Let America Build Act of 2026

Key Points

• The bill dramatically speeds up energy permitting by setting hard deadlines for environmental reviews. Mining environmental assessments must be done in one year, and environmental impact statements in two years. If the Energy Department misses its 45-day deadline to decide on LNG export applications, those applications are automatically approved.
• Courts would lose the power to cancel oil and gas leases even if they find environmental review mistakes. Instead of voiding leases, courts must send the matter back to the government to fix the problem while drilling continues and permits keep getting processed.
• States gain sweeping new authority over energy activity on federal land within their borders. States can take over issuing drilling permits, approving drilling plans, and granting rights-of-way on federal land. For hydraulic fracturing, the Interior Department must defer entirely to state regulations on federal land.
• Federal agencies are banned from using the social cost of carbon or any similar metric when reviewing energy projects. They also cannot consider upstream or downstream emissions from a project, meaning the climate impact of burning the fuel produced would be excluded from review.
• The bill shortens the window for filing lawsuits against oil, gas, and mining decisions to just 60 days. It also restricts which courts can hear these cases and raises the bar for courts to block mining projects, requiring proof of imminent and substantial environmental harm.
• The definition of critical minerals is expanded to potentially include fuel minerals like coal and oil shale. Federal land withdrawals would require Congressional approval within 90 days or they automatically expire, and agency heads are banned from creating new land designation categories not authorized by statute.

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