Paul Cook Twists History in Attack on Desert Monuments
Representative Paul Cook published an opinion piece in the Desert Dispatch this week defending his recent request to slash monuments in the California desert. His opinion piece is one of the first public communications from his office r Harding President Trump's and Secretary of Interior's review of national monuments. Up until now, Cook has only had private meetings and correspondence with select companies and the Secretary of Interior detailing his plan to cut the monuments down. We only know about that because someone submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to force the Department of Interior to release Cook's correspondence . Cook's letter ignores the years of public stakeholder conversation regarding management of our desert public lands, portraying the monuments as midnight decisions that came "out of thin air." Cook's letter disingenuously characterizes the monuments as the result of "extreme environmental groups" an