President Trump visited Utah for four hours last week to rob protections from more than 2 million acres of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments. For those of us who love these places, the illegal act was made more bitter because it was delivered with a dose of preposterous nonsense.
As he slashed two magnificent national monuments into bite-size pieces for digestion by the oil and gas, coal and uranium companies, Trump announced that, “Our precious national treasures must be protected, and they, from now on, will be protected.” On demolishing the Bears Ears Monument, whose protections Native Americans have sought for a generation, he benevolently said that he was giving them back their “rightful voice over the sacred land.