Trump’s Interior Can Now Sign Away Your Public Land Before Anyone Can Sue to Stop It - Alaska’s First

A Trump judge in Anchorage just signed away one point three eight million acres of protected public land to the state of Alaska and ruled that no court in America can ever get it back.Federal land comes with federal rules. Public comment, environmental review, and a federal judge when somebody breaks them. State land comes with none of that. Alaska can lease it, mine it, or sell it to whoever shows up with money, and no federal court can hear about it.And we already know what comes next, because it’s already happening up there. Go watch my Ambler Road video.So how did this happen. In February, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum erased two protections that had sat on two point one million acres since the early seventies. He was carrying out a Trump executive order titled, and I want to be clear that this is the real name, Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential. Signed day one. Ten conservation groups sued in March. And on May fifth, with that lawsuit already on the judge’s desk, Interior signed over the first one point three eight million anyway.That signature is the whole ballgame. Under a 1980 law, the second an Interior official signs, Alaska owns it. Not when the survey is done. Not when the deed is issued. And nothing pauses that while a lawsuit runs. The agency signs, and the signing kills the case. Your roommate sells your car and the judge goes sorry, it’s got new plates now.Then Interior went into court and argued for it. The agency that gave the land away told a judge that giving it away is what put it out of his reach. Airtight work, fellas.And Judge Aaron Christian Peterson bought it, using a rule from 1997 about lake bottoms. That is not a metaphor. The rule was built for the mud under lakes and rivers, and every court since has kept it in the water. This March the Supreme Court was asked to stretch it and refused. Peterson stretched it over dry Arctic tundra, then added a footnote promising it only counts in Alaska. A footnote. Binding on nobody.The conservation groups had one last idea. If a citizen can’t sue for the land back, have the court order Interior to sue Alaska for it. Peterson said no, because a private party cannot “launder its lawsuit through two branches of the federal government.” Laundering. From the man who just notarized the largest land wash in American history.And now it’s a recipe. That 1980 law only exists for Alaska. But Mike Lee, the Utah senator who keeps trying to sell off federal land and keeps losing, can write that same early-transfer language into a bill of his own. Pass it, sign fast, and the courthouse door locks before anybody can ask whether the bill was legal.The other seven hundred thousand acres are still unsigned. Alaska can ask for them any morning it wants.So go look up your own senators on the Public Lands Scorecard at More Than Just Parks in Substack, then call them. Because a recipe still needs somebody in Congress willing to cook.Sources:Case: Northern Alaska Environmental Center v. Burgum, District of Alaska.Reporting by Will Pattiz at More Than Just Parks, who read all 27 pages of the order.https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/29/2025-01955/unleashing-alaskas-extraordinary-resource-potentialhttps://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/document_secretarys_orders/so-3422-signed.pdf Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe