Trump's cuts to Bears Ears turn public trust into a political chip
By Nikhil Raghavan · Reporting from San Francisco ·
We are currently witnessing a policy loop that would be laughable if the stakes weren't measured in millions of acres.
The Executive Toggle Switch
Donald Trump ordered the shrinkage of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in July 2026. He stripped protections from nearly all the land—roughly 3 million acres, an area the size of Connecticut. [upi.com] This move repeats a cycle from 2017, when the administration first attempted to dismantle the sites, only for Joe Biden to restore them in 2021.
Patagonia and the Natural Resources Defense Council have returned to court to stop the erasure. Ryan Gellert, CEO of Patagonia, said the dispute hinges on the Antiquities Act of 1906. The administration treats the Act as a toggle switch, flipping it "on" to protect land and "off" to invite drilling rigs, open-pit mines, and lithium extraction. Gellert argues the law grants the power to establish monuments, but not to undo them.
Can a President "right-size" a monument?
Governor Spencer Cox of Utah and the Trump administration argue that the Act requires the president to protect only the "smallest parcel of land necessary" to preserve specific objects, such as ancient ruins or geological arches. They claim previous presidents overstepped by labeling entire landscapes as "objects." By "right-sizing" these borders, they say they can restore grazing leases and mining access.
This logic turns a permanent legal status into a temporary lease. If the "smallest parcel" shifts every few election cycles, the Antiquities Act protects nothing. The Interior Department calls this "commonsense conservation," but the ground reality differs. [GearJunkie] reports that mining claims already pepper the newly opened areas. Trump’s "resource independence" is a 60-day window to hand public land to extractive firms.
The Tribal Cost
The damage extends beyond the map. Bears Ears was the first monument created at the request of Tribal Nations, managed by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. This structure gave the Hopi and Navajo people a seat at the table to manage water rights and protect ancestral burial grounds. By slashing the borders, the administration dismantles a Tribal-led plan for the soil and water.
Treating federal land as a political chip creates instability. Long-term planning becomes the exclusive province of those with the most lobbyists for coal and uranium. History shows that when executive orders erase protections, the result is a permanent loss of ancient cliff dwellings and rare orchids—assets no future restoration order can regrow.
The courts must decide if the Antiquities Act is a one-way valve. If a president can unilaterally delete a monument, the word "permanent" vanishes from American law. The judiciary must recognize these designations as binding statutes, or the public trust becomes a commodity sold to the highest bidder every four years.