Overview
- Testifying at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum criticized a judge’s injunction that halted new permitting rules and declined to say the department will follow it.
- Burgum said the Interior solicitor would respond in court and repeated that the department disagrees with the ruling.
- Senators Martin Heinrich and Angus King urged him to move pending wind and solar permits as a show of good faith and warned that ignoring a court order erodes support for permitting reforms.
- Earlier in April, a Massachusetts federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that blocks Interior from enforcing policies that required near‑universal sign‑off by the secretary and curtailed use of an online environmental review tool.
- Developers now face uncertainty because the order is temporary and limited to the suing groups, and Interior has not clearly stated its next steps.