Senators should vote no and send negotiators back to write a bill that builds fast and builds right. Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flikr
November 9, 2026 (Boston, MA) – Senate lawmakers were expected to take up a vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA). The permitting bill weakens environmental protections and limits the ability of communities to prevent projects that could harm public health and the environment.
Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) President Brad Campbell released the following statement in response:
“Federal permitting needs a major overhaul, one that reduces needless and sometimes endless delay and stops the Trump administration’s unlawful blockade of affordable clean energy.
“But this backroom deal isn’t that overhaul, and the revisions don’t go nearly far enough to address deficiencies in the first version. The bill includes some sensible reforms to speed energy development. But it pairs them with new (and at times conflicting) rules that maintain a veneer of federal safeguards while in fact stripping the power of federal agencies, states, tribes, and communities to identify and prevent serious harm to health and the environment. It narrows environmental review, limits the remedies when that review falls short, and makes unlawful approvals harder to stop.
“We need a permitting system with firm deadlines that unlocks cheaper, reliable clean energy and good paying jobs, not a system that can never say ‘no’ to projects that sacrifice Americans’ health and household budgets at the altar of fossil fuel and data center developers. Senators should vote no and send negotiators back to write a bill that builds fast and builds right.”
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