Maggie Ferrari

🚨 URGENT: The Senate votes Monday on a bill that would make permits on our public lands nearly impossible for ANY future president to undo. And Trump's admin is still handing them out on those very lands right now. They're calling it the permitting bill, and it's a sneaky one. It's far worse than the name sounds. Any permit still in effect on September 16, 2026 gets shielded, no matter who issued it or when. Older permits count too, even decades old, if they're still active. So does every one Trump's admin signs from here on. The thing I want you to understand is this. Federal oil and gas leases don't expire as long as they keep producing. A lease signed in the 70s or 80s is still in effect today if it's still producing. Earthjustice warns this bill makes leases like that "virtually impossible to overturn." To change or cancel a permit, a future admin would have to prove it by "clear and convincing evidence." Only five reasons count: 1. A court orders it. 2. The permit holder broke the law. 3. The permit was obtained through fraud. 4. The permit holder asks for it. 5. An urgent threat to life, property, or national security the original review missed. If none apply, the permit stays. Locked in. Trumped in. If a judge finds the government botched the environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, the judge can order a redo. But the judge can't cancel the permit or stop the project. The bulldozers keep running during the redo. Tribes don't get a say until AFTER agencies have already made up their minds about work on their ancestral lands and sacred sites. Two Democrats, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), signed on to the bill Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) introduced, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Voters just handed Democrats Congress. Two of them put their names on a bill that locks in Trump's permits anyway. This sitting Congress is trying to push it through Monday. Please call your members of Congress today. We don't have much time. I've tagged the four senators behind this. Let them know how you feel about it by saying no to the bill to your MOC. Thank you for standing up for our public lands. #DemsUnited 📷 Hart Van Denburg / CPR News