Heller betrays Nevadans

By Tabitha Shadrick, North Las Vegas

Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has scoffed at and ignored Nevadans and the whole of the American people.

With his recent plan to shrink national monuments and to strip away protections to Gold Butte and other landmarks across the United States, Zinke is essentially throwing out the 2.5 million comments Americans made asking him to respect and protect our country’s national monuments.

Unsurprisingly, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., President Donald Trump and Zinke himself are choosing to sit on the wrong side of history on another issue. Barely a week after announcing that he may not be pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump and his corporate Cabinet are again launching an assault on the public lands they were sworn to protect.

This ill-advised and disgusting national monument review serves only to cater to corporate extraction services. They will be pulling natural resources from land that has been demarcated as worth treasuring and protecting.

This unprecedented rollback says more than Trump’s jumbled and petulant tweets. Those in support do not care about this country, being stewards to the environment, which has made our nation so prosperous, or their constituents.

Sen. Heller, who behaves more and more like a pancake every day, has spoken in support of shrinking Gold Butte. It is beginning to seem as though he has forgotten he is up for re-election.

Nevertheless, the people of Nevada have not and will not forget his disregard for the people he is supposed to represent.