#anto — Public Fediverse posts

Another delay in the Boundary Waters litigation will open the door to even more political finagling

No one should be surprised by the Joint Status Report just filed in the Boundary Waters litigation before the DC District Court of Appeals. Twin Metals, joined by the federal government, has asked for yet another 180-day abeyance. The mining company clearly sees that it has little chance of succeeding at law, so it has joined forces with the federal government, the putative defendant in this case, to keep the Twin Metals project on a strictly political path.

This is the same strategy they’ve pursued for a while. By petitioning for delay at the DC Circuit, the mining company and its lobbyists can make headway on the political front. They have already made some. Last July, the Department of the Interior revoked the Biden-era legal opinion that canceled (or re-canceled) the zombie leases revived by a legal opinion issued by the Solicitor of the Interior during Trump’s first term. There is still time over the next few weeks for the Chilean mining company and its lobbyists to push the republican-controlled Senate to pass House Joint Resolution 140, which would overturn the 20-year Rainy River watershed mineral withdrawal. And just last week, the Trump administration announced the dismantling of the US Forest Service, closing more than 57 research facilities and virtually shutting down the agency’s ability to conduct scientific research — the kind of careful, incremental, localized research that the 20-year mineral withdrawal would allow and for which it was designed.

Another 180-day abeyance would bring us to October 3rd or thereabouts (depending on when exactly the court issues the order). That’s about a month before the November elections, after which the the political finagling behind closed doors should face some much-needed congressional scrutiny.

We are still waiting to hear from Intervenor Defendant Appellees — the group of non-profits and small businesses that I call the Civil Society Group. Though the federal government has done an about-face, the Civil Society Group has not, so I would expect them to oppose this request. I am not confident the court will see it their way, though. For now, here’s today’s Joint Status Report.

Update 11 April 2026: Here’s the 9 April order: the case is on ice until 5 October, 2026. The plan is to keep justice at bay, sideline science, and let the mining company’s lobbyists (led by Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior) dictate to the corrupted agencies. And remember, there is still a chance — a slim chance at this point, but a chance all the same — that the Senate votes to overturn the 20-year mineral withdrawal.

If all this reads like so much inside baseball, that’s because it is: this is a complex and coordinated political project, with many moving parts.

Type your email…

Subscribe

The Chilean billionaire who wants to mine copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters can’t even be bothered to pay his DC sewer bill?

Law professor and ethics watchdog Richard Painter put it bluntly back in 2019:

Jared and Ivanka’s landlord — a billionaire from Chile who rents them their mansion in D.C. — will use the Boundary Waters as his toilet. Pro-sulfide mining politicians in Minnesota and Washington are handing him the washroom key.

Seven years later, the key to the billionaire’s commode is now turning in the lock. House Joint Resolution 140 will open the door. Meanwhile, as the above notice of delinquency indicates, this same Chilean billionaire has been using Washington DC’s waters and sewers, and the people charged with managing his toilet can’t even be bothered to see that the water bill is paid on time. 

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority — whose motto reminds us that “Water is Life” —issued this notice to the owner of 2449 Tracy Place NW back in November. The property in question is the Kalorama mansion purchased for $5.5 million right after the 2016 election by Andronico Luksic Craig, the billionaire whose family also controls Antofagasta plc, the foreign mining conglomerate currently pushing to mine copper and nickel on the edge of the Boundary Waters. 

Luksic rented the Tracy Place NW mansion to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for the duration of Trump’s first term while Antofagasta’s lawyers, lobbyists, and executives worked behind closed doors with administration officials to undo environmental protections and advance the Twin Metals mine. Despite serious public concern about foreign emoluments and other improprieties, no formal ethics review of the Kalorama rental arrangement was ever undertaken. It was, at best, a not-so-subtle influence operation, a form of corruption that today can seem almost quaint (but that hardly makes it excusable). Nowadays, Luksic could just arrange a meeting at the White House and present Trump with a gilded copper chamberpot.

Luksic continued to hold the Kalorama rental property after Trump’s first term violently unraveled and Jared and Ivanka fled DC. These days, the billionaire’s lawyers are supposed to be managing Tracy DC Real Estate (a Luksic front, one of many) and the the Kalorama property. They appear to be negligent or inattentive managers. In 2019, they failed to renew the required business license for the rental property on time; then in 2023, they simply “abandoned” the business license. The matter was referred to enforcement. 

So this latest infraction appears to be part of a pattern of neglect, and I would suggest that the pattern merits some serious consideration. In other words, I don’t think I’m just taking cheap shots here. In Washington DC, Luksic is an absent rent-seeker, as he would be in Minnesota; and in DC, it seems, his property managers can’t be arsed to comply with local codes and ordinances. His Minnesota managers might do better, or not; but the irresponsible oversight of the Kalorama property does nothing to assuage concern. (Much the same could be said about the significant fines another Luksic enterprise incurred for unauthorized water extraction at Agricola El Cerrito in April 2025).

DC has had to chase down Tracy DC Real Estate for operating the Kalorama property without a license; and the city has had to place a lien against the property in order to collect what is owed for water and sewage management. This is not exactly the conduct of a model citizen or someone with a commitment to the District of Columbia. It’s what we might expect from an absentee landlord.

And that is essentially what Minnesota and the country will get with the Twin Metals mine: an absent owner from a faraway place and a group of hired managers on the ground. Antofagasta might hire the most qualified managers at the Twin Metals mine, and I’m sure they will say that they have; but even the best managers are employees, not owners. With ownership comes responsibility.

The absentee, rent-seeking model of resource extraction is especially concerning when it comes to sulfide mining, where responsible local water management is critical in order to prevent – or at least try to prevent – acid mine drainage and other toxic pollution. Only last month, in fact, the Chilean government fined Antofagasta $775,000 for failing to comply with water management rules. Will our regulators ever be so diligent?

Think of it this way: a copper and nickel mine is, among other things, a sewer. It can, and in most cases will, drain, leak, or discharge pollutants for decades after the mine has closed and the owner has absconded with the profits.

Type your email…

Subscribe

What Happens to the Appeal in Twin Metals v. US if the Senate Passes HJR 140?

Forbes Magazine has excerpted and posted the same moment from the Rules Committee hearing on House Joint Resolution 140 that I did the other day: Pete Stauber’s embarrassing concession that he brings HJR 140 on behalf of a Chilean conglomerate, a foreign company that will ship Minnesota’s ore to China for processing. This was just minutes after the congressman gravely warned that “China, our adversary,” has a “stranglehold” over critical and rare earth minerals.

A publication like Forbes has a lot more reach than I could ever hope to have, so it’s too bad they didn’t offer a little context and commentary to help people understand some of what’s at stake in this exchange, the anti-scientific posture Stauber’s resolution takes, and the abuse of legislative process it represents. I don’t believe that’s well or widely understood.

(I also think there could be a lot more reporting on the various ways that the play for the mineral resources of the Duluth Complex intersect with what’s happening in Minneapolis right now, but that’s a another story, one I started to grapple with here.)

The House passed HJR 140 on Wednesday. Should the resolution of disapproval pass in the Senate, HJR 140 will improve Twin Metals’ North American prospects. By how much is hard to say. This resolution does not permit the mine. As Stauber reminded everyone at the hearing, Antofagasta will still have to take its Twin Metals project through the normal channels of review. (In the hearing, Democrats rightly balked at this suggestion, noting that those channels and the agencies that run them are now captured or seriously compromised.) Advocacy groups, too, have tried to assure supporters that this doesn’t mean that Twin Metals can start building its mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters. It doesn’t. But the legislation will knock down some formidable barriers, most immediately at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

A little refresher. In September of 2023, Judge Christoper Cooper dismissed Twin Metals v. US on two grounds: the mining company had come to the wrong court, and it had no claim. HJR 140 could solve one of these issues for Antofagasta — the lack of a claim — and it might just render the case moot.

It seemed pretty clear that the mining company was going to lose its appeal of Cooper’s decision. They tried to delay oral argument, to no avail. Argument at the DC Circuit was held in January of 2025, and the outlook did not change. But what the mining company could not accomplish at law they could now accomplish by other means. Trump was inaugurated just one week after oral argument. Then the federal government did an about-face, took the mining company’s side in the dispute, and won a motion for abeyance. That put the case on hold until October. In October, the Chilean conglomerate and the US government went back to the court and asked for more time. Now the whole matter is on hold until April of this year.

So Stauber’s resolution comes at an incredibly opportune moment, just months before the mining company has to go back to court. How its passage will play into Twin Metals v. US is clear. In the 2023 case that is now on appeal, Judge Cooper ruled that the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to deny Antofagasta’s Preference Right Lease Applications and to reject its Mine Plan of Operations was lawful because the Biden administration had withdrawn the lands in question. If the Senate now joins the House to disapprove the Public Land Order authorizing the 20-year mineral withdrawal, voila: the agencies’ hands are now untied. The Bureau of Land Management will have new legal basis, or at least legal cover, for reviewing and approving the Lease Applications and the Mine Plan of Operations.

This is not just serendipity. It looks like a fairly well-coordinated scheme, one that I suspect was put together by the Bernhardt Group, but I don’t have the records to make that case persuasively. Watch for Antofagasta’s motion to dismiss their appeal at the DC Circuit once the agencies start to deliver.

Type your email…

Subscribe

South Carolina restaurant wins award at World Pizza Cup in Italy

#dining #cooking #diet #food #Italianrestaurants #anto's #beach #best #championship #competition #Conway #cup #first #fooddelivery #Italia #Italian #Italianfooddelivery #ItalianRestaurants #italiano #italy #market #myrtle #news #Pizza #pizzeria #place #restaurant #Restaurants #romana #rome #sc #southcarolina #Won #world
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2319656/south-carolina-restaurant-wins-award-at-world-pizza-cup-in-italy/

South Carolina restaurant wins award at World Pizza Cup in Italy https://www.diningandcooking.com/2319656/south-carolina-restaurant-wins-award-at-world-pizza-cup-in-italy/ #anto's #beach #best #championship #competition #Conway #cup #first #food #FoodDelivery #Italia #Italian #ItalianFoodDelivery #ItalianRestaurants #italiano #italy #market #myrtle #news #Pizza #pizzeria #place #restaurant #Restaurants #romana #rome #sc #SouthCarolina #Won #world

Here’s the Deputy Secretary of the Interior Doing the Bidding of a Foreign Mining Company

On the very same day that the DC District Court of Appeals issued its per curiam opinion putting the Boundary Waters litigation on hold for 90 days, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Kate MacGregor issued this memo, re-instating the Jorjani M-Opinion.

That legal opinion misconstrues history, suppresses evidence, and twists logic to say that Twin Metals has a “non-discretionary” right to renewal of its mining leases on the edge of the Boundary Waters: put crudely, it says that a foreign mining company has more discretion than the United States government over the disposition of federal lands. The US government capitulates and cedes decision-making authority to a foreign conglomerate.

This is the very same legal opinion that led the agencies into a legal and ethical morass during Trump’s first term. (For context, follow this link; it will bring up about four pages of results. For some discussion of the legal opinion, see this, this, and this, at least for starters. The Jorjani M-Opinion was also one focus of my Boundary Waters FOIA litigation. Those public records are posted here.) It feels like we’re caught in a time warp, or some kind of loop.

We are returning to status quo ante, or at least ante Biden. Antofagasta obviously did not like its chances in the DC District Court, and with Doug Burgum’s help it managed to put the litigation on hold. Pete Stauber failed to sneak non-reviewable lease renewals for the Chilean company into the latest budget. But the mining company and its lobbyists were able to pull strings at Interior. Now they will have to undo, or find a way to work around, the twenty-year moratorium on sulfide mining in the Rainy River watershed put in place by the Biden administration.

Type your email…

Subscribe

#ANTO #authority #corruption #cronyism #DougBurgum #FOIA #governmentCapture #KateMacGregor #kleptocracy #RainyRiverWatershed #selectiveEvidence #Water

Doug Burgum Now Has 90 Days to Hand Over the Boundary Waters to a Foreign Mining Company

For background, see this post.

This per curiam order dropped yesterday. The case before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is held in abeyance until mid-October. The Court deferred to the Agency.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum now has 90 days to act on the findings of an “agency review” of the Twin Metals matter.

According to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the review was already “complete” by June 13th, which just happened to be one day after the Senate struck Stauber’s Boundary Waters giveaway from the budget bill (see the 13 June update to this post).

No surprise, Interior already determined (only a fool would think it had not decided well in advance of the review) that the 20-year Rainy River watershed mineral withdrawal put in place by the Biden administration was unnecessary.

Here is the order.

Type your email…

Subscribe

#ANTO #antiScience #Chevron #corruption #deference #FOIA #LoperBrightVRaimondo #resourceHoarding #Science #scienceDenial #Water

New Correspondence Entered into the Twin Metals v. US Docket, Reiterating the Risk of Serious and Irreparable Harm to the Boundary Waters

The attorney for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ just entered this correspondence into the Twin Metals v. US docket.

It attempts to clarify a point on which the federal government has insisted: since the Forest Service moved to withdraw more than 225,000 acres Superior National Forest lands from mineral exploration and development in September of 2021, the Bureau of Land Management acted lawfully — or with authority — when it denied Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications, or PRLAs. Therefore, the government contends, Twin Metals has no claim, so Judge Cooper was right to dismiss Twin Metals’ complaint. (For a little more context, see this post.)

In response to the Bureau of Land Management’s request for clarification, the Forest Service reiterates its position:

The record for the 2016 lease consent determination and 2023 withdrawal application demonstrate that development of these mineral resources presented an unacceptable, inherent risk of serious and irreparable harm to the BWCAW natural resources. It has been thoroughly documented that the proposed mineral leasing is not a compatible use within the watershed in such proximity to the wilderness and that the Forest Service’s withholding of consent to the issuance of leases for MNES-057965 and MNES- 050264 would be consistent with the record. This is entirely consistent with previous consent decisions on mineral lease renewals in the same area of the Rainy River Watershed, as well as last year’s decision to withdraw approximately 225,378 acres of land within the watershed from mineral leasing. Extensive analysis and public input associated with prior consent decisions and the mineral withdrawal process informs and supports this response. [emphasis mine]

There is a to to unpack here, and can’t help but wonder why this correspondence comes at such a late hour. Is the federal government is just making sure to cover all bases, or are there alarm bells ringing? Be that as it may, here are the letters in question.

Subscribe

#ANTO #administrativeState #corruption #environmentalEthics #ethics #lawfulAuthority #pollution #Water