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Trump Signs the Utah Monuments Orders, Jul. 13, 2026

July 13, 2026 · The White House · 0:20:46

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump signed two documents at the White House on July 13, 2026, reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. “We’re terminating certain monuments,” the President said. “They call it monuments, not the ones we have outside, but these are large thousands of acres. It’s a total of almost 3 million acres.” Each of the two documents, he said, covered close to a million and a half acres.

Utah’s governor, speaking before the signing, said the President had taken similar action in his first term and that the monuments were re-expanded under the previous administration. The governor argued that the Antiquities Act requires monument designations to cover “the smallest area possible” to protect the objects in question, and that monuments of several million acres — larger, he noted, than the state of Delaware — did not fit that standard, while bringing no resources for protecting the sites. Senator Mike Lee of Utah made the same statutory argument: “smallest area compatible with the objects to be protected. That’s always been the standard under the Antiquities Act.” An Interior Department deputy secretary noted that the first monument created under the 120-year-old act covered only 1,200 acres. The President closed the event by taking questions on Iran, saying of the previous night’s strikes that “we’re doing another very major attack tonight” and that Iran’s government “want to make a deal.”

Why it matters

Land management is a standing western-states fight in this administration, and this signing is its dated federal-lands anchor: two monument reductions totaling almost 3 million acres, justified on the record by the Antiquities Act’s own limiting language. This chronicle files it on the Energy & Permitting hub with every figure attributed to the speakers at the signing.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: a dated signing — two proclamations reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments by almost 3 million acres combined, as stated by the President. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; the entry itself stays review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Signs an Executive Order, Jul. 13, 2026,” July 13, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President and the Utah speakers at the event.