Republicans Keep Invoking Teddy Roosevelt. The Roosevelt Family Keeps Pushing Back.
"It is now time for all of you to get in the arena with him," four descendants of the late president wrote in a letter to GOP senators.
History has a funny way of repeating itself.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly invoked America’s conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt. He called himself an “unapologetic admirer” of the 26th president and pledged to “create a conservation stewardship legacy, second only to Teddy Roosevelt.”
In early 2018, one year into Zinke’s tenure, I interviewed Roosevelt’s great grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, while I was working at HuffPost. He told me many in the Roosevelt family were angry that Zinke kept name-dropping their ancestor to misrepresent his own public lands record. “When he says he’s going to live up to the legacy of [Teddy], he’s not doing it,” Roosevelt IV told me at the time. In a second interview in late 2018, shortly before Zinke resigned under a cloud of ethics scandal, Roosevelt IV declared that Zinke’s “bad angels won out.”
Fast forward to today. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has spent his first year following Zinke’s playbook, making similar comparisons between the Trump administration and Roosevelt. “President Trump’s energy dominance can be America’s big stick,” he said during his confirmation hearing in January 2025, referencing a 1900 letter in which the 26th president said to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Roosevelt IV and several other descendants of the late president came forward this month — again, one year into Trump’s term — to condemn the GOP’s attempt to use a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act to rescind a 20-year mining ban in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. The move would pave the way for a foreign-owned mining giant to develop a copper and nickel mine on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a crown jewel of public lands in the Midwest.
In a Feb. 6 letter to senators, Roosevelt IV and three other descendants of America’s 26th president called the move “diametrically at odds with the conservation legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt” and said it “sets a very bad precedent for other public lands.”
Roosevelt protected more than 230 million acres of federal land.
“TR was active in preserving our greatest wilderness terrain on both the East and West coasts — it became one of the greatest enduring legacies of his life,” they wrote. “It is now time for all of you to get in the arena with him.”
The New York Times first reported on the letter Monday. “It’s not just this administration — it’s the GOP collectively that is not as concerned about conservation as it should be,” Roosevelt IV told NYT reporter Maxine Joselow.
House Republicans, led by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), voted last month to overturn a Biden-era moratorium on mining in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, which sought to protect the Boundary Waters from the risk of downstream pollution. The Senate was initially expected to take up the resolution last week, but the vote was delayed — a sign that Republicans may not yet have enough support to pass the measure.
As Public Domain recently reported, current and former Trump administration officials have played a key role in the effort to green light mining next to the iconic wilderness. Kate MacGregor, deputy secretary of Trump’s Interior Department, sent a letter to Congress last month effectively submitting the mining withdrawal for review under the CRA. Zinke, a self-proclaimed “Roosevelt guy” who promptly misattributed a quote to his hero upon reentering Congress in 2023, helped whip House colleagues to vote for Stauber’s legislation to roll back the Biden-era protections. During a fiery speech on the House floor ahead of that vote, Zinke painted himself an expert on what would be a “good mine, a good project.”
Meanwhile, Twin Metals, the company behind the mining project, has paid $260,000 to The Bernhardt Group, a lobbying firm founded last year by former Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, to advance its priorities in Washington, D.C.
The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
In their letter, Roosevelt’s descendants asked Senators to honor the late president’s conservation legacy as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday.
“As [Theodore Roosevelt’s] Presidential Library formally opens in Medora, North Dakota on Independence Day, three pillars of TR’s life will take central stage: leadership, conservation, and citizenship,” they wrote. “It’s one thing for politicians to say they believe in these three pillars, and it’s quite another thing to act that way. We humbly submit it would be hard to gift America a more meaningful fourth pillar — one that better unites these three aspects of his legacy — than a huge enduring present in the form of a permanently protected Boundary Waters.”
A few days after the Roosevelt family sent their letter, Burgum again invoked their ancestor in a press release announcing that the Make America Beautiful Again commission, which Trump created last year and Burgum chairs, had launched a strategy to “champion conservation.”
"President Trump is a visionary for our country just like President Theodore Roosevelt,” Burgum declared in a statement.
I love not noticing that I've been waiting for a good story about a particular issue until I read one and feel it scratch an itch. Thanks, guys.
Makes me sick to see his name taken in vein and misused as such! I interned at Salt River Project (we were incorporated by TDR's Reclamation Act) and my love for lands and natural resources came from that experience so this is specifically grating to me!