The recent ABC/Washington Post poll regarding President Trump is both interesting and frankly a bit disheartening. Trump has the highest disapproval rating for any president since World War II but 96% of his supporters would vote for him again.
So perhaps democrats, liberals and progressives should save their breath and energy. Find a new way to try to resonate with the uneducated white folk that make up the bulk of his base.
We have to come to grips with the fact that we are now a deeply divided people, perhaps more divided than we have ever been since Vietnam or even the Civil War. Find a way to talk to each other again, and foster responsible governance.
And that certainly doesn't mean that we should simply accede to his agenda. There are many areas where he must be fought every step of the way. Like on issues concerning the environment and the Interior Department.
*
Some of my most cherished moments of the last several years are the many trips I have taken to photograph the Utah back country. President Trump announced today that he is going to try to roll back Federal Monument status for both Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase of the Escalante. In fact he wants to review such designations for the last three administrations.
No President since FDR has ever tried anything like this and he was stopped. Some very good comments here at the Deseret News.
Let's look at the facts. This is not state land. This is federal land, owned by the people of the United States. You and me. This is not so much about local or state's rights as it is a case of locals plundering and selling their birthright to energy interests that want to exploit public resources and despoil the environment.
It is ironic that the 1906 Antiquities Act was authored by a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. Old Teddy would be rolling over in his grave today if he saw the audacious blunder his successor was trying to make.
Slate has some good info about the land grab.
...no president has even tried to revoke a national monument since 1938, when President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to reverse Calvin Coolidge’s designation of the Castle Pinckney National Monument in South Carolina. The attorney general at the time, however, decided that the act “does not authorize [the president] to abolish [national monuments] after they have been established.” In the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Congress again affirmed that only it had the power to revoke or modify national monuments, says Mark Squillace, a University of Colorado Law School professor and expert on the Antiquities Act.
Some presidents have managed to shrink monuments. Woodrow Wilson, for example, shrunk Washington state’s Mtout Olympus National Monument to open up more than 300,000 acres to logging, but he didn’t face lawsuits over the decision as Trump almost certainly will.
The Trump war on the environment is in full swing. From pesticides to dirty water and air. If you are content to sit on your hands and say nothing I really think you take some ownership of the policy. And a share of responsibility for what comes next.
Once the wild places are gone, they are gone.
