Patagonia Sues Trump Over Shrinking Utah National Monuments
Left 67%
Center 0%
Right 33%
2 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
In July, President Donald Trump issued proclamations reducing Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from about 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 acres and Bears Ears National Monument from about 1.36 million acres to about 121,100 acres. The proclamations said the lands should be “put to a higher-priority use” and cited critical minerals important to “resource independence” and “national security.” President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996 and President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in 2016 under the Antiquities Act of 1906; Trump reduced both monuments in 2017 during his first term, and President Joe Biden restored them in 2021. On Wednesday, outdoor retailer Patagonia joined Native American groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and other environmental organizations in a federal lawsuit challenging the July reductions and reopening related 2017 cases.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage treats Trump's monument cuts as illegal under the Antiquities Act, while right-leaning coverage reports that the statute does not settle whether a president may shrink a monument. The Guardian restates Patagonia's claim that presidents may create monuments but cannot undo them. Daily Caller cites a Congressional Research Service finding that the Act "is silent" on shrinking or abolishing a monument.
Left-leaning coverage leads with oil and gas and a 90 percent cut. Right-leaning coverage leads with remaining acreage and the White House list of restored uses, including grazing, hunting, and motorized recreation.
None of the coverage says whether any court has ever issued a final ruling on a president's power to shrink a national monument.
Bottom line
The Guardian covers the Patagonia suit as if the Antiquities Act already forbids shrinking a monument; only Daily Caller reports that Congress's researchers found the statute silent on that power.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- A July CRS report found the Antiquities Act silent on a president's authority to diminish or eliminate a monument
- A May 2025 Justice Department memo argued the president may shrink monuments created by prior presidents
- The White House said the Antiquities Act has been stretched to include landscape areas, biodiversity, viewsheds, and remoteness
- Mining claims have already been filed in areas no longer inside the monuments
- The new reductions are even more dramatic than those Trump sought in his first term
- Some legal scholars cite historical examples of presidents reducing monuments without a congressional response
The Left View
Left-leaning coverage treats the proclamations as unlawful and as a giveaway to extractive industry at the expense of tribes and irreplaceable landscapes. Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert said the orders “betray Tribal sovereignty,” described them as an effort to “force secession of federal land to the state and allow private companies to extract natural resources from that land,” and said the company “will not stand idly by while anti-public lands crusaders attempt to exploit these lands for their extractive-industry friends or disrespect tribal nations.” He argued the Antiquities Act lets presidents establish monuments but does not authorize undoing them, that protecting the sites “is worth more than any amount of money,” and that “the vast majority of Americans agree.” NRDC executive director Christy Goldfuss called the action “one of the largest rollbacks of public land protections in US history,” saying Trump is “trying to destroy them with a stroke of a pen” and that once mining and drilling begin, “what gets lost is not coming back – ancient cliff dwellings, dinosaur fossils found nowhere else on Earth and sacred sites tied to the tribal nations.”
The Right View
Right-leaning coverage foregrounds the White House’s claim that the Antiquities Act enables “overreach and abuse” and “has been stretched to include landscape areas, biodiversity, ‘viewsheds,’ and ‘remoteness.’” The administration described the cuts as “rightsizing” that restores “public access and traditional multiple-use activities” such as grazing, timber harvest, fishing, hunting, resource development, infrastructure upgrades, and motorized recreation, and noted the lands hold large deposits of coal, uranium, and other minerals. A Congressional Research Service report stated the Act “is silent with respect to a President’s authority to diminish the size of a monument or eliminate a monument altogether”: some scholars say only Congress can shrink or abolish a monument, while others cite historical presidential reductions and argue that “a grant of authority to do something includes the authority to undo it.” A May 2025 Justice Department memo supplied the administration’s legal framework, arguing the president could shrink monuments created by predecessors.
Our Take (balanced)
Patagonia and its allies’ strongest argument is statutory: the Antiquities Act, in Gellert’s words, does not give the executive “the authority to undo” monuments, a reading paired with the claim that extraction would permanently erase sacred sites, unique fossils, and cliff dwellings. The administration’s strongest argument is that the statute is silent on shrinking monuments, that past presidents have reduced them without congressional reversal, and that a power to create includes a power to undo—as a Justice Department memo and some legal scholars contend—while “rightsizing” corrects what the White House calls “overreach and abuse” beyond the Act’s original archaeological purpose. The central unresolved tension is whether monument authority is a one-way conservation power or a reversible management tool, and therefore whether these Utah lands should remain predominantly protected cultural landscapes or be opened again to mining, drilling, and other multiple uses.
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