Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz issued an executive order blocking mining permits near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a move Republicans say hands a strategic advantage to China and costs union workers their jobs.
The order, signed Tuesday, targets permits and leases for copper, nickel, and other metals in the area surrounding the Boundary Waters in northeast Minnesota. Mining is already banned inside the wilderness itself. Walz's action goes further, locking down the buffer zone where companies have sought access to what geologists describe as the largest known untapped source of nickel and copper in North America, a formation known as the Duluth Complex.
The timing is what makes this a direct challenge to Washington. In April, President Trump signed legislation reversing a Biden-era order that had blocked new mining leases near the Boundary Waters for 20 years. That bill passed both the House and Senate and was led by Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn. Walz's executive order effectively reinstates the restriction at the state level, using gubernatorial authority to counteract a law Congress passed and the president signed.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the highest-ranking Minnesotan in Congress, did not hold back. Emmer told Fox News Digital the order would "harm Minnesota" and "good union jobs in northern Minnesota" while putting "our national defense more at risk with our enemies, adversaries like Communist China."
He framed the dispute as a straightforward question of where critical minerals get mined, and under whose environmental standards.
"What you're literally saying is, 'I'd rather have the Chinese and other adversaries mine in the old-fashioned ways and not care about leaving the world in a better condition, than allow us to do it right here in Minnesota, where we have one of the top precious metal mines in the world.'... And we have the most stringent environmental laws in the world, I would argue, that are going to ensure that it's done safely, and it protects not only the people doing the work, but it protects the environment."
Emmer also dismissed the environmental groups backing Walz's order, calling their position a "false argument."
"Every one of us is an environmentalist. I make this point, so nobody gets to claim the high ground. It's like somebody saying, 'I'm a better conservative than you.' No, we all care about our environment. We all want clean water. We all want clean air."
His sharpest line landed on Walz personally. Emmer called the governor a "lame duck loser" who "is trying to make us more energy and mineral-dependent on our adversaries."
On the other side, Save The Boundary Waters, an environmental organization that has long opposed mining near the wilderness, praised Walz's move. Executive Director Ingrid Lyons framed the federal legislation Trump signed as a betrayal of public input.
"The federal government sold out our canoe country earlier this year by stripping away protections that took hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans' voices and years of work to secure, all while ignoring science and the will of the public."
Lyons went further, urging the Minnesota state legislature to make the ban permanent. She thanked Walz for "pulling out all of the stops to keep toxic copper mining out of the headwaters of the Boundary Waters" and "building a foundation from which to protect it for generations to come."
Environmental groups have warned that mining operations outside the buffer zone still risk contaminating the waterways that feed into the Boundary Waters. But Emmer's counterargument, that American environmental regulations are among the strictest in the world and would govern any mining operation, goes directly to the heart of that concern. If the minerals are going to be extracted somewhere, the question is whether it happens under U.S. law or under far less regulated conditions overseas.
The sequence matters. The Biden administration imposed a 20-year ban on new mining leases near the Boundary Waters. Congress, led by Stauber in the House, passed legislation to reverse that ban. Both chambers approved it. Trump signed it into law in April.
Walz's executive order does not repeal the federal law. But by blocking state-level permits and leases, it creates a practical barrier to the mining activity Congress intended to allow. The governor is using state authority to frustrate a federal policy that went through the full legislative process, committee, floor vote, presidential signature.
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz's office for comment. No response was included in the reporting.
That silence is notable. When a governor takes an action this confrontational, directly countering a signed federal law on a matter with national security implications, the public deserves to hear the reasoning in the governor's own words, not just through allied advocacy groups.
The stakes extend well beyond Minnesota politics. The Duluth Complex holds the largest known untapped source of nickel and copper on the continent. Both metals are critical to defense manufacturing, electronics, and the energy infrastructure that both parties claim to support. Blocking access to domestic deposits does not reduce global demand. It shifts production to countries with weaker labor protections, weaker environmental standards, and, in the case of China, adversarial geopolitical interests.
Emmer's argument is not abstract. Nickel and copper supply chains already run heavily through nations that do not share American interests. Every domestic deposit left in the ground by executive fiat strengthens that dependency. Union workers in northern Minnesota, who stood to benefit from mining jobs under the federal law, now face a governor who chose environmental group approval over their livelihoods, and over a law their own congressional delegation fought to pass.
Walz positioned himself as a moderate Midwestern Democrat during the 2024 election cycle. This executive order tells a different story. It aligns him squarely with progressive environmental organizations and against the bipartisan legislative process that produced the law he is now working to nullify at the state level.
When a governor can sign an order that functionally overrides an act of Congress, the question stops being about copper and nickel. It becomes about whether laws mean anything at all once the right politician decides they shouldn't.
