Daily Caller
Tim Walz And The Hidden Story Of Twin Metals
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The media is now working overtime to rewrite the background of the Harris-Walz ticket. With all eyes shifting to Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, they have their work cut out.
Get ready for a new, refined version of Walz, where he is cast as a moderate, pro-worker Midwesterner — meant to balance out Kamala’s left-wing liberalism. But Walz is not that and American steelworkers, their families and the communities surrounding the Twin Metals Mine of Northeast Minnesota know this all too well.
Northeastern Minnesota is blessed with a plethora of critical and strategic metals that are key components to our modern life. There is an area referred to as the Duluth Complex that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is home to the largest undeveloped deposits of nickel, cobalt and platinum group minerals (PGM) in the world.
The Twin Metals mine in particular is positioned to be a state-of-the-art underground operation within the Duluth Complex using advanced and precise methods of extraction that could deliver these much-needed metals to growing markets.
Given that these metals are key components to cell phones and cars — both gas-powered and electric — as well as solar panels and windmills, the location of these minerals here in the United States should be good news. This should especially be true for an administration like Biden-Harris that is hell-bent on restructuring our entire utility and vehicle industries, so they are more “green.”
From a practical perspective, this type of restructuring will require an immense amount of the minerals that are located at, and very accessible in, the Twin Metals mine. Globally, one estimate suggests that to reach electrification goals the world will need to produce the same amount of copper in the next 25 years as humanity has produced in the last 5,000.
Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration not only cancelled two long-standing mineral leases at the Twin Metals mine, but they also imposed a 20-year moratorium on the surrounding area. This decision imperiled the 750 direct jobs and 1,500 spinoff jobs in the surrounding community that the mine would have supported.
Many of these jobs were for United Steelworkers who were set to buildout and operate the $1.7 billion mine. As often as the Biden-Harris administration talked about creating green energy jobs, they took numerous actions that cancelled the ones that actually did exist.
Walz oversaw the entire debacle. And when the Twin Metals mine and local jobs organizations asked for a lifeline in the aftermath of the Biden-Harris cancellation, he answered it with … more process! Specifically, Walz’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) allowed the mine to explore surrounding state and private lands for minerals but reiterated there would be no actual mining, and such a decision would likely be years into the future after “lengthy environmental review and permitting.”
In other, non-bureaucratic words: It’s paralysis by analysis for the project.
These cancelled mining projects and jobs would have been done consistent with U.S. safety and environmental standards. Instead, China will reap the benefits of the Biden-Harris cancellation and Walz’s complacency.
Beyond concern for negative environmental impacts, some reports have found that foreign sourced minerals are mined using child forced labor. From a national security purview, this anti-development approach is equally damaging as U.S. reliance on foreign-sourced minerals continues to grow. Specifically, for the minerals buried in abundance at the Twin Metals mine, the U.S. is over 50% import reliant for nickel, 79% reliant for platinum, 76% reliant for cobalt, and 37% reliant for copper.
Those who have seen Walz work up close, including Republican Rep. Pete Stauber, have sounded the alarm on the consequences of his anti-mining, anti-energy policies. Under his watch Minnesota electricity costs have skyrocketed for residents.
For businesses, it’s even worse. Minnesota now boasts the highest industrial electricity prices in the Midwest.
Walz’s folksy appearance aside, he has embraced California-style climate zealotry to the extreme. He signed his state up for “100 percent carbon free electricity by 2040” which is estimated to cost billions of dollars, double electricity prices by 2034, lead to blackouts and kill jobs.
He also wants to ban gas-powered vehicles in the process.
Walz’s aggressive, anti-development approach, especially on energy and the environment, mirrors that of failing socialist nations. It is no wonder Minnesota has experienced significant downfalls under his leadership.
Regardless of how the media portrays him, they cannot erase his record of selling out the workers of Twin Metals mine to the liberal Left.
Mandy Gunasekara served as chief of staff to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)
Daily Caller
‘Almost Sounds Made Up’: Jeffrey Epstein Was Bill Clinton Plus-One At Moroccan King’s Wedding, Per Report
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Former President Bill Clinton personally asked to bring Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as guests to the Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s 2002 wedding, a move that unsettled Clinton’s own aides, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Clinton requested permission to include Epstein and Maxwell at the royal wedding in Rabat despite neither having any official relationship with the Moroccan royal family, the Post reported. Sources told the outlet that Clinton’s request was viewed internally as inappropriate and has quietly circulated in Democratic circles for more than two decades.
“[Clinton] brought them as guests to a king’s wedding. I mean, it almost sounds made up,” one source familiar with the matter told the outlet. “How many times in your life have you been invited as a guest of a guest at a wedding?”
As a nonprofit, we are dependent on the generosity of our readers.
Please consider making a small donation of any amount here.
Thank you!
Clinton traveled to Morocco with Epstein and Maxwell aboard Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” according to the Post. Chelsea Clinton attended separately, and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton remained in Washington due to her schedule.
“[Former First Lady] Hillary [Clinton] was in the Senate, so she couldn’t go. Chelsea very much wanted to go, and the president very much wanted to go,” a second person told the outlet. “The idea that they would take [Epstein] was a head-scratcher. But nonetheless, the Clinton office moved forward and made this request … to bring these two guests, and that’s what happened.”
Once in Rabat, Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell were seated with King Mohammed VI during the black-tie wedding dinner, sources said. At one point, Chelsea Clinton requested a group photograph that included her father, Epstein and Maxwell.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for sex trafficking conspiracy and related offenses. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Their crimes were not publicly known at the time of the wedding.
The Clintons continue to downplay the extent of their past relationship with Epstein, maintaining that they cut off contact with him in 2005, three years before he pleaded guilty to state sex crimes in Florida.
Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña previously told the outlet that Clinton took four trips aboard Epstein’s jet between 2002 and 2003 and denied that Clinton ever visited Epstein’s private island or residences.
“I don’t know how many times we need to say there was travel more than 20 years ago before he was cut off. Apparently, we need to one more time. But nice try,” Ureña said, according to the outlet.
Neither of the sources quoted by the New York Post said they believed Clinton was aware of Epstein trafficking or sexually abusing children, but did say the ex-president is downplaying his former links to both Epstein and Maxwell.
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Both Bill and Hillary are scheduled to give depositions in January to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about their ties to Epstein. The Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Clintons in August, and Committee Chairman James Comer said that if the Clintons didn’t appear for depositions scheduled for Dec. 17 and 18 or arrange to appear for questioning in early January, then contempt charges would be pursued.
Photos released by Oversight Committee Democrats in December show Epstein with prominent figures, including President Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Steve Bannon.
The Department of Justice is expected to release a new trove of documents related to the Epstein investigation Friday.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
I’ve written frequently here in recent years about the financial fiasco that has hit Ford Motor Company and other big U.S. carmakers who made the fateful decision to go in whole hog in 2021 to feed at the federal subsidy trough wrought on the U.S. economy by the Joe Biden autopen presidency. It was crony capitalism writ large, federal rent seeking on the grandest scale in U.S. history, and only now are the chickens coming home to roost.
Ford announced on Monday that it will be forced to take $19.5 billion in special charges as its management team embarks on a corporate reorganization in a desperate attempt to unwind the financial carnage caused by its failed strategies and investments in the electric vehicles space since 2022.
Cancelled is the Ford F-150 Lightning, the full-size electric pickup that few could afford and fewer wanted to buy, along with planned introductions of a second pricey pickup and fully electric vans and commercial vehicles. Ford will apparently keep making its costly Mustang Mach-E EV while adjusting the car’s features and price to try to make it more competitive. There will be a shift to making more hybrid models and introducing new lines of cheaper EVs and what the company calls “extended range electric vehicles,” or EREVs, which attach a gas-fueled generator to recharge the EV batteries while the car is being driven.
Dear Readers:
As a nonprofit, we are dependent on the generosity of our readers.
Please consider making a small donation of any amount here.
Thank you!
“The $50k, $60k, $70k EVs just weren’t selling; We’re following customers to where the market is,” Farley said. “We’re going to build up our whole lineup of hybrids. It’s gonna be better for the company’s profitability, shareholders and a lot of new American jobs. These really expensive $70k electric trucks, as much as I love the product, they didn’t make sense. But an EREV that goes 700 miles on a tank of gas, for 90% of the time is all-electric, that EREV is a better solution for a Lightning than the current all-electric Lightning.”
It all makes sense to Mr. Farley, but one wonders how much longer the company’s investors will tolerate his presence atop the corporate management pyramid if the company’s financial fortunes don’t turn around fast.
To Ford’s and Farley’s credit, the company has, unlike some of its competitors (GM, for example), been quite transparent in publicly revealing the massive losses it has accumulated in its EV projects since 2022. The company has reported its EV enterprise as a separate business unit called Model-E on its financial filings, enabling everyone to witness its somewhat amazing escalating EV-related losses since 2022:
• 2022 – Net loss of $2.2 billion
• 2023 – Net loss of $4.7 billion
• 2024 – Net loss of $5.1 billion
Add in the company’s $3.6 billion in losses recorded across the first three quarters of 2025, and you arrive at a total of $15.6 billion net losses on EV-related projects and processes in less than four calendar years. Add to that the financial carnage detailed in Monday’s announcement and the damage from the company’s financial electric boogaloo escalates to well above $30 billion with Q4 2025’s damage still to be added to the total.
Ford and Farley have benefited from the fact that the company’s lineup of gas-and-diesel powered cars have remained strongly profitable, resulting in overall corporate profits each year despite the huge EV-related losses. It is also fair to point out that all car companies were under heavy pressure from the Biden government to either produce battery electric vehicles or be penalized by onerous federal regulations.
Now, with the Trump administration rescinding Biden’s harsh mandates and canceling the absurdly unattainable fleet mileage requirements, Ford and other companies will be free to make cars Americans actually want to buy. Better late than never, as they say, but the financial fallout from it all is likely just beginning to be made public.
- David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Trump DOJ seeks to quash Pfizer whistleblower’s lawsuit over COVID shots
Alberta introducing three “all-season resort areas” to provide more summer activities in Alberta’s mountain parks
Trump admin wants to help Canadian woman rethink euthanasia, Glenn Beck says
Growing Alberta’s fresh food future
-
Business2 days agoOttawa Pretends To Pivot But Keeps Spending Like Trudeau
-
International2 days agoBondi Beach Shows Why Self-Defense Is a Vital Right
-
Censorship Industrial Complex2 days agoHow Wikipedia Got Captured: Leftist Editors & Foreign Influence On Internet’s Biggest Source of Info
-
Crime1 day agoBondi Beach Survivor Says Cops Prevented Her From Fighting Back Against Terrorists
-
Automotive1 day ago
Ford’s EV Fiasco Fallout Hits Hard
-
Energy2 days agoLiberals Twisted Themselves Into Pretzels Over Their Own Pipeline MOU
-
Frontier Centre for Public Policy20 hours agoCanada Lets Child-Porn Offenders Off Easy While Targeting Bible Believers
-
Crime2 days agoThe Uncomfortable Demographics of Islamist Bloodshed—and Why “Islamophobia” Deflection Increases the Threat