Senator Cortez Masto is trying to orchestrate the largest congressional giveaway to the mining industry in a generation. Earlier this week, she introduced the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act. The bill is co-sponsored by our other Nevada Senator Jackie Rosen.

This bill would allow the mining industry to turn public lands into toxic mining-waste dumps. 

We have seen how historically the 1872 general mining law (a federal law) has served as protection and free-reign for the mining industry, to the detriment of the people, particularly Indigenous people.

In recent years, thanks to what is colloquially referred to as "the Rosemont decision", the judicial system has finally begun to interpret this antiquated law correctly, in a way that calls into question the ongoing irresponsibility and unchecked pollutive power of the mining industry.

This historical precedent just happens to offer some benefit to those on the frontlines of extraction.

Now that frontline communities are seeing some benefits from this decision, we see the mining industry rushing in trying to do damage control.

They seek to "reform" the 1872 mining law in a way that allows their practices to continue to go unchecked: they want to continue to dump their waste wherever they want to and make mining claims wherever they want to, with no oversight.

Yet when impacted communities and advocates rally for reform to benefit communities and ecosystems with the same urgency (like we have for decades), it continues to be an uphill battle.

Instead of answering the urgency of impacted communities, her constituents, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has been at the beck and call of the most toxic industry in the country and the state.

The industry has proven time and again that they have zero concern for the communities and ecosystems they disrupt, displace, and destroy.