Most people never work with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. These laws set procedures. They control how a federal agency makes a decision, and the public does not notice them until they fail. In the usual case, they force a federal agency to stop and look before it acts.

The agency must look at the effect of a project on the air, the water, the wildlife, and the land. It must look for a nineteenth-century townsite, a burial ground, or a sacred landscape in the path of the bulldozer. Then it must tell the public what it found, listen to the public, and put its reasons on the record.

Neither law forbids anything. An agency can complete a full environmental impact statement that records severe harm, and then approve the project. Agencies often do this. The power of these laws is the power of the record. The laws make an agency know the facts, disclose the facts, and defend its decision.

Between January 2025 and July 2026, the government rewrote much of that obligation. The changes came through several channels at the same time. That is one reason why they drew less attention than a single large repeal.

• One agency rescinded the government-wide regulations.
• A Supreme Court ruling narrowed the scope of the review.
• A second agency moved its regulations into an internal handbook.
• Emergency declarations compressed the review schedules.
• The historic preservation agency restructured its rules on a one-week schedule.

Each change is a technical adjustment on its own. Together they are the largest restructure of federal environmental review and federal cultural review since Congress wrote the laws.

The government-wide NEPA rules no longer exist

Congress passed NEPA in 1970. The law is short, and it gives a general command. The detail came from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). From 1978, CEQ issued binding government-wide regulations at 40 CFR Parts 1500 through 1508. Those regulations gave every federal agency the same vocabulary. They defined a major federal action, defined a categorical exclusion, and set out how to analyze alternatives and cumulative effects.

Two events changed this quickly. In November 2024, a divided D.C. Circuit panel decided Marin Audubon Society v. FAA. The panel held that CEQ never had the authority to issue binding NEPA regulations, and that an executive order cannot give that authority. No party raised or briefed the issue (Congressional Research Service, 2024). The full D.C. Circuit then refused to rehear the case, and the panel opinion stands.

On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14154 revoked Executive Order 11991. The 1977 order had told CEQ to write those regulations. CEQ published an interim final rule on February 25, 2025. The rule removed all of Parts 1500 through 1508 from the Code of Federal Regulations, effective April 11, 2025 (Federal Register, 2025). On January 8, 2026, CEQ made that interim rule final without change. CEQ again stated that it has no authority to keep binding government-wide NEPA rules (Pillsbury, 2026).

The result is that no common federal rulebook for environmental review remains. Each agency now writes its own procedures, and the law that it interprets is only a few pages long. The CEQ regulations existed to keep the agencies consistent. Consistency is now a matter of the discretion of each agency.

Interior moved its rules into a handbook

The Department of the Interior is the largest actor here. It manages about 500 million acres of public land. That work goes through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. On July 3, 2025, Interior issued an interim final rule that rescinded part of its NEPA regulations. The rule became final on February 24, 2026. The final rule rescinds more than eighty percent of the prior Interior NEPA regulations. Interior moved most of the rescinded text into a Departmental NEPA Handbook of Implementing Procedures (Federal Register, 2026).

The difference between a regulation and a handbook is important. A regulation goes through notice and comment, binds the agency, and a court can enforce it against the agency. An internal memo can change a handbook at any time, and courts are much less willing to treat a handbook as an enforceable obligation. The text is the same, but in its new place the text is less durable and less accountable.

In December 2025, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club sued in the Northern District of California. They argue that the interim final rule broke the Administrative Procedure Act, because no exemption from notice and comment applies to it. They also argue that Interior never explained why it reduced the opportunities for public participation (Paul Hastings, 2026). The court has not decided the case.

The Supreme Court narrowed what agencies must consider

On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court decided Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. It was the first substantive NEPA decision of the Court in about two decades. The case concerned an 88-mile rail line. That line connects the oil-rich Uinta Basin in Utah to the national rail network. The D.C. Circuit had vacated the approval of the Surface Transportation Board, because the environmental impact statement left out two effects. It did not analyze more oil drilling upstream in the basin, or more refinery work downstream on the Gulf Coast.

The Supreme Court reversed that decision, 8-0, and Justice Gorsuch recused himself. Justice Kavanaugh wrote for the majority that “the bedrock principle of judicial review in NEPA cases can be stated in one word: Deference.” The majority opinion also states that NEPA is “a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock.”

The Court held that the review of an agency must address the project in front of it. The review does not have to address the separate upstream and downstream projects that the project makes possible (Wilmer Hale, 2025). The Court also indicated that a NEPA defect may not justify vacatur of an approval. A court needs a reason to believe that a fuller analysis would change the decision of the agency.

This matters for climate analysis. A rail spur to an oil basin, a pipeline, or an export terminal has a small footprint of its own. Almost all of its environmental significance comes from the activity that it makes possible. Seven County holds that this activity is usually outside the scope of the review. As a matter of federal procedure, the greenhouse gas effects of fossil fuel infrastructure become the work of some other party. Often they become the work of nobody.

Reviews now take days

On January 20, 2025, the President declared a national energy emergency. On April 23, 2025, Interior put emergency permit procedures in place. The procedures apply to the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy. An environmental assessment usually takes about a year, and the new procedures complete it in about fourteen days. A full environmental impact statement usually takes two years, and the new procedures complete it in about twenty-eight days (Holland & Knight, 2025).

The same procedures set up an alternative way to comply with Section 106 for historic properties. The consultation process in 36 CFR Part 800 does not apply. Instead, a bureau notifies these parties:

• The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP).
• The State and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers.
• Each affected tribe or Native Hawaiian organization.

The bureau then gives a seven-day comment period.

Seven days is not enough time for a Tribal Historic Preservation Office to do the work. The office must read the project description, consult internally, compare the project against oral tradition and site records, and write a substantive answer. Seven days is enough time to acknowledge receipt. Your view of the purpose of the process decides whether this is a defect or a feature.

The legal risk is real. Agencies have used emergency procedures for floods and wildfires, which are discrete events with a definite end. An economy-wide policy condition with no end date is different. Practitioners note that the indefinite emergency and its procedures may themselves be rules that needed notice and comment (Arnold & Porter, 2025).

Categorical exclusions also expanded. Section 109 of NEPA, added by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, lets one agency adopt the categorical exclusion of another agency. Agencies have used this repeatedly since early 2025. The CEQ guidance of April 9, 2026 goes further. It drops the expectation of public comment before an agency establishes a new categorical exclusion. It requires only publication in the Federal Register (National Law Review, 2026).

A categorical exclusion states that a whole class of actions needs no environmental analysis. Agencies now decide what needs no examination, and they make that decision without public input. The decision about what to leave out is itself no longer examined.

Congress moves in the same direction. On December 18, 2025, the House passed the SPEED Act, H.R. 4776, by a vote of 221-196. The bill declares that NEPA is only a procedural law, and it tells courts to give substantial deference to agencies. It limits the remedies of a court mostly to remand with an explanation instead of vacatur. It also sets a 150-day limit on challenges to reviews of energy infrastructure (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2026). The Senate has not acted on the bill.

The ACHP moved to rewrite Section 106 in July

The most important development came in July 2026, and its schedule is difficult to read as an accident.

Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires a federal agency to consider the effect of its undertakings on historic properties. The agency must also give the ACHP an opportunity to comment. The regulations at 36 CFR Part 800 have organized that work for decades with a consultation model.

The agency identifies historic properties together with the State and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. The agency assesses the effects. The agency then negotiates mitigation in a Memorandum of Agreement, and the parties sign it. About 120,000 projects go through some form of Section 106 review each year (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2026).

In February 2026, the ACHP announced a review of those regulations. It cited long reviews, confusion about indirect and cumulative effects, and the burden on long linear projects such as transmission lines. A resolution in June set out a review process with 30-day and 60-day windows for Council members.

The ACHP abandoned that process. On July 17, 2026, the ACHP Vice Chairman sent a near-complete rewrite of Part 800 to the Council members. The Vice Chairman asked the members to vote by email, in an unassembled meeting, before 5:00 p.m. on Friday, July 24. That is one week later. The ACHP announced a public comment deadline of August 3 at the same time (NCSHPO, 2026). The vote decides whether the draft advances as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and it is the necessary step before the draft can become final.

The state and tribal preservation officers who read the draft report five changes.

Consultation becomes notification. Instead of step-by-step collaboration, the federal agency would prepare one Section 106 report and circulate it for comment at the end. The agency alone would decide whether Section 106 applies, which historic properties exist, what the effects are, and which mitigation is appropriate.

The list of consulting parties gets shorter. Local governments would lose their automatic consultation rights. Preservation organizations and members of the public would lose their status as consulting parties. Public comment would then depend on the discretion of the agency.

The definition of an undertaking narrows. Broad classes of federally connected actions would fall outside the review. These classes include some federal programs that states and local governments administer, and projects with limited federal involvement. The National Trust estimates that this change would exempt hundreds of billions of dollars in state projects and local projects.

Landscapes come out. The rule would no longer treat cultural landscapes and natural landscapes as historic properties. The analysis of adverse effects would narrow toward direct physical damage. The rule would give less weight to effects on views, on setting, and on other indirect conditions.

Mitigation becomes optional. A Memorandum of Agreement needs signatures from the consulting parties. The agency could replace it with a Memorandum of Decision that the agency issues alone.

The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO) voted no. Executive Director Ira L. Matt (Séliš) called the proposal “an affront to Tribal sovereignty.” NATHPO objects to the narrow definition of an undertaking, the exclusion of landscapes, and the reduced tribal participation. NATHPO also objects to the deletion of the text that recognizes tribal expertise and sovereignty. It objects to the narrow analysis of effects on sacred sites, and to the wider discretion of the agency (NATHPO, 2026). The National Trust for Historic Preservation also voted no. CEO Brent Leggs said the changes would “eviscerate the preservation of our shared civic and cultural heritage in the United States” (National Trust, 2026).

The provision on landscapes deserves attention. Tribal cultural significance often attaches to viewsheds, to topography, and to the relations between places. It often does not attach to one discrete structure that a survey map can flag. A rule that recognizes only buildings and archaeological deposits will fail to see the resources that matter most to tribes. A rule that recognizes only direct physical damage has the same result. The intent of the authors does not change that outcome.

The capacity problem

Rules are only half of the problem. At the same time, the offices that do this work lost much of their staff.

The National Park Service lost more than twenty-four percent of its permanent workforce after January 2025. It delivered about 1,000 layoff notices in 2025. The reductions in force targeted regional offices, cultural preservation staff, and resource protection staff (NPCA, 2025). About 5,000 employees of the Park Service, the Forest Service, and the BLM lost their jobs.

The Historic Preservation Fund pays for the State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, and Section 106 depends on those offices. The FY2026 budget proposed a cut of $158 million to the fund. The proposal left $11 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Providence Preservation Society, 2025). The FY2027 proposal cuts the fund by ninety-five percent. A Tribal Historic Preservation Office operates on about $104,000 a year, and it manages dozens of consultations at the same time.

This makes a closed cycle. Preservation offices with too little money respond slowly. Officials then cite the slow response as proof that the process is broken. The new rules bypass the offices that could not keep up, and the funding falls further. The delay is real, and the government made the delay.

What happens on the ground

The procedural changes are not abstract. Their consequences are already here.

On July 13, 2026, proclamations reduced two national monuments. Grand Staircase-Escalante went from about 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 acres. Bears Ears went from about 1.36 million acres to about 121,100 acres. The proclamations removed close to three million acres from monument protection. Bears Ears is now 8.9 percent of its former size.

The administration states that the Antiquities Act permits only “the smallest area compatible with” the protection of specific objects. It states that the earlier designations wrongly included landscape features and biodiversity (The White House, 2026). The proclamations also claim to end the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Commission. Five tribes proposed that monument and hold the place as sacred, and the Commission of tribal representatives helped to guide its management. Tribal representatives report that they received no consultation before the decision (Utah News Dispatch, 2026).

The position of the Native American Rights Fund is simple. The Antiquities Act lets a president declare a national monument, and the law says nothing about the removal of a declaration (NARF, 2026). Litigation is probable.

The BLM proposes to revoke the mineral withdrawal of 2023. That withdrawal closed about 336,404 acres around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to leasing and mining for twenty years. One alternative would permit leasing outside a five-mile buffer. The first review period was seven days. After objections, the BLM extended the period, and comments closed on July 29, 2026 (BLM, 2026).

Oak Flat covers about 2,400 acres east of Phoenix, and it is central to the religious practice of the San Carlos Apache. A congressional land exchange in March 2026 made Oak Flat the private property of Resolution Copper.

On July 14, 2026, the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries made a rule final. The rule rescinds the regulatory definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, and it takes effect on September 14, 2026 (Federal Register, 2026). The Supreme Court upheld that definition in 1995. The definition treated significant habitat modification that kills or injures wildlife as a prohibited take. After the change, the destruction of the habitat of a listed species is usually not a prohibited act on private land. Duties for Section 7 consultation on federal actions remain, which limits the change, but the reach of the take prohibition is much smaller.

The BLM rescinded the Public Lands Rule, which had put conservation beside grazing and extraction as a recognized use. In May 2026, the government revoked Executive Orders 11644 and 11989. Those orders had governed the management of off-road vehicles on public lands since the 1970s.

The case on the other side

It would be dishonest to present the reform effort as pure vandalism. Some of the complaints are legitimate. People who want to keep these laws have made the same complaints for years.

Environmental review does take too long in many cases, and the delay often has little relation to environmental protection. The Bipartisan Policy Center analyzed Section 106. At a Senate hearing in October 2025, industry, state, and tribal witnesses all identified agency delay as the primary bottleneck. They did not identify obstruction by preservation offices. A determination of property eligibility can require field surveys over several years, because almost any structure more than fifty years old is possibly eligible. One state with a fully digital review system completes ninety-eight percent of its reviews in seven days. States that depend on paper take much longer.

That analysis produced a reform package with five parts:

• Deadlines for consultation.
• More programmatic agreements for routine infrastructure.
• Exemptions inside existing rights-of-way.
• Payment to tribes for consultation work.
• $25 million a year to digitize cultural resource data.

Note what these items share. Almost every item makes the process faster because it gives the process better resources and better organization. Deadlines come with the money to meet them. Advance agreements with the parties, digital records, and payment for tribal expertise do the same. These reforms speed up the review and keep the information that the review produces.

The changes now in force take the opposite route. They gain speed because they reduce what an agency examines, who examines it, and what follows when the examination finds something. The Section 106 draft narrows the scope and removes consulting parties. At the same time, the Historic Preservation Fund loses ninety-five percent of its money. These two moves cut capacity first, and then they cut the duties that the capacity served.

There is also a serious argument about clean energy. Permit delay damaged clean energy infrastructure, and transmission lines, solar arrays, and geothermal projects need a faster review for decarbonization. That argument is correct as far as it goes. Two facts complicate it. The Interior emergency procedures define domestic energy around oil, gas, coal, and uranium. Federal support for wind and solar on public lands moved in the opposite direction over the same period. A permit system that is fast for extraction and slow for everything else is not a reform of permits.

What is lost

The deepest consequence is not the approval of projects. Agencies were always going to approve them. NEPA and Section 106 never had a veto, and agencies often proceeded over documented objections.

The record is the thing that is lost. When an agency must identify historic properties with the people who know them, that knowledge enters the file and stays there. When an environmental impact statement analyzes cumulative effects, someone must count them, and the count survives the decision. When a consulting party can sign or refuse to sign a Memorandum of Agreement, the refusal goes on the record. Decades of Section 106 compliance produced a large archaeological and historical record for the United States. Most of that record came as a byproduct of highway construction and pipeline construction, and nobody would have funded that work on its own.

One Section 106 report from the acting agency, circulated for comment at the end, does not produce that record. Landscapes fall outside the definition, and indirect effects fall outside the analysis. Nothing else will produce the record. A site that someone documents before its destruction survives as knowledge. A site that is destroyed without documentation is gone, and no later policy correction recovers it. The same is true for baseline environmental data, because a restored regulation cannot measure what a landscape held before the drilling.

Hold on to that asymmetry. Rules can change in both directions, and these rules changed in both directions before. Cultural resources and ecological resources move in one direction only.

What to watch

The ACHP vote closed at 5:00 p.m. on July 24. If the draft advances, the ACHP publishes it as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with a public comment period. The compressed schedule then becomes a strong argument in any later legal challenge. Comments on the revocation of the Chaco withdrawal closed on July 29. The challenge from the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club to the Interior NEPA procedures is pending in the Northern District of California. The rescission of the ESA harm definition takes effect on September 14.

Litigation over the monument reductions is probable. It will put a question to the courts that the Antiquities Act has never resolved. Does the power to create a monument include the power to undo it? The SPEED Act waits in the Senate.

If you want to act rather than watch, three simple points remain open to you:

• Public comment dockets are still open, and comments enter the administrative record. Parties win and lose APA challenges on that record.
• State Historic Preservation Offices and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices absorb this change. Congress controls their money directly through appropriations.
• Local landmark ordinances and state laws for environmental review work independently of the federal framework. In several states they are much stronger than it.

None of this replaces a federal process that works. It is what remains while the government rebuilds the federal process.

References

Arnold & Porter. (2025, April). Brave new world: Understanding the Department of the Interior’s new approach to emergency permitting procedures for energy projects. https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/blogs/environmental-edge/2025/04/doi-new-approach-to-emergency-permitting-procedures-for-energy-projects

Bipartisan Policy Center. (2026). National Historic Preservation Act: Permitting options for Congress. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/section-106-reform-permitting-options-for-congress/

Bipartisan Policy Center. (2026). What’s in the SPEED Act? https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/whats-in-the-speed-act/

Bureau of Land Management. (2026). BLM seeks input on proposed withdrawal revocation near Chaco Culture National Historical Park. https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-seeks-input-proposed-withdrawal-revocation-near-chaco-culture-national-historical

Congressional Research Service. (2024). Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Administration: D.C. Circuit challenges CEQ’s authority to issue NEPA regulations (LSB11260). https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11260

Council on Environmental Quality. (2025, February 25). Removal of National Environmental Policy Act implementing regulations. Federal Register. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

Department of the Interior. (2026, February 24). National Environmental Policy Act implementing regulations. Federal Register. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/24/2026-03708/national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

Fish and Wildlife Service & National Marine Fisheries Service. (2026, July 14). Rescinding the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act. Federal Register. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/14/2026-14195/rescinding-the-definition-of-harm-under-the-endangered-species-act

Holland & Knight. (2025, April). DOI implements unprecedented 14-day NEPA review process under national energy emergency EO. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/04/doi-implements-unprecedented-14-day-nepa-review-process

National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. (2026, July). July 2026 updates. https://www.nathpo.org/july-2026-updates/

National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers. (2026, July 20). The end of Section 106 as we know it? https://ncshpo.org/2026/07/20/the-end-of-section-106-as-we-know-it/

National Law Review. (2026). CEQ’s 2026 guidance expands use of NEPA categorical exclusions. https://natlawreview.com/article/ceq-issues-revised-guidance-categorical-exclusions

National Parks Conservation Association. (2025). Staffing crisis at national parks reaches breaking point, new data shows 24% decline in permanent workforce. https://www.npca.org/articles/9551-staffing-crisis-at-national-parks-reaches-breaking-point-new-data-shows-24

National Trust for Historic Preservation. (2026). Section 106 is under threat: What you need to know. https://savingplaces.org/stories/section-106-under-threat

Native American Rights Fund. (2026). NARF stands strong with tribes for Bears Ears National Monument. https://narf.org/cases/bears-ears/

Paul Hastings. (2026). Environmental groups challenge Interior Department’s new NEPA procedures. https://www.paulhastings.com/insights/phast-track-legal-insights-on-environment-energy-and-infrastructure/environmental-groups-challenge-interior-departments-new-nepa-procedures

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. (2026). CEQ finalizes rescission of NEPA implementing regulations. https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/ceq-rescission-nepa-implementing-regulations.html

Providence Preservation Society. (2025). Historic preservation offices, grant programs to lose all federal funding in Trump’s 2026 budget proposal. https://ppsri.org/historic-preservation-offices-grant-programs-to-lose-all-federal-funding-in-trumps-2026-budget/

Utah News Dispatch. (2026, July 14). “Zero consultation”: Tribal reps say they were left out of monument reduction decisions. https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2026/07/14/tribal-reps-say-they-were-left-out-of-monument-reduction-decisions/

The White House. (2026, July 13). Fact sheet: President Donald J. Trump modifies two national monuments, restoring sensible land management. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-modifies-two-national-monuments-restoring-sensible-land-management/

WilmerHale. (2025, June 9). Supreme Court decision in Seven County advances permitting reform. https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/insights/client-alerts/20250609-supreme-court-decision-in-seven-county-advances-permitting-reform