President Donald Trump is seen in front of Mt. Rushmore as he and first lady Melania Trump attend South Dakota's Independence Day fireworks celebrations at Mt. Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota, July 3, 2020
Congressional Democrats have opened an investigation into the mining company Energy Fuels after its CEO and chairman bought thousands of shares of the company’s stock just days before President Donald Trump downsized the neighboring Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.
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The Denver-based company operates White Mesa Mill, the last conventional uranium processing site in the nation, which sat about a mile from the Bears Ears boundary before Trump slashed the monument by 90 percent last month.
On July 7, 2026, CEO Ross Bhappu bought 74,000 shares of Energy Fuels, the largest insider purchase of stock in the company’s history, according to a news release issued by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee. The trade bumped Bhappu’s ownership to 41 percent. Board chair Bruce Hansen acquired 4,000 shares the following day.
Less than a week later, Trump removed 1.24 million acres from Bears Ears National Monuments — making the land available again for mining. The day after Trump’s move, the Bears Ears Commission, a coalition of five tribal nations, issued a statement saying, “The decision weakens protections for a living cultural landscape and sacred ancestral homeland that has been cared for by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial and is a major setback to one of the nation’s most extraordinary models of collaborative management of public lands between Tribal Nations and federal agencies.”
Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Maxine Dexter, the ranking Democrat from Oregon on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, announced Monday that they had opened an investigation into the company.
“We understand that monument boundaries were redrawn in a way that could benefit Energy Fuels,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Bhappu.
A spokesperson for Energy Fuels said company leadership was aware of the letter and takes it seriously.
“The Company is unaware of any evidence supporting claims of wrongdoing in the referenced letter and strongly rejects any suggestion that the Company or its executives engaged in any improper conduct,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement Wednesday. “The White Mesa Mill has never been located in the Bears Ears National Monument, Energy Fuels holds no properties, mining claims, or economic interests in the monument, and we have not actively advocated for any changes to the monument with the current Administration.”
The lawmakers are demanding communication between Energy Fuels executives and federal officials, along with the company’s lobbying contracts. The company said in its statement that it follows federal, state, and local regulations to protect communities and the environment.
“The White Mesa Mill is one of the most highly regulated mineral processing facilities in the United States,” the company spokesperson wrote, “and plays a critical role in strengthening domestic supply chains.”
Documents show Energy Fuels pressured the first Trump administration to shrink Bears Ears in a way that would benefit the company in 2017, just months before Trump reduced the monument originally established in December 2016 by President Barack Obama. President Joe Biden restored the monument’s boundaries in October 2021.
Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill lies less than a mile east of Bears Ears’ former boundary, and the monument’s sandstone deposits include both uranium and vanadium. The company announced late last month that it had broken ground on an expansion of the mill to produce heavy rare earth materials used in data centers along with the automotive, energy, and robotics industries.
At the same time, the second Trump administration has been making a concerted push to encourage more domestic mining of critical minerals. The Department of Defense issued a $725 million loan to Energy Fuels on June 18 to support developing rare earth elements. In an investor presentation filed in July with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Energy Fuels noted “strong government support” as one of its competitive advantages. Then, last week, president Trump announced a $3 billion investment in the mining of critical minerals and the development of battery projects.
While some minerals, like lithium and nickel, are used to produce clean-energy products and uranium is used for the production of nuclear energy, the Trump administration describes its rush for domestic production as a matter of national security. The coalition of five tribal nations and environmental advocates, meanwhile, have asserted the White Mesa Mill is not a good neighbor. The company faces accusations that it secretly transported radioactive material through tribal lands and that the material it stores poses a risk to water quality and public health in water-strapped southeast Utah.
“Energy Fuels cannot credibly claim to be a responsible operator while the nation’s last uranium mill functions like an unregulated, bargain-bin waste dump on the doorstep of an Indigenous community,” Democratic lawmakers wrote in their letter to the company CEO. “Instead of respecting the Tribes for whom Bears Ears is sacred, you appear to be enriching yourself from their devastation.”
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.