Katie Nixdorf of More Perfect Union went to northern Minnesota to look at one fight over mining, but what she found was much bigger than one proposed project or one remote stretch of forest.
The fight centers on the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters, a place that has long been treated as one of the country’s crown jewels. But in Nixdorf’s telling, it is also becoming a test case for whether public land in America still belongs to the public at all.
That is why the anger is growing.
For people who live there, this is not some abstract policy fight in Washington. It is about whether protected land can be opened to a foreign mining company, whether Congress can undo years of protections with a simple vote, and whether billionaires and politically connected corporations are being allowed to cash in on places ordinary Americans thought were off limits.
The line that hangs over the whole report is simple and blunt: they are giving it away.
A Wilderness Economy Meets An Industrial Proposal
Nixdorf frames the story from the start as a clash between two very different ideas of value. One side sees a wilderness watershed, recreation, tourism, public access, and long-term stewardship. The other sees valuable minerals underground and a chance to turn protected land into a commercial extraction site.
To show what is at stake, she visits Ely, Minnesota, the town closest to both the Boundary Waters and the proposed mine site. There she speaks with Paul and Sue Schurke, who run Wintergreen, a dog sledding business that depends on the area’s quiet, remoteness, and natural appeal.
Sue tells Nixdorf the land is extraordinary partly because of what is missing. There are no roads cutting through it, little air traffic overhead, and a kind of silence that is now rare in America. Paul makes the point even more directly. He says their business sits only a few miles downstream from the proposed project, and they have already been told they would feel the effects in the form of light, dust, and noise.
That matters because wilderness tourism is not some side activity there. According to Nixdorf’s report, it is the backbone of Ely’s economy. More than 60 small businesses serve the roughly 250,000 visitors who come each year to canoe, fish, camp, and explore the area.
That kind of economy is easy for outsiders to underestimate because it does not look flashy. But it is steady, rooted, and tied directly to the land staying what it is.
The Promise Of Jobs Still Pulls Hard
At the same time, Nixdorf does not pretend the mining argument is imaginary. She interviews Matthew Schultz, a public lands enthusiast from Ely, who openly says a mine would obviously create jobs and bring in a temporary surge of money. In a region shaped by the long decline of the old Iron Range mining economy, that pitch still carries weight.
That is part of what makes this debate real rather than theatrical.
Twin Metals, the company behind the proposal, says the project would create 750 jobs with average salaries around $100,000. In an area where Nixdorf says median household income is closer to $46,000, that kind of promise lands hard. It is not difficult to see why some people would listen.
But Schultz also tells Nixdorf that the benefits are much less clear when you look closer. He says supporters talk as if the American people will somehow broadly benefit, yet he cannot see how that actually works in practice.
That skepticism deepens once Nixdorf looks at what modern mining jobs really are.
Twin Metals is the U.S. offshoot of Antofagasta, a Chilean mining company valued at about $1 billion. Nixdorf notes that Antofagasta’s operation in Chile uses driverless trucks, autonomous drills, and remote operation centers in major cities far from the mine itself. That means the jobs of the future may not go to local residents in Ely at all.
Paul Schurke says it plainly: no one who grew up in Ely is prepared to run robotic mining equipment. That may sound harsh, but it points to a broader truth. The glossy jobs pitch often assumes the local workforce will be the natural beneficiary. In practice, that is not always how it works.
The Risk That Keeps Coming Up
The real fear, though, is not just that the jobs may be overstated. It is that the tradeoff could be permanent.
Nixdorf explains that the proposed project would involve copper sulfide mining, which opponents describe as one of the most toxic forms of mining because of the risk of acid mine drainage. Paul Schurke says every place in the world that has done this kind of mining has triggered the same chemical reaction, and he argues there is still no proven fix. In his words, the result has often been vast biological dead zones.
Matthew Schultz takes that from the abstract to the personal. He tells Nixdorf that the thought of contaminating the fish he catches to feed his household would be devastating to the way he lives his life.
That may be the strongest part of the whole report. It keeps returning the argument to ordinary use, not abstract ideology. This is not just scenery. It is food, water, work, and tradition.
Twin Metals says it would store waste underground rather than in surface pits, and the company argues that makes acid mine drainage a non-issue. Nixdorf includes that defense. But she also notes examples such as Alaska’s Pogo Mine, where groundwater contamination still occurred even with similar storage methods.
Schultz says he has no doubt the company is using what it considers the latest and best method. But he adds that “latest and greatest” in that industry still feels largely untested. That is a reasonable concern, especially in a watershed this sensitive. When the consequences could last decades, people are right to look past the brochure.
Who Actually Benefits?
This is where Nixdorf’s report shifts from environmental dispute to political economy.
She says Antofagasta is owned by the Luksic family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in South America. According to the report, the family controls major parts of Chile’s economy, from mines and banks to shipping and beer, and also owns a Washington, D.C., mansion rented to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Nixdorf also reports that Antofagasta and Twin Metals have spent nearly $6 million lobbying the U.S. government over the last decade in an effort to move the Minnesota project forward. Last year, Twin Metals hired the Bernhardt Group, founded by David Bernhardt, Trump’s former interior secretary. Soon after, Trump’s deputy secretary of the interior restored Twin Metals’ mining leases.
That sequence, even if technically legal, is exactly the kind of thing that fuels public distrust. It makes locals feel as though the game is happening far above their heads, with outcomes driven by money, lobbying, and insider access.
Paul Schurke says the clout Antofagasta seems to have with the Trump administration is puzzling. It is hard to blame him for saying that.
Even the national security justification looks shakier under scrutiny. Republicans such as Rep. Ryan Zinke argue the U.S. needs more critical minerals because foreign adversaries dominate supply. But Nixdorf points out that mining is only the first step. The raw material still has to be processed, and China still dominates that part of the chain.
Paul says the company openly acknowledges it intends to send the copper to China anyway. If that is true, then the patriotic sales pitch begins to fall apart. Schultz goes further, saying there is no guarantee the minerals extracted from northeast Minnesota would ever return to the American supply chain. In his view, people are being duped.
A Single Vote Could Reach Far Beyond Minnesota
Nixdorf makes clear that the Boundary Waters fight matters not just because of this mine, but because of the legal path being used to reopen the issue.
The Biden administration canceled Twin Metals’ leases and placed a 20-year mining ban on the area beginning in 2023. Many residents thought that ended the fight. Then Trump campaigned on reopening public lands to industry, and Rep. Pete Stauber began pushing to reverse the ban using the Congressional Review Act.
That is where the stakes become national.
Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University, explains that the Congressional Review Act has rarely had much bite in this kind of context. Matthew Schultz says the original public land order was created through a democratic process with public input, with hundreds of thousands of people weighing in to support protection of the Boundary Waters. What frustrates him is that Congress is now moving to unravel that protection through a simple majority vote, without that same public input.
House Republicans have already voted to repeal the ban. Nixdorf says the Senate now faces a deadline by the end of April. If it also votes to repeal the mineral withdrawal, agencies could be barred from issuing a similar ban in the future.
That is why people there see Minnesota as a flashpoint. Brinkley tells Nixdorf that if the spirit of opposition can be broken at the Boundary Waters, the same model can be applied elsewhere. Nixdorf notes that in Utah, Republicans are already trying to end protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante.
That is how this stops being a local issue.
If this approach works once, it becomes a playbook.
The Bigger Question Now Hanging Over Public Land
By the end of the report, Nixdorf comes back to a simple test: does this project objectively benefit the American people more than the land simply remaining public land?
It is a good question because it cuts through a lot of the noise.
Public land does not have to be idle to have value. In places like the Boundary Waters, its value is in access, continuity, local business, wildlife, water, memory, and permanence. Those things do not always show up neatly on a balance sheet, but they are real all the same.
Paul Schurke says the jobs created by the Boundary Waters are in perpetuity and are an objective good for every American. That may sound idealistic, but it is hard to argue with the broader point. A place like this, once damaged, does not come back in the form it once had.
Douglas Brinkleyputs it in harsher language. He says if fast-money greed is all America represents, then the country is doomed to become a strip-mall society where everybody is just out for themselves.
That line lingers because it gets at what this is really about.
Not just copper. Not just one company. Not just Minnesota.
It is about whether the public still means something when the land in question becomes valuable enough for somebody powerful to want it.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
