Karen Budd-Phalen, a senior Home Office official, has financial links to the controversial Tucker Pass organisation. lithium mine in northern Nevada, a project the Trump administration worked to accelerate during its first term. In recent months, the administration has acquired a stake in the mine and the mine's parent company.
After an inexplicable delay Public domain And High Country News received Budd-Phalen's financial disclosure earlier this month detailed her family's extensive land holdings. Among them is Home Ranch LLC, a Nevada farming operation worth more than $1 million. Nevada business search database Home Ranch LLC is shown, with Frank Phalen listed as manager in February 2022. Frank Phalen is also the name of Karen Budd Phalen's husband.
In November 2018, shortly after Karen Budd-Phalen joined the first Trump administration as a top Interior Department legal official, Home Ranch LLC agreed to sell water rights to Lithium Nevada Corporation, the company developing the Tucker Pass mine, for an undisclosed amount of money, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. innings. The document names Frank Phalen.
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Home Ranch also appears in planning documents which Lithium Nevada submitted to federal regulators during Trump's first term. A monitoring plan for Thacker Pass from July 2021 notes that the company intended to use existing water wells owned by Home Ranch LLC to “monitor the potential impacts of reduced productivity” from its mining operations.
The water purchase agreement and other documents raise questions about potential conflicts of interest. Budd-Phalen was appointed in March to serve as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's deputy, a position that does not require Senate confirmation. She also served as a senior lawyer at the Department of the Interior during President Trump's first term.
It was during this previous tenure in government that her official calendar lists a meeting on November 6, 2019, where Budd-Phalen was to “lunch with Lithium Nevada.”
In 2019, Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of Canadian miner Lithium Americas, sought speedy approval for its Thacker Pass mine in northern Nevada. In the final days of the first Trump administration, that's exactly what she got. In January 2021, the Bureau of Land Management approved mine project, which includes approximately 5,700 acres of public land.
The $2.2 billion open-pit mine project has drawn fierce opposition from local tribes and environmentalists who say it threatens water resources, endangered species and sacred cultural sites. Tucker Pass, known among the Paiute Shoshone as Pihi Muhuh, was the location of Massacre in 1865 of at least 31 Paiute people..
Budd-Phalen was thought to lead BLM during Trump's first term, but resigned as director when she learned that she and her husband would have to sell their shares in the family ranches to avoid a conflict of interest, she said Fence post in 2018.
Since returning to power, Trump and his team have again worked to advance the project as part of a broader effort to increase U.S. production of critical minerals. In September, the Trump administration made a deal with Lithium Americas to obtain a 5 percent stake in both the Tucker Pass mine and the company in exchange for a loan from the Department of Energy.
Budd-Phalen worked primarily behind the scenes at the Department of the Interior. Little is known about what issues she has focused on since returning to the sprawling agency. Notably, Interior officials have not yet released its ethics agreement, which would detail any prohibited companies or projects.
“Did she have any oversight of the environmental review process for Tucker Pass? That's a big question,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a water conservation group in Nevada. “If she did not recuse herself, it would be contrary to the impartial decision-making that Americans expect from government officials.”
