(Congressional Agenda) – Sixth generation rancher, Chris Heaton, has filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration, alleging they have abused the Antiquities Act in order to designate a million acres of land located in Prescott, Arizona as a national monument. In other words, the progressives within the White House are trying to steal land that does not rightfully belong to them for purposes that are wholly their own. This wouldn’t be the first time the government has attempted to do something shady and underhanded. Moves like this have become all too common.
“The Antiquities Act exists to protect Native American archeological sites, not to give presidents unlimited power to declare vast swaths of land and sea out of bounds for productive use,” Frank Garrison, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, went on to explain. “In our system of government, Congress makes the law and presidents are not allowed to ignore the constraints Congress places on their authority.”
“The Antiquities Act allows the president to create monuments on federally owned or controlled land but limits what may be designated to only historic landmarks, prehistoric structures, or other objects of historic or scientific interest. The statute also strictly limits a monument’s size to only what’s necessary for the care and management of the validly protected objects,” an article published at Pacific Legal Foundation noted.
By establishing the “Ancestral Footprints National Monument,” Biden is designating whole landscapes, species of animals, plants, and other “objects” that are said to go far past the actual scope of the Antiquities Act. There is a rather loose definition of “object,” according to PLF, that goes beyond the permission of the legislation. The million acres that have been set aside for the monument also plays fast and loose with the Act’s limit on the size of such a designation.
“When the Supreme Court declined to hear a previous case challenging a similarly excessive monument designation, Chief Justice Roberts sounded the alarm, noting that ‘[a] statute permitting the President in his sole discretion to designate as monuments ‘landmarks,’ ‘structures,’ and ‘objects’—along with the smallest area of land compatible with their management—has been transformed into a power without any discernible limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea,'” the article says.
Biden and his ilk are attempting to strip the rights to land away from the Heaton family, who have been ranching on it for six generations. That’s a long time. The rancher is also insisting that the president, along with future commander-in-chiefs, should be forced to adhere to the Constitution’s separation of powers. And all God’s people proclaimed, “Amen!”
“On top of the new regulatory power that comes with a monument designation, the Antiquities Act threatens criminal penalties for harming or removing any protected ‘objects’ within the one-million-acre monument. The monument will undermine, and perhaps eliminate, Chris’s ability to earn a livelihood from the land. All the while he faces fines and jail time for simply using public and private property as his family has done for more than a century,” PLF stated.
“The president has no authority to unilaterally withdraw millions of acres of land and forbid people from using those lands for the natural resources they contain. Exceeding the limits of the Antiquities Act to do so is simply an abuse of presidential power,” they continued.
Unfortunately, courts are usually deferential to the president when it comes to challenges made concerning the designation of national monuments. During a previous case taken up by the PLF, Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Raimondo, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts revealed his deep concern for the expansion of the president’s power under the Act.
What’s scary is that if President Biden is allowed to get away with designating a million acres of land, which is an obscenely large amount, as a national monument, what’s the limit for how much land he can set aside and pull away from productive use? There isn’t one. That’s why this needs to be stopped.
Copyright 2024. CongressionalAgenda.com
Biden is hell bent on destroying our country, and farmers, ranchers. He is a wicked man, and needs deliverance, along with Obama they are in this together.
It’s not Biden who kowtows to the Russia communist Putin. It’s not Biden who stifles American women with repeal of abortion. It’s not Biden who threatens to withdraw from NATO, the self-defense pact with Europe that protects us from sending our soldiers, airmen and sailors to war. It’s Trump who is destroying the credibility of our nation but telling Putin to do whatever the hell he wants with European countries, not in NATO, meaning invasion. That’s the definition of wicked, un-American, evil, destructive behavior–by Trump and his right wing extremists like you.
DrBillLemoine: I’m at a loss, you want U.S. taxpayers to keep paying both the U.S. NATO membership fees and the membership payments of member countries who are not paying their membership fees. We need that money for our own people. The so called defense pact does nothing but guaranty that the U.S. will end up defending Europe as always. Since when has Europe defended the U.S. Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was president, Putin didn’t dare, Putin invaded Ukraine under Biden. Trump tried to get Europe to buy our oil instead of Putin’s oil. Europe funded Putin’s invasion, not Trump. Biden destroyed our oil production so we are now buying oil from a commie country, Nicaragua and thus, again, U.S. taxpayers are keeping commies in power. Biden’s a traitor to the U.S. and so are you, look in the mirror. As for abortion, murder is murder and unborn babies are still babies with their own bodies just like their so called mother was an unborn baby with her own body. Murdering at any stage of life is murder and murder of innocent babies who cannot defend themselves against their own parent is the worst of murders. You are really a democrat or commie choosing who survives and who doesn’t. Black citizens have more abortions then whites and commies used abortion to control the population size Russia had to feed while democrats use abortion to control the black populations. The U.S. kills babies because democrats are the true racists, and they encourage stupid women to kill their babies. Democrats and commies are sick people.
As you should know, the executive branch is limited in enforcement of laws by finances. Priorities must be set when the money doesn’t match the enforcement requirement. This House under its rule by extremists is not routinely able to pass legislation to resolve needs of the people, like closing the border tight. So it’s pretty poor when elements of those extremists sue for enforcement. It might be a joke if the extremists weren’t so dead set on diminishing, starving and choking off government as a policy to ensure fascism takes over our governance instead of democracy we’ve lived under for 235 years already.