The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management has finalized a set of recommendations that would overhaul the way it permits energy exploration and other activities on public land by streamlining environmental reviews, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
A White House official confirms with NPR that Kathleen Hartnett White’s controversial nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality is being withdrawn.
One of the most embarrassing political flops of 2017 was Donald Trump’s nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White, a longtime fossil-fuel advocate, to direct the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Her confirmation hearing was a disaster, captured for posterity on YouTube. While she made it out of committee on party lines, the full Senate declined to consider her nomination as part of a bipartisan deal.
The White House has drafted a proposal to scale back environmental requirements in an effort to make it easier to construct roads, bridges and pipelines across the country as part of an infrastructure plan that President Trump could release as soon as next week, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
For over a year President Trump promised to rebuild America’s infrastructure. While the details of his program have not been fully disclosed, it appears that rolling back environmental regulations will be at its core. Rolling back those rules, the President believes, will speed up “the painfully slow, costly and time-consuming process of getting permits and approvals to build.”