On Jan. 6, as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, the Trump administration held the first lease sale of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The auction marked a historic moment in the decades-long battle over the refuge’s coastal plain, 1.5 million acres of tundra along the Beaufort Sea in northeastern Alaska. Yet the highly anticipated sale was a flop; major oil companies shied away, and most tracts went to an Alaskan state-funded corporation that doesn’t even own drilling equipment. Although large swaths have been auctioned off, whether this land will be drilled or protected remains uncertain.