Trump's 'Review' Of Utah Monument Was Over Before It Started

WASHINGTON For anyone following the Trump administrations months-long review of Americas national monuments, Friday likely felt like the punchline to a joke theyd already heard.

Six months after signing a pair of executive orders threatening the future of 27 national monuments , President Donald Trump reportedly phoned Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to inform him that he would follow through on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes recommendation to shrink Bears Ears National Monument , a 1.35 million-acre area in southern Utah that President Barack Obama declared a national monument in 2016.

Im approving the Bears Ears recommendation for you, Orrin, Trump reportedly told the senator, according to The Washington Post . Hatch, who has called the monument a travesty , said the call left him feeling incredibly grateful.

The site is named after a pair of buttes and is home to thousands of Native American archaeological and cultural sites. It has been at the center of the monuments controversy, and Trump requested an expedited, 45-day review. It remains unclear how many acres the administration plans to strip from the monument, although the state is reportedly pushing for a 90 percent reduction .

Fridays news drew national headlines and sparked fresh outrage from the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition , a group of five Native American tribes that petitioned to grant the area monument status.

We have not been contacted with regard to changes to #BearsEars, the group tweeted Tuesday .

But the news was not a surprise.

Seemingly every comment and action the administration made leading up to Friday had suggested Bears Ears was headed for the chopping block, and that the review at least for this particular monument was mostly for show.

Consider the day Trump signed his executive order. Standing below a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt Zinkes hero and the president who more than a century ago signed into law the Antiquities Act, which 16 presidents have used to designate 157 monuments Trump spoke as if stripping protections from Bears Ears was already a done deal. He boasted that he was ending another egregious abuse of federal power, putting states back in charge and opening up now-protected areas to tremendously positive things. He said the designation of Bears Ears was made over the profound objections of the citizens of Utah and should never have happened. And he praised Hatch for his never-ending prodding on the issue.

[Hatch] would call me and call me and say, You got to do this, Trump said. Is that right, Orrin? You didnt stop. He doesnt give up. Hes shocked that Im doing it, but Im doing it because its the right thing to do.

Were now getting something done that many people thought would never, ever get done, Trump added.

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