The Interior Department released hundreds of heavily redacted documents on Monday from a two-week review in February. These records contain action plans for national monuments and mineral withdrawals across the U.S. to accelerate President Donald Trump’s American energy agenda.
“This is over-redacted in a way that is almost laughable,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities. “Clearly, they don’t want to say what they’re up to.”
None of the 468 pages reveal any recommendations for several national monuments of cultural significance to tribes scattered throughout the Southwest.
The Trump administration has been eyeing to shrink large swaths of federally protected lands to expedite the extraction of oil, gas and critical minerals — including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Chuckwalla in California as well as Arizona’s Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni that former President Joe Biden designated in 2023.
In a statement, the Interior Department told KJZZ these internal working documents contain “a large amount of pre-decisional and deliberative information,” which it argues is shielded by law.
“It seems like you’re having it both ways,” added Weiss. “Either you had to have action plans completed in 14 days, or they drafted up a bunch of deliberative action plans and didn’t actually finish them.”
The federal agency would not disclose when its final plans will be released.
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![The Long family [clockwise from top left] Joni Lapahie, Dáilan Long, Jona Lapahie, Emma Long and Emery Long.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ac75967/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4032x2246+0+389/resize/280x156!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F3e%2Fcb7758794c59b588da1f9a3323b8%2Flong-family-household-burnham-nm-gp-202602.jpg)
Coal has long been the economic bedrock of the Navajo Nation, which owns deposits in Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico. Now, the tribe is asking the Trump administration to dramatically expand the life — and size — of an operational coal mine that could uproot the lives of some Navajo families. And their longtime homes — literally. -
So instead of Santa hand-delivering stockings of coal along with his team of reindeer, it’s NTEC — or the Navajo Transitional Energy Company — with its diesel-powered trucks trekking across the sprawling 27,000-square-mile reservation. -
Coal is perhaps most closely associated with Appalachian states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky — or Wyoming, the nation’s leading producer of the fossil fuel. But the coal-mining business was once thriving in northern Arizona as well, atop the Colorado Plateau. -
CRIT leaders say a new plan to share the Colorado River is being rushed by the Bureau of Reclamation. -
Bertram Tsavadawa is a member of the Hopi Tribe and offers tours of the reservation through his company, Ancient Pathways Tours; he’s been doing that for nearly 25 years.
![The Long family [clockwise from top left] Joni Lapahie, Dáilan Long, Jona Lapahie, Emma Long and Emery Long.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8f96e94/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4032x2246+0+389/resize/560x312!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F3e%2Fcb7758794c59b588da1f9a3323b8%2Flong-family-household-burnham-nm-gp-202602.jpg)
