Letter To Chuck Schumer about Section 80131 of the Budget Bill, Which Hands Over the Boundary Waters to a Foreign Mining Company
After calling Chuck Schumer’s office this morning, I sent this letter today via Schumer’s site. I’m also going to fax it to the New York office and to the environmental staffers in the DC office. Yeah, they still use faxes.
Dear Senator Schumer,
As your constituent, I am writing to share my concerns about a specific section of the Budget Bill that was drafted to enrich a foreign corporation at the American public’s expense. In particular, I urge you to strike from the Budget Bill section 80131. This is a non-budgetary policy provision that hands over our public lands to a Chilean conglomerate owned by a billionaire Trump crony and precludes judicial review of a corrupt deal.
This is reckless, bespoke policy, dictated by mining company lobbyists and written with utter disregard for science, the law, or good government.
Antofagasta plc, the mining company under the control of Chile’s Luksic Group, has repeatedly failed to obtain the necessary leases and permits for its Twin Metals project in northern Minnesota by legitimate means, so the company has resorted to influence peddling and relied on Trump’s corruption.
Even before Trump took office for the first time, it was revealed that Andronico Luksic Craig, the Chilean billionaire at the head of the Luksic Group, purchased a Kalorama mansion for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, in blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause. (This move conformed to pattern; only a few years before, Luksic had been involved in a similar scandal involving the son and daughter-in-law of Chilean president Michele Bachelet.) No surprise, the first Trump administration got quickly to work on reversing Obama-era protections.
Reporting by the New York Times (June 26, 2019, Page One), based partly on documents I obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation, showed the administration working behind closed doors and in collusion with mining company executives and lobbyists to rewrite legal opinions in order to reach foregone conclusions. Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture was bullied into burying a scientific study demonstrating that copper and nickel mining – sulfide ore mining – on these lands, in close proximity to the Boundary Waters and north of the Laurentian Divide, would risk irreparable harm. These moves cleared the way for Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, to blithely push through the renewal of Antofagasta’s mineral leases without regard for public opinion or environmental concerns. Bernhardt’s firm now lobbies for Antofagasta on the Hill.
After President Biden restored protections for the Boundary Waters and instituted a 20-year mineral withdrawal in the watershed region, Antofagasta sued in federal court. Unable to prevail on the merits, the mining company is now working hand-in-hand with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to short-circuit proceedings at the DC District Court of Appeals. Knowing that these legal maneuvers are unlikely to succeed, Representative Pete Stauber introduced legislation on behalf of his Chilean masters that would undo the 20-year moratorium, open the Boundary Waters to extractive industry, and roll out the red carpet for foreign mining companies on our public lands. This is the special-interest legislation currently in section 80131 of the Budget Bill.
To make matters worse, the Stauber language precludes judicial review of Antofagasta’s mining leases. This measure would block the public from challenging the corrupt deal between the current administration and a foreign private entity owned by a Trump crony. As you are well aware, it is of a piece with other alarming language in the Budget Bill, like section 80151, which guts the National Environmental Policy Act, and other sections that prevent the judiciary from reviewing agency actions and holding Trump administration officials accountable. Trump loyalists are trying to codify the outrageous attacks we’re seeing on the judicial branch and on the rule of law itself.
The Senate Parliamentarian should rule that Sections 80131 and 80151 are not budgetary provisions. Rhetoric from mining touts about critical minerals, renewable energy, and national security is just more bad faith; most mining nowadays is highly automated, so the promised jobs are unlikely to materialize; and there are no provisions to keep the copper and nickel Antofagasta might pull from the ground in northeastern Minnesota, and at great risk to the Boundary Waters, within the United States. It will surely be exported for processing and sold back to us at high tariffs, if at all. We will keep only the toxic pollution sulfide mining creates. In other words, there is not even a decent economic argument to be made for allowing this foreign company to exploit our public lands.
Finally, I remind you that the lands in Superior National Forest and the Rainy River Watershed are governed by treaties with Native American tribes, who have not been meaningfully consulted in this matter and have not consented to it, and with Canada, whom Trump has already senselessly antagonized. Why should the private interests of a billionaire Trump crony be put above binding agreements with tribes and with our good neighbor to the north?
Please work with Senator Tina Smith to strike the Stauber language from this bill, and hold the line on NEPA to protect our public lands and defend the public interest. I would be happy to meet with you or your staff to discuss this further.
Thank you.
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