The lede: Washington just made permitting the copper trade. Executive Order 14241 ("Immediate Measures To Increase American Mineral Production") named copper a critical mineral and put the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council to work fast-tracking mine approvals — the White House's Permitting Council has already added dozens of mining projects, including copper mines like Resolution Copper in Arizona and Lisbon Valley in Utah, to the FAST-41 transparency track that compresses years of environmental review into a fixed, published timeline. Faster permits mean new domestic supply arrives sooner and existing miners' expansion capex gets de-risked. That's a direct hit to the input cost of every company that has to buy refined copper by the ton — starting with the automaker building the most copper-intensive product in Detroit's history: the EV.