A leaked Interior Department plan reveals the Trump administration is once again plotting to shrink national monuments. The monuments proposed for cuts include two that he shrunk in his first term: the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
The other sites included in the half-dozen proposed cuts are the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kuvkeni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon and the Ironwood Forest monuments in Arizona, the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monument in New Mexico, and the Chuckwalla monument in California.
Here’s the kicker, John: they’re scaling back the protections for these federal lands to open them up to mining and extraction.
These lands aren’t just beautiful. They’re sacred. The lands and waters surrounding the Grand Canyon monument are integral to Native American culture, heritage, and traditions. These monuments together hold centuries of ancestral knowledge and cultural history.
But to the Trump administration, they’re just untapped reserves for uranium, coal, and rare earth minerals. They’ve made their intentions clear: gut protections, protect polluters, and let industry destroy what generations of Americans have fought to protect.
This is about more than just land. It’s about whether we’ll let billionaires and fossil fuel executives redraw the map to fill their pockets — or whether we’ll fight to preserve national monuments for generations to come.
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