Richard Larsen was right in last Sunday’s “ISJ Insight” when he wrote,” Trump is not ideological, he’s practical.” However, I’d go further and say Trump is not only lacking an ideology, he lacks facts, knows little history, and he has no firm opinions about politics or policies at all. He does have grandiose opinions about himself though.
Granted he’s an elected Republican, and his proposed policies of late seem conservative, but many think this is just his strategy to get what he really wants — recognition, fame, and more personal wealth for himself and his family.
Trump easily calls the beliefs and views of those who oppose him “fake” because most of his own beliefs are worn so lightly, and held so tactically, that he can’t imagine others who do hold deep beliefs and have strong values. The President is just not an empathy guy. Instead he’s a narcissist. Narcissists think they are special, unique, without equal, and they hold a low opinion of anyone who opposes or criticizes them. With Trump think of his “fake media.” Narcissists like and reward flatterers, not those who will tell them the hard truth. I don’t want to discuss whether he is pathological. You can’t do that from a distance, but Trump’s personality in a broad sketch is easy to see. For a time some said he is just taking a public stance. Now few think a different kind of man might so appear.
With this in mind, I want to consider President Trump’s recent unprecedented executive order to review our national monuments to see if they can be abolished or reduced in size. Specifically, he refers to those larger than 100,000 acres established since 1996 – by President Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. This is about twenty monuments. Some must think he has a great dislike of our national parks, monuments, and public lands because of his lonely historic stance here, but I think he doesn’t care one way or another about them. He simply saw this action as useful to him.
Let’s first look at the Antiquities Act of 1906. This gives a President power to pronounce national monuments on the public lands of the United States.
The Act says its purpose is to protect, “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, . . ..”
Well over a total of hundred national monuments have been created by presidents, Republican and Democrat, since 1906. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) was the motivating force behind that law, and he established many national monuments. Over time many of the larger ones been elevated into national parks by the Congress. Grand Canyon was the largest of TR’s that were later made into a national park.
As I indicated, no national monument has ever been revoked by a subsequent President, but one (Olympic Peak National Monument in Washington State) was reduced in size by President Woodrow Wilson, and his action was never litigated. Instead, a generation later Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress enlarged it and turned it into a new and larger Olympic National Park. Today there are 129 national monuments, ranging greatly in size.
President Trump has little sense of history as illustrated by his recent incorrect musings about the Civil War and other matters. For example, he thought that Andrew Jackson got very upset about the Civil War (Jackson was dead well before the Civil War) and of Frederick Douglass the African-American social reformer and abolitionist, who died in 1895, Trump said “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”
It is doubtful he knows anything at all about the history of our national parks and monuments, especially because he has lived most of his life an New York City and was never exposed to them or the outdoors in general unlike many wealthy children as part of their preparation for a successful, cultured life.
President Trump was likely told about this part of the Antiquities Act that reads, regarding the size of a national monument, . . . “the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected . . . [boldface mine].”
In the past, opponents of particular monuments have sometimes argued that the monument is too big — not the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the things that need to be protected. However, the few federal court cases on monument size have rejected the plaintiff’s claims that a monument is too big.
He might have been told that many national monuments have been established by one President and then enlarged by subsequent ones. His executive action would be the first time there has been any order to look at the monuments for reduction or elimination. It is unclear whether he actually has the unilateral authority to reduce or abolish one.
Trump’s rhetoric in signing the order was his usual bombast and lack of truth. When he signed his order, he said “I’ve spoken with many state and local leaders … who care very much about conserving land and are gravely concerned about this massive federal land grab,” . . . “And it’s gotten worse and worse and worse and now we’re going to free it up. It never should have happened. I am signing this order to end abuses and return control to the people.”
This is untrue. The federal government can’t grab land it has always owned and managed, and what could possibly be meant in concrete terms by returning control of the national monuments to the people? If this is somehow a land grab, it has been going on for 111 years with much public support. Recently Colorado College’s Conservation in the West Poll found 80% of western voters supported keeping current national monument’s protections. Just 13% of western voters agreed with removing their protections. With this figure how could be it that Trump is giving power back to the people? Designation of a national monument takes no land from a state. Abolishing one gives no land back to a state. It is all federal public land to begin with.
His announcement was old, discredited sagebrush rebellion rhetoric typical of Utah Republican members of Congress, just like Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Rob Bishop or Utah governor Hebert. There can be little doubt that is where it came from. The monument policy is just a favor to Hatch, Bishop, Herbert, and a few others like Governor Paul LePage of Maine. These men will be expected to repay him. The policy is just a tool to advance the self-interest of this President.
Perhaps the most controversial new national monument is Bears Ears in southeastern Utah. It was established by Obama in his last month in office. The Utah congressional delegation and Utah’s governor are strident advocates of abolishing all of our public lands and they certainly opposed the Bears Ears monument from the start.
President Trump certainty enjoys undoing the work of his predecessor. This might be the biggest factor behind this executive order.
Bears Ears lies in a very sparsely populated part of Utah. We should remember this when they talk about “the people.” The monument is in Utah’s largest county, San Juan, population only 17,000. San Juan county is split about 50:50 between Whites and Native Americans. Most of the Whites, except newcomers, like to think of themselves as dependent on ranching, mining and drilling for oil and gas for a living, although this is hardly true today. Tourism has been a major component for many years, and it continues to grow. Most of the newcomers have arrived to enjoy the scenery, not to extract minerals. The number of full time ranchers depending on public land there is trivial. San Juan County is the fastest growing county in Utah. Three thousand newcomers added to a base of 14,000 is a high percentage growth rate.
Native Americans are half of the population and they, especially their leaders, support the Bears Ears National Monument. Somehow the Native Americans don’t seem to count when the Utah politicians and Trump talk about the people. As a native Utahan, I know that has been the local southern Utah tradition.
Past Presidents have often changed the federal agency that manages the land when they have created a new national monument. Most often they have turned it over to the National Park Service. However, since President Bill Clinton, they have not done this. For example, if it was part of a national forest, the U.S. Forest Service continued to manage it; if the BLM (the most common case) the BLM has continued to manage the land. It is doubtful Trump was told this. I think Martin Hackworth doesn’t know either judging from his recent ISJ column on national monuments.
In the same vein, in recent monument creations Presidents have given little management direction different from what was already taking place on the land. As a result, any talk about a “land grab,” meaning a change in the actual use of the land, is not factual. Many conservationists might wish the land use had been changed, especially the Western Watersheds Project. I am President of the WWP, and I can say we have not been happy about continued livestock grazing on new national monuments. However, with Bears Ears the purpose of establishing it was only to protect the archeological features from a local history of grave robbing, but not usually called that locally.
The creation of new monuments has mostly been made to forestall some possible or actual future development in an area. This is where the real anger about national monuments from Utah’s right wing politicians comes from – foreclosed future development — usually mining or oil and gas (are these what Trump calls “the people”?). It is not about power of real people, or of the states, or someone’s conception of the proper separation of powers in the federal government. Many national monument opponents try to wrap their base motives in the Constitution.
Each of the monuments Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke has now been ordered to review deserves a news article in itself. These are very large parcels of land (and water). They include two very large oceanic national monuments that some say are biologically the most important of any of the national monuments. This new innovation by President George W. Bush, with a second ocean monument by Barrack Obama, is perhaps the greatest biological protection yet to be secured by the Antiquities Act.
Trump’s order poses a big threat to our system of public lands. If Trump is willing to do this to our national monuments to advance his influence in the Republican caucus, what will he do to our national forests, national wildlife refuges, national parks, and the vast BLM lands when another politically connected person or group asks? As conservative columnist George Will just wrote, "His fathomless lack of interest in America’s path to the present and his limitless gullibility leave him susceptible to being blown about by gusts of factoids that cling like lint to a disorderly mind."
Dr. Ralph Maughan of Pocatello is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He retired after teaching there for 36 years, specializing in voting, public opinion and natural resource politics. He has written three outdoor guides, including “Hiking Idaho” with Jackie Johnson Maughan. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
