In early 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order rescinding all National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations and instructed federal agencies to issue new procedures prioritizing “efficiency and certainty” in environmental reviews. The NEPA process has long been a procedural burden significantly slowing down the delivery of vital infrastructure improvements. Under this EO, agencies such as Departments of Energy, Defense, Agriculture, Transportation, and Interior began rapid revision of their agency‐specific NEPA procedures to streamline permitting timelines, remove duplicative analyses, and reduce administrative burdens. The Trump Administration’s NEPA initiative represents a decisive shift toward compressing environmental reviews for federal construction and energy projects.
On June 30, 2025, the Department of Transportation became the latest agency to unveil sweeping procedural updates—including Department wide rules that cut USDOT’s NEPA review timelines in half, unify review standards, enforce hard deadlines, broaden categorical exclusions, and centralize environmental procedures in one streamlined framework.
These changes come on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling on May 29, 2025, which held NEPA is a purely procedural statute and agencies are only required to consider immediate, direct environmental effects—not long term or indirect consequences.