#project-2029 — Public Fediverse posts

#Project2029

The Senate Vote on HJR 140 Is Not a Green Light to Mine Near the Boundary Waters, and There are Ways to Remedy the Harm Done

Two days before the Senate voted last week to overturn the 20-year Rainy River Watershed Withdrawal, I sent this letter to the Globe and Mail:

Nathan Vanderklippe’s reporting on the effort to undo the 20-year Boundary Waters mining moratorium (“In Minnesota’s wilderness, a town divided over the future of mining,” Globe and Mail 13 April 2026) lets the cheaters off the hook too easily. House Joint Resolution 140, which would overturn the 20-year Rainy River Watershed Mineral Withdrawal, represents “an outrageous abuse” of the legislative process, in the words of Congresswoman Emily Randall. Many (but perhaps not enough) US lawmakers agree. The measure recklessly hands over a cherished American wilderness to Antofagasta, a foreign mining company with a poor environmental record owned by a billionaire Trump crony; it would also foreclose scientific study of the effects of sulfide mining on the Boundary Waters. The pattern set during Trump’s first term now continues apace: capture the agencies, stifle the science, and let the mining company set the rules. 

On Thursday, the cheaters got their way. 

If there is one positive thing to come out of this disgraceful little episode, it’s that in the run-up to the Senate vote and in its immediate aftermath, the issue of copper and nickel mining on the edge of the Boundary Waters got some of the national attention it has long deserved.

However, much of the reporting and commentary confused, or came close to confusing, the vote to overturn the moratorium on sulfide mining with the permitting of Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project. That is still a long way off. Even careful and reliable narrators like Heather Cox Richardson said that the vote “clears the way for a subsidiary of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta to engage in copper-sulfide mining, which produces sulfuric acid, above the pristine BWCA”. It does nothing of the sort. 

What this reckless vote did was change the state of play on two fronts.

First, it restored the status quo ante Biden. With the withdrawal overturned, the Bureau of Land Management can now renew Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications and review its Mine Plan of Operations. And we can be pretty certain that these new agency reviews will be yet another exercise in foregone conclusions. The agencies will not only decide things in the company’s favor, but also aggressively move to permit the mine.

Second, passage of HJR 140 solved a problem the company was having at court. In Twin Metals v. US, the court confirmed that the Bureau of Land Management had to deny Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications and reject its Mine Plan of Operations; due to the mineral withdrawal, the area was off limits to copper and nickel mining. Now it’s not. Though the case is currently on hold until October of 2026, it may actually be moot. Antofagasta’s lawyers were not having much success, anyway. 

So the vote put things in a worrisome state, but Antofagasta still has a long way to go before it can put shovels in the ground and start shipping ore from Ely to China. 

Incorrectly framing the vote as a green light to mine is not only misleading, it signals (perhaps unintentionally) that this battle is lost and it’s time to move on to the next battle – whatever that may be. I would of course urge people to stick with this battle, or at least keep tabs on it, not only for the sake of protecting the Boundary Waters wilderness, but also because (as I have tried to argue for the past several years) there is a lot to learn from this one case about the harms done to the public interest by unchecked corruption and cronyism as well as the larger authoritarian project to dismantle modern American government known as Project 2025. 

This is not at all a stretch. Overturning the mineral withdrawal was an explicit goal of Project 2025. The scheme was laid out on page 523 of the playbook: the mineral withdrawal and other public land withdrawals should be abandoned “if those withdrawals have not been completed.”  What Pete Stauber found – or what Antofagasta’s lobbyists no doubt found for him – was a way to claim that the mineral withdrawal had not been completed. Congress, Stauber said, had not been notified (even though he received a letter notifying him of the withdrawal and raised a ruckus when the withdrawal was announced). He used, or, as Representative Emily Randall would say, abused the Congressional Review Act to make good on that false claim.

Thursday morning’s vote did a lot of damage, but it’s hardly the end of the story. There are still chances to remedy the harm done, but it will take close scrutiny of every step that the administration makes from here on in: the attempt to renew the mineral leases, the effort to approve the Twin Metals mine plan, whatever moves are left to make in Twin Metals v. US, and so on. This is a coordinated political project with lots of moving parts. Antofagasta’s lobbyists – led by Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt – are doing most of the coordinating behind closed doors. People who care about the Boundary Waters, or good government, or who just don’t like seeing cheaters win, need to track their movements and call out the cheating at every step.

And there are positive steps that can be taken, not just at the state but also at the federal level. Just last year, for example, Senator Tina Smith introduced the Boundary Waters Wilderness Protection Act. Had it passed, it would have made the 20-year mineral withdrawal permanent. Now that act needs updating, and it should be on the legislative agenda for 2027, should the Democrats regain control of Congress or even one house of Congress. More broadly still, protections not just for the Boundary Waters but for all public lands and waters should be a feature of Project 2029, or whatever you want to call the collective effort to clean up our current mess, hold malefactors accountable, and build 21st-century government in the public interest.

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Project 2029: part 1. Let’s set our expectations. #midterms #trump #politics #project2029 #YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djrXy34kbu0

@AfroIsReborn Let’s fucking do this!!!
#project2029

#project2029
#letsgo

The Democratic Party doesn't have a "Project 2029." Got it? Seriously: Got it?

Via Bsky @tadstoermer.bsky.social

https://youtube.com/shorts/fS2AE57knLs?si=SDgM81xCXcZylSkl

#Project2029 #ResistanceHistory #Democrats #Democrat #Politics #Democracy #Justice #HalfHeartedFanatic

"For anyone hoping Kamala Harris’s disastrous 2024 loss would make the Democratic Party drastically change direction, the bad news can be summed up in two words: Project 2029.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Democrats are planning their own version of the right-wing policy blueprint that is the driving engine of Donald Trump’s presidency, which they’ll roll out piecemeal each quarter for the next two years in one of the party’s intellectual organs, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The man leading the effort is also that journal’s founder and coeditor: Andrei Cherny, a New Democrat wunderkind and (briefly) former Arizona Democratic party chair, who claims to have put together a team that’s “the Avengers of public policy.”

But based on the names we know so far, Cherny’s team is less the Avengers and more the Great Lakes Avengers — the hapless joke team of uselessly powered “heroes” who do more dying than saving the day. The Project 2029 brain trust now tasked with saving the Democratic Party is quite literally composed of the same line-up of people who brought the party to its knees in the first place, handing Donald Trump power not once, but twice.

The Democratic Party’s defeat was born of a combination of a decades-long rejection of working-class politics, corporate influence that has captured the party, and a foreign policy hawkishness out of step with a war-weary American public. But it seems Project 2029 is less about reckoning with this reality and more, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel put it, putting out “a Dem[ocratic] message disconnected from left-wing groups,” with one person who’s involved texting him that “the groups are the Achilles Heel of the Deomcratic Party [sic].”"

https://jacobin.com/2025/07/democrats-project-2029-centrism-clinton

#USA #Centrism #Democrats #DemocraticParty #Project2029

What do we do when we win?
One more vision, from non-profits.
Lots of good stuff and pretty succinct.

IMO this one is too timid on climate.
Add: electrify everything,
green the grid,
go big on geothermal
Green agriculture/food supply
Rewild wherever we can
Bikes and peds everywhere
And insulate, of course

#project2029 #climatehope #nonprofit #future #climatechange #resilience

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/crafting-elements-of-a-2029-agenda-a-new-fair-deal/

#ResistanceHistorian #Resistance #Republicans #Democrats #TooLate #Project2029

This guy explains it very well, I am trying to find him explaining it off FB but for now:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1075051624099943

«#Democrats Launch “#Project2029” With Goal of Winning Future #Elections»

https://ground.news/article/dems-project-2029-may-not-actually-bode-well-for-partys-future?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share

«Democrats might be “#overthinking” strategy to #recapture #voters»
«Democrats are rethinking ways to recapture voters they’ve lost to #President #Trump in recent #election cycles, and they may have been offered an important lesson in the #NewYork #mayor|al primary.»

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5383621-democrats-strategy-voters-mamdani/

Progressive Coalition Project 2029 Releases First Major Policy Brief Calling for Electoral College Reform:

https://www.einpresswire.com/article/827558993/progressive-coalition-project-2029-releases-first-major-policy-brief-calling-for-electoral-college-reform

#project2029 #p2029 #project2029official #electoralcollegereform #government #vote #humanrights #justice #governance #economy #grassroots #volunteer #policy #policybrief #press #news

https://youtu.be/uRjr3dmP-PU?si=OyWoOd0cF5hBIWx7

#project2029

Time to unrole PROJECT 2029.

The mission is simple: reverse everything Trump did under Project 2025, especially about climate change.

#Project2029

#ClimateBrawl

It's time for a revolution with a plan, and not just pretty words.

https://1party.org

#project2029 #1party #1partyforall

I really think God is on the right track here…

https://www.thegodpodcast.com/p/announcing-project-2029?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

#Project2029 #God

We must prepare legislation, executive orders, staffing and broader strategy for a future administration to run on + implement if we wish to have any hope of saving American Democracy. You can sign up to help here.
https://www.project2029.me/

#project2029

Dear Democratic Leaders,
Have You Started Project 2029, yet?
#USPol #DemocraticPartyPlatform #Project2029 #Resist
https://www.tumblr.com/porterdavis/775304742783139841

I’m going to say it simply again:

There is no cavalry coming to save us.

But what we can do —and must do— is organize ourselves, find each other, and take a page out of their handbook: start working right now on what needs to be fixed.

We need to write #Project2029

Democrats need a #Project2029 that includes universal health care, child care, elder home care, and high-speed rail.

Let’s get on the front foot and start offering a vision of a better country to rise from the ashes of another four years of Trump and MAGA.

#Project2029: Everything that matters will be decided in the next 4 years.

Why Zuck sees his capitulation to Trump as the cost of doing business. It keeps him in ring with Musk as their "cage fight" to see who dominates the world of AI & robotics continues. https://unprecedented.ghost.io/archive/why-meta-went-maga/

Make no mistake, #Project2025, Will Also Be #Project2029 and #Project2033.

It is the #extreme #conservative #agenda of the #RepublicanParty, #past, #present, and #future.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #Religion #ChristianNationalism #RepublicanParty #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Homophobia #Misogyny #Racism #Transphobia #WhiteSupremacy #ThePartyOfHate #EmptyThePews

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/what-is-project-2025