Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful

Exactly five years ago, on July 15, 2021, I wrote:

“Today Americans began to see the concrete effects of the American Rescue Plan show up in their bank accounts, as the expanded child tax credit goes into effect for one year. Through this program, the Child Tax Credit increased to $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17 and $3,600 per child under 6. All working families will get the full credit if they make up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a family with a single parent. The government sent payments for almost 60 million children on Thursday, totaling $15 billion.

“This is a really big deal. In America, one in seven children lives in poverty. This measure is expected to cut that poverty nearly in half. Studies suggest that addressing childhood poverty continues to pay off over time, as it helps adults achieve higher levels of mobility.”

The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, was an early achievement of the Biden presidency, becoming a signature law as every Republican voted against it. A year later, researchers at the Brookings Institute found that the temporary expansion of the child tax credit lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty before it expired on December 31, 2021.

Family members did not stop working, as critics said they would. Instead, they used the money to cover routine expenses, decreasing their reliance on credit cards; had better nutrition; and made long-term investments in education for both children and parents.

Now, five years later, the results of the Republicans’ signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed without a single Democratic vote and signed into law last July, are revealing a very different set of priorities.

The OBBBA extended or expanded more than $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, while cutting more than $1 trillion from social welfare programs. It did increase the child tax credit, but less than it would have if Congress had just adjusted the credit based on inflation since it had set the amount in 2017. And, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute of Tax and Economic Policy, the benefits from the OBBBA measure went mostly to the richest fifth of Americans, dropping essentially to zero by the time they got to the poorest fifth.

The measure cut $187 billion in federal funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and on Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that between the passage of the OBBBA in July 2025 and March 2026—the last month for which there is data from all states—more than 4 million people lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At least a quarter of those people are children. Those losses will mount in 2027—after the midterm elections—when states will have to assume much more of the costs of the program.

In August 1870 a U.S. exploring expedition headed out from Montana toward the Yellowstone River into land the U.S. government had recognized as belonging to different Indigenous tribes.

By October the men had reached the Yellowstone, where they reported they had “found abundance of game and trout, hot springs of five or six different kinds…basaltic columns of enormous size,” and a waterfall that must, they wrote, “be in form, color and surroundings one of the most glorious objects on the American Continent.” On the strength of their widely reprinted reports, the secretary of the interior sent out an official surveying team under geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden. With it went photographer William Henry Jackson and fine artist Thomas Moran.

Banker and railroad baron Jay Cooke had arranged for Moran to join the expedition. In 1871 the popular magazine Scribner’s Monthly published the surveyor’s report along with Moran’s drawings and a promise that Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad would soon lay tracks to enable tourists to see the great natural wonders of the West.

But by 1871, Americans had begun to turn against the railroads, seeing them as big businesses monopolizing American resources at the expense of ordinary Americans. When Hayden called on Congress to pass a law setting the area around Yellowstone aside as a public park, two Republicans—Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas and Delegate William H. Clagett of Montana—introduced bills to protect Yellowstone in a natural state and provide against “wanton destruction of the fish and game…or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit.”

On March 1, 1872, President U.S. Grant, a Republican, signed the bill making Yellowstone a national park.

The impulse to protect natural resources from those who would plunder them for profit expanded 18 years later, when the federal government stepped in to protect Yosemite. In June 1864, Congress had passed and President Abraham Lincoln signed a law giving to the state of California the Yosemite Valley and nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort and recreation.”

But by 1890 it was clear that under state management the property had been largely turned over to timber companies, sheep-herding enterprises, and tourist businesses with state contracts. Naturalist John Muir warned in the Century magazine: “Ax and plow, hogs and horses, have long been and are still busy in Yosemite’s gardens and groves. All that is accessible and destructible is rapidly being destroyed.” Congress passed a law making the land around the state property in Yosemite a national park area, and the United States military began to manage the area.

The next year, in March 1891, Congress gave the president power to “set apart and reserve…as public reservations” land that bore at least some timber, whether or not that timber was of any commercial value. Under this General Revision Act, also known as the Forest Reserve Act, Republican president Benjamin Harrison set aside timberland adjacent to Yellowstone National Park and south of Yosemite National Park. By September 1893, about 17 million acres of land had been put into forest reserves. Those who objected to this policy, according to Century, were “men [who] wish to get at it and make it earn something for them.”

Presidents of both parties continued to protect American lands, but in the late nineteenth century it was New York Republican politician Theodore Roosevelt who most dramatically expanded the effort to keep western lands from the hands of those who wanted only their timber and minerals.

Roosevelt was concerned that moneygrubbing was eroding the character of the nation, and he believed that western land nurtured the independence and community that he worried was disappearing in the East. During his presidency, which stretched from 1901 to 1909, Roosevelt protected 141 million acres of forest and established five new national parks.

More powerfully, he used the 1906 Antiquities Act, which Congress had passed to stop the looting and sale of Indigenous objects and sites, to protect land. The Antiquities Act allowed presidents to protect areas of historic, cultural, or scientific interest. Before the law was a year old, Roosevelt had created four national monuments: Devils Tower in Wyoming, El Morro in New Mexico, and Montezuma Castle and Petrified Forest in Arizona.

In 1908, Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect the Grand Canyon.

Shortly after retaking office, Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” and yesterday he signed two proclamations. One will shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 91%, and the other will shrink Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument by about 90%—even more than the reductions of his first term. Together, they remove nearly three million acres (1.2 million hectares) from monument protection.