On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed two proclamations that stripped protections from nearly 3 million acres of public land in Utah. Standing near him as he did it was Utah Congresswoman Celeste Maloy.

Trump shrank Bears Ears National Monument from about 1.36 million acres down to roughly 121,100 acres — a cut of about 91%. He shrank Grand Staircase-Escalante from about 1.87 million acres to roughly 181,500 acres — another 90% cut. Groups that track public lands called it the largest rollback of land protections in U.S. history.

This is land that belongs to all of us. And Maloy didn't just watch it happen. She wants to make sure it can never be undone.

What just happened to your public land

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante aren't empty desert. They hold ancient cliff dwellings, rock art, fossils, and sacred sites. Five tribes — the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni — came together as the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to protect that ground.

Now most of it loses its shield. According to the White House's own fact sheet, the land pulled out of the monuments becomes open again to grazing, timber cutting, "resource development," road building, and motorized vehicles. In plain English, that means the door reopens to mining and drilling — including the coal buried under the Kaiparowits Plateau that the Grand Staircase monument was created to shield in the first place.

Tribes, conservation groups, archaeologists, and outdoor businesses all pushed back. Many of them point to the same legal problem: the Antiquities Act of 1906 lets a president create a national monument, but it does not clearly give a president the power to erase or gut one. That power, they argue, belongs to Congress. A court fight is expected.

This has happened before. Trump shrank both monuments during his first term. President Biden restored them. Now Trump has cut them again — and this time, Maloy and her fellow Utah Republicans want to slam the door shut for good.

Maloy was in the room — and wants Congress to lock it in

Maloy was there for the signing alongside Gov. Spencer Cox, Sen. Mike Lee, and Sen. John Curtis. And she made clear she doesn't want this to be something a future president can reverse. She said she'd like to "take the instability out of this process and make it something Congress has to do."

She waved off the people alarmed by a 90% cut, chalking their worry up to "misunderstandings of how federal land management works."

That's a remarkable thing to tell the tribes who consider this land sacred and the Utahns who hike, hunt, and camp there. Their concern isn't a misunderstanding. They understand exactly what happens when protections vanish and the bulldozers and drill rigs are allowed back in.

This is the whole reason Maloy is in Congress

None of this is a surprise if you know Maloy's record. Attacking public land protections isn't a side project for her — it's her signature issue.

• She already sponsored the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would require an act of Congress to create any new national monument — gutting the same century-old law that protected Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in the first place.
• She pushed to sell off more than 10,000 acres of Utah public land — parcels near St. George — as an add-on to Trump's budget bill. The idea drew bipartisan opposition and was stripped out.
• She sits on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior and Environment — the exact panels that write the rules for public lands. She's not on the sidelines. She's holding the pen.

Maloy is also the cousin of Ammon Bundy and the niece of Cliven Bundy — the family behind the 2014 armed standoff against federal agents over grazing on public land. The anti-public-lands fight that once played out at gunpoint in the Nevada desert now plays out with Maloy's vote in Washington.

Her environmental record backs it up. The League of Conservation Voters gives Maloy a 3% score for 2025 and a 5% lifetime score. That's not a lawmaker who occasionally sides with polluters. That's a near-perfect record of voting against clean air, clean water, and public land — over and over.

Who wins, and who loses

Ask who actually benefits when 3 million acres of protected land is handed back to "resource development." It isn't the family that camps in Grand Staircase. It isn't the tribes whose ancestors are buried there. It isn't the small towns whose economies run on hikers, hunters, and tourists.

It's the mining and drilling companies who've eyed that coal and mineral country for decades. Maloy has spent her short time in Congress trying to sell public land, kill the monument law, and now permanently shrink two of Utah's crown jewels. When she says the worried public just doesn't "understand" land management, what she really means is that they understand it too well.

Utah's public lands belong to every American — including the ones who won't be born for a hundred years. Celeste Maloy is fighting to make sure that when the drills and bulldozers move in, no future president can ever protect them again.

Source

This post was reported from the Missouri Independent / States Newsroom coverage of Trump's July 2026 monument proclamations, plus the White House fact sheet, Deseret News, and Salt Lake Tribune.