Congressional Republicans Are Waging War against Environmental Regulation
And they're using a relatively obscure law to do it
On April 27th, 2026, Trump signed a bill that ended a twenty-year ban on mining in the Superior National Forest of Northeast Minnesota. The ban had only been in place for two years, but for Trump, it was still a long time coming. All the way back in the spring of his first year in office, Trump had called on Congress to open up mining access to the Duluth Complex, a constellation of mineral deposits along the western shores of Lake Superior. All told, the Duluth Complex holds largest concentration copper-nickel ore in the world. One estimate lists the value of these deposits at $40 billion. It’s likely worth a lot more. Copper is a critical mineral, an essential component of electronics and hybrid vehicles. Historically, the US imports a fraction of what it consumes. Why not start here, and start fast? Domestic mineral leasing on federal land seemed like an obvious place to roll out the “America First” plan.
Boundary Waters. Image from the Save the Boundary Waters website.
From the get-go, though, there were problems. Since the Clean Water Act (1972/3), the federal government has taken a special interest in protecting this extraordinary region. A patchwork of EPA-mandated mining restrictions had blanketed the area since the mid-70’s. But even before then—since 1854, to be precise—the northern tribes of Chippewa have retained rights to forage, hunt, and gather there in perpetuity. The mine would almost certainly violate tribal rights. Also, one proposed mine bordered the Boundary Waters Canoe Access Wilderness, one of the most iconic and beloved recreation spots in the United States. According to the US Forest Service, it is the most visited wilderness area (not national park) in the country.
In the last decade, one particular company has fought harder than any other to overturn federal and state mining bans in the Superior National Forest: Twin Metals Inc., a subsidiary of the Chilean-owned Antofagasta. It just so happens that Antofagasta has deep ties to the Trump family. Back in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that the scion of the company, Andronico Luksic, owned the D.C. home that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived in from 2017 to 2021. The terms of the rental agreement were never made public. No one knows if Jared and Ivanka actually paid Luksic’s company to live there. While Twin Metals/Antofagasta has never donated to Trump’s campaign for re-election, the company has, since 2017, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to congressional Republican campaigns and and employed Republican lobbyists.
Twin Metals has several lawsuits pending in Minnesota state court. There are still state protections in place that guard the Boundary Waters from mining companies. For now, no one expects mining to begin any time soon. But the case is telling for what we might expect from Congress in the months leading up to midterms.
The mechanism that killed the mining ban was a piece of legislation that, until 2017, was relatively obscure. It’s called the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA grants Congress the authority to reject certain laws and policies implemented by federal agencies. It works like this: federal agencies are required to submit to both houses of Congress a report of its policies, or “rules,” in the language of the CRA. According to the CRA, a “rule” is any kind of agency pronouncement that “implement(s), interpret(s), or prescribe(s) law or policy.” If the verbiage of the CRA sounds hopelessly vague, consider it this way. When the EPA sets a new federal limit on, say, vehicle emissions, the implementation of this limit must be reported to both sides of Congress before the rule takes effect. The Senate and the House have sixty days to review the report. If they don’t like the rule, they can vote on what’s called a “joint resolution for disapproval.” Either House or Senate can initiate the joint resolution, but confusingly, each house has its own procedure of initiating the process. For the disapproval to take effect, though, it has to pass both the Senate and House and be signed by the president--or, in the case of a presidential veto, override it. Because of the way that the CRA is set up, no future presidential administration can reinstate the rule or a “similar” rule--ever, in fact, unless Congress changes its mind and votes to reinstate the rule again. Perhaps most controversially, the CRA explicitly states that no part of it or is subject to judicial review.
Before Trump’s first term, the CRA had been used exactly one time. In 2001, Congress used the CRA to end OSHA’s workplace ergonomics program. (Simpler times, one is tempted to conclude.) However, in the first two years of Trump’s first term (2017-19), the CRA was used a whopping seventeen times to strike down Obama-era laws and policies. These were CRA rules that covered everything from consumer privacy protections from tech/telecom surveillance to a rule that required US companies to disclose payments made directly to foreign governments for the extraction of oil and gas. Only two disapprovals under Trump’s first term had to do with environmental matters.
It’s been a different story since the Republicans swept Congress in November 2024. From the January 2025 to the present, Republicans have used the CRA to wage an all-out war against environmental regulation. Congressional Republicans have successfully implemented twenty-three disapprovals, all of them targeting actions of the Biden administration. Nineteen of the twenty-three disapprovals have to do with protecting the environment. One disapproval lifts clean air restrictions for vehicles; another does away with regulations on tire manufacturers, one of the dirtiest and most hazardous industries on the planet. Another abolishes a waste emissions charge for oil and gas companies.
Maybe the most upsetting thing about this pattern is the way Republicans are going about it. According to a study from the Regulatory Review, ten of the twenty-three disapprovals follow no congressional precedent whatsoever, meaning that Republicans are interpreting the application and scope of the CRA in whatever way they see fit. In each of the examples the Review studied, Republicans pushed an interpretation that went far beyond the limits Congress initially set in the original act. They’re simply doing whatever they please. On multiple occasions, the Government Accountability Office and the Senate Parliamentarian, offices that advise each house on their own parliamentary rules, objected to the use of the CRA. Congress plowed ahead anyway.
The most recent use of the CRA to strike down the mining ban in the Boundary Waters follows this pattern. The mining ban was passed in 2023. The sixty-day review window mandated by the CRA has long passed. The Department of the Interior, the agency that initiated the ban, never reported the rule to Congress, because it didn’t think it had to. In fact, there’s no precedent for the Department of the Interior ever having to do something like this. But here is where Pete Stauber, the House Republican who sponsored the disapproval, staked his claim. The Department never sought input from Congress on this particular rule; therefore, it was illegal.
Whether or not Stauber was right--and he wasn’t--the CRA should never have been deployed. The disapproval explicitly violates the act’s own terms. However, because CRA-related disapprovals are exempt from judicial review, the courts can’t hold Congress accountable.
Not surprisingly, the CRA has only ever been used when one party controls the Senate, the House, and the presidency. It seems likely that Trump’s disastrous first two years may bring this bizarre period of congressional history to an end soon. But what if they don’t? Why wouldn’t Democrats borrow from the Republican playbook and keep expanding the CRA to repeal policies from years, even decades, ago? If I were a betting man, I’d say we’re in for more, not less, regulatory chaos in the coming years.
Parliamentary dysfunction: it’s what the US does best. Meanwhile, the world burns.