Minnesota's outgoing governor signed an executive order blocking copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters just months after Congress and President Trump repealed the federal ban, and the state's top House Republican says the move is pure spite.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer tore into Gov. Tim Walz on Saturday for issuing Executive Order 26-10, which directs state agencies to halt all permitting and leasing for nonferrous mining in the Rainy River Headwaters Watershed and orders a review of 38 existing mineral leases, including one held by Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta. Emmer, speaking on Breitbart News Saturday, framed the order as a lame-duck governor sabotaging his own state's economic future on his way out the door.
Walz signed the order Tuesday. He offered a single public justification that left little room for ambiguity.
"As far as my administration is concerned, the fight for the future of the Boundary Waters is over."
For Emmer, that fight is anything but over, and Walz picked the wrong side of it.
The backdrop matters. In April, Congress voted to repeal a 20-year federal ban on mining near the Boundary Waters wilderness area in northeastern Minnesota. Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican who represents the Iron Range district, sponsored the repeal resolution. It cleared the Senate on a razor-thin 50-49 vote, and President Trump signed it into law.
That repeal was supposed to open the door for responsible development of what Emmer described as a deposit ranking "among the largest precious-metals finds in the world," containing copper, nickel, and palladium. Instead, Walz used executive authority to slam the door shut again at the state level, directing Minnesota agencies to freeze permitting and review dozens of leases that could have moved the region toward production.
Stauber called the order "an outright war on Northern Minnesota and our way of life."
Emmer went further. He argued that Walz's order does not merely block mining, it actively strengthens foreign adversaries who dominate global mineral supply chains with none of the environmental safeguards the United States enforces.
"He is going to empower our adversaries like the Communist Party of China. We have the most stringent environmental laws on the face of the planet. If you're going to end mining in the United States of America, you're going to send it to places like China and Russia where they don't care."
That argument carries particular weight as the U.S. races to secure domestic supplies of critical minerals for defense, energy, and technology. Copper, nickel, and palladium are not luxury commodities. They are essential inputs for everything from electric vehicle batteries to military hardware. Blocking domestic extraction does not reduce global demand, it shifts production to countries with weaker labor protections and virtually no environmental oversight.
Walz is not running for reelection. He dropped his 2026 bid amid what has been described as a sprawling social services fraud scandal, a controversy that has drawn sustained congressional scrutiny. A House oversight report accused the Walz administration of ignoring fraud warnings as billions in taxpayer funds disappeared through state-administered programs.
Emmer did not hold back about the governor's motivations. He called Walz "completely incompetent" and accused him of using the mining order as a parting act of political retaliation.
"But this lame duck loser... named Tim Walz, he's not only, I think, complicit in the fraud in this state, he's completely incompetent and now he's being spiteful. Literally as he's leaving office in the next couple of months, what he's doing is he's trying to exercise executive authority from the governor's office to end mining in Minnesota."
Whether or not one shares Emmer's characterization of Walz's motives, the timing raises fair questions. A governor who chose not to face voters again is using his remaining weeks to lock in a policy that Congress and the president just reversed at the federal level. The people who will live with the consequences, miners, union workers, Iron Range families, and the school districts funded by mineral lease revenue, had no say.
Walz's record of last-minute executive actions has drawn scrutiny before. His administration pardoned an illegal immigrant convicted of armed robbery ahead of an ICE deportation to Laos, a decision that drew sharp criticism from law enforcement advocates and immigration hawks alike.
Emmer argued that Executive Order 26-10 does not just block a single mine. It threatens the broader economic foundation of Minnesota's northern Iron Range, a region built on mining and natural resource extraction. He estimated the order puts "hundreds if not thousands of good-paying union jobs" at risk, though he did not cite a specific independent study for that figure.
He also pointed to a less obvious casualty: Minnesota's public school trust lands. Revenue from mineral leases on state-managed land flows into education funding. Freezing those leases, Emmer argued, cuts off a revenue stream that benefits every school district in the state.
The 38 leases under review include one held by Twin Metals, the company that has spent years navigating federal and state permitting to develop the copper-nickel deposit. Twin Metals' parent company, Antofagasta, is a major Chilean mining firm. Neither Twin Metals nor Antofagasta has publicly responded to the order, at least not in any statement captured in available reporting.
Emmer broadened his criticism beyond Walz, faulting Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for what he characterized as governing only for "one downtown Minneapolis" while ignoring the economic needs of the rest of the state. Neither Klobuchar nor Flanagan has issued a public response to the mining order that appears in the current record.
That pattern, urban progressive priorities overriding the livelihoods of rural and working-class communities, is one that resonates far beyond Minnesota. The Walz administration's pardon board decisions have already raised serious questions about whose interests the governor's office actually serves.
Emmer took direct aim at the environmental justification Walz offered for the order. He did not dismiss environmental concerns outright, he reframed the debate entirely.
"We're all environmentalists... We all appreciate clean water, clean air. We want to leave the planet in as good or better condition than we found it. But that's not the issue, even though that's what he wants to claim the issue is."
The issue, as Emmer sees it, is whether the United States will produce the critical minerals it needs under the strictest environmental laws in the world, or cede that production to adversaries who strip-mine with no accountability. That is not a hypothetical tradeoff. China already dominates global processing of many critical minerals, and every domestic deposit left undeveloped widens that gap.
Walz's order does not propose an alternative supply chain. It does not identify a substitute revenue source for Iron Range communities or school trust funds. It simply declares the fight "over" and walks away, which is easier to do when you are not running for office again.
The fraud scandals that shadowed Walz's final years in office have not gone away either. Federal enforcement actions continue, including the arrest of a former Minneapolis deli owner who surrendered as the first capture from the DOJ's Most Wanted Fraudsters list, part of a broader Minnesota fraud network that flourished on the Walz administration's watch.
Meanwhile, the consequences of the governor's pardon decisions continue to unfold. ICE removed a convicted child sex offender after a Walz pardon, only after Secretary Rubio revoked the individual's legal status, a federal cleanup of a state-level failure.
Executive orders are not legislation. A future governor could reverse Walz's order on day one. But the damage in the interim, stalled investment, frozen leases, deferred jobs, and lost momentum, is real. Mining projects operate on long timelines. Every month of regulatory uncertainty pushes capital and expertise toward jurisdictions that actually want the work.
Congress did its part. The president signed the repeal. Stauber fought for his district and won a 50-49 Senate vote that should have cleared the path. Walz used the power of a governor's pen to block what the democratic process delivered, not because voters asked him to, but because he could.
Emmer's bottom line is hard to argue with on the merits: if you shut down mining in the country with the toughest environmental laws on earth, you do not save the environment. You hand the business to countries that will do it dirtier, cheaper, and without a shred of accountability. The only people who lose are American workers and the communities that depend on them.
A governor who cannot face his own voters should not get to override the ones who showed up in Washington.
