Climate science, policy, politics, and action
Full Committee hearing entitled “American Resilience: Examining the SBA Disaster Assistance Program.”
Witness:
The Committee on Rules will meet Monday, December 15, 2025 at 4:00 PM ET in H-313, The Capitol on the following measures:
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires the federal government to consider the environmental effects of proposed major federal actions, ensuring federal projects and permitting decisions are informed and transparent to the public. NEPA also requires agencies to evaluate alternatives and public input, publicly disclose this information before taking final action, and provides a structure for coordinating permitting decisions. Committee Democrats believe any reforms to NEPA must prioritize a permitting process that is efficient, effective, and accelerates clean energy development and other essential infrastructure, while respecting communities, public input, tribal sovereignty, and tribal consultation. Since President Nixon signed NEPA into law in 1970, NEPA has democratized the federal decision-making process, giving the public a chance to influence actions that shape the environment in which Americans live, work, and play. The NEPA public input process has improved myriad projects in small and large ways. Members of the public, tribes, local governments, and organizations have suggested useful alternatives and identified critical errors in underlying data or analysis.1 Research shows that public comment plays a meaningful role in shaping federal decision-making, substantively altering decisions in 62 percent of analyzed environmental impact statements; federal decision-makers credited public comment as the reason every time they modified a mitigation plan or selected a new preferred alternative.
The NEPA process has measurably improved major infrastructure projects across the country. Examples include improving port operational efficiency (Choctaw Point Shipping Terminal, Alabama); lowering project costs, saving time, and reducing environmental disturbances (Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor, California); and improving public safety (I–70 Mountain Corridor, Colorado). To quote the Environmental Law Institute, ‘‘because of NEPA, bad decisions have sometimes been avoided and good decisions often have been made better.’’
Projects that experience significant NEPA delays are the exception, not the norm. According to numerous studies, when delays occur, the most common causes are agency capacity, including staff, expertise, funding, or technology; delays attributable to the project applicant, including waiting for information, changed plans of operation, and shifting priorities; and compliance with other laws and coordination with other permitting authorities, including state and local governments.5 Litigation can cause additional delays at the end of a permitting process, but NEPA-related claims are also rare compared to challenges under other statutes: a 2020 study found that only one in every 450 NEPA reviews is ever challenged in court.
NEPA and the permitting process have already undergone significant changes in the last two years, including statutory changes through enactment of the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), major regulatory changes during President Trump’s second term, and judicial changes related to the Supreme Court case Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. Notably, the FRA amendments added 1- and 2-year judicially enforceable timelines for completing an environmental assessment and an environmental impact statement (EIS), respectively.
Under the previous administration, Committee Democrats championed a historic investment of over $1 billion for federal permitting offices across several federal agencies through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This investment had a significant positive impact on federal environmental reviews and addressed legitimate, evidence-based challenges. According to the Biden administration, as of January 2025, the $1 billion investment, along with the utilization of other commonsense authorities, reduced the median time needed to complete an EIS (from notice of intent to final EIS) by 28 percent compared to the first Trump administration. The median time was 2.2 years in 2024, compared to 3.6 years in 2019.
Despite the clear benefits of adequately funding our agencies, Republicans want to continue slashing funding while avoiding proper analysis and community input. The recently enacted H.R. 1 rescinded unspent funds appropriated through the IRA, including for permitting staff and technology upgrades. Additionally, agency reductions-in-force and voluntary resignations appear to be having a significant impact on permitting, with project developers reporting significant frustration over the lack of agency staffing.
On top of these recent changes, the Trump administration’s regulatory chaos has created significant uncertainty in the permitting process, including by repealing the unifying Council on Environmental Quality NEPA regulations that helped provide consistent NEPA procedures across the federal government, and using a legally dubious ‘‘energy emergency’’ and other claims to skirt essential permitting requirements. Many of these actions are facing litigation, and the Trump administration is losing in court, adding to further uncertainty and chaos. In May, 15 state Attorneys General sued the Trump administration over its ‘‘energy emergency’’ declaration, arguing the order’s direction to bypass federal review is illegal. And in August, a federal judge ordered the Governor of Florida and the Trump administration to begin dismantling the socalled Alligator Alcatraz detention center based on their failure to conduct NEPA analysis and other violations of law.
Despite all these changes, the majority’s oversight of NEPA has been virtually non-existent, even while pursuing a major overhaul of this foundational law. Furthermore, they have not been able to answer basic questions raised by Democrats about the impact of the SPEED Act, should it become law. For example, the bill, as written, could waive NEPA requirements for all Department of Transportation federal highway projects, and the majority has not shared whether this is the intent or even whether they understand the potential impact. Before NEPA, federal highways cut through many low-income communities and communities of color, often without input from the people who lived there. NEPA was passed in part to stop that pattern by ensuring the federal government considers these environmental justice impacts and gives communities a voice before proceeding with major projects. Waiving this review is a shortsighted step in the wrong direction and will actively put vulnerable communities in harm’s way.
The SPEED Act further undermines NEPA by shifting its focus away from informed, balanced decision-making. The bill fundamentally restructures NEPA to reduce the number of projects that trigger NEPA review, narrow the quality of environmental analysis and public input that remain, and sharply limit judicial oversight, making it harder to challenge unlawful decisions and easier for polluters to advance harmful projects. Specifically, the legislation makes judicial review, the only avenue for accountability, essentially meaningless—both by preventing courts from stopping projects even when agencies rely on faulty or non-existent analysis and by imposing overly restrictive standing requirements that shut affected communities out of the process while possibly even lengthening and complicating litigation. The bill’s efforts to limit the scope of environmental analysis go far beyond Seven County Infrastructure. Its limitations on considering new science put blinders on agency analysis, leading to poor decision-making and likely increased legal risk. Democrats offered amendments to correct many of these problems, but they were all rejected by Republicans.
While undermining core safeguards for communities, the SPEED Act also fails to provide meaningful permitting certainty for virtually all clean energy projects that are currently being stalled or blocked by the Trump administration. I appreciate efforts to improve the legislation throughout the process, but the SPEED Act still does not address the many ways the Trump administration is stopping renewable energy projects from being permitted in the first place. Amendments added in hopes of ensuring previously enacted permits cannot later be revoked will still not make a meaningful difference for clean energy deployment in the first place, and do not help projects that have already had permits overturned by this administration.
H.R. 1366, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, would allow mining companies to claim an unlimited number of adjacent five-acre parcels of public land as mill sites to be used to support mining activities like processing and tailings storage. This bill would codify the mining industry’s priority right to as much public land as the industry wants, for as long as the industry wants it. H.R. 1366 could also give mining operators further statutory rights to priority usage of unclaimed public lands. The mining industry argues this legislation is necessary to clarify how mines may use public lands following the 2022 ‘‘Rosemont decision’’. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Rosemont copper mine in southeastern Arizona could not dump its mining waste on an invalid mining claim in the Coronado National Forest. Initially, the Forest Service had assumed that the Rosemont Copper Company had valid mining claims where it planned to dump its waste. However, the court found those wastedump claims invalid because they had not been shown to contain valuable minerals. Under the Mining Law of 1872, a mining claim is only considered ‘‘valid’’ when it contains valuable minerals, and only valid claims grant the claim holder broad rights to public lands under the mining law. The court reasoned that a company wouldn’t use an area with a valuable mineral deposit as a waste dump and, therefore, that the company could not have a valid mining claim on the proposed waste site. The mining industry argues they need the ‘‘fix’’ in this bill because the Rosemont decision has limited their ability to use mining claims for important ‘‘ancillary uses,’’ like dumping toxic waste on public lands. Mining claims come with certain benefits, including automatic priority use of public lands. Without a valid mining claim for those ancillary uses, a company can still request to use the public land as a waste dump; however, it must undergo the same multiple-use balancing determinations as other uses of public lands and may be less likely to be approved. There are also other methods for procuring land adjacent to a mine to use as a mining waste storage area, such as land swaps or buying private land, but the mining industry vastly prefers to use mining claims (or mill sites, described below) due to their ease and affordability. In 2023, the Department of the Interior Solicitor under President Biden issued an opinion referencing the many other options for procuring land for mining waste under current law, including mill sites. Mill sites were established under the Mining Law of 1872 to address this exact issue, allowing miners to use non-mineral lands adjacent to their mining claims for ancillary activities. However, the mining law specifies that mill sites must be land that is nonmineral in character, which can be difficult and expensive to prove, and does not specify how many five-acre mill sites are allowed per twenty-acre mining claim. A 1997 DOI policy limiting mill sites to one per claim sparked a long-running disagreement over the allowable number of mill sites, which appears to be settled now after a 2024 D.C. Circuit Court ruling that allows unlimited mill sites, although they need to be non-mineral in character, as defined by the Mining Law of 1872. Furthermore, the Rosemont mine has since bought private land to use for its mining waste, and other mines have located mill sites for ancillary uses in their mining plans of operations.
Nonetheless, the mining industry continues to push for a ‘‘legislative fix.’’ The industry argues that legislation would provide certainty for mining and mineral exploration, but there’s no evidence that any mines are currently being challenged because their use of mining claims or mill sites is being questioned.
The legislation would alter mill sites instead of directly changing the law on mining claims; specifically, it would allow mill sites on any public land—not just non-mineral lands—and would codify the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling allowing for unlimited millsites for ancillary activities. It would also direct claim maintenance fees from millsites to the Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation Fund established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Concerningly, H.R. 1366 defines mining operations in a way that significantly expands mining companies’ rights on public lands. The bill uses the current regulatory definition of mining ‘operations’: ‘‘all functions, work, facilities, and activities in connection with the prospecting, development, extraction, and processing of mineral deposits and all uses reasonably incident thereto including the construction and maintenance of means of access [. . .] whether the operations take place on or off the claim’’ (emphasis added). Effectively, this definition would mean that mining operators would not need a mining claim to conduct operations on public lands. Although this definition is currently in regulation, giving the term the full weight of statute and Congressional approval would further prioritize mining over other uses of public lands. While BLM and the Forest Service have traditionally held that they do not have the authority to deny a mine under the Mining Law of 1872, they have greater discretion to approve or deny rights-of-way for roads, electrical lines, water pipelines, and other related facilities. The previous Trump administration argued that mining companies do not even need a mining claim, much less proof of a valid claim, to be allowed to conduct mining operations or ancillary activities on open public lands without undergoing multiple-use balancing under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA)—effectively arguing against any discretion. Codifying this definition of operations would codify this interpretation of the Mining Law.
Additionally, the retention of a savings clause from the 118th Congress’s version of the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act further calls into question the drafters’ intentions. Although the 119th version does not focus on claim validity, it retains a clause specifying that nothing in this bill ‘‘limits the right of the Federal Government to regulate mining and mining-related activities (including requiring claim validity examinations [. . .]) in areas withdrawn from mining’’ under the mining laws, FLPMA, the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, or the Surface Resources Act. Clarifying that this bill does not limit the rights to regulate mining only in areas withdrawn from new mining claims reinforces that the bill’s definition of operations might limit the federal government’s ability to regulate mining under the listed laws outside of withdrawn areas.
H.R. 3616, the Reliable Power Act H.R. 3616, the Reliable Power Act, would restructure section 215 of the Federal Power Act to grant the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) veto authority over other agencies’ regulations in certain circumstances. It would effectively elevate FERC’s authority over all other agencies’ statutory responsibilities. The bill would grant FERC an unprecedented veto over other agency actions while FERC’s status as an independent regulator is in serious jeopardy.
The bill grants FERC power over other agency regulations if the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) notifies FERC that the bulk-power system is in a ‘‘state of generation inadequacy.’’ This would transform NERC from a neutral arbiter of the electric sector’s reliability into a political actor, deciding when to grant FERC additional powers. NERC’s annual long-term reliability assessments would become politicized, and Congress would delegate a decision about what powers FERC should have to an industry body.
Furthermore, while NERC and its staff do an admirable job with relatively few resources, their judgment is only as good as the data inputs they receive. This recently became an issue when NERC announced that it was reclassifying the footprint of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) from a state of high risk to a state of elevated risk later this decade, because MISO had mismatched data submitted to NERC. This episode highlights the sheer complexity of NERC’s reliability assessments, and, while useful, they are uncertain enough that they should not be used to trigger additional FERC authorities.
The majority’s report singles out the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2024 rule on New Source Performance Standards for new, modified, and reconstructed power plants. However, the majority can hardly argue that EPA lacked information on potential reliability impacts when crafting the rule. In April 2023, a year before the rule was finalized, FERC staff from the Office of Electric Reliability met with EPA staff regarding the rule. In November 2023, FERC held a technical conference that featured EPA’s then Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Joseph Goffman, as a witness and included an additional two panels from electric industry stakeholders discussing the rule. Following the technical conference, EPA noticed a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking, specifically soliciting comments on how the proposed rule related to electric reliability, and received over one hundred comments. Finally, then-FERC Commissioner James Danly himself submitted two comments on the rule to EPA.
The majority may dislike the conclusions EPA came to, but the agency’s process was undeniably thorough. EPA considered a number of factors, including electric reliability, and came to a conclusion of what was required of it under the Clean Air Act. Here, the majority seeks to upset the law without actually doing the hard work of amending agency authorizing statutes, instead simply giving the final call to FERC—an independent commission that ‘‘has no business promoting the policies of any one party or presidential administration.’’
Giving FERC the final call on regulations is even more concerning now than it was in prior administrations due to an exodus of staff over the previous nine months. The agency has lost 11 percent of its workforce since the Trump Administration took office, meaning that it will struggle to carry out its basic activities regulating the energy sector, let alone policing other agencies’ regulations. This amplifies fears that even at pre-Trump Administration staffing levels, FERC lacked the capacity to implement the bill, as the Committee heard from Dr. David Ortiz, then-Director of FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability in 2023 and FERC’s Acting General Counsel David L. Morenoff earlier this year.
At the Energy Subcommittee Markup, Rep. Diana DeGette (D– CO) offered an amendment that would have fixed this portion of the bill by preventing it from taking effect until FERC certified that it had sufficient staffing capacity to analyze all covered agency actions.10 That amendment failed on a party-line vote.
At Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi, Mississippi, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), will join the Mississippi NAACP State Conference to host community leaders to highlight how more frequent extreme weather is increasing out-of-pocket insurance costs for families and making it harder to obtain coverage along the Gulf Coast.
In Mississippi, rising sea levels, intensifying storms, more extreme precipitation, and increasing flood risk are making it harder for residents to afford and obtain homeowners’ insurance. Mississippi Today recently reported that the echoes of Hurricane Katrina and heightened climate risks have caused insurance companies in the state to raise rates or pull out of the marketplace altogether.
Last Congress, the Senate Budget Committee under then-Chairman Whitehouse obtained national county-level non-renewal data and published a first-of-its kind public dataset and accompanying staff report exposing instability in insurance markets across the country. According to the data obtained by the Budget Committee, Mississippi ranks sixth in the nation for insurance non-renewals. Mississippi insurance premiums are the seventh highest in the nation, averaging nearly $5000.
Nationwide, a dual crisis in insurance affordability and availability threatens to destabilize the entire US economy. Without access to insurance, more Americans will be unable to secure a home mortgage, which risks undermining property values and cascading into a 2008-style economy-wide shock. Earlier this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified to Congress that it will soon become impossible to obtain insurance or a mortgage in certain coastal and fire-prone regions of the country, and research has estimated that extreme weather could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value by 2055 due to insurance pressures and shifting consumer demand from the highest-risk places.
Ranking Member Whitehouse’s trip to Mississippi will be the latest in a series of visits to communities that are on the front lines of the insurance crisis. He has previously met with residents in North Carolina, Texas, and Florida.
Mary Mahoney’s Old French House
110 Rue Magnolia
Biloxi, MS 39530
Full committee hearing to receive testimony on legislation under the committee’s jurisdiction.
If you have any questions concerning the hearing, please contact Annabelle Huffman with the Committee staff at [email protected]. If you have any press-related questions, please contact Matt VanHyfte at [email protected].
On Thursday, December 11, 2025, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bills:
Witnesses:
Full committee hearing for testimony from members of Congress on legislation under the committee’s jurisdiction.
The purpose of this hearing is to continue the Subcommittee’s focus on consolidating Federal agencies and selling public buildings. The hearing builds on the March 2025 hearing about implementing the public buildings reforms passed last Congress.
Witnesses:
This year, we’ve seen the Trump Administration weaken federal agencies and programs that protect workers’ rights, mass fire federal employees, and launch unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties. But there has also been inspiring resistance. Unions and labor leaders have been at the forefront of resistance: defending the right to unionize, protecting immigrant workers, and advocating for the students, patients, and communities they serve.
Special guest:
Speakers:
On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled “Abuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act by Environmental NGOs.”
Witnesses:
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 allows litigants who win cases to protect endangered species to collect litigation costs (Section 11(g)(4)).
The Equal Access to Justice Act of 1980 authorizes attorney fees to individuals and businesses that win cases against the U.S. Government, but eligibility requirements apply to individuals ($2 million net worth) and businesses ($7 million net worth). On the other hand, there are no requirements applied to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Right-wing anti-environmental organizations like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation advocate for limiting the practical application of the Endangered Species Act by limiting these awards to environmental organizations.
Legislation has been introduced, such as the Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act of 2025 (H.R. 180), to impose such limits.
Subcommittee markup.
Items to be considered:
The legislative hearing on most of these bills was on September 16th.
The proposed FENCES Act would let states escape having EPA designate an area as “nonattainment” for a national ambient air quality standard by blaming ambient air quality exceedances on sources outside their borders or outside the country — even though residents are indisputably breathing unhealthy air.
The Clean Air and Economic Advancement Reform (CLEAR) Act would make several changes to the Clean Air Act, including amending section 109(d) to extend the current NAAQS review cycle from five years to 10 years; section 109(b)(1) to allow consideration of attainability when choosing among a range of air quality standards that are protective of human health and the environment; section 110(c)(1) to provide states the opportunity to address concerns in a State Implementation Plan (SIP) submission before a Federal Implementation Plan is issued; and section 1825 to eliminate certain demonstration requirements in a SIP to promote increased technological innovations in control technologies. The legislation also includes provisions similar to H.R. 6387 concerning how certain events including fires, drought, and heat, are considered as part of the NAAQS process and H.R. 6409 concerning how non-attainment areas are classified as severe or extreme for ozone or as serious for particulate matter, and sanctions are imposed for implementation plan deficiencies under section 179.
The Clean Air Act section 319 allows states to petition EPA to exclude air pollution caused by “exceptional events” from EPA’s consideration in determining whether an area is violating a national ambient air quality standard. The proposed FIRE Act (H.R. 6387) would revise the definition of “exceptional event” to explicitly include prescribed fires undertaken to reduce the risk and severity of wildfires. The bill also would make other changes designed to make it easier for states to demonstrate that an ambient air quality standard violation resulted from an exceptional event. The proposed bill is unnecessary because EPA’s regulations already establish criteria for prescribed fires to be treated as “exceptional events.” More importantly, the proposed bill would put public health at risk by relaxing the required demonstration a state must make for an ambient air quality standard exceedance to be disregarded due to it being caused by an exceptional event. Such lax criteria for exceptional events would contravene the statutory principle in Clean Air Act section 319 “that each State must take necessary measures to safeguard public health regardless of the source of the air pollution.”
The Clean Air and Building Infrastructure Improvement Act (H.R. 4214) amends section 1097 require EPA to concurrently publish regulations and guidance for implementing a revised NAAQS and prevent the new or revised standards from applying to preconstruction permit applications until the Administrator has published such final regulations and guidance. It also clarifies that nothing in the subsection eliminates the obligation of a preconstruction permit applicant to install the best available control technology and lowest achievable emission rate technology, and clarifies that nothing in the subsection limits the authority of a state, local, or Tribal permitting authority to impose more stringent emissions requirements pursuant to a state, local, or tribal law than NAAQS. The legislation also provides that the 2024 PM2.5 standard shall not apply to the review and disposition of a preconstruction permit application if a permit application is completed on or before the date of promulgation of the final designation of an area; or a public notice of a preliminary determination on a draft permit is provided within 60 days after the date of final designation of an area.
The so-called “New Source Review Permitting Improvement” Act (H.R. 161) would essentially eliminate NSR for emissions-increasing changes made to our nation’s largest industrial sources.
The proposed “Air Permitting Improvements to Protect National Security” Act (H.R. 6373) would authorize the President to exempt proposed large new or modified semiconductor manufacturing facilities and facilities that extract, process, refine, or mill a “critical mineral” from the requirement to “offset” the new air pollution they will cause with air pollution reductions within the same airshed.
Clean Air Act section 309 grants EPA authority to review and comment on the environmental impact of (1) legislation proposed by any Federal department or agency, (2) newly authorized Federal projects for construction and certain other major Federal agency actions, and (3) proposed regulations published by any Federal department or agency. The proposed “RED Tape” Act would eliminate all of EPA’s section 309 authority except for its authority to comment on proposed legislation.