Janos Marton

I litigated NEPA cases at DOJ for ~10 years. I saw highways, pipelines, & solar projects all grind to a halt under the same laws -- because they apply regardless of what's being built. So are ICE detention centers a reason not to pass the bipartisan permitting bill, BAAJA? BAAJA has nothing to do with immigration or ICE directly. It changes core permitting laws and transmission policy in ways that benefit *any project* that requires the most common federal permits, or uses electricity. Opposing BAAJA because of its indirect effects on ICE facilities is therefore like opposing a reversal of Trump’s tariffs because they make construction of ICE facilities slightly cheaper. The bigger point is that using permitting laws to target disfavored projects on policy grounds is part of what makes infrastructure -- particularly clean energy infrastructure -- so difficult and expensive to build in this country. A Stanford study looked at 355 big federal projects; nearly two-thirds of solar projects, 38% of wind projects, and 31% of transmission lines were sued under these laws. fsi.stanford.edu/publication… My own research on NHPA has found clean energy and transmission review areas were about 10 times larger than fossil projects, and nearly half had an adverse effect finding, versus 6% of fossil projects. nhpa-ape-stats.org/ Our permitting laws were not designed to be -- and should not be -- used as a tool to stop whatever policy someone doesn’t like. Using permitting laws as a tool of obstruction is a double-edged sword that has stabbed our country’s ability to build anything -- especially the energy infrastructure we need to electrify the economy & have affordable electricity. Detention policy should be for Congress to settle on its own terms, not through litigation over the environmental review and permitting process.