Fact Sheet: President Trump Is Delivering Historic Permitting Wins Across the Federal Government

ACCOMPLISHING PERMITTING REFORM IN RECORD TIME:  Today, President Donald J. Trump delivered on his promise to fix a broken permitting system, ensuring that burdensome Federal environmental reviews cannot be weaponized to stall the growth of the American economy or halt energy infrastructure construction.

• The White House, through the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), coordinated a historic effort to dramatically reduce the burdens of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance across the Federal government so that America can get back to building again.
• In consultation with CEQ, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce (including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers updated their respective NEPA implementing procedures to  simplify this overly burdensome process and ensure efficient and timely environmental reviews.
• These historic reforms:
  • Implement deadlines and page limits on environmental reviews required under recent amendments to NEPA, in order to expedite infrastructure development and reduce costs.
  • Provide clarification that NEPA does not apply to every action that a Federal agency takes, but only to Federal actions where the agency has sufficient control and discretion to take environmental effects into account.
  • Ensure simple and expeditious processes to create categorical exclusions (CEs), adopt other agencies’ CEs to minimize repetitive NEPA analyses, and focus their attention on actions with truly significant environmental effects.

CUTTING UNNECESSARY RED TAPE: All three branches of the Federal government have recently directed reforms to the NEPA process: President Trump, in his Unleashing American Energy Executive Order; the United States Congress, in its BUILDER Act amendments as part of the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act; and the United States Supreme Court in its recent landmark decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County.

• NEPA directs all agencies to maintain their own, agency-level NEPA implementing procedures.
• Most of those procedures had not been modernized to reflect any of the recent reforms. Some agencies were still using outdated NEPA regulations from the 1980s.
• Under President Trump’s leadership, the endless cycle of regulatory back-and-forth and excessive environmental reviews that produced little benefit for the American people has come to a halt.
• Federal agencies are cutting unnecessary layers of bureaucracy in record time by implementing the unmistakable direction from all three branches of the Federal government. 

BUILDING ON PAST SUCCESS: The Trump Administration has taken decisive action to reform, modernize, and expedite the Federal environmental review, eliminating unnecessary delays that are holding back the growth of secure and reliable infrastructure projects across the Nation.

• On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed the Executive Order, Unleashing American Energy, which called for unleashing American energy dominance through efficient permitting.
  • The E.O. directed CEQ to provide guidance on implementing NEPA to expedite and simplify the permitting process – and propose rescinding CEQ’s regulations.
  • CEQ responded to President Trump’s direction by rescinding its NEPA regulations, creating a clear path for agencies to expeditiously reform their own NEPA procedures and allow America to build again.
  • President Trump’s action to restore CEQ to its core statutory mission of coordinating and consulting, providing guidance to Federal agencies as they revise their NEPA procedures, will ensure timely reviews and consistency across agencies and enable CEQ to coordinate this monumental deregulatory effort.