Protesters marched to the Eldorado Hotel in downtown Santa Fe, where the Western Governors’ Association was holding its annual meeting on June 23, 2025. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM)
As state-level elected officials met with cabinet secretaries appointed by Donald Trump at the Western Governors Association’s annual meeting on Monday afternoon, demonstrators protested outside, their chants of “not for sale” echoing through downtown Santa Fe.
A coalition of hunters, fishers, mountain bikers, rock climbers, skiers, hikers, campers, wildlife lovers and more marched to the conference venue from nearby DeVargas Park, where the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance hosted a rally to oppose a Republican tax and spend proposal that would make more than 21,000 square miles of public land in New Mexico “eligible” to be sold to private buyers, according to a recent analysis.
New Mexico State Police unsuccessfully tried to stop the crowd of more than 1,000 people from completely blocking West San Francisco Street and the entrance to Eldorado Hotel, where U.S. cabinet secretaries and state and territorial governors were gathered. Earlier in the day, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had given a keynote address to conference attendees, with no mention of the GOP proposal.
“This land is sacred, this land belongs to all of us, the water belongs to all of us,” Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. James Naranjo said at the rally. “They don’t belong to rich millionaires, they belong to the people of New Mexico and our visitors that come a long way to see our beautiful state, our beautiful culture, our beautiful ways of life.”
Speakers at the rally also opposed the Trump administration’s review of national monument protections, including buffer zones around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
“Please support us tribes,” Naranjo told the crowd. “We’re fighting for Chaco Canyon, we’re fighting for Bears Ears, Tent Rocks, Puye Cliffs, Bandelier, Valles Caldera. All our national parks are in jeopardy.”
Teresa Martinez, executive director and co-founder of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, said when people stand up for the land, they also stand up for each other. She said 100 years from now, future generations need to know that the right people stood up at the right time to protect cherished natural landscapes.
“Because if we don’t do it, the wrong people will,” she said, gesturing to the hotel where the governors were meeting with Trump officials. “The people in that room are the wrong people, and they’re trying to do it right now.”
Lauren Leib, president of the National Treasury Employees Union Local 340, which represents federal Bureau of Land Management workers in New Mexico, called on all of the state and federal officials at the conference to stop the tax and spending legislation going through Congress called the “one big beautiful bill.”
“They’re using this rationale to propose selling off millions of acres of our public lands to offset the massive tax breaks for the 1%, and they’re doing that under the guise of creating affordable housing,” Leib said. “That’s not how you solve the housing crisis.”
Instead, she said, policymakers should enact rent control, living wages and regulations of the rich who can afford to buy up housing.
“They’re trying to steal your public lands to line their own pockets out of insatiable greed, and utter disdain for working class people like you and me,” she said.
Also during the rally, more than 100 nonprofit organizations delivered a letter to the 19 state leaders at the WGA conference, urging them to oppose the federal legislation. The letter warned that the proposal would allow an unprecedented disposal of public lands “with no environmental review, meaningful Tribal consultation, or public input.”
“It will take effect with lightning speed, forcing the immediate nomination of lands put up for auction within 30 days, all with no public process,” the letter states. “There are no requirements or safeguards that sold land be used for affordable housing. It’s an attack on the very values Westerners hold dear.”
Naranjo placed the struggle over public lands in the context of his people’s struggles against colonialism.
“We fought off the Spaniards. We fought off the U.S. government,” he said. “We fought off a lot of people in our day, my ancestors, and we’re still here.”
This post was originally authored and published by Austin Fisher from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
