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Antofagasta’s Lobbyists Deliver “An Outrageous Abuse” of the Congressional Review Act

It’s a little hard to sit through the video of yesterday’s Rules Committee hearing on House Joint Resolution 140, but it’s worth it just to see Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez coax Pete Stauber to acknowledge that any copper Antofagasta pulls out of the ground in northern Minnesota is going to end up “on a boat, in China.” So I excerpted that moment, above. Stauber can keep smiling along with Leger Fernandez, because he has already built a “strong coalition,” as one Republican member says, and his testimony here is mostly kabuki theater (and not very good theater at that). Among Republicans, at least, the backroom deal is done. That doesn’t mean the resolution will gain majorities in both houses of Congress within the next sixty days, but it is going to take popular outcry, firm resolve, and coordination to defeat it – which is hard to muster, given everything else that’s going on right now.* 

The most compelling arguments against Stauber’s resolution have less to do with mining or protecting the Boundary Waters specifically than with legislative process and the role of science in setting policy and guiding agency actions generally. The 20-year mineral withdrawal was grounded in science (despite Stauber’s bad faith complaints about something Deb Haaland once said), and more importantly the withdrawal allows for further scientific study of the effects of mining on the Rainy River watershed. Stauber relies on a sole, quasi-scientific opinion from the 1970s and pushes a resolution that would block any future withdrawal, no matter what current and future scientific study might show. “We don’t accept any new science” is how Representative Emily Randall rightly characterizes this position. 

Never again can we learn from…new science. Never again will we learn how we might preserve and protect this place further. Never can we say, it turns out…the pollution was terrible, let’s do something different. The way this resolution is written doesn’t allow us.

But “science is not static,” as Representative Mary Scanlon puts it; “if we were to approve this resolution…it blocks any future administration from taking action with respect to this property” or “address the harm” that mining in the watershed is going to cause. 

If the resolution passes in both houses, the Congressional Review Act bars any future administration from reinstating the withdrawal without new legislation. The big question hanging over all this is whether the Congressional Review Act even covers this Public Land Order. Lately, Republicans have been relying on opinions issued by the General Accounting Office that say Public Land Orders count as “rules” (usually because of their economic impact) and can therefore be undone by congressional review. As Randall puts it, “this congress, the Trump administration, and Republican members of Congress have been using the CRA to overturn public land protections that have never before been considered rules by any administration.”

This is exactly what Stauber is trying to do: convert the mineral withdrawal to a rule, or at least treat it as a rule. Reading from his prepared script, Stauber argues that the mineral withdrawal “is exactly the kind of action Congress intended to review [with] the CRA” because “the withdrawal substantially affects private companies and local economies by foreclosing leasing opportunities qualifying as substantive rule under the Administrative Procedure Act and the CRA.” This is a stretch, or, as Randall says, an abuse – an “outrageous abuse” – of legislative process and of the Congressional Review Act. The GAO has never declared this Public Land Order a rule, and, what’s more, Congress was notified of the withdrawal three years ago, as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act requires. Randall even waves around the letter Stauber was sent in 2023.

It’s also curious, she continues, that Stauber and others were not making noise about the Congressional Review Act back then, and they haven’t until now. What changed? Randall points out that the Chilean owners of Twin Metals “have spent half a million dollars in lobbying this past year”; and with the latest lobbying disclosure by The Bernhardt Group showing revenues of $110,000 for Q4 2025, it’s pretty clear that “this backdoor, after-the-fact attempt to undo a public land order cannot withstand any scrutiny,” as she says.

House Joint Resolution 140 is a plan cooked up on K Street, for a foreign mining company, and by a lobbying firm led by Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior.  Stauber is their errand boy.

*Postscript: Today, just after I published this, the House voted to provide for consideration of the joint resolution. The vote was 213-210, with 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats not voting. Later in the day, the House passed the resolution, 214-208, with one Republican (Don Bacon of Nebraska) voting against and one Democrat (Jared Golden of Maine) voting for the resolution. Four Republicans and five Democrats did not vote.

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“This is a completely improper use of the #CongressionalReviewAct,” AG Bonta said in an interview. “The Congressional Review Act applies to rules, not to waivers. It’s never been applied to any waiver, ever.”

But the act includes a provision that could stymie #California’s lawsuit, because it prohibits #judicial review of actions passed under the act.

#Trump #law #climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #FossilFuels #PublicHealth

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/senate-vote-esg-rule/index.html passed on a vote of 50 to 46 Senate votes to overturn Biden administration retirement investment rule GOP decry as 'woke'
Democratic Sens. COAL BARRON #JoeManchinSenatorForSale of West Virginia & big agri supporter #JonTester of Montana voting with #GOP using #CongressionalReviewAct which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation to only 51 votes