While China was building, America was bogged down in paperwork—until now

Nine Justices, a Unanimous Ruling

In May 2025, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. And this wasn’t just a majority decision—it was unanimous. All nine justices agreed. The message was crystal clear: we cannot return to the old system of endless delays. The Court severely reprimands the lower courts and environmental groups for abusing the process. It points the finger at the government, which spends enormous sums of money and a considerable amount of time protecting its decisions from the risk of litigation by analyzing impacts and unfeasible alternatives that are completely disconnected from the actual project.

The message is blunt and necessary: NEPA litigation is a major cause of delays and rejections of essential infrastructure projects. The courts must show deference to the agencies’ expertise. No judicial micromanagement. No allowing interest groups to block projects for years with frivolous challenges. The central principle of judicial review in NEPA cases, the Court says, is deference. Period. Gone are the days when any group with a lawyer could paralyze a project for a decade. The Supreme Court has just said: the agencies know what they’re doing. Trust them. Or at the very least, don’t harass them with impossible demands.

Do you realize what that means? The Supreme Court—NINE justices, unanimously—has just said that the system was broken. Not just ineffective. BROKEN. And they’ve given Trump the green light to fix it. This isn’t just a political victory. It’s an acknowledgment that what we’ve been living through for decades made no sense. That we were sabotaging our own future in the name of environmental purity that existed only on paper. And that it had to stop. Now.

Congress and the BUILDER Act

Congress, for once, also did its job. The BUILDER Act codifies Trump’s 2020 NEPA amendments. Deadlines. Page limits. Clearer procedural safeguards. Significant exemptions from the NEPA process. It’s written in black and white in the law. But here’s the thing: only the Trump administration has actually implemented these reforms. The Biden administration has tried to circumvent Congress’s directives. Trump, on the other hand, is faithfully applying them. He’s implementing the law. Not his version of the law. The law, period.

And now, Congress and the judiciary have a choice. They can support the work of the democratically elected administration and back the authorization of crucial projects. Or they can reject appropriate additional reforms and cede power to cynical litigants and their attorneys. Following Trump’s example, Congress should adopt further beneficial corrections to the permitting process. The lower courts should follow the Supreme Court’s directive in Seven County: the central principle is deference. Not obstruction. Deference.

The Bold Vision

Trump isn’t stopping there. The administration is working tirelessly in other areas to cut through red tape while promoting exceptional environmental stewardship. Because contrary to what some people would have us believe, environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. We can build cleanly. We can build quickly. We can build smartly. Modern technology allows us to minimize actual impacts while maximizing economic benefits. Advanced filtration systems. Integrated renewable energy. Eco-friendly materials. All of this exists. But we can’t build at all if we’re paralyzed by regulations that no longer make sense in 2026. The world has changed since 1970. Technologies have evolved exponentially. Our understanding of the environment has advanced by leaps and bounds. Our ability to build responsibly has multiplied. Regulations? They were stuck in the past. Fossilized. Mummified. Until now.

The Trump administration reflects a simple but powerful truth: while China is breaking ground to build critical infrastructure, the United States cannot remain stuck doing paperwork. This isn’t a matter of ideological choice. It isn’t a philosophical debate about the right way to protect the environment. It’s a matter of economic survival. Of global leadership. Of not letting our children inherit a second-rate country because we were too busy analyzing hypothetical impacts to build the real future. Trump understands this. His administration understands this. Katherine Scarlett understands this. And finally, after decades of self-inflicted paralysis, they’re taking action. Not with studies. Not with committees. With decisions. Actions. Results.

The Crucial Choice

Now, the rest of the government must follow suit. Congress must pass additional reforms to codify these changes into law. The lower courts must respect the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision and stop micromanaging agency decisions. Bureaucrats must embrace this new era of speed and efficiency instead of looking for ways to circumvent the reforms. And Americans must demand that this continue. That no one backtracks. Because if we let the system revert to the way it was, we’ll lose decades all over again. And this time, we may not recover. China isn’t going to slow down. India isn’t going to slow down. The world isn’t going to wait patiently for us while we rehash the same bureaucratic issues for the thousandth time.

That’s what I’m left with from all of this. An image. China building. America filling out forms. For years, that was our reality. And it made me sick. Physically sick. To see this country’s potential wasted because someone, somewhere, had decided that endless analysis was better than concrete action. But today, for the first time in a long time, I see hope. A government that says: enough. A president who takes action. A Supreme Court that upholds. A Congress that legislates. And I wonder: Are we finally going to wake up? Are we finally going to build? Or are we going to let this chance slip away like all the others? The world isn’t waiting for us. China isn’t waiting for us. So let’s get moving. Now. Before it’s truly too late.