Tracy Stone-Manning Returns: Don't Mourn, Organize

About this episode

Tracy Stone-Manning returns to discuss the recent changes in federal land management and the implications for environmental policy.

The federal lands fight has shifted since Tracy Stone-Manning last sat down with Bill and Anders in June 2025. The workforce cuts she warned about have arrived; the Roadless Rule is days from final rescission; and on the day this episode was recorded, the BLM Public Lands Rule was formally rescinded. Stone-Manning, who led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden, returns as the show's first repeat guest to assess the damage, name what's still worth fighting for, and make the case that the crisis contains an opportunity. The conversation covers the full landscape of the current moment. We walk through the hollowing-out of federal land management agencies, including the deferred resignation programs, proposed 30% budget cuts for FY27, and Forest Service reorganization, all of which she frames as an effort to set agencies up to fail and use that failure to justify divestiture. She sounds a direct alarm on wildfire: with historic low snowpack, a reorganizing Forest Service, and reduced staffing, she calls the coming season a recipe for the government to fail its people. She also addresses the Congressional Review Act's unprecedented use against Grand Staircase-Escalante's…

People in this episode

Hosts: Bill, Anders

Guest: Tracy Stone-Manning

Topics covered

• federal land management
• wildfire risk
• budget cuts
• Bureau of Land Management
• Congressional Review Act
• environmental policy
• opportunity in crisis

Keywords

• federal lands
• wildfire
• budget cuts
• Bureau of Land Management
• Congress
• environmental crisis
• Ground Shift

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bureau of Land Management, Wilderness Society

Places: Grand Staircase-Escalante

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