Over the past year, Republican leaders and the Trump administration have used a law known as the Congressional Review Act to advance coal mining in Montana, oil drilling in Alaska and copper mining in Minnesota, while attempting to roll back protections for national monuments in Utah.
The rarely used law gives Congress several months to rescind new federal regulations. Only in the past year has this system been used to overturn land management plans.
Conservationists say Congress is recklessly releasing detailed plans that were developed after years of research, public meetings and local collaboration. They worry that lawmakers’ intervention could upend long-standing systems governing hundreds of millions of acres of public land, potentially endangering endangered species and coal miners alike.
But some legal experts say the impact could be much broader than reducing protections to specific areas. By exercising review powers in a way they never thought applied to land management plans, lawmakers are casting doubt on the validity of well over 100 other such plans that were not submitted to Congress for review.
Challenges to these plans could create legal uncertainty for tens of thousands of leases and permits for oil and gas, mining, cattle grazing, logging, wind and solar farms, outdoor recreation, and more.
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“Using the Congressional Review Act[to cancel a management plan]is truly unprecedented and would have unintended consequences,” said Robert Anderson, a former Interior Department lawyer in the Biden administration. “If none of these management plans are legally implemented, there is a wide range of prohibited actions that could bring things to a screeching halt.”
Republicans have argued that Congressional action is needed to unwind President Donald Trump’s “energy domination” policies. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum frequently refers to public lands as “America’s balance sheet” and promises to increase profits by extracting more resources such as oil, minerals and timber.
Republican Representative Troy Downing, who sponsored a resolution to repeal Montana’s management plan, argued during consideration of the bill that Montana’s economy and energy needs depend on coal production.
“When the federal government acts recklessly, it’s Congress’s responsibility to step in and correct course. … The war on coal must end,” he said.
What is the Congressional Review Act?
The Congressional Review Act, signed into law in 1996, requires federal agencies to submit new regulations to Congress before implementing them. Congress would then have 60 business days to consider these regulations and potentially vote to repeal them.
If lawmakers reject a rule, federal agencies would be prohibited from creating new rules in “substantially the same form” unless Congress passes new legislation.
For two decades, the Congressional Review Act was rarely invoked. But during President Trump’s first term, Republicans used the system to overturn 16 regulations, including rules protecting rivers from coal mining pollution. Democrats used the law to roll back three Trump-era rules.
But in 2025, Congress and Trump revoked 22 Biden-era rules.
“It seems to be gaining popularity in Congress as a way to get a quick win to reverse what happened under the previous administration,” said Devin O’Dea, western policy and conservation manager for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, which has opposed efforts to open public lands for resource extraction. “What we’re concerned about is the long-term effects.”
Until recently, management plans for public lands were not considered subject to parliamentary review. Federal agencies have issued well over 100 such plans without submitting them to Congress. These documents guide the work of agency officials who oversee specific areas of land, often spanning millions of acres.
Created after years of public meetings and local feedback, it determines which landscapes will be leased for oil and gas drilling, protected from endangered species, opened to off-road vehicles, and used for a variety of other uses.
But last year, Republicans asked Congress’s nonpartisan advisory body, the Government Accountability Office, to confirm a sweeping new opinion on the Congressional Review Act. The office found that the specific management plan was subject to review because the land use decision was “predetermined policy,” and determined that the lawmakers’ questions opened a 60-day “clock” for review of the plan in question.
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“These plans require a very long deliberative process,” said Justin Muse, government relations director for climate and energy at the conservation nonprofit Wilderness Society. “These plans are very broad and multifaceted and address so many different things. This is a machete solution to what should be done with a scalpel.”
Republicans used this new tool to roll back plans to limit drilling and oil production on federal lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Meanwhile, House Republicans passed a bill in January that would overturn regulations that prevent mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, and now awaits a vote in the Senate.
And Utah Republican lawmakers are trying to overturn the management plan for the state’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Conservation leaders say the cuts are unprecedented.
“This is very surprising,” said Autumn Gillard, coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Intertribal Coalition, a group of tribal nations working to protect the monument. “[Resource management plans]are created as a set of advice points for land managers to consider when making decisions. It is not a direct set of rules.”
In Minnesota, advocates for the Boundary Waters Conservancy argue that the area is prized for its pristine lakes, where paddlers can fill water bottles directly from the surface. They fear efforts to allow copper mines to be built near the region’s headwaters will irreversibly pollute the country’s most popular natural habitat.
“We never expected the Congressional Review Act to be debated in this way,” said Libby London, communications director for Save the Boundary Waters, a coalition that works to protect wilderness areas. “This sets a truly terrible precedent that will undermine decades of land management decisions.”
Officials from the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management did not respond to requests for interviews. House Natural Resources Committee staff did not make available an interview with the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican who has supported the use of the Congressional Review Act to allow expanded mining and drilling.
legal questions
Environmental groups have accused Republicans of using the law to push for more resource extraction. If President Trump wants to expand mining and drilling, they say, federal agencies should take the time to draft new management plans using the same rigorous process.
But perhaps more concerning to some public land stakeholders are the potential impacts across many other lands. None of the plans issued by federal land managers in the past 30 years were submitted for review. Because at that time no one considered them to be rules.
In other words, hundreds of plans covering millions of acres of land could be deemed invalid under the new Congressional interpretation of what qualifies as a rule.
Something like rolling back your entire resource management plan is a big curve ball.
– Ryan Callahan, President and CEO, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers
“It’s just a mess out there,” says Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner of Bethenny & Van Tuyn LLC. “They (plans) span the full spectrum of a land manager’s operations, including conservation and conservation, mine approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource development, and public access and recreation. There is a very real possibility that a court could say that a resource management plan has never been implemented and that all enforcement actions under that plan’s umbrella are invalid.”
In a letter to the Bureau of Land Management late last year, the Wilderness Society and other groups identified more than 5,000 oil and gas leases that could be legally invalidated because they were issued under management plans that have not been reviewed by Congress.
Public lands advocates say similar logic could be applied to mining leases, grazing permits, logging, outdoor recreation and many other activities covered in agency planning documents. Many industries that rely on public lands, such as hunting and fishing guides, could be disrupted.
“Let’s say you’re an outdoor gear store,” said Ryan Callahan, president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “Rolling back something like an entire resource management plan is a huge curveball and something you absolutely can’t plan for as a business owner. It’s very reasonable to have a lot of questions about what the impact will be.”
industry concerns
Some industry leaders are concerned that Congress is setting a precedent by overriding a plan developed after years of local input and consultation.
“I’m pretty concerned about that,” said Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas advocate who now heads Multiple-Use Advocacy, a consulting group focused on federal land policy. “It’s not unreasonable to think that there will be a day in the future when we have a three-way Democratic option and can (rescind) old plans as well.”
Sgamma was nominated by President Trump to head the Bureau of Land Management, but withdrew his nomination last spring after fierce opposition from conservation groups and the publication of a memo criticizing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
She said she wasn’t too concerned about the idea that previous plans could be declared invalid. She argued that if challenged, agency officials could submit those old plans to Congress and start a 60-day review “clock” before litigation moves forward.
Sgamma said the greater uncertainty is the provision that agencies cannot adopt rules that are “substantially the same form” as rules rescinded by Congress. Republicans intend to target drilling and mining restrictions, but are using the Congressional Review Act to repeal the entire plan. This could prevent government agencies from issuing new plans covering less controversial topics, such as campgrounds and trails.
Environmental lawyer Van Tuynh shared that concern.
“If you have a plan that is 80% similar to a previous plan, and a court says 80% is ‘substantially similar,’ what will the authorities do? Do you go back to square one and say 50%? We used to have this much public access, and now we don’t?” he said.
The Council on Public Land, which advocates for ranchers operating on public land, did not respond to requests for an interview. Western Energy Alliance, which claims oil and gas production, did not respond to requests for an interview. The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to requests for an interview. Public Lands For The People, which advocates mining on public lands, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at: (email protected).
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