Trump Opens a National Park to Mining Trucks. Guess Who Bought Stock in the Company That Profits?

Donald Trump has ordered a 211 mile industrial road cut through Gates of the Arctic, a national park with no roads and no trails, because that was the entire point of it. This new road would be for mining trucks. You will never drive on it. At the end of it, a Vancouver company called Trilogy Metals is sitting on mineral claims with no way in and no way out. Without this road their copper stays in the ground forever. They have a hope and a press release. And apparently Trump on speed dial.The pitch is critical minerals and not being dependent on China. The mechanism is the Defense Production Act, the wartime law we used in the pandemic to build ventilators. Today it’s being used to buy stock.Because on the same day Trump reversed the denial, the federal government bought ten percent of Trilogy. Thirty five million dollars of your money, plus the right to buy more at a penny a share once the road is finished, plus a seat on the board. So the people deciding whether to build the road are holding stock that only pays out if they build it. That isn’t a conflict of interest. That’s a business model. The stock tripled before lunch. The deal closes today.The feds bought the stock. Alaska pays for the road. The state’s development authority puts that at three hundred fifty million. An independent study in January put it over two billion once you count maintenance and interest, and the state borrows that money by selling bonds. Alaska expects about a billion back in mining taxes. Of course Trump supports an infrastructure plan where the business plan is losing a billion dollars and calling it growth.The route crosses 2,932 streams and rivers. Not a fun fact. A damage estimate. Interior’s own review said this road would damage critical food sources for Alaska Native communities who have hunted and fished there for thousands of years. Not a hobby. Food. And the caribou herd is already down two thirds, so the fix is tear up the land haul trucks through what’s left.And the damage can’t be undone. The Bureau of Land Management denied the permit in 2024 for exactly those reasons. The food, the villages, the permafrost. Their scientists, their review, their answer. No. So Trump went looking for a workaround, and Alaska’s delegation had buried one in the 1980 law that created the park, a clause letting you appeal an agency’s no straight to the President. It sat there forty six years like a fire axe behind glass. He broke the glass, and every agency that said no had to turn around and say yes.The good news is the lawsuits are alive. Tanana Chiefs Conference has been fighting this since 2020, and ten more groups joined in January through Trustees for Alaska, the nonprofit law firm carrying the case. Court is where this road has been stopped before, so if you’ve got twenty bucks, that’s where it does the most good. And follow Will and Jim Pattiz at More Than Just Parks, about the only people still telling you it’s happening.Because cut that road and the land does not come back. Not in your life, not in your kid’s. Interior said so themselves. There is no putting it back.Sources: Follow More Than Just Parks https://trilogymetals.com/news-and-media/news/trilogy-metals-announces-strategic-investment-by-us-federal-government/https://alaskapublic.org/programs/alaska-economic-report/2025-12-11/to-ambler-mining-company-u-s-government-is-both-investor-and-regulatorhttps://www.newsminer.com/news/local_news/report-ambler-road-could-cost-at-least-2-billion/article_2734294c-b052-4203-84b0-0976866ab94e.htmlhttps://alaskawild.org/true-cost-of-ambler-road/https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/legal-filing-challenges-trump-approval-of-ambler-mining-road-through-national-preserve-2026-01-23/https://www.tananachiefs.org/tanana-chiefs-conference-condemns-decision-to-advance-ambler-road/ Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe