A July 20 letter that U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber and others in Congress signed demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hold Canada accountable for wildfire smoke under the U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement was a masterclass in political hypocrisy. It takes profound cynicism to weaponize an international treaty over cross-border wildfire smoke while leading a charge to dismantle environmental protections, scientific safeguards, and tribal treaties here in Minnesota.

Stauber’s legislative record exposes a glaring double standard that places foreign corporate interests above the health and heritage of Minnesotans. He complains about unmanaged air pollution from our neighbors while executing maneuvers like overturning the 20-year moratorium on toxic sulfide-ore copper mining. By pushing for projects like Twin Metals, which would be directly upstream from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, he willingly is risking America’s most-visited water wilderness with the catastrophic threat of acid mine drainage.

Furthermore, his “national security” justification for pushing for this mining seems fraudulent. The Twin Metals project is owned by Antofagasta, a Chilean conglomerate with established processing deals with state-owned Chinese smelters. Because the U.S. lacks the domestic infrastructure to refine raw sulfide ore, Minnesota’s copper likely would be shipped to China, refined there, and sold on the open global market to the highest bidders. That isn’t national security; it’s an America-last policy that threatens to poison our watersheds for foreign profit.

Finally, Stauber’s actions openly trample on tribal sovereignty by disregarding the 1854 Treaty of LaPointe and the inherent subsistence rights of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe to hunt, fish, and gather safely on ancestral lands.

You cannot demand international accountability under a clean-air agreement while aggressively working for something that could poison our own world-class wilderness. Minnesotans see through the double standard.

Brian Chizek

Moorhead, Minn.

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