Monday February 24, 2025
E&E News —
President Donald Trump in recent days has relied on a White House policy shop — the Council on Environmental Quality — to take a sledgehammer to what’s known as the “Magna Carta” of environmental laws.
The Nixon-era office swiftly moved to scrap almost five decades’ worth of its own environmental rules aimed at implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, handing the job off to hundreds of federal agencies.
At the center of that contentious policy shift is a looming vacancy, one that conservatives say should quickly be filled by someone who wants to aggressively promote Trump’s plans to boost energy production and speed up the federal permitting process.
“If they’re sincere about wanting permitting reform, they need some really bloodthirsty person in CEQ,” said Myron Ebell, the former director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Ebell led the incoming Trump administration’s EPA transition team in 2016. “They need somebody who isn’t always trying to split the difference,” Ebell said of the potential CEQ leader.