Fact-check · Nov 2, 2026 · Donald Trump
“The secretary of the interior should be renamed the number of different things, but some people jokingly call it the 14 time zones, 500,000,000 acres of land, 700,000,000 acres of subsurface, 1,300,000,000 of offshore”
MISLEADING
What the record shows
DOI manages ~500M acres of surface land, ~700M acres of subsurface minerals, and ~3.2 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (not 1.3 billion).
Surface and subsurface figures are accurate. Offshore acreage is materially understated—DOI manages 3.2 billion OCS acres, not 1.3 billion as stated.
Sources
- Reforming Federal Land Management
- S. 434
- United States Department of the Interior
- The Federal Land Management Agencies
- Interior secretary manages vast lands that all Americans share
- Interior secretary manages vast lands that all Americans share − and can sway the balance between conservation and development
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