Versus Trump

On a new episode of Versus Trump, Easha and Jason discuss several lawsuits filed over President Trump's recent Proclamation that substantially cuts the size of two National Monuments: Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both in Utah. They begin the discussion by discussing what national monuments are, how they can be designated under the Anitiquities Act of 1906, and how the President decided to shrink the boundaries of these two national monuments. They discuss the argument in several recent lawsuits that the Antiquities Act permits a President to declare new land to be a national monument but does not permit the President to unilaterally remove that land from its proected status—and their respective positions on the merits of the suit may be somewhat surprising to regular listeners. They then update the status of the lawsuits and note that the government has moved to transfer all of these cases to a federal court in Utah. The episode ends with Trump nuggets about the volume of public