The White House on Wednesday started to unwind the Trump administration’s changes to the nation’s environmental permitting rules.
The new rulemaking is the first of two sets of changes that, taken together, would restore the National Environmental Policy Act to its pre-2020 state, and in some cases go further. Environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers have been clamoring for the Council on Environmental Quality to undo the Trump-era changes since President Joe Biden took office.
Industry groups have broadly preferred the Trump-era changes because they push agencies to make permitting decisions faster, and in many cases make it easier to obtain permits. ...