A Big, Bleak, Beastly Bill

Summer in the Boundary Waters began with loon calls, misty mornings, sweaty portages and long nights around the campfire that are mainstays of a canoe trip here. But overshadowing the thousands of magical moments was an impending disaster. In Washington, D.C., tucked deep in the Budget Reconciliation Bill was a provision that would open hundreds of thousands of acres of protected land near the Boundary Waters to dangerous copper-sulfide mining. It would stifle any meaningful environmental review and allow the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta to mine at the doorstep of the wilderness. Because of rapid mobilization and action taken by you and thousands across the country, this measure was blocked. But, as an old saying among conservationists goes: Victories are temporary, defeats are forever. Before we had time to celebrate, the Trump administration launched another attack on the Boundary Waters.

Should courts be banned from reviewing public land giveaways to foreign billionaires? Along with opening federal land surrounding the Boundary Waters to copper-sulfide mining, handing land over to a Chilean mining corporation, and making a travesty out of environmental review, that’s exactly what HR 978 would do. It would not only hand federal land at the Boundary Waters’ edge to Chilean billionaires who own Antofagasta but also prohibit courts from reviewing these sweetheart deals. No matter the makeup of the U.S. House and Senate, such radical legislation would have a very hard time getting passed. But the author of the Bill, Minnesota Congressman Pete Stauber, found a loophole to sneak it into the Reconciliation Budget Bill, otherwise known as the Big Beautiful Bill. Despite the radical nature of the bill, the House barely held a debate and narrowly passed a bill that will make our country dirtier, sicker, and more polluted.

your action helps stop Boundary Waters MininG!

Before the fight went to the Senate, we were concerned that these dangerous attacks on the Boundary Waters, tucked in the over 1,000-page bill, could be passed by a mere 50 votes, rather than the normal two-thirds majority needed to pass a bill through the Senate. But thousands of Boundary Waters lovers flooded offices with phone calls and emails at the same time that our legal and advocacy team was putting forward a strategy to stop the bill. Only laws that directly deal with the budget can be passed in a reconciliation bill like the Big Beautiful Bill. Measures need to abide by the Byrd Rule, meaning they need to be focused on budgetary matters, rather than policy initiatives. Through extensive research, we showed that greenlighting the Twin Metals project, removing judicial review, and imposing pay-to-play environmental review are policy provisions dressed in budgetary clothing.
We outlined this in a detailed memo that provided strong justification for why these measures should be stricken from the Budget Bill.

The strategy, of which you were a major part, paid off. In early June, before officially transmitting the bill to the Senate, House leadership decided to take out some of the most controversial provisions that they didn’t think would stand up to the Byrd Rule. For a moment, it looked like we won. However, that very day, the Secretary of Agriculture — who oversees the Forest Service — announced the agency would begin the process of canceling the twenty year mining ban in the Superior National Forest and would open the area up to copper-sulfide mining. Frustrating, yes, but we will go into this new challenge energized and inspired by what we were able to accomplish, together. In the Boundary Waters and elsewhere, we are witnessing a giveaway of our public land. Land that belongs to you, that belongs to me. It belongs to our families and our grandchildren. It belongs to all of us. We are faced with a basic question: Are we a country of the people, by the people, and for the people? Or are we a country that is bought and paid for by billionaires? Together, we can confidently provide an answer to this and other challenges we now face.