AP News52%
Trump reduces size of 2 national monuments in Utah as Republicans reshape land management 55%
By MATTHEW BROWN18% SAVANNAH PETERS33%
7/13/2026, 9:59:37 PM
Keywords: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Utah, Energy Industry, U S Republican Party, Nevada, New Mexico, Co State Wire, Az State Wire, Colorado, Arizona, Ut State Wire, Nm State Wire, Nv State Wire, Trump Bears Ears Grand Staircase Escalante, Mike Lee, Business, Environmental Conservation, Davina Smith Idjesa, Bill Clinton, Hannah Schoenbaum, Politics, Government Regulations, Oil And Gas Industry, Climate And Environment, Religion, Steve Bloch, Doug Burgum, U S Democratic Party, Spencer Cox, Barack Obama, Climate
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Framing Effect, and Appeal to Emotion, with Politically Left Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 33% saturation with 227 hits. Analysis detected 944 faulty-reasoning hits from 687 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 53.3% and a BS Rank of 55% (9,248 of 20,516 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 54.90% of the article peer group.
President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by his Democratic predecessors on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that state officials want made available for development.
Trump, a Republican, issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act to reduce their size by about 90% each.
He took similar actions during his first term, but those were reversed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“This is a big day for Utah,” Utah Gov.
Spencer Cox as he stood next to Trump at the White House Monday.
“These monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.”
Bears Ears was the first national monument created at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred.
The landscape contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites and features in some tribes’ creation and migration stories.
Its designation honored five tribes in the region — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
Grand Staircase-Escalante consists of cliffs, canyons, natural arches and archaeological sites, including rock paintings.
It holds large coal reserves, while the Bears ears area has uranium.
The national monument designation provides sweeping protections not just for significant geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining and new construction nearby.
Proponents of Trump’s move to downsize say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals.
Trump asserted Monday that people can not hunt, fish or “virtually not even walk” on the monuments.
That’s false: Hunting, fishing, camping and other recreation are permitted under state and federal regulations, said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation group.
Biden designated or expanded more than a dozen monuments and had a goal to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Trump’s policies are largely the opposite: He wants to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands that total more than 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers) and offshore areas under federal control, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
That’s drawn backlash from Democrats who warn of the wholesale disposal of treasured landscapes for commercial gain.
“Today’s executive action is another chapter in this administration’s war on the West,” Democratic Sen.
Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said Monday.
He added that Trump was “turning the Antiquities Act on its head.”
Land sale proposals fell flat
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year that federal officials would review and consider redrawing monument boundaries as part of a push to expand U.S. energy production.
Trump in his current term has used proclamations to lift commercial fishing prohibitions within expansive marine monuments in areas of the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast.
Those monuments were created by Democratic and Republican administrations.
The effort to boost the fishing industry, which has been challenged in court, marks a dramatic shift in federal policy by prioritizing commercial interests over efforts to allow the fish supply to increase.
Some Republicans have tried to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities.
Those efforts have largely fallen flat: A push by some GOP lawmakers in the House to sell public lands ran into bipartisan opposition, while another proposal by Sen.
Mike Lee of Utah to sell more than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square kilometers) of federal lands was removed from Republicans’ big tax and spending bill.
The U.S.
Supreme Court last year turned back a lawsuit from Utah officials who sought to wrest control of vast areas of public land within the state from the federal government.
Hannah Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.
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