Lawmakers from Utah have commandeered an obscure law to unravel protections for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, potentially delivering on a Trump administration goal of undoing protections for public conservation lands across the country.
This week two Utah Republicans, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy, introduced a “joint resolution of disapproval” in the Senate and House, which will require Congress to vote on whether the Congressional Review Act (CRA) can overturn a resource management plan for the sprawling redrock landscape in the southern part of their state. If both chambers pass the resolution by a simple majority, the plan will be nullified. Similar actions eliminating other resource management plans could follow.
“This is the blueprint for which all uses on this land are managed, whether it’s for exploring a slot canyon or hiking or enjoying the night sky or grazing livestock,” said Axie Navas, a campaign director with The Wilderness Society. “Now Representative Maloy and Senator Lee are trying to use this arcane, top-down approach to rip up that blueprint.”
A recent analysis found that Republicans in this Congress have used the CRA a record 22 times to wind back Biden administration actions, most of them addressing environmental issues.
While this represents the first time the act has been used to target a national monument, it is not the first time the Trump administration has taken aim at Grand Staircase-Escalante, which was established by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
During his first term, President Donald Trump attempted to shrink the monument from its current 1.9 million acres to 1 million acres by effectively excising 900,000 acres for multiple uses rather than conservation. “That would have set the stage for oil, gas, coal leasing, hard rock mining or off-road vehicle use,” said Steve Bloch, the legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
The alliance and other groups challenged the move, but before their legal case made its way through the courts, President Joe Biden took office. Biden added back in the 900,000 acres and launched the development of a new management planning process. That process involved two years of discussions with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the monument, as well as state leaders, local utilities, businesses, ranchers, outdoor groups and Native American tribes.
“Utahns include Tribal Nations. We are part of this state’s history, present, and future,” said Davina Smith-Idjesa, a member of the Navajo Nation, in a statement. “Undermining Tribal collaboration undercuts trust, weakens public land management, and threatens the integrity of monuments nationwide. True leadership would strengthen government-to-government relationships, not disregard them.”
In June 2025, Lee attempted unsuccessfully to insert language in the One Big Beautiful Big Act to allow the sale of some federally owned land. In December, Lee introduced an amendment to a package of spending bills that would have allowed the sale of national park lands.
Conservation groups say these measures would have gutted a national park system already under duress from the administration’s layoffs last year.
“It is very apparent from his actions over the last year that the Senator would like to sell America’s public lands to private interests, which means that rescinding the management plan might be part of a bigger scheme,” said Jackie Grant, executive director of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners, a group founded in 2004 to protect the monument.
Last year Maloy began laying the groundwork for a plan to use the CRA to lift conservation protections on national monuments by asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to decide whether the management plan represents a rule, which would make it subject to Congressional review.
The GAO issued its opinion in January, saying the plan does indeed qualify as a rule.
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“The Joint Resolution introduced today is grounded in the GAO’s determination and ensures Congress exercises its statutory authority to review and, if necessary, disapprove of agency actions of this magnitude,” Lee’s office said in a statement.
If Congress approves the resolution, not only would it nullify the management plan, it would “prevent the issuance of any substantially similar rule absent further authorization from Congress,” the statement continued.
Some government officials in southern Utah celebrated Lee and Maloy’s maneuver.
“With our County being engulfed by 80 percent monument, the crushing restrictions of the 2025 rules severely impact local families and business owners,” said the Kane County Commission, in a statement issued by Lee’s office. “We are overjoyed to hear of these efforts to return power to our duly elected federal delegation.”
Conservation and tribal groups worry that the move, if approved by Congress, could set in motion a strategy by the administration to eliminate protections on other monuments or eliminate the monuments altogether. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued orders soon after taking office that called for a review of monuments to determine which should be scaled back or eliminated. The Department of Justice, at the behest of the White House, also issued an opinion that the president has the power to review and eliminate national monuments.
“We know that Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears and a handful of other western monuments are on the short list for the president to attack,” Bloch said. “So you undo the plan, you salt the earth behind you by saying that there can’t be a plan substantially the same, and then you encourage the president to reduce if not outright eliminate the monument itself. That’s a serious one-two punch.”
These moves are proving to be unpopular, even with Trump’s staunchest allies. A recent poll by Colorado College found overwhelming bipartisan support for maintaining national monuments, with “MAGA supporters” interest increasing from 81 percent in last year’s poll to 87 percent this year.
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Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News, and has reported on the intersections of farming, food systems and the environment for much of her journalism career. Her work has won numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and she was twice named the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year, once with ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CQ Roll Call, and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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