More than three months after taking control of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, colleagues and advocates are still wondering how Mike Lee will use his perch.
The Utah Republican with a deeply conservative voting record has been pushing politically difficult ideas like selling public lands and retooling environmental laws. He is not known for being a schmoozer or deal-maker.
At the same time, Lee has promised bipartisan work on issues like permitting, but committee watchers say they are still trying to figure out his plans.
Some senators suggest Lee — who unseated an establishment Republican in 2011 and has become a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump — might take time to grow into his new role.
“You have to adjust your mindset a little bit when you’re the chair,” said Republican committee member John Hoeven of North Dakota. “As a chair or ranking member, you recognize it’s a different role than just being a member of the committee.”
Hoeven said Lee had potential to do that, pointing to his previous work with Democrats on issues like sentencing reform.
Lee is selective about chatting with reporters in the Capitol’s hallways and wasn’t available for an extended interview. And while there are some clues about where the committee is headed, questions abound.
For example, the reauthorization of a major outdoor recreation and public lands law signed by Trump during his first term is due by midyear, but it’s a measure Lee voted against and has serious problems with.
Lee hasn’t met with House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), who has been helping lead the push for a permitting overhaul and amending the Endangered Species Act.
A lot of Lee’s time has gone to helping craft the Republicans’ party-line budget bill, which is expected to include provisions to promote fossil fuel production and roll back Biden-era regulations.
Lee has deemed the idea of expanding renewable energy sources like solar and wind power at the expense of gas and coal “very disturbing.”
This weekend Lee made clear he also supports the sale of some public land to build housing. He called Democratic attempts to thwart such efforts “disgraceful.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) disagrees with Lee on selling lands but said the committee was in good hands. “He understands the issues of the West, and that’s what makes him a good leader,” said Daines.
Back home, Lee’s constituents are excited about his new role, said former chief of staff Spencer Stokes, a well-known political strategist.
“He’s got a great understanding of what needs to be done,” Stokes said. “With Trump in office he feels more empowered. He and the president have a good working relationship — we are all hopeful for that.”
Early clashes
For years, the committee carried out a tradition of bipartisanship, with previous chairs like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) priding themselves on working across the aisle.
But in 2025, the new leaders got off to a rocky start. In January, Lee and his Democratic counterpart, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, exchanged sharp words over paperwork and the scheduling of hearings for President Donald Trump’s nominees.
“I encouraged them to at least get the rules right, because I’m sure we’re going to disagree on other stuff,” said former committee ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington. “After a while, they seemed to get that done.”
Lee, 53, entered the Senate as a tea party firebrand and has styled himself a MAGA stalwart. He is a frequent guest on Fox News and prolific poster on the social media site X, where he wrote last year that any Republican with “a climate-change agenda … shouldn’t be in office.”
He and Trump adviser Elon Musk frequently interact online over matters like whether Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
The now-retired Manchin — who prided himself for his deal-making during his 14-year Senate career — thought Lee and Heinrich needed to get to know one another better, and that it “might take a little bit more time to work out the nuances they both have in their styles.”
He had an idea: “When I get up there, I might just invite them both down on the boat to have dinner,” he said, referring to “Almost Heaven,” his 65-foot yacht. “That might work.”
Committee work picks up
In addition to the early partisan strife, the committee has gotten off to an arguably slow start, with just a dribble of hearings and Trump administration nominations.
That stands to change this week, with a markup of a series of mining and minerals bills and confirmation action that could spark fireworks.
“We haven’t had many hearings, so it’s tough for me to form a judgment,” said committee member Angus King of Maine, an independent senator who caucuses with Democrats, adding the ones they have had have been “pretty good.”
“I like hearings, so I wish we had more,” he said.
Reaching across the aisle and working on big deals has not been Lee’s modus operandi. When Republicans joined in recent years to back the bipartisan infrastructure law and the CHIPS and Science Act, he voted “no.”
He’s often among a handful of Republicans who oppose widely bipartisan bills. In December, he was the lone senator to oppose the biennial water infrastructure bill.
In 2020, he opposed the Great American Outdoors Act and says changes need to be made before he would support reauthorizing the national parks maintenance backlog bill — which some senators are already working on.
One exception might be the “Fix Our Forests Act,” a bipartisan House-passed forest-management and wildfire-prevention bill. Hoeven expressed confidence that it would come up soon.
In addition, Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Lee “has shown no disinclination” to engage with Democrats on talks about permitting reform, which he sees as a bellwether.
“Now that he has responsibilities to his caucus and the Senate as a significant committee chairman — that creates a different paradigm,” Whitehouse added.
‘He can be a little abrasive’
Lee’s views have been shaped by his unyielding belief that the federal government — run by Washington bureaucrats rather than ranchers, loggers and oilmen — chokes Western land. The federal government owns more than two-thirds of his home state.
“He comes from Utah, which is kind of extremely overshadowed by the [Bureau of Land Management] and he wears that chip on his shoulder,” said Manchin. “Basically saying the federal government owns more of my state than most any other state in the nation and it’s always a battle.”
Manchin said Lee’s public persona does not always match his behinds-the-scenes character.
“He’s got a good personality — he’s very likeable,” Manchin said. “Sometimes he can be a little abrasive, but he does it in a way where you can say, ‘Come on, Mike.’ He’s got a good heart.”
Moderate Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado — who is part of negotiations on permitting — thought Lee seemed “more open to bipartisanship than what people talked about before.”
Asked why he and Lee haven’t met, Westerman said, “It’s just scheduling,” adding they both “think a lot alike — we kind of see things from a black and white perspective. It’s either the right thing to do or it’s not the right thing to do, but we also realize we’ve got to get things done.”
Another question mark is his relationship with Heinrich. In a brief interview, Heinrich said the two have a “cordial” relationship and he was hopeful they could find areas to work together.
“We talk on a regular basis,” the Democrat said. “We’ve traveled together. We’ve always had a polite relationship. Our values are different.”
Unlike other past ENR chairs, Lee is not one to chat up the Capitol Hill press with much frequency, and he recently went on Fox News to chide the “feeding frenzy” of the “liberal Capitol Hill press corps,” which he said has started chasing lawmakers down hallways. Reporters typically follow lawmakers around the Capitol complex to ask questions.
After Trump’s address to Congress last month, Lee offered some thoughts on energy. He justified Trump’s hatred for wind power, even after Republicans spent years hyping an all-of-the-above energy strategy.
“The most common concern about wind is that we have put too many of our eggs on its sources of intermittent power,” he said. “And that’s a big concern. At a time when gas- and coal-fired electric power plants are being phased out and not approved. The fact we’ve got as many eggs in the wind and solar basket as we do is very disturbing.”
When asked how the president’s anti-regulatory agenda could undermine the Republican reconciliation bill, he said Trump administrative actions could “affect how we write” legislation. “It’s not necessarily a zero-sum game between executive orders and action on reconciliation,” he said.
Public lands, climate change
Lee offered more clues in a recent Washington Examiner opinion piece with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), in which they declared, “No one knows the land like those who live on it.”
In that op-ed, the lawmakers said they want to amend the Endangered Species Act and reopen the Antiquities Act, the law dating back to President Theodore Roosevelt that allows a president to designate huge swaths of land as national monuments.
Lee pushed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to work with him to fix the “current mess” that is the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a long-standing fight over who gets to control public lands out West.
Lee is currently focused on shaping the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, according to several people who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“The first thing we’re going to work on is reconciliation,” Hoeven said. “So we have to go through and identify the reductions that we’ll make, or the pay-fors it will provide. So pulling back some of the funding from the [Inflation Reduction Act], expanding leasing, onshore and off — some of those kind of things.”
The bulk of his committee’s role is expected to center on increased mining and oil and gas leasing, which they expect to raise billions of dollars.
They could also secure some land sales and permitting changes. The latter may run into conflict with rules governing budget reconciliation.
“No one is more excited than Mike Lee to fight the parliamentarian over the Byrd rule,” said an observer who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The Byrd rule, named after the late Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), limits policy provisions that can be included in the bill that are not directly tied to the budget.
“When you talk to Mike, there are a lot of things that he’d like to do that he’s not going to get Democratic buy-in,” Hoeven said. “Maybe some of those can get done in reconciliation. After that, he’s going to find a way to get buy-in.”
After reconciliation, Hoeven continued, the committee focus will shift: “How do we work to really grow energy in this country? Ways to streamline the permitting process, reduce the regulatory burden, to encourage investment in more energy production of all kinds.”
Differences do exist within the GOP on these issues — including with new Utah Sen. John Curtis, who founded the Conservative Climate Caucus during his time in the House.
Already, though, the two have joined on several Utah-specific lands bills. “We talk frequently, and we like our relationship,” Curtis said, adding, “We are different.”
Curtis said he’s spoken to Lee about climate change — a conversation he described as exploratory. “He’s talked to me more about what I’m doing,” he said. “He’s not critical of what I’m doing.”
