June 10: U.S. mine permitting takes 7–10 years; Canada does it in two

Jun 11, 2026

Highlights

🏗 Permitting: Twenty-seven reforms to unblock America’s critical minerals supply chain

🗽 Immigration: Cutting H-1B visas screened out the most talented workers, not the least

🧪 Science & Innovation: Universities can’t afford to patent their own federally funded inventions

🏛 State Capacity: Rules were supposed to constrain authority; they made people unaccountable instead

Twenty-seven reforms to unblock America’s critical minerals supply chain
Policy Reforms to Unleash Domestic Critical Minerals Mining and Processing—Mitchell Kerman, John Wagner, Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Mary Scales & Seth Kanter (Idaho National Laboratory)
U.S. mine permitting takes 7–10 years, compared to 2–3 in Canada and 1–2 in Australia. This report proposes 27 reforms across six areas that could cut timelines by 60%: permitting deadlines, environmental review streamlining, mining law modernization, interagency coordination, processing capacity, and workforce development. The biggest gap isn’t mining itself but the near-total absence of domestic refining and processing capacity.
Massachusetts is building a one-stop shop for clean energy permits
A Ray of Hope? Massachusetts’ Renewables Permitting Reform—Maria Carolina Gutierrez (Natural Resources & Environment)
Massachusetts’s 2024 Climate Act created a consolidated local permitting process for small clean energy projects, with mandatory prefiling meetings, site suitability scoring, and streamlined timelines. Draft regulations require community engagement before developers can apply—an attempt to move faster without cutting out local input.

Massachusetts is forcing towns to zone for apartments near transit and surviving legal challenges
All Aboard the Housing Train: Massachusetts’s MBTA Communities Act and the Future of Zoning Policy in New England—Zachary Holmes (Suffolk University Law Review)
The MBTA Communities Act requires 177 municipalities to zone for multifamily housing within a half mile of transit stations. Despite fierce local resistance—including a lawsuit by the town of Milton—the state’s highest court upheld the mandate while striking down the original compliance guidelines as improperly promulgated. Other New England states facing similar crises may look to this model.

Cutting H-1B visas screened out the most talented workers, not the least
The Unintended Selection Effects of Cutting the H-1B Quota—Chad Sparber, Kevin Shih, Francesc Ortega, Giovanni Peri & Anna Maria Mayda (VoxEU/CEPR)
When Congress cut the H-1B cap, the policy disproportionately kept out the highest-ability foreign workers rather than marginal ones. Firms did not hire more Americans to replace them, suggesting the cuts reduced the talent pool without producing domestic labor market gains.

Rules were supposed to constrain authority; they made people unaccountable instead
Stupid Rules: Reducing Red Tape and Making Organizations More Effective and Accountable—Natasha Hamilton-Hart (book)
When decision-makers are hemmed in by procedures, they acquire immunity from real responsibility as what the book calls “accountability sinks.” Drawing on comparisons between developed democracies and Southeast Asian governance systems, the argument is that restoring discretionary authority to decision-makers is the precondition for both accountability and getting things built.
The government built two of the world’s best information platforms but is now gutting them
Beyond the Library of Congress: The Federal Library Ecosystem as Democratic Information Infrastructure—Nancy E. Weiss (Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law)
Federal libraries do more than store books. PubMed gives the world free access to biomedical research that accelerates scientific progress; the Marrakesh Treaty framework makes published works accessible to people with print disabilities. Both are products of federal library infrastructure embedded in the government’s design since its founding. Yet the current administration is trying to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Library of Medicine has faced deep cuts to staff and operations.

Universities can’t afford to patent their own federally funded inventions
Protecting Federally Funded Intellectual Property with Federal Funds: A Direct Cost Proposal for Academic Invention—Paul R. Sanberg, Sethuraman Panchanathan, Anthony J. Hopen & Kristi B. Bjugstad (Technology and Innovation)
Federal grants cover publication fees as a direct cost, but patent filing and prosecution costs are generally unallowable unless the grant requires conveying title to the government, which almost none do. A typical patent application costs around $11,000, comparable to publishing fees on a standard NIH R01. Making patenting an optional budget line item would push researchers to consider commercialization during the planning stage and relieve chronically understaffed university technology transfer offices.

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