Rob Bishop

In 2010 Bishop introduced to the House an amendment to the United States Constitution, known as the "repeal amendment," which would allow a majority vote of the states to overturn any act of the United States Congress.^[15]

Bishop supports repeal of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, saying it has been "hijacked" to control land and block economic development, and that he "would love to invalidate" the law.^[16][17] Bishop is among those most critical of the Antiquities Act.^[13] Bishop opposed the designation of the Bears Ears National Monument and supports repealing or shrinking the designation.^[13][18] Bishop supports transferring federal public lands to the states.^[19] Despite this, Bishop sponsored a successful amendment to the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act to create the Cedar Mountain Wilderness, specifically to block transportation access to the Private Fuel Storage nuclear storage facility on Goshute's Skull Valley Indian Reservation land in Tooele County.^[20][21]

In February 2011, Bishop introduced a budget amendment^[22] that would have defunded the National Landscape Conservation System, which manages 27 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land, including the National Monument, National Conservation Area, National Wilderness Preservation, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Scenic Trail, National Historic Trail systems and other systems. After coming under fire for introducing this amendment,^[23] Bishop withdrew it.

On April 10, 2013, Bishop introduced the Ensuring Public Involvement in the Creation of National Monuments Act. The bill would amend the Antiquities Act of 1906 to subject national monument declarations by the President to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).^[24] At present, the President of the United States can unilaterally designate areas of federally-owned land as a national monument, whereas national parks and other areas are required to be enacted into law by the United States Congress.^[25] Bishop argued that "the American people deserve the opportunity to participate in land-use decisions regardless of whether they are made in Congress or by the President". He claims his new bill would ensure "that new national monuments are created openly with consideration of public input".^[25]

In March 2019, Bishop said that "the ideas behind the Green New Deal are tantamount to genocide".^[26] Asked to elaborate how this was similar to genocide, Bishop answered, "I’m an ethnic. I’m a westerner."^[27] Asked whether he believed that the Green New Deal would kill him, Bishop said, "If you actually implement everything they want to. Killing would be positive if you implement everything the Green New Deal actually wants to. That’s why the Green New Deal is not ready for prime time."^[27]

Bishop was chairman of the Utah Republican Party when the decision was made to close primaries to nonparty members in the late 1990s. The Utah Democratic party holds open primaries. When asked about Democrats changing their party affiliation to vote in the 2020 Republican primary, he replied "instead of piddling around with the Republican primary. Doing it this way ... the best you can call it is dishonorable. It really is a slimy way of doing things." He said the only reason Democrats are attempting to "pervert the process" is to help advance a candidate. "That's inherently wrong," Bishop said.^[28] In an editorial, Bishop restated his view: "A leading Democrat wants to create havoc in the system. For what aim? Maybe to elect the 'correct' candidates? Maybe to help Democrats have a bigger voice in the elections?"^[29]