ASSOCIATED PRESS • February 1, 2021
Joe Biden has brought a transformation both in tone and substance in the earliest days of his presidency. After the bellowing, never-self-questioning Trump, almost anyone would. “For over 100 years, it was the accepted meaning of declaring national monuments that it was a one-way door,” said Kenneth Mayer, political scientist and expert on presidential powers and executive actions. “You couldn’t undeclare a national monument.” But that custom shattered in 2017 with Trump’s executive action to review or shrink the protected status of vast acres of national monument lands. Biden moved to counter that with an order of his own.