This community and many more like it just won a major public lands victory against Mike Lee and his congressional cronies – proof that what we’re all doing here works.

Sit with how this happened. Republicans run the House. They run the Senate. Lee chairs the committee with jurisdiction over public lands, and he had a procedure built to win on a simple majority with no filibuster. In more than three months, with every structural advantage in Washington, they couldn’t bring a fifteen-year goal to a vote in either chamber. The clock ran out Thursday. The attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante is dead, and the plan protecting 1.87 million acres of redrock canyon country is still standing.

It stalled because forcing members to go on record gutting a beloved national monument in an election year was a vote nobody wanted to cast. More than 150 scientists, more than 125 organizations, six tribal nations, and tens of thousands of ordinary people made the political cost climb every single day.

This is the second time in twelve months this exact delegation got beaten back by public pressure. Last summer they tried to auction off your land and a public revolt stopped them. This spring they tried a procedural backdoor and you stopped them again. Anyone who tells you your phone calls don’t matter wasn’t watching.

Share this with one person who keeps saying nothing they do makes a difference. Today’s the day we prove them wrong.