royalty rate for coal, increasing coal acres available for leasing and unlocking critical minerals from mine waste, we are strengthening our economy, protecting national security and ensuring that communities from Montana to Alabama benefit from good-paying jobs,” Burgum said.

Zeldin called coal a reliable energy source that has supported American communities and economic growth for generations.

“Americans are suffering because the past administration attempted to apply heavy-handed regulations to coal and other forms of energy it deemed unfavorable,” he said.

Trump has clamped down on renewable energy

Environmental groups said Trump was wasting federal tax dollars by handing them to owners of the oldest, most expensive and dirtiest source of electricity.

“Subsidizing coal means propping up dirty, uncompetitive plants from last century — and saddling families with their high costs and pollution,” said Ted Kelly, clean energy director for the Environmental Defense Fund. “We need modern, affordable clean energy solutions to power a modern economy, but the Trump administration wants to drag us back to a 1950s electric grid.’’

Solar, wind and battery storage are the cheapest and fastest ways to bring new power to the grid, Kelly and other advocates said. “It makes no sense to cut off your best, most affordable options while doubling down on the most expensive ones,” Kelly said.

The EPA said Monday that it will open a 60-day public comment period on potential changes to a regional haze rule that has helped reduce pollution-fueled haze hanging over national parks, wilderness areas and tribal reservations. Zeldin announced in March that the haze rule would be among dozens of landmark environmental regulations that he plans to roll back or eliminate, including a 2009 finding that climate change harms human health and the environment.

Coal production has dropped steeply

Burgum, who also chairs Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, said the actions announced Monday, along with the tax law and previous presidential and secretarial orders, will ensure “abundant, affordable energy while reducing reliance on foreign sources of coal and minerals.’’

The Republican president has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.

Coal once provided more than half of U.S. electricity production, but its share dropped to about 15% in 2024, down from about 45% as recently as 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower.

Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper, and there’s a durable market for wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.

Daly writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Todd Richmond in Madison, Wis., contributed to this report.

President Trump this week threw his full support behind a massive project to turn a sacred Apache site outside Phoenix into one of the world’s largest copper mines, meeting with mining executives at the White House and ridiculing a recent court decision that temporarily halted the transfer of federal lands to their companies.

Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met in the White House on Tuesday with several executives from Rio Tinto and BHP, the two multinational mining companies behind the planned Resolution Copper mine. As proposed, the mine would turn Oak Flat — a long-preserved site of rocky outcroppings and desert waterways on the edge of the Tonto National Forest — into a nearly two-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep industrial crater.

Trump also posted about the project on his Truth Social site, calling the three-judge U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel that blocked the transfer a “Radical Left Court” and saying it was “sad” that “Radical Left Activists” could stall such a project.

“3,800 Jobs are affected, and our Country, quite simply, needs Copper — AND NOW!” Trump wrote.

He also wrote, without evidence, that those fighting the mine are “Anti-American” and working on behalf of “other Copper competitive Countries.”

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, which is among the plaintiffs suing to block the mine, called the court’s decision a “last minute victory” in its ongoing battle to save the land.

“The Apache people will never stop fighting for Chí’chil Biłdagoteel,” tribe Chairman Terry Rambler said in a statement, using the traditional Apache name for Oak Flat. “We thank the court for stopping this horrific land exchange and allowing us to argue the merits of our pending lawsuit in court.”

Trump’s decision to directly weigh in further elevates the already large profile of a monumental legal battle. It has aligned environmental activists and religious liberty proponents, and has major implications for the nation’s ability to meet its rapidly growing demand for copper, which is an essential element in telecommunications networks, electric vehicles and other growing technologies.

Oak Flat was federally protected land for decades. Members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe describe it as sacred land home to spiritual guardians akin to angels, and say it has been used for coming-of-age and other tribal ceremonies for generations.

In 2004, prospectors discovered that one of the world’s largest copper ore deposits, estimated to hold enough copper to supply up to a quarter of U.S. demand, sat somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 feet below the surface.

The battle to extract the deposit has raged ever since, but particularly since 2014, when former Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake inserted language mandating the land transfer into a last-minute defense appropriations bill.

A lawsuit brought by the group Apache Stronghold and led by Apache elder Wendsler Nosie Sr. resulted in a split 9th Circuit ruling against the Apache and in favor of the mining companies in March 2024.

In May, the Supreme Court declined to hear an Apache appeal of that decision, clearing the way for the U.S. Forest Service to issue a final environmental impact report and hear a last round of public comment before handing the land over to Resolution Copper.

The decision marked a major loss to the mine opponents, but it did not end other lawsuits filed to stop it — including one filed by the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and another by a group called the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition.

On Aug. 15, a district court judge in Arizona issued an order clearing the way for the land transfer to move forward on Tuesday.

The groups appealed, and the three-judge 9th Circuit panel put the district court decision on hold Monday, pending its own hearing of arguments over the transfer — one of which is that the federal government bypassed a required step in the environmental review process.

The panel — composed of two Clinton appointees and one Trump appointee — said it was not taking a position on the merits of those arguments, and would “expedite” the case, with all briefs due by Oct. 14.

The court’s reprieve, if only temporary, was cheered by Apache groups and other organizations whose members use the Oak Flat land for rock climbing and other recreation. Some also spoke out against Trump’s remarks, calling them anti-American.

Rambler, the San Carlos tribe chairman, said the mine’s opponents “are working to save the U.S. from making a disastrous decision that would give up American resources to foreign interests,” and that Trump had been “misinformed” to think otherwise by the mine’s supporters.

Rambler said BHP and Rio Tinto are foreign companies with ties to Chinese state-owned companies, and will be exporting the copper taken from Oak Flat — “likely to China.”

Rambler said he looks forward “to sitting down with the administration and providing factual information to protect American assets.”

Nosie, in a statement provided to the The Times, also accused Trump of siding with foreign interests over those of indigenous Americans.

“Our nation cannot survive if we sacrifice what is sacred in pursuit of temporary profits,” he said.

Wendsler Nosie Sr., a longtime opponent of the proposed Resolution Copper mine, gathers with other opponents to the mine at Oak Flat in 2023.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

He said the Apache people are grateful for all of the support they have received from people of all political stripes and religious backgrounds, who he said have recognized the fight for what it is — a “moral one.”

“If we destroy our sacred land and poison our environment, we are betraying our children and grandchildren and hurting ourselves,” he said. “The future of the entire human race is at stake.”

A Resolution Copper spokesperson said they are confident the 9th Circuit will “ultimately affirm” the district court’s “well-reasoned” ruling in favor of the land transfer.

“Over the past 11 years, the Resolution Copper project has undergone a rigorous, independent review under the National Environmental Policy Act, led by the U.S. Forest Service. This review has included extensive consultation with numerous Native American Tribes with ancestral ties to this land, local communities, civil society organizations, and a dozen federal, state, and county agencies,” the spokesperson said. “The collaborative process has directly led to major changes to the mining plan to preserve and reduce potential impacts on Tribal, social, environmental, and cultural interests.”

The spokesperson said the project has other local support and “the potential to become one of America’s biggest copper mines, contributing $1 billion annually to Arizona’s economy and creating thousands of local jobs in a region where mining has played an important role for more than a century.”

Tuesday’s meeting at the White House included Trump and Burgum, as well as current Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm, incoming Rio Tinto chief executive Simon Trott and BHP chief executive Mike Henry, as well as other White House officials.

The Resolution Copper spokesperson said the discussion centered on “the mining industry’s capacity to deliver long-term domestic supplies of copper and other critical minerals” from the Oak Flat deposit.

WASHINGTON — A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling millions of acres of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.

The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.

“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense … we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.

Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,’’ he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.

Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,’’ said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”

Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”

“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.

MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.

While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Lee’s plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.

Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan.

Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee’s plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.

“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”

Daly writes for the Associated Press.

BILLINGS, Mont. — More than 2 million acres of federal lands would be sold or transferred to states or other entities under a budget proposal from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, reviving a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House.

Lee, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, included a mandate for the sales in a draft provision of the GOP’s sweeping tax cut package released Wednesday.

Sharp disagreement over such sales has laid bare a split among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.

A spokesperson for Montana Sen. Steve Daines said Thursday that he opposes public land sales and was reviewing the proposal.

Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as interior secretary in President Trump’s first term and led the effort to strip land sales out of the House version, said he remained a “hard no” on any legislation that includes large-scale sales.

Most public lands are in Western states. In some such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.

Lee’s proposal does not specify what properties would be sold. It directs the secretaries of interior and agriculture to sell or transfer at least 0.5% and up to 0.75% of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management holdings. That equals at least 2.2 million acres and up to 3.3 million acres.

The Republican said in a video released by his office that the sales would not include national parks, national monuments or wilderness. They would instead target “isolated parcels” that could be used for housing or infrastructure, he said.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said.

Conservation groups reacted with outrage, saying it would set a precedent to fast-track the handover of cherished lands to developers.

“Shoving the sale of public lands back into the budget reconciliation bill, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, is a betrayal of future generations and folks on both sides of the aisle,” said Michael Carroll with The Wilderness Society.

Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under the House proposal were far from developed areas.

Republican officials in Utah last year filed a lawsuit seeking to take over huge swaths of federal land in the state, but they were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Twelve other states backed Utah’s bid.

Brown writes for the Associated Press.