This bill would cancel a 2014 law that requires the U.S. Forest Service to hand over Oak Flat, a 2,400-acre area in Arizona's Tonto National Forest, to a foreign mining company called Resolution Copper. Resolution Copper is controlled by two major international mining corporations—Rio Tinto (55%) and BHP (45%)—with China's government owning a significant stake in Rio Tinto and being the primary buyer of both companies' minerals. The bill argues that allowing this mining operation would harm America's interests in several ways: it would extract U.S. copper resources and send them to China rather than keeping them domestic, it would strengthen China's control over global copper supplies, and it would weaken U.S. national security by enriching foreign entities.

Beyond national security concerns, the bill highlights serious environmental and cultural impacts. The mining operation would create a crater two miles wide and over 1,000 feet deep, consuming 250 billion gallons of groundwater over 40 years—enough water to support 180,000 people annually. This massive water extraction would cause the ground to sink by over 4 feet in some areas and would redirect water from the East Salt River Valley, which is already experiencing severe drought. The bill also emphasizes that Oak Flat is sacred ancestral land to Native American tribes who were forcibly removed from the area in the 1880s, and it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The bill points to Rio Tinto's history of environmental destruction and human rights violations around the world, including the intentional destruction of a 46,000-year-old sacred Indigenous site in Australia.

By repealing the 2014 law, this bill would permanently protect Oak Flat from mining by withdrawing it from all mining claims and mineral leasing. The Arizona State Land Department has also opposed the mine, warning that groundwater depletion would cause irreversible damage and cost Arizona billions of dollars in lost public education funding and development.