The Ministry of Justice (DOJ) said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump had the power to revoke the designations of the national monument carried out by previous presidents, including two massive landscapes in California that former President Joe Biden has locked development.
The new legal opinion issued by the Doj challenges a 1938 decision which indicated that the monuments designated by the previous presidents cannot be canceled. Opinion provides a way to potentially reduce the quantity of land controlled by the federal government, a political priority that the Trump administration has been referring for months.
Under the Antiquity Act, the presidents have the power to “declare by public proclamation, historic monuments, historical and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historical or scientific interest which are located on the land held or controlled by the government of the United States as national monuments.” However, previous decisions have limited the president’s ability to overthrow these declarations. (Related: Biden firm 500,000 acres of public land for development)
American president Joe Biden signs proclamations to establish the national monument of Chuckwalla and the national monument of Sattitla Highlands in California, in the east house from the White House in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)
“If the president can declare that his predecessor was false concerning the value of preserving one of these objects on a given package, nothing prevents him from declaring that his predecessor was wrong on all these objects on a given package,” said opinion.
The opinion distinguished the national monument of Chuckwalla of 624,000 acres and the national monument of 225,000 acres of Sáttítla Highlands National Monument in California, which Biden appointed in 2025 just before leaving its functions. Biden’s Declaration prevented the extraction of oil, gas and other natural resources, but the last DOJ’s decision indicates that Trump can revoke the proclamation of his predecessor.
During his first mandate, Trump reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah. At the time, he argued that state management and local would be more effective than federal surveillance.
“Your timeless link with outdoor should not be replaced by the whims of regulators to thousands and thousands of kilometers,” said Trump at the time. “I came to Utah to take a very historic measure to reverse the federal counter-effect and restore the rights of this land to your citizens.”
However, criticism argues that such a change would destroy land with cultural and scientific meaning.
“This opinion flies in the face of a century of interpretation of the Antiquity Act. The Americans massively support our public lands and oppose them to see them dismantled or destroyed,” the Wilderness Society said in a press release in response to the Opinion of the Doj.
Federal lands are particularly concentrated in Western states, where around 46% of the land was held by the federal government in 2020.
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