Joe Biden just solidified Russia’s near-monopoly on global uranium production. Using the Antiquities Act of 1906, Biden declared a national monument on 1 million acres of uranium-rich Arizona land, rendering hundreds of uranium deposits unmineable.

America spends $1 billion annually on Russian uranium. U.S. nuclear reactors use uranium that comes from the Russian nuclear company Rosatom, which also supplies missile fuel to Russia’s military. Domestic uranium production has bipartisan support, as did the ban on Russian oil and gas imports in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Senate last week added an almost-unanimous amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to support domestic uranium production and enrichment. Biden himself supports domestic mining efforts in theory, and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairwoman Cathy Rodgers called reliance on Russian energy imports “one of the most urgent security threats America faces.”

Yet national security is apparently second fiddle to this monument, or what Interior Secretary Deb Haaland called an “eternal home, a place of healing and a source of spiritual sustenance” for Native Americans. The Antiquities Act stipulates that executives can only designate “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” The Supreme Court will likely consider the act in coming years, and Chief Justice John Roberts has questioned the scope of presidential power to federalize millions of acres of land.

It wasn’t necessary to put all this land off-limits for mining, which has a small footprint while packing a lot of energy punch. Arizona’s now-inaccessible uranium deposits each take up a maximum of 20 acres of land and each contain enough uranium to supply the entire state with carbon-free energy for one or two years. Energy contained in each of the mines is enough to fill a coal train stretching from Los Angeles to New York, according to Arizona mining executive Steve Trussell.

Biden, who promised to protect 30 percent of America’s lands and water by 2030, was an easy target for Arizona lobbyists and activist groups like the Sierra Club, who have for decades tried and failed to stop mining in the area. Courts have upheld the area’s mining (including San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, twice), as did both the Obama and Trump administrations.

But along came Biden with his typical executive overreach, undertaken in a ramshackle fashion. The Department of the Interior told energy stakeholders in Arizona that as of July 28, the administration had no official proposal to create a monument, and that timing on the matter was not imminent. The process was “confusing, shifting, unusual, and grossly inadequate,” the owner of the sole active uranium mine in the area, Energy Fuels Resources, said, and proceeded “without anything close to the level of public input that would be expected for a decision of this magnitude, particularly given the significant impacts to our national energy security and clean energy goals.”

There are already 1.2 million acres of land that encompass the Grand Canyon. Biden’s move is gratuitous and shows how Democrats love renewable energy, except to the extent it conflicts with their deep-seated anti-development reflexes.