An obscure federal law is being weaponized against National Monuments, and a vote could come any day now.

Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah have introduced a joint resolution invoking the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to permanently overturn the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in Utah. If it passes, it would mark the first time in history that Congress has used the CRA to erase a National Monument's management plan.

The CRA was designed to give Congress oversight of federal agency rulemaking, but it's being stretched here to gut a plan that took years of public meetings, environmental review, Tribal consultation, and input from local communities, hunters, ranchers, OHV users, and recreation groups to build. And once a management plan is overturned through the CRA, the law prohibits anything "substantially similar" from replacing it, permanently blocking the kind of locally-informed planning that went into GSENM from ever being reinstated.

This is not a one-off attack on Utah's red rock country. It is a template. If Lee and Maloy succeed, Congress gains a new tool to override locally developed management plans for any of the 20 National Monuments in California, and every other monument across the country.

Grand Staircase-Escalante is not where this started. It's where they're trying to take it next.

In the past year, Congress and the Trump administration have used the CRA to revoke management plans in Montana, Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming, erasing protections built through years of environmental review, public input, and tribal consultation, and permanently locking the door on anything like them returning. They used it to gut protections for critical habitat and Alaska Native subsistence lands in the National Petroleum Reserve. The House has already passed a resolution that would open the Boundary Waters watershed to toxic copper mining using the CRA.

Each time, the CRA's "substantially similar" clause did its quiet, permanent work. Each time, Congress moved fast, and local voices didn't matter.

The BLM's own Solicitor's Office has warned that this strategy could call into question the legal basis of every management plan the agency has finalized since 1996, along with the grazing permits, recreation authorizations, and other land uses built on top of them. That's not a Utah problem. That's an everywhere problem, and the Eastern Sierra is very much part of everywhere.

Representative Kevin Kiley represents our Eastern Sierra communities in Congress. He needs to hear from you NOW before this resolution comes to a vote.

Click the button below to call Rep. Kiley and urge him to vote NO on Lee and Maloy’s Joint Resolution to overturn Grand Staircase-Escalante's management plan. A script will be provided.