A New Bedford fisherman missed his son being born because he was finishing a trip – on waters his government would only let him work 35 days a year.
Trump just fixed that – and went after the Democrats who caused it by name.
Here is what he said to the people who spent 30 years stealing those waters from American fishermen.
Obama and Biden Built a Wall Around America's Waters
Georges Bank is bigger than the entire state of Massachusetts.
It sits off the coast of New England and has fed commercial fisheries since the 1500s.
In 1994, regulators shut down the northern edge to scallop fishing – and for three decades, that closure became permanent bureaucratic furniture.
The New England Fishery Management Council voted as recently as 2024 to keep those grounds locked.
Scallop landings in 2024 were a third of what they were in 2019.
Boats worth $3 to $5 million sat tied to the dock for 11 months at a time.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2072743244807713158?s=20
The port of New Bedford – the highest-value commercial fishing port in the country for 23 straight years – watched 7,000 scallop-dependent jobs slowly bleed out while Washington held the line.
Obama made it worse.
He used the Antiquities Act to brand vast stretches of American ocean as environmental monuments, locking out U.S. fishermen while foreign fleets worked the same waters freely.
Biden got the keys in 2021 and immediately reversed the rollbacks Trump had achieved in his first term – sealing those monuments shut again.
Trump Did in One Day What Bureaucrats Refused to Do in Three Decades
On Thursday, NOAA announced rotational access to the Northern Edge of Georges Bank – the exact ground fishermen had been begging Washington to reopen for years.
White House adviser Peter Navarro said the administration is cutting regulatory burdens on fisheries from coast to coast, with Georges Bank as the centerpiece.
Trump declared it National Scallops Day on Truth Social: millions more pounds of wild scallops on American kitchen tables, thousands of new jobs from Norfolk to New Bedford.
https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2072740261424189809?s=20
This is his third fishing action of the second term.
He opened the Pacific Remote Islands monument in April 2025, terminated Obama's Atlantic monument in February 2026, and now cracked open Georges Bank.
Every one of them reversed a Democrat closure.
Every one of them put American fishermen back to work.
This Is What America First Looks Like for Working People
Trump closed his Truth Social post with a direct warning: vote Republican in the midterms, because if the Socialist Democrats retake power, these waters close again.
He's not wrong.
Democrats use environmental monument designations as a weapon – not against pollution or genuine ecological threats, but against the working-class industries they've decided don't fit their vision of America.
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2072749113272304106?s=20
New Bedford's scallop families spent 30 years fighting Washington bureaucrats who kept voting no – while the scallops matured and died unharvested in the water below them.
Massachusetts State Senator Mark Montigny – a Democrat – called it "singularly my most frustrating experience."
The scallops were there the whole time.
Trump just got the government out of the way.
Sources:
- The Hill, "Trump declares National Scallops Day while ripping Obama, Biden," July 2, 2026.
- Reuters, "US lowers regulatory burdens on fishing, adviser Navarro says," July 2, 2026.
- Boston Globe, "Beacon Hill hearing urges reopening Georges Bank to scallop fishing," July 31, 2025.
- New Bedford Guide, "Massachusetts Senate Comm. slams Feds, pushes to reopen scallop grounds," September 3, 2025.
- Port of New Bedford, "Economic Impact," portofnewbedford.org.
- NOAA Fisheries, "Atlantic Sea Scallop," fisheries.noaa.gov.
- The Garden Island / Bloomberg, "Trump opens protected Pacific waters to commercial fishing," June 12, 2026.
