So great that Heather dedicated today's Letter to the threat posed by HJR 140 to the Boundary Waters.
The latest on the Chilean billionaire who stands to profit from all this:
lvgaldieri.com/2026/02/22/t...
@rwpusa.bsky.social how right you were.
lvgaldieri.com/2026/02/22/t...
The Chilean billionaire who wants to mine copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters can’t even be bothered to pay his DC sewer bill?
Kalorama Sewer_ 2025115942Download Law professor and ethics watchdog Richard Painter put it bluntly back in 2019: Jared and Ivanka’s landlord — a billionaire from…
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Donny McCaslin 16 Feb 26
Donny McCaslin with the Ari Hoenig Quartet last night at Smalls. Sony A7iii FE 1.8 85mm.
https://lvgaldieri.com/2026/02/17/donny-mccaslin-16-feb-26/
Hitchhiking As A Type of Women’s Emancipation in the Early Thirties
This scene from director Mervyn LeRoy's 1934 Heat Lightning brings me back to the observation that American women in the 1920s and 30s pioneered and popularized the practice of hitchhiking. Women like Doris Poggendee and Nettie…
What Happens to the Appeal in Twin Metals v. US if the Senate Passes HJR 140?
Forbes Magazine has excerpted and posted the same moment from the Rules Committee hearing on House Joint Resolution 140 that I did the other day: Pete Stauber's embarrassing concession that he brings HJR 140 on behalf of…
Antofagasta’s Lobbyists Deliver “An Outrageous Abuse” of the Congressional Review Act
It’s a little hard to sit through the video of yesterday’s Rules Committee hearing on House Joint Resolution 140, but it's worth it just to see Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez coax Pete Stauber to…
And Boundary Waters defender Rebecca Rom just wrote to explain that Stauber doesn't know the law here, or he's just trying to pull a fast one. I added her explanation in a postscript.
And yeah, I corrected the spelling of Marcy's name.
Here is a response, which I hope is constructive.
bsky.app/profile/lvga...
cc: @emptywheel.bsky.social, who got me thinking about this.
If We’re Talking about the Violent Occupation and Colonization of Minnesota, Let’s Also Talk about the Play for Minnesota’s Critical Minerals
The ever-prolific docket watcher and political commentator Marci Wheeler put up a video the other day where, in her words, she "laid out how Trump's…
François Moutin, 8 Jan 26
François Moutin with the Pilc Moutin Hoenig Trio last night at Jazz Genius. (The trio plays tonight and tomorrow night as well.) Sony A7iii. 85mm 1.8.
Goddard and Newman On Resource-Hoarding Hyper-Elites
Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman urge us to take off our "Westphalian blinders" if we are to make sense of the bullying, extortion, and belligerence that now passes for US foreign policy. Their paper on "neo-royalist cliques" addresses a…
Chasing Returns Leaves a Big Carbon Footprint
This chart is from the World Inequality Report 2026, published this week by the World Inequality Lab. The authors explain: Most emission estimates traditionally attribute greenhouse gases to the final consumers of goods and services. This…
The crackpot king loses his bid to shut down offshore wind
Back in January, I wondered whether wind investors had standing to sue the Trump administration over the inauguration day memorandum suspending all federal approvals for offshore wind projects. It turns out the answer is yes, but the…
A Second Adjournment Vibe Check on QQQ
The Invesco QQQ shareholder meeting has been adjourned for a second time, because the company once again failed to muster the votes they need for their UIT-ETF conversion scheme. Invesco came awfully close on this round, with "over 50% of shares" voting with…
The Center for Biological Diversity Claps Back at House Republicans
With blatant disregard for First Amendment protections, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee are now conducting sham investigations into civil society groups who "oppose mining in Northern Minnesota and otherwise…
A Global Politics That Will Finally Save the World?
All of us must do our part and subject world leaders to extreme and relentless public pressure. The challenge of stranding potentially trillions of dollars in fossil capital and rebuilding the world is enormous. Of course, global leaders and…
Where are Grinevsky’s Notes?
And why am I only just now learning about Andrei Gromyko's three rules for negotiating with the West? 1) demand the maximum – do not meekly ask, but demand that which has never been yours; 2) present ultimatums – do not hold back on threats, since you will always find…
Alt Text for Pete Hegseth’s November 1st Boat Strike Video
Like many of the boat strike videos posted to social media by Trump, Hegseth, and the White House, the video of the attack conducted in the Caribbean on November 1st was edited and heavily redacted before its release. Like the other…
All the Boat Strike Videos, To Date, in Chronological Order
In my last couple of posts (here and here), I've been trying to look closely at some of the latest boat strike videos, call out some of their features, and discuss the information they offer as well as the information they withhold. It…
Updated this post with the news that Mexican authorities failed to rescue the lone survivor of these latest boat strikes.
How the Boat Strike Videos Dehumanize and Gamify Murder
The latest boat strike video shows US military attacks on four boats in the Eastern Pacific. The strikes killed 14 people and left one survivor, who is, according to Pete Hegseth, now in the hands of Mexican authorities. Edited together to…
cleaned this up a bit and added a few thoughts.
Some Notes on the Latest Boat Strike Video
This morning, I downloaded the latest of the boat strike videos that the Secretary of Defense is posting on Twitter. (That sentence alone is kind of mind blowing, but let’s leave that discussion for another day.) After watching it a few times, I am…
The Bernhardt Group’s Lobbying for Antofagasta’s Copper and Nickel Mine on the Edge of the Boundary Waters, Q3 2025
The Bernhardt Group, the lobbying shop set up just down the street from the White House by Trump's former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, is now the sole firm lobbying for…
AI, GDP, and the Singularity
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas published this chart of AI Scenarios back in June. I came across it for the first time today.
Against Converting QQQ from a Unit Investment Trust to an Open-End Fund
I’ve been receiving mailings (surface mail, emails) about the upcoming vote on Invesco QQQ Trust for a few months now, urging and imploring me to vote Yes on converting the QQQ fund from a Unit Investment Trust or UIT to a…
The Boundary Waters Litigation is on Hold, Again.
I've been traveling for the past week or so, and haven't had a chance until this morning to publish these latest filings in Twin Metals v. US. (For background, see this, this, this, and this, among many other posts.) As those who have been…
Today, Pete Stauber Learned How Quotation Marks Work
This is from today's House Natural Resources hearing, where Representative Jared Huffman offered an amendment to Stauber's HR 4090. As both Huffman and Teresa Leger Fernandez suggest in the discussion that follows, this is not just a one-off.…
