How one White House council is fighting to end ‘regulatory reign of terror’

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Katherine Scarlett told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the “regulatory pendulum” and “excessive” CEQ regulations have burdened the United States for “far too long.”

The CEQ announced Wednesday that it confirmed the official removal of the CEQ’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations, following President Donald Trump’s day-one directive and a February 2025 interim final rule. NEPA is a key environmental law that requires agencies to account for environmental impacts ahead of project development and permitting, though some analysts argue it burdens the energy sector with litigation and is in need of reform.

The Council has now paved a way for federal agencies to reform their NEPA procedures, according to CEQ, at a time American energy demand is climbing due to onshoring of manufacturing and the expansion of artificial intelligence. Scarlett told the DCNF that some of these agencies have not updated their NEPA guidelines in decades.

“For far too long, the regulatory pendulum, and the added burden of excessive CEQ regulations and litigation over their interpretation, have prevented meaningful NEPA reform for Federal agencies,” Scarlett told the DCNF. “President Trump’s action to return CEQ to its core statutory mission fixed that, reducing the burdens of NEPA compliance and opening the door for Federal agencies to modernize their permitting procedures to ensure efficient and timely environmental reviews.”

“This is really a NEPA reset, and we’re trying to go back to the baseline of what the statute requires. … We really want to break through that red tape and allow projects to move through the process more smoothly with less duplicative requirements and endless and endless rounds of review,” Scarlett told the DCNF.

The CEQ was established by NEPA in 1970 and is within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Scarlett previouslyworked for the CEQ as the Special Assistant during the first Trump administration and was confirmed as the 13th Chairman in September 2025.

“In this Administration, NEPA’s regulatory reign of terror has ended,” Scarlett said in a statement Wednesday. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, CEQ acted early to slash needless layering of bureaucratic burden and restore common sense to the environmental review and permitting process. The Trump CEQ is putting the American people first by cutting red tape that has held back growth of the U.S. economy and refocusing its attention on ensuring the certainty needed in the permitting process to invest in American infrastructure. Renewing our energy and other infrastructure will lead to job creation, energy dominance, economic growth, and better environmental outcomes.”

The Trump administration contends that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive, calling for regulatory reform while touting conservation wins. The administration has also sounded the alarm over the American power grid, with one Department of Energy analysis finding that the U.S. could face up to 100 times more blackouts by 2030 if reliable energy sources are retired without sufficient replacements.

Under Scarlett’s previous tenure at CEQ, she witnessed how projects can be delayed through permitting problems.

The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County Supreme Court unanimously held that a lower court’s broad interpretation of NEPA effectively stalled a vital rail project and ruled that narrowing the scope of NEPA is appropriate, which the CEQ noted is a prime example of how overly expansive interpretations of NEPA can unnecessarily delay critical infrastructure.

“Our goal at CEQ and in this administration is to avoid [project delays],” Scarlett told the DCNF. “We’re very focused on base load, deployable, reliable energy in this administration and returning to our core statutory mission of consulting with agencies on their implementation of NEPA. That’s going to be our big focus, so that these projects that will provide a more reliable grid do not get held up in the in the NEPA and permitting process.”

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