I used to spend my nights in the glow of molten metal. Inside the aluminum smelter, the air was thick with heat that wrapped around you like a heavy coat you couldn’t take off. Lightning cracked inside the pots as electricity tore oxygen from alumina, leaving behind the glowing, silver stream of raw liquid aluminum — the metal that built everything from airplanes to transmission lines.

We turned raw earth into something strong and lasting. And today I’m calling on our leaders to bring that work, and those good jobs, back to America by reinvesting in primary aluminum production, because I know what it looks like when those jobs disappear.

I saw it firsthand when the gates of Magnitude 7 Metals shut for good in 2024 in Marston, Mo. I walked out with a pink slip in my pocket and decades of experience suddenly put on hold. It wasn’t just me — hundreds of us lost our livelihoods, and a whole community lost its anchor.

The grocery store, the barber shop, the gas station on the corner — they didn’t just lose customers, they lost neighbors. Primary, or raw,........

© The Hill