DOJ opinion: Trump can abolish national monuments

President Donald Trump has the authority to abolish national monuments created by his predecessors, according to a May 27 legal opinion by Lanora Pettit, deputy assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. The document, released Tuesday, reverses a 1938 opinion that had long limited presidential power to revoke designations under the Antiquities Act of 1906, according to Reuters.

A new opinion was requested by the White House as Trump considers revoking former President Joe Biden’s January national monument designations of Chuckwalla and Sattitla Highlands in California. The two sites protect over 800,000 acres of land significant to Native American tribes. Pettit wrote that the Antiquities Act’s silence on revocation implies a president may determine a monument “no longer [is] deserving of those protections.”