House Democrats tried to learn during a June 25 hearing how uranium ended up on a Trump administration list of minerals deemed critical to national security and the economy, a move that could speed up uranium mining in sensitive parts of the West.
To Democrats, uranium shouldn’t have been on the list because it doesn’t meet the ground rules for inclusion laid out in the 2017 executive order that authorized the list.
Under the order, a mineral must have uses other than fuel, must be vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, and must serve an essential function in the ...