When Utah became a state (in 1896) land was set aside and given to the state of Utah under School and Institutional Trust Lands (SITLa, a Utah state agency), to be managed to produce funds for the state school system. This included the mineral rights. Land from this act was stolen from the state by Bill Clinton and added to Grand Staircase.
At that time the land was being looked at by the state of Utah in order to allow mining of coal. The revenues from that mining were going to be used by the state of Utah for their schools as previously designated by the federal government. At the time there were only two known sources of the cleanest burning coal in the world. One was the Utah land that bill Clinton added to Grand Staircase. The other was controlled by political contributors to Bill Clinton. They did not want competition from the coal that would be mined in Utah. By stealing the land from the state of Utah, Bill Clinton was paying back his political contributors.
Donald Trump is only trying to right a wrong that was done to the state of Utah by returning the land and mineral rights to the state of Utah given by the federal government in 1896.
From World News Daily story"...Clinton didn’t mention that the coal he was effectively locking away was a low-sulfur, clean-burning coal called “compliance coal,” so-named because it meets requirements set by the EPA. It is in demand worldwide as a fuel for electric plants. Nor did he mention that one of the only other places in the world where comparable coal is found is Indonesia, the home of Mochtar and James Riady, the Chinese government-connected billionaires who poured millions of dollars into Clinton campaigns in 1992 and 1996. ..."
