Five Republican congressmen including Mike Simpson of Idaho and Dan Newhouse of central Washington signaled Thursday they will vote against President Donald Trump’s budget bill if it emerges from the Senate with a public land sell-off provision.

They called the effort pushed by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah a grave mistake, unforced error and a poison pill and wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson that “we cannot accept the sale of federal lands that Senator Lee seeks. If a provision to sell public lands is in the bill that reaches the House floor, we will be forced to vote no.”

The letter was also signed by Cliff Bentz of Oregon, Ryan Zinke of Montana and David Valadao of California.

The fate of the bill in the Senate remains unclear. Recreationists of all stripes waited into the night for a parliamentarian ruling on the latest version of Lee’s legislation that would mandate the selling off of up to 1.2 million acres of public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

Some news outlets reported that Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana said he has the votes to kill it if the provision isn’t stripped from the budget reconciliation bill by the Senate parliamentarian.

Reporters from Punchbowl News posted on the social media site X that Daines has enough votes to stop Lee’s effort. The nonprofit online news source NOTUS quoted Daines as saying “We’re already prepared, and we’ve got the votes to strike it if we need to.”

Last week, the Lewiston Tribune reported that Daines along with Idaho Republican Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo said they were against Lee’s proposal.

At that time, Lee had inserted language in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that would have mandated the sell-off of more than 3 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

The parliamentarian said early this week that the measure did not align with the so-called Byrd Rule, which mandates reconciliation bills be restricted to a strict set of fiscal measures. Reconciliation bills can be passed with simple majorities rather than the 60 votes needed to move most legislation through the Senate.

Lee came back with a slimmed down version that could target as many as 1.2 million acres of BLM land within 5 miles of population centers. However, Lee also said land covered by grazing leases would be off limits, a move that likely pushes the total land mandated for sale to less than half a million acres.

Public land advocates were not mollified and kept up a campaign against the measure with a new “Not One Acre” slogan.

Todd Adkins, senior vice president of Sportsmen’s Alliance, a hunting group, marveled at the diversity of the opposition to the potential sell-off. It includes hunters, anglers, hikers, backpackers, campers, off-roaders, boaters, bikers, birdwatchers and others who at times can find themselves on opposite sides of natural resource issues. They have set differences aside and locked arms on this one.

“I love it for our community that we have been able, with a big crowd of people, to have one voice on this,” Adkins said. “‘Not One Acre’ is pretty cool.”

In their letter to the speaker, the Republican representatives said they agree with Lee that federal lands have been mismanaged for decades but selling the land is not the right move.

“We believe advancing the House Republicans legislative agenda on public lands and natural resources, along with using existing law for land disposals, is the correct path forward,” they said.