Trump Erased 3 Million Acres of Bears Ears Nat'l Monument - Says the Canyons are "Too Generic"

Donald Trump erased nearly three million acres of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments yesterday, and the official justification his own White House put in writing is that the canyons are “too generic.” I am not making that up. The proclamation says the monument protects, quote, “deep sandstone canyons, broad desert mesas, forested mountaintops dotted with lush meadows.” And then it says, quote, “while scenic, these generic features are not landmarks worthy of protection.” My dude. You just described one of the most beautiful places in North America and then wrote it up like a Zillow listing you are trying to lowball.It gets dumber. The petroglyphs apparently don’t count either, because petroglyphs are, quote, “found across the American West.” There are a hundred thousand archaeological sites inside Bears Ears. The White House looked at all of it and said, meh, seen it.Here is the damage. Bears Ears drops from one point three six million acres to a hundred twenty one thousand. Grand Staircase, from one point eight seven million to a hundred eighty two thousand. It is the largest rollback of protected land in American history, breaking the record Trump set in 2017, when he gutted these same monuments and Biden restored them.He signed it while Bears Ears is on fire. The Babylon Fire has been burning inside the monument since June, and it is the largest wildfire in the country. So there is the president in the Oval Office handing Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox a commemorative pen while the ground is still smoking.Oh and Trump’s public reason for doing this: out there you can’t hunt, you can’t fish, you can, quote, “virtually not even walk.” Steve Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance confirmed that hunting, fishing and camping are all allowed. The real reason for doing this is in the proclamation, which cites critical minerals, uranium and copper. Under Grand Staircase sits the largest coal field in Utah. Trump says he is giving the land back to the people of Utah. And by “the people” he means Energy Fuels, the mining company sitting on a hundred and seventeen claims inside the old boundary and a uranium mill six miles away.Seventy one percent of Utah voters want Bears Ears kept, per polling from the Center for Biological Diversity. Utah Center Utah Senator Mike Lee is the architect of this, and he doesn’t just want these two. Last year he tried to force the sale of three million acres of public land across eleven western states. His own party killed it. So he skipped the voting part.Bears Ears is also the first national monument Indigenous nations ever asked for. Five of them. Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, and two Ute nations. They built a commission to co-manage the land with the federal government. Trump’s proclamation dissolves that commission.I’m sure you’re thinking, Can he even do this? Short answer. No. The Antiquities Act lets a president create a monument. It says nothing about destroying one. In 1938 the attorney general ruled that a president cannot abolish monuments. Last year Trump’s Justice Department overruled him. He wrote himself a permission slip.But they’re doing this on purpose. It’s a trap. The tribes will have to sue to keep the land, and the case will climb toward a Supreme Court where John Roberts has already put his contempt for the Antiquities Act in writing. Win there and it is not two monuments. It is every acre any future president could ever protect.None of this takes effect for sixty days. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance will be the ones in that courtroom. Fund them.Unless you think these places are too generic.Sources Reporting by Jim and Will Pattiz at More Than Just Parks .https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/07/modifying-the-bears-ears-national-monument/https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2026-07-13/trump-shrinks-bears-ears-grand-staircase-escalante-utahhttps://utahnewsdispatch.com/2026/07/13/president-trump-shrinks-bears-ears-and-grand-staircase-escalante-again/https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-slashes-bears-ears-grand-staircase-escalante-national-monuments-for-second-time-2026-07-13/https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/update-white-mesa-uranium-mill/https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1403101/dlhttps://www.hcn.org/articles/doj-opinion-puts-national-monuments-at-risk/https://www.propublica.org/article/utah-mike-lee-public-lands-sell-offhttps://suwa.org/national-monuments/ Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe