JUST POSTED: The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Biden takes office

Let's take a look at some of these projects awaiting actions in the remaining weeks of Trump's tenure. MASSIVE mining projects on federal lands. First stop, ARIZONA. Sacred Native American lands now in a national forest are targeted for destruction to make way for a copper mine
Next stop SOUTH DAKOTA. Area near Black Hills planned for massive new uranium mine, on land also historically held by Native American tribe. Groundwater would be contaminated to extract the radioactive uranium.
Next stop, NEVADA, were one of world's largest lithium mines slated to be built starting soon on federal land. Final "Record of Decision" on project by Interior Department expected in EARLY January.
Next stop, UTAH, where Interior as soon as NEXT week, slated to give approval to what could soon be one of the large helium drilling operations in the United States on land in and around an iconic federal WILDERNESSS area.
NEXT STOP, WEST VIRGINIA/VIRGINIA where Forest Service slated to give final approval before mid January to a new natural gas pipeline that will be built across a national forest and the Appalachian Trial.
There are many others. Picked these as examples. Illustrates an intentional effort by President Trump and his Cabinet to open up public lands to mining/drilling, despite protests from Native Americans and environmentalists.
What is interesting is that many of these projects are sponsored by foreign investors, such as Rio Tinto, an Australian-based mining giant, which directly lobbied Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross to speed up the project. Here is Ross discussing it during a visit to mine site in October
Please give the story a read (and a share). Will be doing tweet threads drilling down on individual projects. Collected thousands of pages of fed documents, detailing environmental consequences anticipated from these projects. Many r linked in story. https://t.co/hARCFWtqph
FYI, here is the area in Utah near what could soon be one of the largest helium drilling operations in United States, pending approval as soon as next week by Department of Interior. Construction slated to start immediately. Photos by Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance/Ray Bloxham

More from Trump

OK, #Squidigation fans, I think we need to talk about the new Wisconsin suit Donald Trump filed - personally - in Federal Court last night. The suit is (as usual) meritless. But it's meritless in new and disturbing ways. This thread will be


Not, I hope, Seth Abramson long. But will see.

I apologize in advance to my wife, who would very much prefer I be billing time (today's a light day, though) and to my assistant, to whom I owe some administrative stuff this will likely keep me from 😃

First, some background. Trump's suit essentially tries to Federalize the Wisconsin Supreme Court complaint his campaign filed, which we discussed here.


If you haven't already, go read that thread. I'm not going to be re-doing the same analysis, and I'm not going to be cross-linking to that discussion as we go. (Sorry, I like you guys, and I see this as public service, but there are limits)

Also, @5DollarFeminist has a good stand-alone thread analyzing the new Federal complaint - it's worth reading as well, though some of the analysis will overlap.

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.