The “shiny new toy” Congress is using to break public lands

If you follow public lands news, then you’ve likely noticed that the past year has been filled with stories about the administration slashing important protections across the United States. Congress has also been taking part—sometimes working in partnership with the administration—using an obscure law: the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

Passed in 1996, the CRA requires that all federal agencies submit rules to Congress after they have been finalized. Upon receiving a final rule, Congress has a period of 60 legislative or session days to review and potentially overturn it through a simple majority vote on a resolution of disapproval. If the resolution passes both chambers of Congress, the rule in question is struck and the agency is forbidden from finalizing another that is “substantially the same.”

The CRA is highly controversial. Though it’s meant to function as a tool for Congress to review last minute rules enacted by outgoing administrations, in practice the CRA is being abused to shred through any agency decisions that the congressional majority takes issue with.

That is exactly the scene that is unfolding right now, as members of the thin Republican congressional majority are wildly axing established public lands protections and decisions that contradict their current agenda. Here is a survey of the destruction:

• A CRA resolution that would overturn protections for the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has cleared the House and is awaiting final vote in the Senate. If it passes, the resolution will open the doors to destructive mining that is all but certain to pollute the waters of the wilderness itself.
• Utah’s congressional delegation is expected to introduce a CRA resolution that would overturn the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument—possibly to clear the way for dangerous uranium and coal mining. This effort would also set the precedent that the CRA can be used to rollback monument management plans.
• Congress passed two CRA resolutions concerning the Arctic—overturning a leasing plan that included protections for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and an activity plan for the Western Arctic.
• Congress also passed CRA resolutions overturning management plans for Bureau of Land Management offices in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota—jeopardizing conservation designations, recreation permits and development permits.

To be clear, all of these actions are unprecedented. Mineral withdrawals, management plans and similar documents have never been considered “rules” for the purposes of the CRA in the past. This newfound weaponization of the CRA is a dangerous escalation in the anti-public lands agenda and sets a precedent that any existing action is fair game for shredding—no matter how established, popular and informed it may be.

With each new development in this relentless assault, the stakes are getting higher for public lands. Perhaps more than ever before, beloved public places across the country are at risk of being irreversibly lost to development. If the tide is not reversed soon, there will be little left for current and future generations.