Inside the Reconciliation Bill That Could Rewrite America
A Senate rule keeper is all that stands between public lands and a corporate free-for-all.
This isn’t just another budget bill. It’s potentially the end of environmental law in America.
The House Natural Resources Committee just released its proposed section of the reconciliation bill. Buried beneath budget jargon and legislative formatting is the most extreme environmental deregulation proposal ever assembled. It's a wish list for polluters, land-grabbers, and industry lobbyists. A sweeping, coordinated attack on the laws that protect our air, water, wildlife, and public lands.
A small sampling of the gems in this legislation:
A provision allowing fossil fuel developers to pay the federal government what amounts to a legalized bribe to fast-track their own environmental reviews, with strict one-year deadlines and no possibility of legal challenges.
Language declaring that oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is automatically in compliance with NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, regardless of environmental harm.
A new protest filing fee that charges everyday citizens and conservation groups onerous fees to exercise their right to object to mining or drilling leases on public land.
Mandatory reissuance of mining leases (including the Boundary Waters copper mine) and accelerated approval timelines that bypass or sideline public input and environmental review.
Revocation of ESA species protections within lease areas by legislative fiat, preempting future listings or habitat designations.
Provisions that ban courts from reviewing federal agency decisions on energy leasing and permitting, even if those agencies violate environmental laws.
A 25% increase in mandated logging on public lands, forced leasing of 4 million acres of coal-rich land, and a rollback of royalty rates for fossil fuel companies.
And so much more. I have a complete breakdown of everything further down in this piece.
And they want to pass it all using reconciliation, a special process that allows them to bypass the filibuster and pass legislation with just a simple majority in the Senate. No 60-vote threshold. No bipartisan compromise. Just 51 votes to rewrite environmental law, public lands policy, and judicial oversight from the ground up.
This newsletter focuses on the public lands provisions because that’s where my expertise and passion is, but make no mistake: this reconciliation bill will contain much more. Across every committee, there will be provisions attacking worker protections, consumer safeguards, science, and the federal workforce itself. What I'm breaking down here is only one piece of a much larger, darker whole.
What is This House Natural Resources Committee Document?
This is the "committee print" from the House Natural Resources Committee, essentially their formal contribution to the broader GOP reconciliation bill. It's fully drafted legislative language. If the larger reconciliation package moves forward, this is what gets dropped in.
Where Does it Go From Here?
The House GOP will fold this into the full reconciliation bill. Once it passes the House, it heads to the Senate, where under normal circumstances, the Byrd Rule would block the craziest parts from ever being enacted. The Byrd Rule is a procedural safeguard meant to keep reconciliation bills focused on spending and revenue. It says that any provision that doesn't have a direct, significant budgetary impact must be removed. That includes things like repealing NEPA, overriding ESA protections, banning judicial review, or handing out mining leases.
The Byrd Rule doesn’t enforce itself though. Senators have to raise formal objections to non-budgetary provisions. Then it falls to the Senate Parliamentarian to decide whether those provisions violate the Byrd Rule.
The Parliamentarian is a nonpartisan legal expert who interprets Senate procedure. Her rulings aren’t binding law, but they're treated as the final ruling in the Senate. If she rules that a provision must be removed under the Byrd Rule, it takes 60 votes to override her. With the current Senate balance (Republicans have a 53-47 seat advantage) the Republicans don’t have the votes to override the Parliamentarian.
The Nuclear Option
Here’s where things get terrifying. The Parliamentarian serves at the pleasure of the Senate, more specifically, at the pleasure of the Senate Majority Leader. That means the Parliamentarian can be fired unilaterally. No vote required. And she can be replaced just as easily with someone who’ll greenlight whatever this administration wants.
And yes, it’s been done before. In 2001, Senate Republicans fired Parliamentarian Robert Dove after he ruled against parts of their tax bill. They replaced him with someone more favorable to their agenda and passed the bill. This time the stakes are incalculably higher.
This Reconciliation Bill May Be a Setup
The reconciliation bill will be so loaded with flagrant violations of the Byrd Rule that no honest Parliamentarian on Earth wouldn't rule against most of it. Which is exactly the point.
When she does, they’ll call her part of the deep state. Anti-American. Anti-energy. Anti-MAGA. Never mind that she’s repeatedly ruled against Democrats in past reconciliation fights, including blocking the $15 minimum wage, and has been publicly praised by Republicans, including none other than Majority Leader Jon Thune.
But this time, it won’t matter. Trump will demand she be fired. Maybe J.D. Vance, who serves as President of the Senate, will stage another Oval Office-style tirade about globalists and disrespecting the administration. And Thune will, in all likelihood, quietly do what he once swore he never would: replace her with a MAGA loyalist who will rubber-stamp it all.
And then all bets are off. We become a bare-knuckle authoritarian state.
The Consequences of Ignoring The Byrd Rule
If they fire the Parliamentarian, the Byrd Rule is dead. That means a simple majority, just 51 votes, can pass anything they want in reconciliation. Not just budgets, but laws. Not just cuts, but ideological rewrites of environmental policy, land management, and civil procedure. You name it.
If they pull that trigger, we'll see the biggest rollback of environmental protections in U.S. history, passed by a simple majority, with no public debate.
What You Can Do
In the meantime here's what you can do. Write a letter to Senator Jon Thune (R-SD) urging him to abide by the Senate Parliamentarian's rulings and not throw this country into a crisis. Removing the parliamentarian would be the final straw of sorts. The administration would have no more legal cover. Just the naked exercise of raw power for their own ends – ends that don't serve the American people.
Below is a sample letter you can send to Senator Thune’s office with the link to do that online.
Draft Letter to Senator Thune
Subject: Please Uphold the Parliamentarian’s Role and Protect the Rule of Law
Senator Thune,
I write today with deep concern about the reconciliation process currently unfolding in Congress. The legislative language submitted by the House Natural Resources Committee includes numerous provisions that appear to be clear violations of the Byrd Rule. These provisions would repeal longstanding environmental protections, limit judicial review, weaken public oversight, and dramatically reshape public lands policy, all through a process that was never meant to carry such sweeping policy changes.
In moments like this, the Senate relies on its rules and referees to preserve public trust in the legislative process. Chief among them is the Senate Parliamentarian.
I understand you may face pressure to replace the Parliamentarian should she rule, as she must, that many of these provisions violate the Byrd Rule and cannot proceed under reconciliation. But I urge you, in the strongest terms, to resist that pressure.
What’s on the table now is not a marginal tax provision or a routine procedural disagreement. This is a sweeping attempt to bypass the normal lawmaking process and enact a deeply controversial agenda through a budget bill. If the Parliamentarian is removed for doing her job, for applying the rules as they are written, it will send a clear and dangerous signal: that rules no longer matter, and power is the only authority that counts.
That would not just affect this bill, it would upend the rule of law in the United States. It would erase the last guardrail separating democratic governance from unchecked power. It would remove any remaining legal or procedural legitimacy this administration has. It would tear at the foundations of the Senate, plunge the country into political and legal chaos, and confirm that we have entered a new era, one defined not by law or process, but by force.
This isn’t about one vote or one bill. It’s about whether there are still any lines that can’t be crossed.
I ask you, not as a partisan, but as a citizen, to protect the independence of the Parliamentarian and preserve what’s left of institutional integrity in the Senate. Please do not remove her. Please do not override her rulings. Please do not allow this process to cross a line that cannot be uncrossed.
Respectfully,
[Your Name]
[City, State]
So What's in This Bill?
I've gone through the House Natural Resources committee print line by line and compiled a full breakdown of every provision targeting public lands, wildlife, environmental protections, etc. There’s 34 provisions by my count that would have extremely far-reaching implications for our public lands. I mean this stuff is crazy.
I've also included what is likely a Byrd Rule violation and what isn't, according to my analysis: