Click play to listen to this article.

A new report finds the Trump administration has implemented 80 percent of the public lands goals laid out in Project 2025, significantly impacting New Mexico and other Western states.

The Center for Western Priorities has said the actions have been carried out despite the president’s repeated disavowal of the document on the 2024 campaign trail.

Kate Groetzinger, the center's communications manager, said researchers with the center found multiple efforts to undermine the environmental review and public comment process under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Image

"The Trump administration has really cut the 'public' out of public lands," she said, "by limiting the amount of work that companies need to do to get a permit and limiting the opportunities for public participation in permitting."

Supporters of the administration's efforts have maintained that environmental reviews often take years, slowing down projects that could support jobs and tax revenue. That's led Republicans in Congress to use a little-known law to overturn federal public lands decisions – the 1996 Congressional Review Act. It allows Congress to roll back certain federal agency rules with a simple majority vote and the president’s signature. Until recently, the law rarely had been used in the context of public lands.

According to the Center for American Progress, Trump remains the only president in U.S. history to remove protections for more public lands than he has added. Groetzinger said this leaves New Mexico sites at risk.

"These land management agencies have been gutted and directed to only work on things that help oil and gas companies, ranchers and mining companies," she said. "So, it really is a perversion of what the land-management agencies are supposed to do, which is serve the people and protect the environment."

Last year, the Trump administration announced its intention to rescind a 10-mile buffer zone prohibiting future oil and gas drilling around New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park, established under the Biden administration in 2023. The site has cultural, spiritual and historical significance to many Pueblos and Tribes and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of only 24 in the United States.