• Restoring common sense to environmental reviews.

Congressman Hageman has pinpointed the need to take a common sense approach to environmental management.

In her column released this week in the The Wyoming Round Up (July 27, 2025), she accurately summarized a system that is “misinterpreted, misapplied and misused.”

I stand in full support of Rep. Hagemans’s analysis.

Here is the Congresswoman’s summary –

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Restoring Common Sense to Environmental Reviews

On Tuesday, the House Natural Resources Committee held an oversight hearing on NEPA, focusing on the urgent need to restore common sense to the permitting process.

Originally enacted in the early 1970s, NEPA was intended to be a procedural safeguard—ensuring that project developers considered potential environmental impacts when evaluating siting, construction, etc. Over time, however, NEPA has been misinterpreted, misapplied, and misused, becoming a tool to delay, obstruct, block, or force the cancellation of critical infrastructure and energy projects across the country.

Today, NEPA is routinely weaponized to stall the very projects that support a modern economy and society: pipelines, energy facilities, housing developments, roads, railways, defense installations, and more. These delays increase costs, create uncertainty, and jeopardize economic growth and national security.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has recently stepped in to clarify the law’s intended scope, Congress must also act. We need to ensure that radical environmental groups and activist judges can no longer misuse NEPA as a political tool to block projects based on ideology rather than law.

I remain committed to advancing meaningful NEPA reforms that will cut red tape, restore balance, and provide certainty for builders, developers, and communities across the country.

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Let me conclude as we consider the importance of the energy infrastructure of Wyoming and this nation.

What happened Monday morning?

A significant new trade agreement was made with the European Union, noted by the administration as “the biggest deal ever made.”

Speaking in Scotland on Sunday, President Trump reported tariffs will be at 15 percent for European goods.

EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen responded, the agreement will “rebalance” trade between the two partners.

Trump added, the European Union will purchase 750-billion dollars worth of energy and agreed to invest another 600-billion dollars in the U.S.

The deal ends months of uncertainty surrounding trade with America’s largest trading partner.

Note the amount directly related to energy.