Public Pressure on The Boundary Waters is Working
The clock is running out on Republican efforts to poison the Boundary Waters — and they know it.
On January 6, 2026, the Trump administration's Department of Interior took a three-year-old land withdrawal — a legally issued, properly filed, thoroughly settled protection for the Boundary Waters watershed — and secretly re-submitted it to Congress as if it had just arrived, solely to manufacture a new fast-track window to kill it.
They invented a procedural fiction out of thin air in an attempt to undo something that was already done. It was a con. A brazen, cartoonishly villainous con, cooked up in coordination with Rep. Pete Stauber — a congressman who has spent his career doing the bidding of mining interests while pretending to represent the people of northern Minnesota. Congressional staffers told Reuters the plan had been in development for most of the past year. The getaway car was already running.
Six days later, Stauber introduced House Joint Resolution 140, invoking the Congressional Review Act — a procedural tool designed for overturning last-minute regulations — to erase the Boundary Waters protections entirely. It was fast-tracked through the Rules Committee in a single afternoon. The House passed it 214-208, fifteen days after Interior quietly submitted their letter.
The resolution then moved to the Senate, where Republicans need only 51 votes to pass it under the CRA’s filibuster-proof fast-track procedures. The math is simple and grim, Republicans hold 53 seats. They have the votes on paper.
So why hasn’t it come to the floor?
Here’s a number that answers that question more honestly than any Senate spokesperson will: 21.
That’s approximately how many Senate session days remain before the CRA’s 60-day fast-track window closes. After that, the filibuster comes back. Democrats can block a floor vote. Republicans would need 60 votes to advance it, and they don’t have 60 votes. And by my reading, they don’t even have 51.
The clock isn’t running against conservationists. It’s running against the mine.
The Silence Is the Story
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) controls the floor calendar. If he had the votes locked down, this resolution would have been scheduled the week after the House passed it. Instead, a vote was reportedly expected during the week of February 23rd — and then it was quietly postponed. No announcement. No explanation. Just silence.
That silence is worth sitting with for a moment.
A 214-208 House vote is not a ringing mandate. One Republican crossed party lines to oppose it. In the Senate, any one of several Republicans facing constituents who hunt, fish, paddle, and depend on clean water for their livelihoods has real exposure here. The politics are not comfortable.
And this is before you factor in the precedent problem — which may be the thing quietly unnerving the most thoughtful Republicans in that chamber. Using the CRA to erase a land withdrawal isn’t just aggressive. It’s legally unprecedented and strategically reckless. If the Senate Parliamentarian allows it, or Republicans choose to ignore her ruling, the CRA transforms overnight from a time-limited procedural check into a permanent weapon against settled law itself — any agency action, any administration, any subject, nullified by a simple majority vote whenever the political winds shift.
The Senate Has Other Problems
And then there’s the chaos.
While the Boundary Waters clock ticks, the Senate floor has been consumed by three other crises that have made scheduling HJR 140 even more politically treacherous.
First there’s the partial DHS shutdown which is now in it’s 30th day. Over 50,000 TSA employees are going without pay, hundreds have resigned, and spring break travel is getting underway to the tune of hours long lines at airports. Democrats are holding ground demanding changes at DHS over the heinous shootings in Minneapolis. And while their position is likely to crumble because that’s what Senate Democrats do, every day they hold out is another day focused on something other than the Boundary Waters.
Then on February 28, the “Peace President” launched a war with Iran. Surprise! Nothing says America First like consulting Israel instead of the American people or Congress to start another war in the Middle East. But don’t worry, the administration that promised lower gas prices, bringing the troops home, and no more forever wars, has plenty of excuses for this one. In fact, they have so many that their justifications change every time you ask them.
This means the Senate has been buried in classified briefings nobody can talk about, failed war powers votes that Republicans killed on party lines, and Democrats threatening to grind the chamber to a halt until someone explains what the plan actually is in Iran.
And that brings us to the SAVE America Act — Trump's unconstitutional voter ID bill, which he’s decided is his singular obsession ahead of the midterms. Last Sunday he posted that he will not sign any legislation, including a DHS funding bill, until it passes. "It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE." Thune has reluctantly scheduled a floor vote this week while openly acknowledging it will fail. It needs 60 votes. Democrats won't provide a single one. And critically — despite enormous pressure from Trump, despite threats, despite Mike Lee's online army of right-wing influencers screaming about talking filibusters — many Senate Republicans have flatly refused to blow up the filibuster to pass it. Because they know exactly what that would mean. Thune said it plainly: "There's no single piece of legislation worth blowing up the United States Senate." Even Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has warned that Trump is setting up to call the midterms rigged if the bill fails — exactly the 2020 playbook, recycled.
And to be clear, the Republican senators refusing to nuke the filibuster aren't doing it out of courage. They're doing it out of survival instinct. They know that a bill requiring Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to vote — in the middle of a very challenging midterm election year — would be a catastrophe at the polls.
The bill is dead. The week is burning. Mike Lee is holding the floor for a bill that will never pass, on behalf of a president so desperate to hold onto power that he's willing to trash the Constitution and hold the government hostage to do it. He told Republicans they'd "never lose a race for 50 years" if it passes. Not because elections will be more secure. Because tens of millions of eligible Americans who don't have a passport or birth certificate on hand will simply be turned away at the polls. That's the whole plan.
Meanwhile, somewhere in all of this, there are 21 session days left on a clock that could determine the fate of America's most visited wilderness — and nobody in Senate Republican leadership seems particularly eager to find the time.
The Clock, and What Comes After
Assuming this SAVE America Act nonsense dies off after this week, the Senate will recess for two weeks at the end of March for Passover and Easter. When senators return on April 13th, roughly ten session days will be left on the clock. The fast-track window closes the week of April 21st.
After that deadline, one of two things will have happened. Either Republicans muscled this through — establishing the precedent that any agency action from any prior administration can be retroactively reclassified, re-submitted to Congress, and nullified by a simple majority vote with no filibuster, no debate, and no public input. Or the clock expired quietly, and HJR 140 died not with a dramatic floor vote but with a scheduling decision that was never made.
Senate leadership letting the clock run out is not a neutral act. It’s a choice. And for the Republicans in that chamber who don’t have the stomach for this vote but also don’t want to go on record opposing their own leadership, a quietly expired deadline is the most politically convenient outcome imaginable.
Nobody has to explain anything. Nobody has to answer for anything.
But here's what you need to understand: even if HJR 140 dies, the Boundary Waters is not safe.
The Other Shoe
This administration has never needed Congress to come after the Boundary Waters. That’s been the lesson all along.
Last June, while Americans were celebrating the Senate Parliamentarian blocking the Boundary Waters mining provision from the reconciliation bill, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted on X that USDA was “initiating the process to cancel the mineral withdrawal in the Rainy River watershed.” No formal press release. No public comment period. No environmental review. A tweet. It later emerged that Stauber had personally called Rollins before the post went up — and that during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, he had used his five minutes of questioning time to extract a commitment from Doug Burgum to cancel the withdrawal and return the leases to Twin Metals.
That process is still underway. The Forest Service and BLM have the authority to cancel or modify the withdrawal administratively, through a formal process that requires environmental review and public comment — but that process is far more vulnerable to manipulation, bad-faith review, and executive pressure than the clear legal standard the CRA requires. If HJR 140 fails, this administration will almost certainly accelerate that administrative track. Expect a truncated environmental review. Expect a predetermined outcome dressed up as “common sense”. Expect the same 675,000 public comments that produced the withdrawal in the first place to be dismissed as irrelevant to a “new” analysis. And expect a legal fight.
The Boundary Waters survives — this time — if the CRA clock runs out. But the threat doesn’t end. It just changes shape.
Watch the calendar. The silence from Senate Republican leadership is telling you everything you need to know about whether they actually have the votes — or whether they’re simply running out the clock and hoping nobody notices. And when that clock expires, start watching USDA.
Don’t Let Up
There can be no doubt that the pressure is working. It’s the only explanation for why a Senate with 53 Republican seats and a filibuster-proof fast track hasn’t scheduled this vote. They have the math. What they don’t have is the political cover. And the reason they don’t have it is because hundreds of thousands of Americans have been calling, writing, and showing up in a way that has made this vote feel costly.
That can change overnight. That’s what they’re counting on. A distracted public. A news cycle that moves on. A week where nobody’s watching and the schedule quietly opens up. If they ever feel the winds shift — if they sense that attention has drifted and a floor vote can happen without blowback — they will take it. Senate scheduling can happen with 24 hours notice. This is not over until the clock runs out.
So keep calling your senators. Keep sharing this. Get your friends to call theirs. The constituent pressure that’s made this vote politically toxic needs to stay toxic through the end of April.
And understand what’s at stake beyond the Boundary Waters itself. Under the Congressional Review Act, if HJR 140 passes and is signed into law, no future administration can ever issue a substantially similar protection for this watershed. Not in four years. Not in forty. The withdrawal can’t come back without an act of Congress. This isn’t just about stopping a mine. It’s about whether a foreign mining company gets a permanent, congressionally-sanctioned green light to operate upstream of America’s most visited wilderness — forever.
They manufactured a clock on January 6th to try to steal America’s favorite wilderness and poison it. Run it out.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Jim
Gents, this is excellent. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.
For such discouraging and maddening news and potential news, this essay actually felt strangely hopeful for a change. This really sums it all up:
"Senate leadership letting the clock run out is not a neutral act. It’s a choice. And for the Republicans in that chamber who don’t have the stomach for this vote but also don’t want to go on record opposing their own leadership, a quietly expired deadline is the most politically convenient outcome imaginable."
Keep up the great work.
Agreed. There’s a subtle but definite hopefulness here. Thank you, Jim! Inaction as a way to victory just somehow sounds perfectly like our congressional system. Bring on the inactivity!
I grew up in Deer River MN, 90 miles south of Ely, the gateway to the BWCA. Two week-long canoe trips there in the 70s cemented its place in my heart and soul. And the WATER… Such a critical place to keep unpolluted and pristine. Nearly everyone I grew up with there was Republican and everyone of them were hunters and fishermen; everyone of them would be horrified to think of the spoiling of this treasure.
So Hope remains. Let’s continue to speak up! We can show congress how to win by taking a loud stand rather than wimping out in silence and shame.