There are three ways to destroy an environmental law. You can repeal it outright (. You can withhold the funds needed to enforce it. Or (and this is the preferred method of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party) you can keep the law on the books but completely rewrite the machinery that makes it work.
The latest attack is the so-called “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026”.
Introduced on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, by a bipartisan collection of Senators (including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is usually a champion for the environment), this massive energy and infrastructure permitting reform package is being sold as a “commonsense” way to update America’s aging energy grid. But if you look closely at the bill you’ll find that in Title III it sneakily tries to dismantle the legal machinery of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
For decades, the ESA has been the gold standard of conservation law because it’s effective. When a federal agency approves a pipeline, a mine, or a massive industrial project that will bulldoze critical habitat, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and scientists have a mechanism to push back and sue the Government. Especially when agencies have ignored crucial science. The new “jobs act” doesn’t repeal the ESA, however it does strip away some of the the tools NGOs use to defend it.
Discover a project is harming the environment? You may be out of time to act
Under “jobs act”, the window to legally challenge a federal agency’s decision (specifically biological opinions under the ESA) is slammed shut just 5 months (specifically 150 days) after approval.
Think about how environmental damage unfolds during a project. It gets approved, and it takes some time for it to actually get started and underway. It can take months, years, even decades, for the actual impact of a project on wildlife and the environment to be apparent or proven by scientists. Under the current ESA rules, if new environmental damage comes to light later on, conservation groups can bring a court case to halt a project’s harmful activities.
However, under the “jobs act”, if you don’t discover ecological harm, or that the government has made a serious mistake in their environmental analysis and file a federal lawsuit within five months of the signature drying on the permit, you are entirely out of luck. The bill actively rewards developers for delaying the most destructive phases of a project until day 151. After that there is nothing that NGOs can legally do to halt the project.
Severing the link between NEPA and the ESA
Historically, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the ESA have operated almost as a team. NEPA forces the government to disclose environmental impacts, and those enforcing the ESA can use this information to ensure that the Government doesn’t drive a species to extinction. The “jobs act” mandates that ESA Section 7 consultations (consultations about whether a government-funded project impacts endangered species) must be finished by the time the NEPA document is completed, rushing agency staff to a decision without necessarily having all of the information about potential impacts.
Furthermore, the bill drastically slashes the statutory Section 7 consultation timeline by a third: to just 60 days. Considering this massively reduced timeline, coupled with how many US Government staff have been axed by the administration, this severely hampers the ability of the Government to properly assess the impacts of a project on endangered species.
Forcing the few remaining government scientists to rush through complex biological evaluations of endangered species in just two months is a recipe disaster. Rigorous environmental evaluations will be replaced with the quick rubber stamping of projects by harried government staff.
Limiting who can sue
Perhaps the most damaging blow to environmental accountability is how the bill narrows who is allowed to sue in the first place. The “jobs act” limits the right to bring a lawsuit strictly to individuals or groups who actively participated in the public comment period and who can prove direct, immediate harm.
Standardizing public comment windows to a rigid 45 to 60 days means grassroots organizations and underfunded conservation groups will easily be buried under the sheer volume of fast-tracked project notices. If a small NGO misses a single comment deadline on a dense, thousands-of-pages-long digital filing, they are legally barred from ever challenging that project in court.
Also, by rewriting the rules of judicial review, favor is shifted heavily toward “remand without vacatur”. This means that even if a court finds that an agency completely botched its wildlife assessment, the project is allowed to keep going while the agency fixes its paperwork.
By severely hampering the ability of NGOs to hold the government accountable, the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026” ensures that when bulldozers start moving forwards, imperiled wildlife will be left with no voice … and no time.
