Related video above: Trump and Musk feud continues over ‘Big, Beautiful bill’

(NEXSTAR) – Over 2 million acres of public land would go up for sale across 11 states under the current version of the Republican budget bill – a proposal that has met criticism from conservationists, hunting groups, local politicians and even some conservatives.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, included the sale of federal lands – a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control – in a draft provision of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Lee has defended the plan as a way to boost domestic energy production, create new revenue streams and increase housing. 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 last Thursday.

Lee has struggled to convince some members of his own party, however, and a similar measure was rejected by the House.

Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke led an effort to strip land sales out of the House version, saying he was a “hard no” on similar measures. Montana was removed from the proposal over the protests of Zinke and other local officials.

What lands could be sold?

An analysis by The Wilderness Society found that more than 250 million acres currently under the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service are at risk of sale.

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 2.1 million acres (868,000 hectares) and up to 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares).

The states potentially affected by the proposal are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

The Wilderness Society and other conservation groups have 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.

Others have expressed doubt that the lands potentially up for sale would ever be suitable for housing development. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under the House proposal were far from developed areas.

“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said of the Senate version. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”

Conservative environmentalist calls sale a ‘loser issue’

Benji Backer, author of “The Conservative Environmentalist,” has accused Sen. Lee on social media of “secretly trying to sell” America’s public land for development.

“I’ve never seen so many conservatives AND liberals stand together as I’ve seen in opposition of this proposed mass sale of public lands,” Backer posted on X. “Conservation of our nation’s beauty is a deeply patriotic and nonpartisan value.”

An April poll sponsored by the Trust for Public and and conducted by YouGov found that, of the 4,000 Americans surveyed, 71% opposed the sale of public land. The opposition was bipartisan: 61% were Trump voters in 2024, and 85% Harris voters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iran’s nuclear breakout time has become a key question as President Trump considers whether to bomb the Islamic regime’s key underground nuclear facility. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in justifying his unprecedented strikes on the regional rival last week, said Iran was “marching very quickly” toward a nuclear weapon. 

That seemed to diverge from U.S. assessments — voiced by Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard in a March congressional hearing — that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon. 

Trump was clear about where he stood when asked Tuesday about Gabbard’s testimony. 

“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

Nuclear watchdogs have had limited ability to monitor Iran’s stockpiles since Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2018. For that reason and others, experts say pinning down a specific nuclear timeline is complicated. 

“When people give different estimates of Iran’s breakout timeline, I think it’s because they’re talking about different things,” said Heather Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointing to Gabbard’s testimony and Trump’s pushback. 

“Tulsi Gabbard said there is no evidence that Iran is weaponizing. That can be a true statement at the same time as Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability,” she said. “If you want to talk about actual weaponization, that is a very specific activity. It involves developing trigger technologies, figuring out how an implosion device works.”

Given its current level of enrichment, experts estimate it would take Iran a week or two to produce the weapons-grade uranium needed for a nuclear weapon and another few months to build a crude weapon. 

Then Iran would need to figure out how to deliver the bomb to Israel, more than 1,000 miles away, either fitting it onto a missile, dropping it from a plane, or smuggling it across the border by land. 

According to CNN, U.S. officials think Iran is up to three years away from actually launching a nuclear weapon. Andreas Krieg, a lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, put that figure closer to 18 months. He said he was skeptical of Israel’s claims of a rapidly closing window to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

“The assessment of what the Israeli intelligence says, we only have it filtered through the government, and the government obviously has an intention to say ‘they’re very close,’ and hence, this was a preemptive strike rather than an act of aggression,” Krieg said.

“I’m not sure whether the Israeli intelligence service really says this, or if this is the Israeli government abusing or exploiting a narrative,” he added. “No one has seen that report.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not respond to questions about its latest assessments. 

Israel has pounded Iranian nuclear facilities in the past week, possibly setting back the country’s nuclear program by a few months. However, experts say eliminating Iran’s near-term nuclear threat requires destroying the Fordow nuclear facility, which is buried in the side of a mountain.

Only the U.S. has the 30,000-pound bombs required to penetrate the thick concrete bunker shielding the nuclear centrifuges underground.

Trump returned early from the Group of Seven summit in Canada and summoned his national security team to the White House on Tuesday as he considers sending U.S. bombers and pilots to join Israel’s war. 

Latest assessments 

A day before Israel’s strikes, a quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found that Iran had amassed 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, a stockpile that “remains a matter of serious concern,” according to the agency tasked with monitoring Tehran’s nuclear program. 

The report was the first time since 2005 that the IAEA board of governors had found Iran in violation of its non-proliferation pledges.

“The first time in 20 years that you find someone to be in breach, it is a big deal and it should be very concerning,” Williams said.

Ninety percent enrichment is considered weapons-grade, and experts have said Iran’s uranium supply is well above what would be needed for civilian use in a nuclear power plant.

The 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration included provisions for Iran to allow the IAEA significant access to its nuclear program, including installing cameras and sensors at nuclear sites.

After Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, the Iranian government has limited inspections and removed cameras at its sites altogether, though the IAEA has been able to retain some investigatory power and access.

Since at least 2019, the U.S. has assessed that Iran is not actively pursuing a workable nuclear device.

Annual reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence typically included the line “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”

Last year, American intelligence agencies shifted to say that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so” but maintained that Iran did not have an active nuclear military program.

Before it launched its attacks last week, Israel told the United States that Iran had renewed research efforts useful for a nuclear weapon, including studying an explosive triggering system, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

But U.S. officials weren’t convinced those efforts amounted to a decision by Iran to actually build a weapon.

Different perspectives

David Des Roches, a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, said Israeli officials were inclined to be more cautious than their U.S. counterparts when assessing Iran’s nuclear threat. 

“The Americans are more capable of looking at the capability and saying, ‘yes, yes, yes, but,’ and then examining intent. I think Israeli strategic culture is fundamentally different,” he said. “Their culture is preventing annihilation while the world stands by, so their calculus is less accepting of risk.”

Gabbard told lawmakers in March that the U.S. had seen a shift in Iranian rhetoric around nuclear weapons. 

“In the past year, we’ve seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus,” she said.

But she noted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not reauthorized Iran’s nuclear weapons program suspended in 2003, and she said the U.S. still believed Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Krieg argued that any decision made by Iran to begin sprinting toward a nuclear weapon would be known by Western intelligence agencies.

“Looking at how penetrated Iran is right now, we see that the Mossad [Israel’s spy agency] has been able to operate with impunity across all levels of the regime,” he said. “If any of these decisions had been made, it would have come to all our attention.”