While the concept of federally protecting certain parks and monuments has enjoyed wide bipartisan support, there’s plenty of disagreement about just how much of the nation’s fertile land should be off limits.
President Donald Trump weighed in on that debate recently with his announcement that two massive monuments in Utah will be whittled down to about 10% of their respective sizes.
According to Fox News:
The order applies to the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, shrinking their total coverage by roughly 90% from 3 million acres to 300,000. The areas were established as federal monuments by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2016, respectively.
ADVERTISEMENT“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said during the Monday signing ceremony. “We’re giving it back.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also attended the signing and praised the move, saying the original size of the monuments was far too expansive.
.@POTUS: "We're doing something very dramatic and very important for the people of Utah." @GovCox: "This is a big day for Utah. @POTUS did something very similar several years ago during his first term… we believe that under the Antiquities Act, it's very clear that these… pic.twitter.com/RCQe1WMKBi
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 13, 2026
News of the scaled-back monuments soon sparked some social media discussion:
Trump prioritizing American energy & jobs over locked-up land. Utah wins.
— Johnathon "Jack" Corcoran 👑 🇮🇪 (@TheKingCorcoran) July 13, 2026
This is fantastic for Utah. Classic Biden and big government democrats rescinded a presidential order was insane.
— Phil (@P_J_Kopp) July 13, 2026
NBC News added these details:
Utah officials have long fought against the monument designation and have argued that the state should be in charge of controlling its own lands. Trump in his first term reduced their size, calling their creation a “massive land grab.” Combined they span more than 3.2 million acres, an area nearly the size of Connecticut.
ADVERTISEMENT“This is a big day for Utah,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said as he stood next to Trump at the White House. “These monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.”
Bears Ears was the first national monument protected at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred. The landscape contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites and features in some tribes’ creation and migration stories. Its designation honored five tribes in the region — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
Here’s some additional coverage:
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