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3mo ago

Trump Granted Power to Abolish National Monuments, DOJ Rules

The Department of Justice reversed a nearly 90-year-old interpretation of the Antiquities Act to open the door for future rescissions of protected sites.

FILE - A sign is set up ahead of President Joe Biden's visit to the Chuckwalla National Monument, Jan. 7, 2025, to the Coachella Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
Medicine Lake, as seen in November of 2023, sits northeast of Mount Shasta at the bottom of the caldera of the largest volcano in the Cascade Range. The lake is the centerpiece of the newly designated Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, which the Trump administration says it has legal authority to abolish.
A vehicle rides on a highway past a pair of buttes known as the Bears Ears in Bears Ears National Monument outside Blanding, Utah, U.S., October 22, 2023. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

Overview

  • On May 27 the Justice Department issued a 50-page opinion disavowing the 1938 Castle Pinckney memo and concluded that presidents can revoke or shrink any national monument established by their predecessors under the Antiquities Act.
  • The legal memo spotlights two Biden-designated California sites—Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments—together covering 848,000 acres and shielding tribal cultural landscapes from drilling and mining.
  • White House spokesperson Harrison Fields framed the opinion as enabling a broader “liberation” of federal lands for oil, gas, coal, geothermal and mineral leasing under the president’s energy agenda.
  • Environmental groups and tribal advocates have denounced the opinion as lacking legal precedent and are preparing court challenges to block any attempts to dismantle or reduce monument protections.
  • The ruling also casts uncertainty over Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments, which Trump pared back in 2017, were restored by Biden and remain tied up in ongoing litigation.