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mary moriarty
'Foreign Billionaires First, America Last': Critics Slam GOP Over Mining Approval Near Minnesota Boundary Waters
"We don’t allow mining in Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion, Acadia, Glacier, or any of our nation’s revered national parks—and we shouldn’t allow it in the watershed of the Boundary Waters, either," said one congresswoman.
Apr 16, 2026
Democratic lawmakers and environmental protection groups condemned Senate Republicans on Thursday for their "heartbreaking" passage of a House resolution to overturn a 20-year moratorium on mining in the watershed of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the nation's most visited wilderness area—a vote that critics said was the result of years of lobbying by a foreign-owned mining firm.
House Joint Resolution 140 now heads to President Donald Trump's desk, nearly a decade after Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta, the owner of Twin Metals Minnesota, began discussing with Trump's first administration its desire to build a copper mine over the pristine area.
"Because of this extremely short-sighted vote, our nation’s most-visited wilderness area faces the threat of permanent toxic pollution," said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.). "Why? So Antofagasta, a Chilean corporation that owns Twin Metals, can mine American copper and ship it to China to be smelted and sold on the global market. Twin Metals has been lobbying President Trump and Republicans in Congress for over ten years to remove the protections from this watershed and renew their mine plans to extract American minerals at the expense of freshwater for future generations."
The 50-49 vote in the Senate, said Environment America, puts the 1.1 million-acre wilderness area for heavy metals leaching into the soil and water through acid mine drainage.
Toxic runoff from copper mining, said the group, "ultimately poisons the land and water surrounding a mine, making the ecosystem unlivable for wildlife."
Leda Huta, vice president of government relations for American Rivers, called the vote "a betrayal of the public trust."
“We share in the deep disappointment of millions of Americans who expect our elected leaders to protect our clean water, our abundant wildlife, and access for all to unmatched outdoor recreation spaces," said Huta. "This is a heartbreaking moment.”
Amanda Hefner, manager of Save the Boundary Waters Action Fund, wrote in a column in Minnesota Reformer last October that "in a water-rich environment like the Boundary Waters, with its low buffering capacity, pollution would spread quickly through interconnected lakes and streams." She also wrote that it was "reckless" to risk the preserve's 17,000 jobs and over $1 billion in annual revenue "for a foreign-owned mine that would pollute and leave toxic waste for generations."
According to Jacobin, Antofagasta spent $200,000 on lobbying in the final quarter of 2024 and $230,000 in the first quarter of 2025 "on issues including federal leases for Twin Metals." The Chilean company is owned by billionaire Andrónico Luksic, who rented out his $5.5 million mansion in Washington, DC to Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband, then-White House adviser Jared Kushner, from 2017-21.
The Sierra Club noted that to pass the mining ban reversal, Senate Republicans "utilized a baseless interpretation of the Congressional Review Act (CRA)."
"The CRA only allows Congress to disapprove of administrative rules," said the group. "No previous administration has considered mineral withdrawals to be 'rules' that are subject to the CRA."
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said that "allowing a foreign company to open a toxic mine on its doorstep puts a fragile ecosystem at risk and shows the Trump Administration will always act to benefit corporations over the American people.”
“The Boundary Waters is one of the country’s most iconic wilderness areas, visited by thousands every year. It should be a place for recreation and conservation, not for pollution and exploitation," said Manuel.
Despite Trump's refrain, "America First," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said the vote made clear that "for the GOP, it’s foreign billionaires first, America last."
McCollum warned that the mining moratorium was "the only way to protect this wilderness, which is home to some of the cleanest water in the entire world.
"We don’t allow mining in Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion, Acadia, Glacier, or any of our nation’s revered national parks—and we shouldn’t allow it in the watershed of the Boundary Waters, either," said the congresswoman. "One hundred percent of copper mines have failed, leading to polluted waters. This case will be no different."
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Minnesota Prosecutors Slap ICE Agent With Two Felony Assault Charges
"Today's charges reflect an important milestone in our efforts to seek accountability for the harms inflicted on our community," said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
Apr 16, 2026
Prosecutors in Minnesota charged a federal immigration enforcement agent with assault on Thursday for pulling a gun on two local residents during a February traffic dispute.
The Hennepin County prosecutor's office charged US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., a resident of Maryland, with two counts of felony assault for the incident that took place along Highway 62 on February 5.
During a press conference, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty alleged that Morgan was driving a rented, unmarked Ford Expedition illegally along the shoulder of Highway 62.
The alleged victims, objecting to Morgan illegally driving on the highway shoulder, swerved in front of him briefly to block him, then pulled back into the regular lane.
Morgan then allegedly sped up his vehicle, pulled up alongside the victims' car, and drew his gun on them.
Moriarty said that Morgan's alleged actions were unjustified and outside the course of his duties, which would be enough for the state to avoid violating the US Constitution's Supremacy Clause that prevents state governments from infringing upon the federal government's sovereignty.
"Our opinion is that illegally driving on a shoulder, pulling up to a car and pointing a gun at the heads of two community members who are not doing anything at the time, is well beyond the scope of their authority as federal agents," said Moriarty. "So they may say that, but we will litigate that in court. And there is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal agents who violate the law in the State of Minnesota or any other state."
Moriarty also brushed off concerns about the federal government retaliating against Minnesota for criminally charging ICE agents.
"Not a concern of ours," she said. "Our role, by the way, is to hold people accountable if they violate the laws of the state of Minnesota. And in this particular case, we feel strongly that this agent committed second-degree assault against both of these victims. We have charged the case and our intent is to hold them accountable."
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty: "Are we concerned as to whether there would be federal blowback? Not a concern of ours. Our role is to hold people accountable if they violate the laws of Minnesota. We feel strongly that this ICE agent committed 2nd degree assault." pic.twitter.com/G6aPyewU3q
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 16, 2026
The case against Morgan is the first state prosecution related to Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration enforcement operation that targeted the Twin Cities earlier this year and generated unprecedented mass protests that included a one-day general strike.
Morgan's prosecution may also be a preview of future cases, as there have been calls for months to prosecute the federal immigration officers who fatally shot Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
While speaking with reporters, Moriarty emphasized that "today's charges reflect an important milestone in our efforts to seek accountability for the harms inflicted on our community during Operation Metro Surge," vowing "we will not rest until we get the answers we seek about federal agent conduct across Hennepin County, and accountability is delivered wherever appropriate."
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As Sotomayor Apologizes to Kavanaugh, Thomas Paints Progressives as Existential Threat
"Cowering liberals think this is a manners contest while conservatives are waging an ideological war," said one observer.
Apr 16, 2026
While one liberal US Supreme Court justice apologized Wednesday for mildly condescending remarks about a colleague, one of the high court's most right-wing members compared progressives to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler—a contrast that one prominent observer called "a perfect commentary on the asymmetry in politics" between liberals and the MAGA right.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she apologized for "inappropriate" public comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh's upbringing during an April 7 speech at the University of Kansas School of Law. Sotomayor, who grew up in financial poverty in the Bronx, referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which the son of high-powered Washington, DC attorneys brushed off the potentially fatal consequences of immigration enforcement stops.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals," Sotomayor told the audience, "and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas linked the progressive movement—which Americans have to thank for many of the rights they have today, from the five-day, 40-hour workweek, to food safety and environmental protection, to near-universal civil and voting rights—with some of the 20th century's worst mass murderers.
"Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government," Thomas told attendees of a University of Texas event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document's signing. "It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government."
Thomas called the declaration "one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of the Western civilization," even though its proclamation that "all men are created equal" did not apply to the 20% of the American population who were enslaved Blacks, and a condemnation of slavery was stricken from the draft due to objections from slave owners.
However, Thomas argued that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence have "fallen out of favor" among progressives.
"Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, to openly oppose the principles of the declaration" Thomas asserted. "Progressives strove to undo the declaration's commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident."
"It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights," he continued, adding that it "led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen."
"Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based," Thomas added, referring to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Nazi leader, and Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
Balls and Strikes editor-in-chief Jay Willis responded to Thomas' remarks on Bluesky, writing that it is "genuinely funny that Sonia Sotomayor issued a public apology today for her mild criticism of a conservative colleague on a specific, substantive issue, and then a few hours later Clarence Thomas picked up a mic and was like ALL LIBERALS ARE AMERICA-HATING COWARDS."
"Clarence Thomas is a right-wing freak," Willis added. "This is an indistinguishable from what unironic retvrn guys post on X about, like, women being allowed to have bank accounts. Anyone who tells you he is a profound thinker or a serious jurist or whatever is not to be trusted."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said on X that "if Dems had a spine, they’d run on impeaching this financially corrupt justice who got away with the allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings."
Many right-wingers, meanwhile, applauded Thomas' remarks, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—who helped try to steal the 2020 election for President Donald Trump—posting on X that "progressivism *is* an existential threat to America."
During his speech, Thomas also expressed his admiration for Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor whose largesse to the justice and his wife Virginia—who was also involved in efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election—has included undisclosed gifts like luxury vacations and private school tuition for a relative.
He also praised John Yoo, his former clerk and senior Justice Department lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memos" for the George W. Bush administration and publicly argued that the president has the power to order the massacre of an entire village of civilians or the crushing of a child's testicles.
Thomas closed his speech with a call to action.
"Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day," he said. "It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today's fashionable bigotries, such as antisemitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor."
"It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized," he continued. "It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises."
This, from a justice on the nation's highest court whose moral and ethical compromises in the form of “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts" he took from a billionaire linked to a case before that same court has "no comparison in modern American history," according to a Senate report.
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Human Rights Groups Demand Ireland Stop Letting Trump Use Airport for 'Unlawful' ICE Flights
"If Ireland is facilitating the monstrous ICE project, then we fear the government has lost its way. Rather than cower and capitulate, it must show courage, compassion, and principle," said the head of Amnesty International Ireland.
Apr 16, 2026
A pair of human rights groups on Thursday called for the Irish government to stop letting the administration of US President Donald Trump use Shannon Airport as a refueling stop for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's deportation flights.
In a joint letter to Ireland’s transport minister, Darragh O’Brien, and foreign affairs and trade minister, Helen McEntee, Amnesty International Ireland and Human Rights First urged the Irish government to stop cooperating with President Donald Trump's efforts to deport migrants to third countries.
Using data from its ICE Flight Monitor, Human Rights First determined that Shannon Airport has been used to refuel deportation planes during at least five of these removal operations, which involved what the groups described as "transfers of individuals to countries... they have no ties to and where they have faced arbitrary and prolonged detention and other abuse."
After one of the flights in May 2025, eight migrants from several countries, including Cuba, Mexico, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Sudan—some of whom had legally been resettled as refugees—were dropped in the East African nation of Djibouti. There, they were held in a shipping container at a US base for at least six weeks before being sent to war-torn South Sudan, where they were promptly detained by authorities. Six of them remain in detention today, with little ability to communicate with their lawyers.
Another group of five men from Cuba, Yemen, Vietnam, and Laos was taken to the southern African country of Eswatini in July. Four of them remain in state custody more than eight months later, despite the authorities giving no official reason for their ongoing detention.
Another flight stopped in Ireland on its way back from dumping eight Palestinian men, who were shackled for the entire journey, on the side of the road in the occupied West Bank. Some of the men had green cards in the United States, and several had wives and children from whom they had been forcibly separated, despite facing no accusations of having committed a crime. Two such flights have taken place.
In total, the groups found that at least 28 migrants had traveled through the Shannon Airport on their way to third countries.
About 300 migrants have been sent to third countries as part of the Trump administration's "mass deportation" campaign, according to a February report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The administration has spent more than $40 million, part of which has gone to countries willing to take in deportees, including Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini, and Palau, each of which has received multimillion-dollar lump sums.
Most infamously, the administration last year secretly sent more than 280 young men, most without criminal records, to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a megaprison in El Salvador, where they were subjected to torture and cut off from communication with their families and lawyers for more than four months before a judge ordered most of them released.Amnesty and Human Rights First have described this practice as a form of "enforced disappearance" under international law.
"To carry out its mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration is flouting international law and cutting deals with dictators. It is also endangering lives, through its opaque web of third country agreements to send people against their will to countries where they have no connection”, said Uzra Zeya, the CEO of Human Rights First.
“Beyond their cruelty, these agreements reflect a transactional foreign policy driven by xenophobia, and they undermine due process and human rights globally," she said. "Ireland should play no part in facilitating these unlawful removals, including to third countries notorious for rights abuses.”
Shannon Airport has become a target of protest over its use as a hub for American military planes, which many in Ireland see as an affront to the country's long history of military neutrality. It has previously come under scrutiny for helping transport detainees renditioned for torture by the CIA during the post-9/11 global War on Terror.
Last week, a man was arrested for allegedly breaking into the facility and damaging a US military plane that was en route to a bilateral military exercise in Poland, according to The New York Times. Though no motive has been made public, the incident evoked other acts of vandalism by anti-war activists opposed to the US military presence.
"People across Ireland and the world look on in horror as the Trump administration continues implementing its vile, racist, and xenophobic executive orders that dehumanize and criminalize people who are, or are perceived to be, migrants and refugees. The administration has brazenly violated the right to due process by unlawfully removing people and subjecting some to enforced disappearance,” said Stephen Bowen, the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland.
Following a request last month for it to stop US deportation flights from using Shannon to refuel, Ireland’s Department of Transport contended that under the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, US aircraft do not require permission to refuel at Shannon. Transport Minister O’Brien has said the US did not request authorization for the flights to land and that his department had no knowledge of them.
But Bowen says that even though states are not required to obtain permission to land, the convention still requires them to abide by international law, and that the Irish government ultimately has the power to decide how its sovereign airspace is used.
“The Department of Transport’s public responses are just not good enough,” he said. “There are depressing parallels with Ireland’s failure two decades ago to stop CIA-leased civil aircraft using Shannon as a stopover for rendition operations during the US ‘War on Terror’. Despite promises to ‘enforce the prohibition on the use of Irish airspace, airports, and related facilities for purposes not in line with the dictates of international law’, it appears that no concrete actions were ever taken.”
“The government’s timidity in its dealings with President Trump is already a cause for concern," Bowen added. "If Ireland is facilitating the monstrous ICE project, then we fear the government has lost its way. Rather than cower and capitulate, it must show courage, compassion, and principle."
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