GOP Congress Introduces Bill To Gut Antiquities Act

By shifting the ability to designate National Monuments from the President to Congress, Republicans hope to rule out future land protections

Two Republican Congressgoblins today introduced a bill that would revoke a President’s authority to create national monuments. The move is the latest in a coordinated assault on public land protections that will likely culminate during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.

“The Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act would strip presidential authority to unilaterally designate national monuments and give that authority to Congress by striking Section 2 from the Antiquities Act,” reads a press release from Utah Congressgoblin Celeste Maloy’s office. She’s sponsoring the bill along with Nevada’s Mark Amodei.

Let’s look at the Act’s full text:

And here’s section two of the Antiquities Act, as its stood since 1906:

The reason this matters is that, in the era of dysfunctional legislature, the Antiquities Act remains the primary tool through which threatened lands and waters can be protected, and have that happen on a timeline that meets the urgency of the threat. When drilling and mining threatened the pristine landscapes around Bears Ears in Utah, for instance, President Obama was able to step in, declare the area a National Monument, and block new extraction leases from being written.

Since Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect Devil’s Tower (of “Close Encounters” mashed potato fame) in 1906, it’s been used to safeguard areas as iconic as the Grand Canyon, as historic as the Statue of Liberty, and as unique as the Mariana Trench.

These designations have not come without controversy. Roosevelt’s designation of the Grand Canyon National Monument triggered a Supreme Court case that ultimately confirmed the constitutionality of the Antiquities Act. When Jimmy Carter designated 56 million acres of Alaska as part of 13 new national monuments, Alaskans burned effigies of him in the streets. But these designations have stood the test of time.

Can you imagine if the Grand Canyon had been strip mined for uranium, forever rendering water flowing through the Colorado River undrinkable? Today, 40 million people across the southwest rely on the Colorado River for water. Alaskans sure aren’t mad about their state’s wild places and pristine ecosystems today. Carter’s actions in that state now bring $9.5 billion of consumer spending there annually, supporting 92,000 jobs and generating $711 million in tax revenue for the state government. If you’re from Alaska, and attended public school there, Carter’s monuments paid for that.

Monuments are also popular with voters. According to Colorado College polling, 85 percent of voters in the American West support the continued ability for the President to create new national monuments. In Utah, 70 percent of voters support continued protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. That’s substantially more support than the next President garnered in that state’s election.

But that’s not what you’ll here from the Congressgoblins bringing legislation their constituents have not asked for.

“Congress trusted Presidents with a narrow authority to declare national monuments in the Antiquities Act,” states Utah’s Maloy. “Unfortunately, Presidents have continued to abuse that narrow authority to designate millions of acres of land in Utah and across the West without proper Congressional oversight. My bill aims to rebalance the powers between Congress and the executive branch and restore transparency and accountability to these designations.”

“My home state of Nevada, along with other Western states, has long been burned by executive actions on public lands and monument designations that bypass input from Congress and local governments,” says Nevada’s Amodei. “I am a firm believer that the best lands policy is generated by the local communities who actually live off of these lands, not Washington bureaucrats. This legislation overturns years of a one-sided approach on major land management decisions and ensures Western communities are given a seat at the table for any future monument designations.”

Those statements are, of course, a pack of lies. In its 1920 ruling on Cameron v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the President’s authority under the Antiquities Act to designate large monuments. And federal law mandates much more significant mechanisms for local input in decision making on all types of public land than state law does either in Nevada, or anywhere else.

So why are Maloy and Amodei introducing this legislation? Let’s follow the money. The oil and gas industry was the largest donor to Maloy’s 2023-2024 campaign. For Amodei, the second largest donor (after defense, his district is home to Sierra Nevada Corp, which makes space planes and rocket motors) was real estate developers. Both industries stand to benefit from decreased land protections.

“This bill is part of a larger political effort to dispose of our cherished federal public lands,” explains Scott Miller, Southwest Senior Regional Director for The Wilderness Society. “The bill, following on the heels of the anti-public-land lawsuit in Utah, plays a role in a coordinated plan to gut the Antiquities Act, revoke our beloved national monuments, then sell off the newly undesignated land.”

Given that Republicans have a very slim majority of 53 seats in the Senate, and to avoid a filibuster a bill requires 60 votes, how likely is it that the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act could become law? It’s not. But I don’t think that’s the end goal here. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress are talking about packing most of their major priorities into a single omnibus bill that they would use budget reconciliation to pass (which skips the filibuster and requires only a simple majority in the Senate). Omnibus bills draw their language from other pending legislation. This bill presents the authors of that hypothetical omnibus the simple, clear language they need to forever alter the Antiquities Act.

Top photo: BLM