Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act

Key Points

• This bill would strip the president's power to create or expand national monuments. Instead, only Congress would be able to establish or extend a national monument, fundamentally changing how public lands have been protected since 1906.
• The bill directly rewrites the Antiquities Act, which has been used by presidents of both parties for over a century to protect millions of acres of public land and ocean. If passed, it would replace the existing law with a single sentence giving that power to Congress alone.
• Introduced by Sen. Lee of Utah along with Sen. Curtis, the bill reflects longstanding concerns from Western states where large national monument designations have restricted mining, ranching, and other commercial uses of federal land.
• If this becomes law, protecting new sites would require a vote from both the House and Senate, which could make it much harder and slower to safeguard culturally or ecologically important areas from development or destruction.