In the spring of 1996, lawmakers quietly buried a rider in a humdrum bill meant to make life easier for small businesses. That addition, the Congressional Review Act, granted Congress the power to kill new federal regulations with a simple majority vote. Thirty years later, Republican lawmakers are wielding it to quietly upend how the country manages public lands.
One of the act’s sponsors was Ted Stevens, an irascible Republican from Alaska. Known on Capitol Hill for his temper and the Incredible Hulk tie he sometimes wore, Stevens framed the measure, known as the CRA, as a way to reclaim legislative authority from an overreaching executive branch. Stevens soon collided with scandal: He and other Alaska politicians proudly dubbed themselves the “Corrupt Bastards Club,” after a federal investigation uncovered cash bribes and secret tapes of debauchery with oil executives. The saga exposed the sway that extractive industries hold over political decision-making — a grip soon to tighten as lawmakers use Stevens’ law to wipe out federal land-use plans nationwide.
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn rules finalized in the previous 60 legislative days with a simple majority. This prevents federal agencies from ever creating similar regulations. In its first two decades, the oversight law was used just once. But when Donald Trump took office in 2017, a Republican-led Congress swiftly used the CRA to repeal 16 Obama-era regulations, ranging from environmental protections to labor and financial rules. (Congress also used it three times during President Biden’s first term.)
Now, conservatives want to use it to advance President Trump’s extraction agenda in a way that tests the bounds of the law. In July, Alaska Representative Nick Begich proposed a bill to overturn the federal management plan for 13 million acres — an area four times the size of New York — across his state’s northwest flank. The region includes land near the proposed Ambler road, which would cross 211 miles and through Gates of the Arctic National Park to mineral deposits. The plan provides environmental protections for important salmon spawning grounds, where runs have recently dwindled, and critical caribou habitat.
The move comes amid an ongoing campaign by the Trump administration to radically remake how the nation’s resources are managed. The Bureau of Land Management, for example, just announced plans to rescind a Biden-era rule that placed conservation on equal footing with other uses of federal land. It also follows nationwide outcry over a proposed giveaway of public lands; Representative Ryan Zinke, who opposed the transfer of Western lands this summer, nevertheless voted in favor of the Central Yukon’s resource management plan. (Zinke did not respond to requests for comment.)
Begich made clear that he intends to streamline development of the region. “It is federal overreach that is ensuring that Alaska’s wealth stays in the ground, unavailable to the people of one of America’s most impoverished regions,” he said on the House floor.
The Bureau of Land Management finalized Central Yukon’s latest resource management plan last year after more than a decade of extensive public engagement involving tribes, local communities, and state and federal agencies. It concluded that over 3 million acres should be considered areas of critical environmental concern, and protected. Contrary to Begich’s claims, Alaskans largely supported this decision. The process cost the federal government $6.7 million. Ignoring it, said Mollie Busby, who lives in the affected area in the small town of Wiseman, ignores the voices of those directly impacted by the plan. She worries that without the plan’s protections, the natural resources her family and neighbors depend upon will disappear. “This plan should not be overturned on a whim by Congress,” she said.
Should the legislation — which passed the House on Sept. 3 and is now before the Senate — become law, resource management plans nationwide could be at risk. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills to upend plans regulating fossil fuel and mining in the Powder River Basin in Montana, and swaths of North Dakota. “We are in uncharted territory here,” Representative Sarah Elfreth, a Democrat from Maryland, said during a House Rules Committee hearing in July. “Congress has never used the Congressional Review Act to overturn a resource management plan, or any other similar land use plan in our history.”
Because the Department of the Interior has never considered these plans eligible for review under the Act, it never submitted them to Congress. The CRA requires that before a “rule” can take effect and the 60-day look-back period begins. After the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, determined in June that the Central Yukon resource management plan qualifies as a “rule,” Congress may now rescind it. This precedent may unravel decades of land policy.. “Hundreds of resource management plans that have been finalized since 1996 will never have technically taken effect,” says Justin Meuse, government relations director for The Wilderness Society. That, he said, calls into question everything built on them — “oil and gas leases, drilling permits, rights of way, timber allotments.”
The likely result, he argued, is a cascade of uncertainty for the industries Republicans champion. “It should be scary to oil and gas companies, to anybody who farms, grazes, or uses timber on public lands,” Meuse said. A letter sent to Congress by 31 law professors concludes the move “threatens to paralyze public land management nationwide.”
This summer, the GAO also determined that the Biden’s administration’s 2022 decision to close 11 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil leases was subject to the CRA, opening it up to repeal. By pushing the CRA beyond its customary lookback window, lawmakers could begin unraveling hard-won protections long after they were thought secure.
Meuse called these determinations a dangerous expansion of the Congressional Review Act’s scope, one that may have sweeping implications beyond conservation. “We’re seeing the CRA being applied much, much more broadly than we ever have before,” he said. Other federal agencies — such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Transportation — could face challenges to long-standing regulations never previously treated as “rules,” potentially sparking litigation and halting years of carefully planned programs.
As the House passed Begich’s bill to repeal the Central Yukon plan in early September, Jack Reakoff watched in disbelief. A long-time Wiseman resident, he fears scuttling the plan will open the door to a transfer of federal land to the state.
The lands at stake are not empty wilderness, as they are often portrayed, but a vibrant network of rivers, migration corridors, and food for residents. They are managed for a variety of uses under federal rules that prioritize rural food security, and give those communities a voice through the Federal Subsistence Board. The 2024 Central Yukon plan maintained federal oversight over millions of acres, including federal subsistence protections for residents like Reakoff that are not allowed under the state constitution.
Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The use of the CRA is just one of many avenues the state is pursuing to seize control of millions of acres of federal land to benefit extractive industries. Bruce Westerman, a forester and the chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, explicitly cited the Ambler Industrial Access road as a reason to overturn the management plan. The unpopular road, which the Biden administration scuttled, would threaten North America’s largest protected region, disrupt caribou migration, and pollute waterways — while using state funds to subsidize a road that would primarily benefit mining companies.
“It is not all about Ambler and the utility corridor, but the entire district,” Reakoff says, adding that using the CRA “throws the baby out with the bathwater.” Reakoff says the state doesn’t have the resources to appropriately manage the lands it already controls, and he fears the state will open the area to ATVs that tear up fragile tundra and non-resident rifle hunting that could decimate wildlife already threatened by climate change. He’s also concerned about additional industrial traffic, and whether the state will have the budget to maintain the road.
The Busbys, meanwhile, say using the CRA ignores the voices of many small businesses that currently have federal permits to access Gates of The Arctic, plunging their operations into limbo.
Legal experts remain uncertain about the broader implications of this unprecedented move. If the bill passes the Senate, where a vote is expected this week, it’s still unclear what will replace the 2024 plan. It could potentially revert to resource management plans approved in 1986 and 1991, over the objections of six tribal councils. It’s also uncertain what the CRA’s restriction on issuing a “substantially similar” plan may mean and could make crafting a modern replacement might never be possible.
This legal ambiguity carries serious consequences for communities across Alaska. Karma Ulvi, chief of the Native Village of Eagle, said the repeal threatens the ability of tribes to have a meaningful voice in managing the lands they rely on. “It’s going to have an impact on our culture, our food sovereignty,” she said. The central Yukon salmon populations have already crashed, she says, and mining or additional infrastructure could harm their chances of recovery. “Our Congressmen need to consult with the tribes, and ask how this could impact us,” she says. “I’m really afraid that the priorities now are just extraction and money.”