Who is doing the grabbing?
Trump wants to claw back the national monuments – claw them back from the people in order to give them to developers and ranchers.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands, as he singled out “a massive federal land grab” by the Obama administration.
It was yet another executive action from a president trying to rack up accomplishments before his first 100 days in office, with Saturday marking that milestone.
The latest move could upend protections put in place in Utah and other states under a 1906 law that authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.
During a signing ceremony at the Interior Department, Trump said the order would end “another egregious abuse of federal power” and “give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs.”
Trump accused the Obama administration of using the Antiquities Act to “unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control” — a practice Trump derided as “a massive federal land grab.”
It’s not an abuse of federal power. Yellowstone and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon do not represent abuses of federal power. Trump is a grubby philistine.
And it’s certainly not a land grab. The point is to preserve the land, which is the opposite of grabbing it. It’s the people who want to turn it into cash who are grabby.
“Somewhere along the way the Act has become a tool of political advocacy rather than public interest,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said.
Advocacy of what? Preservation and perpetual non-destructive public use? Which is in the public interest?
In December, shortly before leaving office, President Barack Obama infuriated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on more than 1 million acres of land that’s sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.
Republicans in the state asked Trump to take the unusual step of reversing Obama’s decision. They said the designation will stymie growth by closing the area to new commercial and energy development. The Antiquities Act does not give the president explicit power to undo a designation and no president has ever taken such a step.
So it will stymie growth (if that’s true), so what? Not everything has to grow.
Zinke said that over the past 20 years, the designation of tens of millions of acres as national monuments have limited the lands’ use for farming, timber harvesting, mining and oil and gas exploration, and other commercial purposes.
Yes, obviously. That’s the point.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said that if Trump truly wants to make America great again, he should use the law to protect and conserve America’s public lands. In New Mexico, Obama’s designation of Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument have preserved important lands while boosting the economy, Heinrich said, and that story has repeated across the country.
“If this sweeping review is an excuse to cut out the public and scale back protections, I think this president is going to find a very resistant public,” Heinrich said.
Leaders of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition called Trump’s action “extremely troubling.”
“It is offensive for politicians to call the Bears Ears National Monument ‘an abuse,’” said Shaun Chapoose, chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee. “To the contrary, it is a fulfillment of our duty to preserve our cultures and our ancestral lands, and its designation was the result of a long, deliberative process to fight for our ancestors as well as access for contemporary use of the lands by our tribal members.”
And that could be the case even if more Utahans wanted to farm and mine and develop that land. If a gang of people come along and grab my wallet, they don’t have a better claim to it than I do. Numbers are not always decisive.
I suspected this was going to happen when Obama designated the monument. Just because it’s never happened before…well, Trump’s never happened before. I doubt he cares about scenic beauty; cover it in gold and he might notice it. I am sure he doesn’t care about the needs of other species – he has shown himself indifferent to the needs of our species if we are “other” to him (non-white, non-male, non-American, non-Trump – any combination of the above, or, just the last one will do).
Ammon Bundy and the Bundy gang have won. This is exactly what they were wanting. Meanwhile, those who protest the pipeline are seen as obstructionists, and are seen as terrible…sad…losers.
And here in Nebraska, the court’s have ruled that not only can the government take your land under eminent domain to give it to a private, for profit company (that happened years ago, in Texas and elsewhere), but now a foreign government can come into your state, seize your land under eminent domain, and turn it over to private enterprise. For some strange reason, that is not seen as a land grab.
Better hold onto your wallet, Ophelia. That gang is coming for it, and your argument is not likely to hold up in the current court system. You should have protected it better, and not let it go out half dressed.
I’m very grateful for my country’s parliamentary system. We have our share of wannabe Trumps, however no individual has that level of power. The barbarians are in the citadel.
No, I’m not being complacement.
In my experience, any time someone has said this (regardless of country or decade) it has been a reactionary social conservative or a business group complaining about either granting legal rights to a minority or protections to land, species or structures. Always. The implicit message is that minorities and anyone who cares about minorities or preservation of the environment is not worthy of public interest (i.e. not a valid part of society. It’s become an inverse dog whistle for me. Every time I hear it now I am alerted to an issue I should consider fighting.
Ah yes – that whole “you are political and I am just normal” thing that the people on top are so likely to brandish. Feminism is political, not-feminism is just how things are. Anti-racism is political but racism is just common sense. Etc.
It’s interesting that we aren’t seeing protests of this from the same people who are screaming about losing our heritage with the removal of the monuments in Louisiana. Is concrete more valuable than regular rocks? Or could it be that people just want their position validated with the one, and want to rip up the other and turn it into money? Nah, people couldn’t be so crass…or could they?
Concrete, was it? Why, lost all of the marble? / s
And, as the mythical Midas allegedly discovered belatedly, you can’t really eat gold. Or money. (Except duly laundered, and with lots of ketchup … )