Trump Moves to End Federal Environmental Permitting Tug-of-War

President Donald Trump effectively ended a long-standing fight over federal environmental permitting rules on the first day of his administration, vaporizing the rules altogether instead of parrying Biden-era changes with changes of his own.

In so doing, Trump appears to fulfill a long-standing Republican goal of speeding up the permitting process, paring the timelines down “from seven years to maybe six months,” said Marcella Burke, former deputy solicitor for energy and natural resources at the Interior Department.

But opponents say the Monday executive order will further destabilize the climate, endanger communities’ water and air, fracture the ...