One of former President Joe Biden’s last official acts was declaring the Chuckwalla National Monument on almost 625,000 acres of “canyon-carved mountain ranges” in Riverside County.

This spring President Donald Trump asked the Department of the Interior to consider removing those protections. In May the Department of Justice concluded that Trump “can and should” reverse the monument designation.

But this week, the White House Press Office told CalMatters that nothing is set in stone: “We would not get ahead of the President on any policy changes that may or may not be planned,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in an email.

Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, which lobbied for the Chuckwalla National Monument designation, said the administration might be thinking twice about reversing that status after blowback from a recent proposal in the House budget bill to sell off public lands.

“Veterans, hunters, anglers - a lot of people who are not traditionally invested in politics - came out to say hands off our public lands,” she said. 

Speculation that the Trump administration could revoke monument status for more than half a million acres of protected land in California has environmentalists fretting, but some outdoor recreation and mining advocates hope to undo what they call a “lame duck land grab.”

The Chuckwalla National Monument hugs the southern edge of Joshua Tree National Park and extends eastward across the Mojave and Colorado Deserts. 

Tribal trails thread through the monument and the region is considered culturally and spiritually important to a number of tribes, Biden’s proclamation stated. It’s also home to endangered desert tortoise and desert pupfish, and rare species of aster, sage and cholla, that “grow nowhere else on Earth,” according to Sierra magazine.

“This is not just a bare landscape out in the desert,” tribal engagement strategist Donald Medart, a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, told CalMatters. “This is a living, breathing, thriving place, where people have lived since time immemorial. We intend to protect it by any means possible.”

Biden dedicated the monument in the final days of his term, but it got off to an inauspicious start. The White House had planned to celebrate with a ceremony at Chuckwalla on Jan. 7, then cancelled it amid fierce winds that fanned deadly fires in Los Angeles that day. Biden issued a proclamation establishing the monument a week later.

On his inauguration day Jan. 20, Trump declared an "energy emergency” to fast-track power projects, and ordered the Interior Department to look at the new monuments. Officials pored over geological maps to identify their oil and mining potential, the Washington Post reported.

In May, a Michigan gold miner, an Idaho-based off-road vehicle organization and a conservative Texas think tank sued the federal government to overturn the Chuckwalla monument designation, alleging that it restricts access to public lands for recreation and amateur mining. However, Biden’s proclamation preserves existing rights to use of the land.

Chance Weldon, director of litigation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said that’s true, but future mining claims and trails could be off limits. He said the foundation believes that vast national monuments declared by presidential proclamation are a misuse of the Antiquities Act, which authorizes their creation.

“When you have thousands of acres being taken off line, that’s something that should be decided by Congress, not by the president at the stroke of a pen,” Weldon said.

Goldbeck questioned the plaintiffs’ basis for challenging the monument: “This is an out of state entity being represented by another out of state entity, trying to undo something that Californians love and fought for.”

Environmental and tribal groups have argued that once a president dedicates a monument it can’t be undone. But in June the Department of Justice told Trump he could eliminate monuments if he thinks the space or structures they contain “either never were or no longer are deserving of the (Antiquities) Act’s protections.”

Some local officials have also balked at what they consider restrictions of Chuckwalla National Monument. The city of Blythe weighed in against the designation, arguing that it would hurt tourism, solar development and the local economy.

It’s unclear whether those objections are part of the administration’s calculations. Trump has put the brakes on alternative energy development, and on Monday directed the treasury to end tax credits for wind and solar programs.

In a recent Senate hearing, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the monument is just too big.

“The question is not whether the monuments serve the purpose, I think the real question is the size,” Burgum said, responding to questions from California Sen. Alex Padilla.

Burgum said he has heard concerns from residents of other states that local communities weren’t consulted on recent monuments, but he noted that wasn’t the case in California. Padilla thanked him for acknowledging California’s public review efforts and said the Trump administration should follow the same process for any changes to Chuckwalla National Monument.

“If it’s going to be revisited or undone, we expect that same level of engagement on the back end before any action is taken or before any decisions are made,” Padilla said.

A former jail commander has sued Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and other law enforcement leaders, saying they retaliated against her for blowing the whistle on civil rights abuses in the county jail, the Desert Sun reported.

Victoria Flores, who ran the Robert Presley Detention Center, filed her suit Monday claiming wrongful termination, retaliation, gender discrimination and other civil rights violations. Flores was terminated in 2024 after nearly 30 years in the department.

Flores said she witnessed misconduct such as a 2021 incident when deputies knocked a man unconscious by throwing him against a wall. She said her firing followed lax discipline of misconduct, a surge in jail deaths and coverups of alleged abuse.

CalMatters reported on the disproportionate rate of jail deaths in the Inland Empire and investigated rising jail deaths throughout California last year.

USA Today readers voted Big Bear Lake the best in California in a recent poll of recreational water bodies.

The nearly 3,000 acre alpine lake also won third place among the best lakes for aquatic sports, with jet skis, canoes, catamarans, swimming and trout fishing.  It also features a new floating waterpark with 12-foot-high platforms, tunnels and waterslide.

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