The federal government is the largest landowner in the United States, and federal lands are managed and governed under the Property Clause of the United States Constitution. The Property Clause gives Congress the power to manage and acquire property, and “national parks, national wildlife refuges, military reservations, federal prisons, and public-domain land are all examples of lands owned or administered by the Government of the United States.” As a result, the federal government can own, manage, and regulate lands within the states.
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This is statistics porn, akin to how cookbooks may be refered to as “food porn”. This image hides all kinds of important data, like “what land is owned”. Washington’s 30% government owned. Which part? It’s half desert, so if the government owns all the fertile lands, that’s a world of difference from if it owns all the sand that no one actually wants. The particular choice of visualisation heavily skews viewer perception of what the statistics are saying, which is frankly not a lot. All it gives is relative area if that area were contiguous (which it most likely isn’t). This is an example of neutral statistics being turned into insinuative statistics. Stop it =)