Mining executives bought stock in their own firm days before Trump shrank Bears Ears

Filed 1w ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Hidden Agenda

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jean Fouquet · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

House Democrats have opened an investigation into Energy Fuels after CEO Ross Bhappu bought 74,000 shares — the largest insider purchase in company history — on July 7, 2026, days before President Trump cut Bears Ears National Monument by 90 percent. Board chair Bruce Hansen bought 4,000 more shares the next day, and the boundary change opened land near the company's White Mesa Mill to mining again.

Representatives Jared Huffman and Maxine Dexter are demanding communications between Energy Fuels executives and federal officials, plus lobbying records. The Bears Ears Commission, representing five Tribal Nations, called the monument reduction a major setback to collaborative land management.

Energy Fuels says it holds no claims inside the monument and has not lobbied the administration for changes, calling the accusations groundless.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

The wonderful thing about a coincidence this exquisite is that no one has to prove anything: the timing just sits there, radiating innocence, like a cat next to an empty birdcage. We are asked to believe that the largest insider purchase in the company's history and the redrawing of a map arrived in the same week the way two strangers arrive at the same bus stop. Sooner or later somebody will produce the emails, and the only surprise will be how bored the participants sounded while writing them.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Hidden Agenda · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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