AND NOW THIS!

APRIL 18, 2026 – All the people who’ve died or will die in Africa because of the end of USAID? We’ll never get them back.

All the people who will perish because funding of cancer research funded by the federal government was ripped into sawdust by the chainsaw of DOGE? We’ll never get them back.

All the hundreds of top-flight career lawyers at DOJ who’ve resigned in the face of orders by political hacks to undertake unethical, unconstitutional, and illegal assignments? We’ll never get them back—nor will their vacancies be filled by qualified replacements.

All the hard-working deportees who contributed billions of tax dollars to the common till but without the right to or expectation of benefits; who contributed billions more consumer dollars to the U.S. economy; who above all, filled a labor gap and contributed their daily work ethic to American prosperity? We’ll never get them back.

All the thousands of federal workers with critical expertise and experience who were indiscriminately axed or who quit or took early retirement in the face of evisceration of vital agency functions? We’ll never get them back.

All 126 of those schoolgirls in Iran, lives obliterated by one of our missiles? We’ll never get them back.

All the decades of trust and respect that we’d accumulated among our partners and allies abroad? We’ll never it them back.

And now this: bullied by the anti-earth Trump Administration, Senate Republicans approved House Resolution 140, overriding President Biden’s order banning mining operations adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota. Once copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum group mines are fully operational, a near certainty of irreparable pollution of watersheds in the BWCA will ensue.  And we’ll never get the undamaged environment back.

Every Minnesotan who’s ever heard of a canoe has heard of the “Boundary Waters,” the “BWCA,”[1] the pristine million-acre wilderness running for 150 miles along Minnesota’s lacustrine border with Ontario. Tens of thousands of Minnesotans are among the 150,000 to 250,000 canoeists who dip their paddles into those sacred waters each year, as the haunting yodels and tremolos of the loons echo across the primeval, granite-bound and evergreen-guarded lakes and rivers of the Boundary Waters.

But despite the forceful pleas of our own two, 51 U.S. Senators turned blind eyes and deaf ears to this rare piece of the rarest planet. Some of those Republicans expressed opposition privately but succumbed to political—and financial—pressures to vote against Mother Nature. Shame. On. Every. Last. One. Of. Them. Yet, shame on us consumers, too, for ignoring the direct relationship between our EVs/iPhones/other electronic devices and the demand for precious earth metals.

By way of our opposition to ICE, however, we Minnesotans are not about to take this latest direct assault on the environment without some fierce paddling, no matter how choppy the waters. Already forces have organized to halt the damage before it begins. No stops will go unpulled, starting with the end-run by termination of an extant mining lease between the subsidiary of the Chilean mining firm, Antofagasta (controlled by the Luksic family, Chilean-based but of Croatian and Bolivian origins[2]), and the state of Minnesota. In this regard, the DNR Commissioner’s office has been flooded by calls—mine (no pun intended) among them—and the governor’s inbox swamped with messages, again, mine among them. And if ICE brought out the lawyers, so will this spring’s “ice out” in the BWCA.

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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Its official name is the “Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness” (BWCAW).

[2] Known for their educational philanthropy, the family would be undermining (so to speak) its financial interests if public service extended to protection of the environment.