In recent decades, presidents have used the 1906 Antiquities Act to bypass Congress and declare massive swathes of land as “national monuments,” especially in western states. This practice was taken to a new level by the federal government announcing the designation of the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California on Jan. 7.
The monument will cover more than 600,000 acres. There certainly isn’t 600,000 acres worth of “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest,” as required by federal law.
These declarations have been happening for years, sometimes locking up large tracts of land as big as a small state and bigger than most counties. Now measuring in many millions of acres, this perverts the original intent of the Antiquities Act. The core idea of the short, succinct Act—before it was amended in 2014—was only one paragraph, which I have included below to remove all doubt as to its original intent:…