For decades, Minnesota’s Boundary Waters has sat on the edge of the ordinary—hard to reach, easy to love. It’s a vast stretch of wilderness bordering Canada, with more than a million acres of forest and thousands of lakes and streams, mostly accessed by canoe. On Thursday, Senate Republicans voted 50-49 to open the area up to mining, using a tool many people outside Washington never hear about: the Congressional Review Act, or CRA.
The move doesn’t just tweak a policy. It targets a protection put in place over three years ago during the Biden administration, not as a rule but as a Public Land Order. That distinction matters, and it’s exactly where the legal fight is likely to be loud. Critics argue the CRA can cut years of research and public process down to a quick political vote—essentially letting Congress flip a switch with a simple majority instead of the usual two-thirds threshold.
The CRA was written in the 1990s by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with the stated aim of reducing government bureaucracy by eliminating regulations. It was designed to let Congress overturn regulatory rules fast—within 60 days after a rule is passed. Misryoum newsroom reported that, during the CRA’s first 20 years, it was used only once by the second Bush administration. But the pattern since then has been different. Misryoum newsroom analysis indicates that President Trump and Republicans have expanded the law’s use substantially: invalidating 17 rules from the Obama era, and signing 22 CRA repeals in 2025 alone.
Senators and lawyers say this case may be legally unusual—maybe even “extraordinarily legally questionable,” as Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice, put it. “We are not done fighting,” she said, adding that the situation is largely uncharted. Under the plan being voted on, it could also ripple beyond the Boundary Waters. If the resolution is allowed to stand, critics warn it could open up other land management decisions to similar political attacks—place-based battles that can arrive alongside broader permitting reform efforts.
The Senate action also collides with the kinds of environmental impact assessments that have long shaped U.S. practice. Signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires federal agencies to assess how large-scale development would affect the environment before approving it. Environmentalists have relied on it to slow or halt major projects, though in recent years NEPA has also been blamed for constraining solar and wind buildouts as the grid is updated for clean energy. Misryoum editorial desk noted that pairing NEPA-era checks with this new CRA approach could put protected areas in “grave danger,” according to Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center.
There’s another complication, too—tribal nations. Misryoum newsroom reported that Republican use of the CRA resolution is expected to exclude key voices from the Boundary Waters conversation. New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich said on the Senate floor that three tribes—the Bois Forte Band, the Fond du Lac Band, and the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa—have extensive treaty rights in Northeastern Minnesota, guaranteed by the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe and reaffirmed by federal courts. By overturning the Public Land Order with a CRA resolution, Heinrich argued, Senate Republicans “disrespect[] Tribal treaty rights” and “directly risk” access to traditional ways of life.
Outside the courtroom drama, there’s a practical story about who stands to benefit. The main winner out of the Boundary Waters mining ban repeal is Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Chilean mining outfit Antofagasta. The company fought during the first Trump administration to build a copper and nickel mine on the Duluth Complex—just 5 miles south of the Boundary Waters—an area described as one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of critical minerals. Inside the
debate over energy and technology, those minerals are the headline: Misryoum newsroom analysis ties the stakes to computing, batteries, renewable energy, and military technology, with copper demand projected to rise 50 percent by 2040 and concerns about a nickel deficit by 2035. One of the more blunt points, made by Miller-McFeeley, is that the bottleneck may not be mining at all; the U.S. currently has only three copper smelters and no nickel smelters, meaning production
could still be shipped abroad for processing.
Even if this is meant as a legal test, the case is already putting federal scientists and agencies in a difficult position. Misryoum newsroom reported that the U.S. Forest Service is 100 percent opposed to mining in this watershed. In 2016, it determined that a sulfide-ore copper mine such as the one Twin Metals is proposing could cause “extreme” and “serious and irreplaceable harm.” Marc Fink, director of the Public Lands Law Center and a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it goes against “the science and the administration’s own agencies”—and that the fight will continue.
The bill now heads to President Trump’s desk, where he is expected to sign it. Somewhere not far from the waterline—mosquitoes buzzing, paddle dripping—people who know this place for what it is may feel the change first, even before any court filing lands. And then, the rest of the country will be watching to see how far a political shortcut can reach.
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