Trump Set to Downsize Environment Office, Unless Courts Do First

Permitting changes that took the Biden administration years to establish are suddenly up in the air—both because of mounting legal challenges and an anticipated scale-down of the White House office that oversees the rules.

Under President Joe Biden, the Council on Environmental Quality has turned into a muscular policy shop with a broad portfolio, spanning environmental justice, clean energy deployment, the transition to green construction materials, ecological conservation, federal sustainability, and more.

Biden’s CEQ chair, Brenda Mallory, has also become a prominent spokesperson for his White House’s agenda, frequently appearing at high-profile events like the UN’s annual climate gathering, COP, to spread the administration’s message.

But once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, CEQ is likely to see a sharp reduction in its mission, profile, and staffing, according to eight former White House officials familiar with the office.

Most of the former officials expect CEQ to revert to something like the far more limited role it played in Trump’s first term, when it was primarily focused on rewriting rules under the National Environmental Policy Act to make environmental reviews and permits happen faster.

That tracks with Trump’s recent promise of more permitting reforms, writing Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that any person or company investing at least $1 billion “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

CEQ’s Legal Challenges

This time, CEQ might not even have to work on unwinding the Biden-era permitting rules, because the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently ruled in Marin Audubon Society v. FAA that the agency doesn’t have the authority to even issue regulations. If that ruling stands, it could roll back CEQ’s existing NEPA rules and absolve the office of having to issue new ones—leaving the agency with even less to work on.

The Marin Audubon decision is also now at the heart of a different case before the US District Court for the District of North Dakota, Iowa v. Council on Envtl. Quality, in which 21 states are alleging NEPA rule changes by Biden’s CEQ are an overreach. In light of the D.C. Circuit decision, the parties have been instructed to file new briefs by Friday.

On Dec. 10, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, exploring whether federal agencies must look at a project’s potential effects when making permit decisions under NEPA.

The justices strongly suggested the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overreached in requiring the US Surface Transportation Board to consider the indirect impacts of a proposed railway as part of a NEPA analysis.

In response to the arguments, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said her group hopes the court will provide a clear test that lower courts and agencies can use to demarcate the scope of agency analyses.

“NEPA has become weaponized over time to severely delay or halt energy projects, no matter how protective they are,” Sgamma said.

Staff Cuts

Regardless of the legal authority the office retains, all the former officials who spoke with Bloomberg Law—who requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the next administration—said they expect Trump to sharply cut CEQ’s staff.

More than 100 staffers are currently listed at the agency, some in areas like environmental justice, renewable energy, and equity that the Trump team will likely de-emphasize, if not be outright hostile toward. In previous administrations CEQ’s staffing has been as low as 10 or 12.

“CEQ has fluctuated in size and power across administrations, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was made smaller,” said Karen Hanley, a former CEQ official.

But the agency could still be involved in policy areas like energy innovation, greenhouse gas guidance, and the use of artificial intelligence for NEPA modernization, said Hanley, now a managing consultant at Trinity Consultants. In Trump’s first term, CEQ also had a hand in lower-profile actions like exploring the oceans and putting the US in the international One Trillion Trees initiative, under then-Chair Mary Neumayr.

The office isn’t likely to get cut altogether, despite the vows by Trump allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to axe federal offices and programs they see as wasteful or inefficient. The office can’t simply be canceled because it was established by an act of Congress, and its budget is comparatively low at $4.6 million.

Former White House officials said CEQ remains a useful tool that wields considerable influence among federal agencies, giving the White House little reason to shelve it.

“I have yet to see somebody give money or power back to Congress when there’s the opportunity to use it for their own purposes,” said John Cossa, a former official with the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council and now managing consultant at Trinity Consultants.

“And CEQ has a lot of cachet with the other agencies; it’s just another lever that the president and the White House can use to influence the actions of all the agencies,” Cossa said.