Three million acres, erased with a pen.
Congress refused to sell off the public's land. Two months later, the White House took it anyway — not by sale, but by shrinking the monuments that protected it.
In July 2026, two presidential proclamations cut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by more than 90 percent each: the largest single rollback of national-monument protection on record. This page grades the acreage chain, which is documented in the proclamations themselves, and keeps the honest limit — whether a president may shrink a monument this far is a legal question the courts have never settled.
What this page is about
In the summer of 2025, Senator Mike Lee tried to require the government to sell more than a million acres of public land through the budget bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled it out of order, and Lee withdrew the plan. The public land was not sold.
A year later, the administration reached the same ground a different way. On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed two proclamations under the Antiquities Act, cutting Bears Ears from about 1.35 million acres to roughly 121,000, and Grand Staircase-Escalante from about 1.87 million acres to roughly 181,500. Combined, the two proclamations stripped protection from close to three million acres, more than 90 percent of each monument.
Books that go deeper on this story. Links are Amazon affiliate searches — buying through them supports the work at no cost to you.
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
Three million acres, erased with a pen.
Congress refused to sell off the public's land. Two months later the White House shrank the monuments that protected it — more than 90% of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by proclamation, with no vote.
What Congress blocked, the pen delivered
The through-line of this case is that the same objective was pursued twice, by two different mechanisms, and only the second one worked. The honest part of the story is that the public's pushback beat the first attempt.
| Track | The legislative sell-off (2025) | The monument cuts (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanism | Mandated BLM land sale in the budget-reconciliation bill | Presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act |
| Scale | Over 1 million acres eligible for sale (earlier draft: up to ~3 million) | ~3 million acres stripped of monument protection |
| Check that applied | Senate parliamentarian (Byrd rule); public pressure | None at signing; the courts are the only remaining check |
| Outcome | Defeated — ruled out of order, then withdrawn | Enacted — signed July 13, 2026 |
Sources: ABC4, Politico, and E&E News on the 2025 withdrawal; Proclamations 11043 and 11044 of July 13, 2026 (Federal Register) on the cuts.
The record, claim by claim
The 2025 push to force a sale of over a million acres of public land was ruled out of order, then withdrawn.
FACTSenator Mike Lee, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote a mandate to sell public land into the 2025 budget-reconciliation bill. On June 24, 2025, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled the provision violated the Byrd rule, which bars policy riders on reconciliation bills, meaning it could not pass on a simple majority. After a rewrite and sustained pressure from hunters and conservation groups, Lee withdrew the entire provision on June 28, 2025. The final law contained no public-land sale.
A July 13, 2026 proclamation cut Grand Staircase-Escalante from about 1.87 million acres to roughly 181,500.
FACTProclamation 11044 of July 13, 2026 reduced Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to approximately 181,500 acres. The proclamation itself recites the monument's history: Clinton established it in 1996 at roughly 1.7 million acres; Trump's 2017 proclamation removed about 860,000 acres; Biden restored it to about 1.87 million acres in 2021; and the 2026 proclamation cut it to its current size. The acreage chain is documented in the primary Federal Register text, not in secondary reporting.
A companion proclamation cut Bears Ears from about 1.35 million acres to roughly 121,000.
FACTProclamation 11043 of July 13, 2026 reduced Bears Ears National Monument to approximately 121,096 acres. Its text recites that Obama established the monument in 2016 (Proclamation 9558) at about 1.35 million acres, that it was cut by roughly 85 percent in 2017 and restored in 2021, and that the 2026 proclamation cut it again. As with Grand Staircase, the figures come straight from the primary Federal Register document.
Together, the two proclamations stripped monument protection from close to three million acres — more than 90 percent of each monument.
FACTAdding the two reductions gives a combined loss of roughly 2.9 million acres of protected land, and each monument lost more than 90 percent of its area: Grand Staircase fell from about 1.87 million to 181,500 acres, and Bears Ears from about 1.36 million to 121,096. Contemporary reporting characterized it as the largest reduction of national-monument protection in a single action. The land is not sold, but the protections that had blocked mining, drilling, and road-building on it are removed.
The 2017 monument reductions were challenged in court, and the legal question was never resolved because the monuments were later restored.
FACTWhether a president may sharply shrink a monument a predecessor created is a genuinely open legal question. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents clear power to create monuments; it does not spell out a power to shrink them, and the courts have never squarely decided whether large reductions are lawful. Tribes and conservation groups sued over Trump's 2017 cuts to both monuments, but those cases were rendered moot when Biden restored the monuments in 2021 before any ruling. The 2026 cuts are expected to reopen exactly that unresolved fight.
Where the evidence is strong, and where it stops
- The acreage is not in dispute. Every figure on this page comes from the proclamations themselves, published in the Federal Register. The monuments were cut by more than 90 percent each; that is a documented fact, not an estimate.
- “Stripped,” not “sold.” Shrinking a monument removes a protective layer; it does not itself hand the land to a buyer. What it does is reopen the ground to mining claims, mineral leasing, and development that the monument had put off-limits. The consequence is real, but it runs through later leasing and claims, and we keep that distinction.
- The public beat the first attempt. The 2025 legislative sell-off failed, and it failed partly because hunters, anglers, and conservation groups made it politically toxic. Any honest account credits that, and this page does.
- The legality is unsettled. We do not assert the cuts are illegal. We assert that the power to make them is contested, was litigated once without resolution, and will be litigated again. That is a description of an open question, not a verdict.
When a check works, and when it is routed around
The public land belongs to everyone, and the ordinary way to dispose of it runs through Congress, where it can be debated and voted down — as it was in 2025. The lesson of 2026 is how quickly that check can be routed around when a second lever exists. A tool built in 1906 to protect land was used to un-protect nearly three million acres of it, with no vote and no debate. That is the pattern the Looting the American Public hub tracks: the mechanisms by which a shared inheritance is quietly moved within reach of private hands.
Questions worth taking seriously
Was the land actually sold?
No. Shrinking a monument removes protections; it does not transfer title. But it reopens the land to mining claims, mineral leasing, grazing, and roads that the monument had blocked, which is where the value shifts. We say “stripped of protection,” not “sold,” on purpose.
Can a president legally shrink a monument like this?
It is unsettled. The Antiquities Act plainly lets presidents create monuments; it does not spell out a power to shrink them, and courts have never definitively ruled on large reductions. Lawsuits over the 2017 cuts were mooted when Biden restored the monuments in 2021 before any decision. The 2026 cuts are expected to revive that fight.
Isn't this just a partisan land fight?
The disagreement over how much land to protect is genuinely political. What is not partisan is the record: the acreage figures come from the proclamations themselves, and the sequence — Congress said no, then the executive acted alone — is documented. We grade the facts and leave the values argument to the reader.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Federal Register — Proclamation 11044, Modifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (to ~181,500 acres)
- Federal Register — Proclamation 11043, Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument (91 FR 45169; to ~121,096 acres)
- govinfo.gov — Proclamation 11044 official PDF (Grand Staircase-Escalante)
- govinfo.gov — Proclamation 11043 official PDF (Bears Ears)
- ABC4 — Sen. Mike Lee withdraws public lands provision after parliamentarian ruling
- Politico — Lee pulls federal land sales from the megabill (June 28, 2025)
- E&E News — Mike Lee withdraws public land sales from megabill
- Moab Sun News — Trump cuts Bears Ears and Grand Staircase again (combined ~3 million acres)