Monument designations and White House proclamations

Some imagine President Obama can expand the bounds of national monuments by unilateral proclamation, but President Trump cannot shrink them back by the same mechanism. But that’s not how it works, explained Jonathan Wood in a September piece on the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante controversy.

More: Ronald Bailey. And Randal O’Toole on a high-profile lawsuit:

I visited the Patagonia web site looking for some Christmas presents yesterday and learned that “the president stole my land.” How horrible! So I looked into it and discovered that President Trump took federal land that was managed by a particular set of federal agencies under a particular set of restrictions and changed it into federal land managed by the very same federal agencies under a slightly different set of restrictions. Not to jump on Patagonia, whose clothing I’ve always enjoyed, but where’s the theft in that?

2 Comments

  • From The Daily Caller:

    The founder of Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company that has pledged to lead the resistance against President Donald Trump, called Trump’s voters “rednecks.”

    “Why should we kowtow to these redneck voters and Republican politicians?” said Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s eccentric founder and billionaire environmentalist, according to consultant Steve Everly. “The most you can achieve is a compromise, and that never solves a problem.”

    ….

    Might give this comment some thought when you go looking for Christmas presents.

  • Some readers reported a paywalled original link on the Jonathan Wood piece, so I’ve substituted a non-paywalled.