Alaska knows what it looks like when Washington locks away American resources and denies our right to produce. We lived it for decades. When one looks at what the Biden Administration did to lock down 225,504 acres in northern Minnesota – one of the most mineral-rich resources in the nation – it is the same playbook and the same consequences for American workers and American national security.
For nearly four decades, Alaska fought to unlock the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). That fight became a defining test of whether America would develop its own resources or continue ceding that advantage to foreign competitors. Year after year, the same arguments were made: predictions of environmental catastrophes, claims of irreversible damage, and warnings of reckless development. But what those arguments ignored was the cost of inaction. Every year Alaska’s resources remained locked away, we weakened our own energy security and strengthened the leverage of nations that understand a simple truth: energy is power.
Last year, we finally broke through. With sustained effort, legislative action in Congress, and a commitment to put Alaska at the center of the national energy conversation, we secured a lasting victory that reopened access and restored certainty. But it took nearly 40 years to get there.
What sits beneath the ground in Northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest has strategic national importance. Beneath those 225,504 acres lies the largest untapped copper and nickel deposit on the planet. Copper and nickel are not “nice to have” commodities; they are the essential building blocks of defense systems, semiconductors, modern vehicles, our energy grid, and the entire modern supply chain that Washington talks endlessly about securing from Chinese dominance. This region also holds the highest-grade helium deposit in the United States, a resource with no synthetic substitute, critical to MRI machines, rocket propulsion, and nuclear technology.
China has spent decades executing a deliberate strategy to corner global critical mineral supply chains. They mine. They process. They stockpile. While they are building the future, we are debating whether to allow an environmental review process to even begin on the largest untapped deposit of its kind in the world. China is on America's neck, and right now, an illegal Biden-era land withdrawal is doing Beijing's work for it. This is why the U.S. Senate must pass H.J. Res. 140.
H.J. Res. 140 does not waive a single environmental standard or bypass a single public comment period. Instead, this bill restores a standard and rigorous environmental review process. If this project in Northern Minnesota ultimately clears that process, it will do so on the merits, with full environmental scrutiny. If it doesn't clear that process, it won't move forward.
That is exactly how our process is supposed to work.
By passing H.J. Res. 140, Congress can demonstrate to the entire world that the United States means what it says about delivering mineral dominance to the American people.
Alaska's North Slope didn't become the backbone of American energy independence by accident. It happened because Congress and the American people eventually decided that producing resources at home, under American law and American environmental standards, was smarter and safer than depending on foreign powers that do not share our values or our interests.
Alaska's story is ultimately a story about belief - belief that American workers, operating under American law, developing American resources, are a better answer to the world's energy and mineral needs than foreign autocracies with no environmental standards and every incentive to keep us dependent. We proved it on the North Slope. We proved it in Cook Inlet. We have been proving for 50 years that responsible resource development and environmental stewardship go hand in hand and that America is better at both than any nation on Earth.
There is no greater jurisdiction than the United States when it comes to safe, responsible resource development. The choice before the Senate is the same one we have faced in Alaska - the same one America always faces when the question is whether we trust ourselves or surrender to our adversaries: Produce it here, under our laws, by our workers, on our terms, or keep bowing to Beijing.
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