OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:56 PM – Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Revisiting actions from his first term that were subsequently reversed by the Biden administration, President Donald Trump signed presidential proclamations on Monday to dramatically scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
President Trump is ending the overreach and abuse of the Antiquities Act, which has been used to restrict the uses of America’s public lands, the White House emphasized.
The executive action slashes the combined 3.2 million acres of federal lands down to less than 303,000 acres, a far greater territorial reduction than the cuts enacted during his previous term.
The sprawling southern Utah wilderness sites, which contain ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and unique natural features, are also home to significant coal, uranium, and mineral deposits.
Speaking before a crowd of supporters at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City, Trump heavily criticized the expansive boundaries drawn by his Democrat predecessors under the Antiquities Act of 1906, describing them as federal overreach. The president argued that previous left-wing administrations severely abused the original purpose and spirit of the law by placing massive swathes of land off-limits.
At the initial signing ceremony during his first term in 2017, Trump had labeled the historic boundary reductions as an act of returning autonomy back to the local Utah population, declaring, “I’ve come to Utah to take a very historic action, to reverse federal overreach and to restore the rights of this land to your citizens.” The decision drew immediate praise from state politicians who spent years fighting federal control over the state’s public lands.
Meanwhile, on Monday this week, while sharing the stage during the White House ceremony, Governor Spencer Cox (R-Utah) applauded the new presidential directive once more, noting that it aligns with the original legal parameters governing monument declarations.
Endorsing the drastic rollback, Governor Cox stated, “This is a big day for Utah. These monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.”
The reduction “does not remove the other protections that already exist in those areas,” noted Cox, adding that his office explicitly assured the public the excluded lands “remain protected under existing federal and state law.”
However, on the flip side, the sweeping rollbacks have since triggered condemnation from progressive Native American tribal coalitions, who claimed that the move “violates tribal sovereignty” and “exposes sacred landscapes to immediate mining exploitation.” An aggressive legal battle is already mounting as far-left environmental lawyers and tribal leaders reportedly prepare to challenge the GOP administration’s authority in federal court, arguing that a sitting U.S. president “lacks the constitutional power” to dismantle existing monuments.
However, the Trump administration and Utah officials point to a different phrase in the Antiquities Act: monuments must be confined to the “smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” They argue that Democrat administrations overreached by grabbing millions of acres, and that a president has the implied power to correct this by downsizing the boundaries to match the law’s original intent.
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