The Inner Monologue

There was a time when political corruption was refreshingly straightforward.

A businessman wanted something from the government. He slipped an envelope across a desk. A politician did him a favor. Eventually somebody found the envelope, somebody went to jail, and Hollywood made a movie about it.

We have apparently evolved beyond such primitive arrangements.

Consider the Colosseum Mine in California’s Mojave National Preserve.

An Australian company, Dateline Resources, acquired this long-dormant mine in 2021. For years, the National Park Service’s position was pretty clear: You cannot simply restart a mine inside a national preserve based on paperwork approved in 1985, nearly a decade before the preserve even existed.

The Park Service repeatedly told Dateline that new operations required proper authorization. It ordered the company to cease operations. It demanded more than $200,000 for damage allegedly caused by unauthorized activity.

That sounds remarkably like government functioning normally.

Then America changed administrations.

Donald Trump returned to office on January 20, 2025.

On April 3, the National Park Service suddenly announced that Dateline’s old rights and operating plan remained valid.

On April 8, Trump’s Interior Department publicly announced that the Colosseum Mine could continue operating under its old Bureau of Land Management plan.

On April 14, the Park Service rescinded its previous cease-and-desist position and its demand for damages.

Three months.

Years of objections disappeared in three months.

Perhaps this was all perfectly legitimate.

That’s the wonderful thing about modern American influence: it frequently comes with enough lawyers, lobbyists, executive orders and official letterhead that nobody needs to pass an envelope anymore.

Dateline had lobbyists.

And not lobbyists vaguely advocating for the mining industry. Its federal lobbying disclosures described work concerning National Park Service issues at Mojave National Preserve, reaffirming the mine’s operating plan with the Bureau of Land Management and monitoring mining executive orders.

In other words, the company paid professionals in Washington to work on the precise government problems standing between it and the mine.

Again, lobbying is legal.

That sentence deserves to be embroidered onto a pillow and placed in every congressional office in Washington.

Lobbying is legal.

So is hiring former government insiders.

So is requesting meetings.

So is explaining to government officials why your particular commercial enterprise happens to be essential to national security.

And sometimes, amazingly enough, the government eventually comes around to your point of view.

By June 2025, Dateline director Stephen Baghdadi wasn’t arguing with lower-level Park Service employees anymore. He was meeting with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at Interior Department headquarters to discuss development of Colosseum.

That’s quite a journey.

One year you’re being told to stop damaging a national preserve.

The next you’re sitting with the Cabinet secretary responsible for America’s public lands discussing how important your mine is to America.

Only in this case, “your mine” belongs to an Australian corporation.

There is, importantly, something I cannot find.

I cannot find evidence that Dateline Resources simply wrote Donald Trump a giant campaign check and received a mine in return.

And that distinction matters.

A foreign corporation generally cannot legally contribute directly to an American presidential campaign anyway.

So this is not an accusation that Trump was bribed to reopen the Colosseum Mine.

It’s almost more depressing than that.

Nobody needs to prove a bribe for this system to stink.

The Trump administration openly made expanded domestic mineral production a priority. Interior’s own announcement approving Colosseum explicitly invoked Trump’s executive order seeking increased American production of critical minerals and described Colosseum as America’s second rare-earth mine.

There is a perfectly coherent policy argument behind that.

America depends dangerously on foreign sources—particularly China—for rare-earth minerals. Developing domestic supplies is a legitimate national-security objective.

Fine.

But national security shouldn’t be a magic phrase that causes environmental law to evaporate.

If this mine is genuinely important enough to reopen, then demonstrate that.

Validate the mineral claims.

Prepare a modern operating plan.

Conduct the environmental review.

Determine what protections are necessary.

Require the company to repair damage it caused.

Then make the decision.

Instead, according to the lawsuit challenging the government’s action, an operating plan approved when Ronald Reagan was president suddenly became good enough for a mining operation inside land Congress later designated as part of the National Park System.

The old paperwork wasn’t merely old.

Congress created Mojave National Preserve in 1994.

The mining plan dates to 1985.

We are apparently grandfathering mining operations into national parks based on documents written before they were national parks.

Four Democratic members of Congress subsequently complained that the 1985 plan covered different minerals, existed under different ownership and preceded creation of the preserve. They argued that the Mining in the Parks Act required both a mineral-validity examination and an NPS-approved operating plan.

The administration disagreed.

And Dateline got what it wanted.

That, increasingly, feels like the defining characteristic of government under Donald Trump.

Not necessarily the cartoon corruption of a suitcase stuffed with hundreds.

Something much more sophisticated.

Find a commercial interest that can be wrapped in one of the administration’s favored political narratives.

Energy dominance.

Critical minerals.

China.

National security.

Jobs.

Deregulation.

Then hire people who understand Washington.

Lobby the government.

Get access.

Get the right officials interested.

And watch regulations that looked terribly important yesterday become surprisingly flexible today.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are told that regulations are regulations.

Try building a garage six feet too close to your property line and explain to the zoning department that your garage is vital to American energy dominance.

See how that goes.

The most revealing part of the Colosseum story may therefore be that we haven’t found a giant Trump donation.

Because corruption isn’t the only thing citizens should worry about.

Access is power even when access is completely legal.

Most Americans cannot hire Washington lobbyists.

Most small businesses cannot arrange meetings with Cabinet secretaries.

Most citizens cannot transform their personal financial interests into questions of national security.

And most Americans certainly cannot get the federal government to reconsider several years of regulatory decisions within months of a presidential inauguration.

An Australian mining company apparently could.

Now a federal court has intervened in the dispute, which is precisely why independent courts matter. The litigation challenges whether Interior and the Park Service could legally reverse their previous position and allow mining to proceed without the reviews the challengers say federal law requires.

Maybe the Trump administration will ultimately prevail.

Maybe the courts will conclude Interior acted entirely within its authority.

That’s how the system is supposed to work.

But Americans should still ask a more uncomfortable question.

Not:

“Can you prove somebody was bribed?”

But:

“Would an ordinary American ever receive treatment like this from their government?”

Because that is the genius of the modern influence economy.

You don’t necessarily buy politicians.

You buy lobbyists.

You buy expertise.

You buy introductions.

You buy access.

You buy the ability to make your problem important to people powerful enough to solve it.

And if the resulting government decision happens to make your company enormously more valuable, well, that’s capitalism.

If the decision happens to reverse years of objections from career officials, that’s policy.

If environmental protections get pushed aside, that’s deregulation.

If the beneficiary is foreign-owned, that’s foreign investment.

If anyone complains, that’s politics.

And if a judge eventually says the government went too far, everyone solemnly announces that the system worked.

Perhaps it did.

But forgive me if I’m not comforted.

Because somewhere in the Mojave Desert sits an abandoned mine that America’s government spent years saying couldn’t simply restart.

Then Donald Trump became president.

The company had lobbyists.

The administration discovered a national-security imperative.

The objections disappeared.

The company’s director met the Secretary of the Interior.

And the bulldozers started moving.

Maybe every step was legal.

That’s supposed to make me feel better.

It doesn’t.