Ranking Member Huffman Statement on Trump’s Latest Attack on NEPA, Public Input

February 24, 2026

Washington, D.C. – Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) condemned the Department of the Interior’s final rule gutting National Environmental Policy Act procedures for public lands.

“The Trump administration’s final rule sharply limits the public’s ability to engage with decisions that affect public lands, which belong to every American,” said Ranking Member Huffman. “By weakening transparency and public engagement, this rule takes away the very safeguards that ensure public lands are managed in the public interest, rather than sold off to the highest bidder for private gain.

“This final rule makes it even easier for this administration to abuse emergency procedures under its unlawful so-called "energy emergency," eliminates the requirement for Interior to publish draft Environmental Impact Statements, and closes its eyes to climate and environmental justice impacts, among other erosions of the bedrock environmental law.

“NEPA protects not only the environment, but every person who enjoys and depends on safe, thriving ecosystems. Cutting them out of the process and fast tracking dangerous, polluting projects will make everyone worse off.”

Background

Signed into law in 1970, NEPA is a cornerstone of environmental protection and government transparency, ensuring that federal agencies evaluate the environmental and public health impacts of major projects before moving forward. In February 2025, the Trump administration rescinded the Council on Environmental Quality’s unified NEPA rules, directing agencies to issue their own versions.

On July 3, 2025, Interior and USDA issued separate interim final rules (IFRs) that severely limit public comment, eliminate draft environmental impact statements, and allow agencies to skip analysis of climate change, cumulative impacts, and environmental justice. The public was given just 30 days to comment on each.

In formal comments to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Ranking Member Huffman and fellow Natural Resources Committee Democrats blasted the Departments’ rushed and sweeping rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — calling it a “dangerous” effort to shut the public out of federal decision-making and greenlight polluting projects behind closed doors.

Today’s final rule largely adopts last summer’s draft. The draft cut close to one-sixth of the agency’s regulations implementing NEPA and rescinds more than 80 percent of Interior’s prior NEPA regulations.

This approach — with each agency adopting its own rules and regulations — is legally risky and will delay,?not?speed up, project delivery. Data shows that permitting times fell under the Biden administration after Congressional Democrats invested over $1 billion in agency capacity through the Inflation Reduction Act. That funding has since been slashed by the Trump administration.

###