On March 20th, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production.” This EO invokes wartime powers for the president and a number of federal agency secretaries to identify significant mineral deposits on federal lands and, through federal funding and private industry input, designate mineral production as the official use of those federal public lands. This is an immediate threat to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and federal public lands at large. This action must be monitored very closely in the coming weeks and months to defend the places we cherish the most.
