Amid Covid & Floyd protests, Trump prepares executive order to speed up environment nods

President Donald Trump was prepared to issue an executive order on Thursday directing ncies to look for ways to speed up building of highways and or major projects by scaling back environmental reviews, invoking special powers he has under coronavirus emergency. order would direct federal ncies to seek workarounds from bedrock environmental laws, such as National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, to hasten completion of various infrastructure projects, according to a draft obtained by Associated Press.

Trump, who has consistently sought to cut environmental reviews and or protections, said in order that ecomic lockdown and accompanying massive unemployment required action. Unnecessary delays in timely ncy actions will deny our citizens opportunities for jobs and ecomic security and will hinder our ecomic recovery from national emergency, keeping millions of Americans out of work," it states. Trump has been issuing executive orders on a near-weekly basis during his fourth year in office.

Thursday's order will mark his 25th of year as he uses pandemic to justify efforts to do away with government regulations that are designed to protect environment and public health but are viewed by critics as costly and unnecessary. president has consistently portrayed permitting process as hindering infrastructure projects in U.S. He issued an executive order in August 2017 that was designed to speed infrastructure projects. But a report prepared for Treasury Department in 2016 looked at 40 major proposed transportation and water projects whose completion h slowed or was in jeopardy and found that a lack of funds is by far most common challenge to completing se projects.

Meanwhile, finding ditional dollars to fund new ros and bridges has proved elusive as lawmakers and president fails to agree on extremely difficult choices that are necessary to raise more money for transportation projects without ding to alrey soaring national debt. In anticipation of Trump's executive order, environmental groups said sidestepping environmental review requirements would hurt many of same communities alrey suffering most from pandemic.

"Americans are crying out for leership to confront racist violence and stop spre of a dely pandemic. This ministration is t only igring those cries but piling on burden. We will t let this stand," said Gina McCarthy of Natural Resources Defense Council.

Conservative groups and lawmakers have been encouraging Trump to move forward with regulatory overhauls. It is imperative federal government continues to lessen burden of unnecessary regulations in a systematic manner moving forward since we do t kw where next crisis may strike, a group of five GOP senators said in a letter to Trump on Wednesday.