With three weeks left in his term, President Barack Obama designated two more national monuments using the Antiquities Act of 1906. This drove Republicans mad because they want that sweet money you get when you sell off public lands to corporate interests.
No president ever has retracted a monument designated by a predecessor, and the courts have several times backed up executive authority in the matter, beginning with the case of Cameron vs. United States in 1920. But given the kind of renegade reinterpretation a Trumpian judiciary could take, there’s no certainty that stare decisis will keep an existing presidentially declared monument from being unproclaimed.
The most controversial of the monuments, Bears Ears in Utah, encompasses 1.35 million acres of stunningly beautiful public lands surrounding San Juan County in the southeastern part of the state. Obama’s detailed proclamation elegantly explains just how special it is.
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, the chair of the House Committee on National Resources, is one of those pissed off Republicans. Using the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Obama sidestepped Congress’s ability to have input into the process. Rep. Bishop, maybe unaware that his party spent six years stalling our government under President Obama, is also unaware that he is full of “baloney.” Here he is talking about “gotcha” executive moments with no trace of irony or self-awareness.
"No one ever gets to have a say, you don't work out things in advance," Bishop says. "It has to be a gotcha moment where the president unveils something unilaterally."
Bishop wants the Trump administration to also act by executive order, and either shrink Bears Ears or nullify it altogether. Bears Ears connects a huge protected corridor that links several monuments that ultimately bring you to the Grand Canyon. The land is also considered sacred to Native American tribes.
Rep. Bishop doesn’t seem to be worried about “unilaterally” moving to ban entry into our country based on religion, nor does he seem to mind the “unilateral” move to put a white supremacist into the National Security Council. But, not unlike fellow blight on humanity Rep. Jason Chaffetz, he does wants all of this land to have the elasticity of being sold off in pieces for oil and gas drilling. Whether or not Rep. Bishop and the other Republican privatizers can convince the public that they don’t love National Monuments (they do) remains to be seen. Of course, Rep. Bishop doesn’t butter his bread amongst his constituents.
Bishop wants more local control of federal public land. He's also one of the biggest supporters in Congress of the idea that most all federal public land should be turned over to states to own and manage.
An analysis by the Center of Responsive Politics however found that he gets more campaign donations from outside his home state than any other lawmaker in the House, much of that coming from energy and agribusiness.
The hypocrisy is strong in Utah’s state legislature.