Justice Department Says Trump Has Authority to Revoke National Monument Protections on Federal Lands

The Department of Justice has reversed decades old precedent and concluded that the president has the authority to abolish protected lands set aside as national monuments by previous presidents. The [new legal opinion](https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1403101/dl) undoes an opinion written in 1938. That interpretation of the 1906 Antiquities Act had allowed for millions of acres of federal lands to be off limits to miners, oil driller, and other interests. According to the opinion, authored by the department's Office of Legal Counsel, the president can determine that previously declared monuments “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections; and such an alteration can have the effect of eliminating entirely the reservation of the parcel of land previously associated with a national monument.”