"This is a hot issue, this is a steaming hot issue in the west... For several decades now, certainly since the Clinton administration, Western conservatives have been irate over what they see as the president's overreach and overprotectiveness and the dismissal of local concerns. So yes, the showman President Trump made his trademark style points, but this does speak to an issue that's been preceding him."

"The interior department under Secretary Ryan Zinke is now tasked with looking at the largest of the national monuments established since 1996. There are several dozen of these and they will examine, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, that monuments are no larger than is necessary to fulfill the protective function. And so the department is going to look at whether the monuments in Utah and perhaps in Colorado and elsewhere are simply too big."

"In the last couple of years, President Obama designated a number in Southern California, there's the 1.3 million-acre Mojave Trails national monument and the Sand to Snow monument in the Mojave Desert...



There's a huge national monument off the coast of California, covers the entire coast, but focuses on the reefs and rocks.



And up in the southern Sierra Nevada, there's the Giant Sequoia National monument that President Clinton signed in 2000 and was intensely controversial. They're among those that might be under review.



There are many smaller ones, for instance, the former residence of United Farm Workers' leader, César Chávez up in Kern County. They are very small and will escape review.