Public comment closes, wait begins for decision on national monuments

As reported by the Nevada Independent, the Trump administration is threatening to undo the Basin and Range National Monument designation, instituted by President Obama. Never before has a U.S. president moved to undo a national monument designation established by a predecessor.

As the article reports:

President Barack Obama designated 704,000 acres of undeveloped mountains in rural Southern Nevada as the Basin and Range National Monument in July 2015. The creation of the monument hampered plans to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by sealing off 300 miles of land through which one of the proposed railroad routes to the mountain could have run — plans that the Trump Administration is interested in revisiting.