House Democrats are demanding an ethics probe into the high-ranking Interior appointee over her financial ties to the massive Thacker Pass lithium mine.
Jimmy Tobias
Jimmy Tobias is an investigative reporter who covers federal environmental and health agencies. He is the co-founder of Public Domain.
Posted inArticles
Top Interior Department official has ties to Thacker Pass lithium mine
Karen Budd-Falen’s family ranching operation agreed to sell water rights to the company developing the controversial Nevada lithium project.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
How ranchers accused of breaking the rules dodge oversight
Elected officials interfere with agency efforts to protect the land.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
Congress made it easier to ignore grazing’s harm to public lands
Federal law requires agencies to review the environmental impacts of grazing, but government employees allege the system is riddled with loopholes.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
The wealthy profit from public lands, and taxpayers pick up the tab
Roughly two-thirds of grazing on Bureau of Land Management land is controlled by just 10% of permit holders.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
How we reported Free Range, our grazing investigation
Data and analyses used in the stories.
Posted inArticles
Inside Utah’s PR campaign to seize public lands
Utah used actors, AI, stagecraft and NDAs as it sought to sway public opinion and take control of 18.5 million acres of federal public land.
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DOJ says presidents can revoke monuments, not just create them
The 1906 Antiquities Act gave presidents the power to protect objects on public lands. A Justice Dept. memo said the Act also ”carries with it the power to revoke.”
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Federal grazing lands fail their checkup
Fifty-seven million acres of BLM land fall short of health standards.
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How grizzly bear poachers are getting away with it
Investigation finds that Department of Justice rarely prosecutes grizzly bear killers under the Endangered Species Act.
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Groups sue over acting BLM director’s appointment
William Perry Pendley has long opposed public lands and wildlife protections but is tasked with overseeing them.
Posted inMarch 16, 2020: Wiring the Wild
The Park Service is selling out to telecom giants
With Trump’s blessing, cell towers are infiltrating protected public lands across the West.
Posted inArticles
Trump administration manipulated wildfire science to promote logging
Emails show Interior appointees crafted a narrative that blamed forest protection efforts for wildfires.
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Trump’s Fish and Wildlife pick is entangled with industry
Aurelia Skipwith has ties to water interests fighting endangered species protection and worked for ag giant Monsanto.
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‘Cyanide bombs’ use reauthorized to kill wild animals
The traps have caused unintentional deaths, but Wildlife Services can continue to employ them to protect livestock and farm crops.
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Public lands top Rep. Debra Haaland’s agenda
One of the first Native American women elected to Congress is fighting fossil fuel development on ‘the most pristine and beautiful places in our country.’
Posted inOctober 12, 2015: The Rise of Lisa Murkowski
For the Lassics lupine, wilderness is a mixed blessing
The Wilderness Act has complicated efforts to protect the rare California wildflower.
Posted inArticles
Crude tactics worked against the sage grouse
For years now, the oil and gas industry has been stirring up trouble for sage grouse. The possibility that the prairie-dwelling birds might receive Endangered Species Act protection gives oil executives high-grade anxiety. It would threaten jobs, they say. It would ruin the economy. It would reduce profits. All the noise the industry has made […]
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Trail dogs do the grunt work on our public lands
Trail dogs — that’s what trail workers across the country call themselves. It tells you what life is like for the thousands of young men and women who spend their summers tending to the travel corridors on our country’s public lands. Trail dogs really do work like dogs, cutting back brush, sawing through trees and […]
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Wilderness at 50: A place to be free, a place to hide
No Place To Hide is the name of a new book by Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who worked with whistleblower Edward Snowden to break the story on National Security Agency spying. The book’s title is drawn from commentary by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, who held hearings in the 1970s that uncovered widespread domestic […]