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Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prioritize mining on national public lands. While mining has long been one of the many uses of public lands, and while some minerals and materials are important in advancing the transition to clean energy, Trump’s executive order seeks to prioritize mining profits and processing and abandons the multiple use principles that Congress requires.
In a new Westwise blog post, Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby dives into the details of the Trump order. Hamby warns that if Interior Secretary Doug Burgum successfully implements the order, it will drastically reduce access to public lands and create giant toxic messes for taxpayers to clean up .
The rush to mine public lands is already playing out in Oregon, where the Bureau of Land Management published its environmental assessment of the McDermitt lithium exploration project, which has been in the works since 2022. The assessment is 103 pages long, but the Trump administration is giving the public just four days to read and comment on it.
Writing in The New Republic, Kate Aronoff notes that Trump's obsession with critical minerals is "leading to some weird places." The rush to mine means Trump is aggressively intervening in the private sector, which expands rather than shrinks the administrative state. But the Trump actions aren't likely to fix the problems facing America's mining companies.
How Elon Musk is trying to dismantle the Interior department
In the latest episode of CWP's podcast, The Landscape, Kate talks to longtime public lands reporter Jimmy Tobias and Jacob Malcom, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Environmental Management at the Interior Department, to talk about Elon Musk’s attacks on the Interior Department and its employees. Jimmy has been covering DOGE's dismantling of the Interior Department at the new Public Domain newsletter, and Jacob chose to leave his job at the Interior Department last month in response to DOGE's mass firings. Listen now or subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
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