The U.S. Senate defeated House-approved legislation today that would have allowed all members to retain their conflicting stock investments and continue manipulating the stock market. Craig Holman, Ph.D., government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, released the following statement:

“This measure was a ruse, promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, to make it appear that congressional Republicans were tackling an ethical quagmire when, in fact, it would have accomplished very little. There was serious legislation to stop congressional insider trading, but Johnson would not bring up any of the serious proposals for a floor vote. Kudos to Senate Democrats for not falling for the ruse.”

Sens. Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse today released a top-line summary of an agreement with Sen. Shelly Moore Capito and Rep. Bruce Westerman to advance so-called “permitting reform.”

The legislative package, cynically titled the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026,” would provide massive long-term structural advantages to the fossil fuel industry and minimal short-term improvements to electricity transmission policy that might marginally benefit renewable energy. The legislation fails to meaningfully curb the accelerating build-out of data centers and artificial intelligence.

“This is a climate kill shot that condemns our most vulnerable communities to suffer decades more fossil fuel pollution. It’s absurd to ensure our planet chokes with greenhouse gases, gut endangered species protections and eviscerate the Clean Water Act for what seems to be a nearly meaningless victory against Trump’s war on offshore wind,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The minor benefits for renewable energy corporations are massively dwarfed by the gifts to the fossil fuel industry. If this grotesque legislation becomes law, the paltry increases in renewable energy will be instantly devoured by AI data centers. The only winners here are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, tech oligarchs and the shareholders of fossil fuel companies.”

Today’s package contains numerous provisions that lock in thousands of fossil fuel projects, including oil and gas pipelines, LNG export terminals, and expanded fossil fuel drilling onshore and offshore approved by President Trump over the past two years. It also ensures that future fossil fuel pipelines and methane gas-generated electricity can never be challenged in court.

Additional provisions gut parts of the Clean Water Act, including the Section 401 authority of states to protect their rivers and streams from the impacts of building pipelines and the EPA’s Section 404(c) permit veto authority, which has been used to stop projects like the Pebble Mine in Alaska.

The legislation weakens the National Historic Preservation Act and Tribal consultations, leaving most Tribal nations with no meaningful way to protect their sovereignty when faced with potential fossil fuel projects on their lands.

In addition, the legislation guts the Endangered Species Act by allowing states to take over the Section 7 consultation process with minimal safeguards, turning one of the law’s strongest provisions into a state-run rubberstamp of dangerous projects. The deal also likely includes redefining the “best available science” and exempts the vast majority of damaging fossil fuel projects from any meaningful review of the threats and harms to imperiled wildlife and plants.

The legislation curtails the ability of individuals, nonprofits and communities to challenge fossil fuel projects by requiring courts to tip the scales in favor of the fossil fuel industry and making it impossible to bring an environmental justice claim.

“Two Senate Democrats are giving away our most cherished environmental laws based on fantastical models that project a renewable energy utopia. They’re rewarding a ruthless fossil fuel industry that will always put its quarterly profits ahead of a livable planet and future generations,” said Hartl. “Trump promised fossil fuel companies that he’d do everything in his power to assist them in his second term, and Sen. Heinrich and Sen. Whitehouse seem hellbent on helping Trump fulfill that promise. We’ll fight this disgraceful legislation to make sure it doesn’t become law.”

Today, the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch sued the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding the agency release records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to its abandonment of an Animal Agriculture and Water Quality (AAWQ) Federal Advisory Subcommittee.

EPA formed the Subcommittee in 2024 in response to a Food & Water Watch petition demanding EPA strengthen its rules to adequately regulate factory farm pollution under the Clean Water Act. To justify its petition denial, EPA claimed it lacked adequate information about factory farm pollution and committed to studying the problem via the Subcommittee. It then repeated this excuse before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in defending the legality of its petition denial. The Subcommittee met three times in 2024, but has not met since Trump took office in January 2025. Trump’s EPA has, with no communication or explanation, rendered the Subcommittee “inactive.”

After more than a year of radio silence, on February 18, 2026, Food & Water Watch requested records about the status of the Subcommittee and what led EPA to abandon it. Requested records include any communications between Trump’s EPA and factory farm industry groups related to the sidelining of the Subcommittee. Nearly eight months later, EPA has refused to produce a single record, in violation of FOIA.

Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen, a member of the abandoned Subcommittee, issued the following statement:

“EPA has never taken factory farm pollution seriously — under Trump, it has stopped even pretending. The fact that we have to litigate over a FOIA non-response is proof that EPA has abandoned its commitments to address this environmental and public health nightmare.

“Let’s be clear: EPA has more than enough information to know that its factory farm pollution rules are a failure and that it must act. The industry’s waste remains almost entirely unregulated, free to poison drinking water and ecosystems from coast to coast. Yet time and time again, EPA has chosen delay over action. This Subcommittee itself was a delay tactic — its abandonment doubles down on inaction. EPA’s continued stonewalling will not stand in court.”

Food & Water Watch is represented by the public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, PLLC and its own Tarah Heinzen and Emily Miller.

BACKGROUND

Agriculture is the nation’s leading polluter of rivers and lakes, with factory farms, also called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), responsible for a significant share. U.S. factory farms produce 940 billion pounds of manure each year — twice as much as the sewage produced by the entire U.S. population. Much of it ends up in waterways, where it contributes to harmful algal blooms and dead zones, threatening aquatic ecosystems.

Factory farm pollution is driving nationwide public health crises, contaminating drinking supplies with pathogens and harmful chemicals including nitrates, which are linked to cancer, birth defects and more. Roughly 1 in 5 Americans on public water systems are exposed to dangerous nitrate levels.

In September 2023, 13 groups, led by Food & Water Watch, sued Biden’s EPA over the agency’s denial of a 2017 Food & Water Watch petition asking EPA to initiate a rulemaking to overhaul its ineffective factory farm regulations. The case challenged the EPA denial of the petition.

The petition and subsequent litigation sought to expand and strengthen factory farm pollution regulation under the Clean Water Act, regulation that the industry has largely evaded for more than 50 years. Today, EPA itself estimates that nearly 10,000 of the nation’s largest factory farms are illegally discharging pollution to waterways without the necessary Clean Water Act permits. Indeed, fewer than one third of the country’s largest factory farms operate with federal water pollution permits. The permits that do exist fail to effectively control the vast quantities of waste these polluting operations generate.

In October 2024, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled against the plaintiffs, accepting EPA’s assertion that findings from the Animal Agriculture and Water Quality (AAWQ) Federal Advisory Subcommittee were needed before EPA could be compelled to act.

The Senate may imminently announce a permitting reform bill that would gut bedrock environmental laws to enable a massive buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure, data centers, and other projects that harm our climate. This “dirty deal” offers even greater concessions to Big Oil and Big Tech than previous iterations of the bill, while drastically curtailing communities’ ability to voice their concerns about polluting projects planned for their area.

In response, Oil Change International U.S. Campaigns Manager Collin Rees said:

“This backdoor ‘dirty deal’ will worsen the climate crisis and put families at even greater risk of losing their homes and loved ones to extreme weather. The science is clear: There are no new fossil fuel projects compatible with a climate-safe future. Yet this ‘dirty deal’ would make it easier and faster for fossil fuel companies to steamroll community opposition to their polluting, climate-wrecking projects.

“This ‘dirty deal’ threatens to raise electricity prices for working families by accelerating the buildout of energy-guzzling AI data centers and liquefied natural gas export projects. Our recent research shows that the Trump administration’s support for reckless AI development and greater gas exports drives up energy costs for households.

“We all deserve a voice in the decisions that impact our lives. The ‘dirty deal’ shuts communities out of decisionmaking spaces, especially the Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities that are disproportionately harmed by polluting fossil fuel projects. We urge all senators to stand firm against this bill.”