Land grabbing Biden admin. 😡

'A sixth-generation rancher, Chris Heaton, is suing the Biden administration for abusing the Antiquities Act to designate a million acres of land in Arizona as a national monument.

“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,” said Frank Garrison, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “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 empowers the president to erect monuments on federally owned or controlled land, but only historic landmarks, prehistoric structures, or other objects of historical or scientific significance may be designated.

The statute also limits the size of a monument to what is required for the care and management of validly protected objects.

In creating the “Ancestral Footprints National Monument,” President Biden designated entire landscapes, species, plants, and many other “objects” that go well beyond the scope of the Antiquities Act.

This loose definition of “object” is far beyond what the Antiquities Act permits, according to the lawsuit. The million acres encompassed by the monument flouts the Act’s limit on the size of such designations.

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.”

Heaton is fighting for the right to use the land his family has been ranching for six generations and insisting that the Biden administration and future presidents adhere to the Constitution’s separation of powers.'