October 10, 2025 - The Trump administration has issued sweeping orders to federal agencies to remove regulatory hurdles and encourage more coal leasing and coal use. Now, Congress is acting to employ a little-used tool to override the Bureau of Land Management and rewrite or install new coal- and mining-friendly public land management plans throughout the West, including one in northeast Wyoming.

Wyoming’s all-Republican congressional delegation introduced a joint resolution Wednesday to employ the Congressional Review Act to essentially invalidate the BLM’s Biden-era supplemental environmental impact statement updating the Buffalo Field Office Resource Management Plan.

Published last year, the Biden-era plan included a ban on future federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, citing coal’s human health and climate impacts, as well as the fact that mining companies had not asked for any new major coal leases in the basin in nearly a decade. The joint resolution, if passed, “would terminate the no leasing alternative, revert to the previous plan and prohibit the BLM from issuing a substantially similar plan,” according to a joint statement by Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Harriet Hageman.

The Powder River Basin is home to one of the world’s largest coal deposits and some of the nation’s biggest coal mines. 

“Coal is the backbone of Wyoming’s economy, it supports thousands of good-paying jobs, generates the revenue that funds our communities and provides reliable, cheap electricity to Americans across our country,” Lummis said. “Biden’s BLM left us no choice but to stop this dangerous overreach via the Congressional Review Act.”

The Buffalo office oversees 780,291 acres of public lands and 4.7 million acres of mineral estate spanning Campbell, Johnson and Sheridan counties. 

The Senate this week passed other resolutions employing the Congressional Review Act to modify BLM public land management plans, including in Alaska, North Dakota and one in southeast Montana that also included the Biden-era coal leasing ban.

Congress’ move to override the BLM bypasses years of public input and local expertise, and it threatens to “upend the public lands management system as we know it,” according to the nonprofit conservation advocacy group Earthjustice.

“They’re saying, ‘We don’t like the public process. It didn’t achieve the result that we want,'” said Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office. “It says, by partisan fiat, the BLM cannot take this substantially sane action [banning coal leasing in the Powder River Basin] in the future no matter what information might support it.”

Using the Congressional Review Act to invalidate land use plans creates a lot of “chaos and confusion,” which may end up backfiring on the fossil fuel and mining industries that President Donald Trump and GOP congressional members say they’re trying to help, according to the conservation group Center for Western Priorities.

If a plan is invalidated, “doesn’t that mean that oil and gas leases or coal leases issued under that [resource management plan] are no longer valid?” Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby told WyoFile. “What you’re guaranteed to get is uncertainty, which is not good for anyone, including industry.” 

Others suggested it’s insulting to Wyoming residents to invalidate a hard-fought compromise among multiple stakeholders who rely on the Buffalo Field Office management plan to guide myriad public land activities, including grazing and recreation.

“Wyoming voices — people who participated in that exhaustive [BLM planning] process — aren’t going to be heard once that [Congressional Review Act] kicks in,” Powder River Basin Resource Council Executive Director Donna Birkholz told WyoFile.

Further, Birkholz said, Congress doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to micromanage such plans to make them work for all stakeholders. 

“People in the West, we tend to get our backs up about people from [Washington] D.C. telling us what to do,” Birkholz said. “Using the [Congressional Review Act] seems like politicians telling folks that their voices are not going to be considered.”

Gov. Mark Gordon joined the Wyoming delegation in support of overriding the BLM to remake the Buffalo Field Office plan, as did the Campbell County Board of Commissioners.

“Campbell County has always known the true value of coal — both to meet baseload demand for affordable, reliable energy and for other non-thermal uses that are emerging as important for the future,” the commissioners said in a statement. “We appreciate the unwavering support we have received from the Trump Administration and our entire congressional delegation to overturn the misguided decisions by the previous administration to eliminate future coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.”

The Wyoming BLM, under President Trump, had already initiated its own amendment process earlier this year to potentially remove the coal leasing ban from the Buffalo Field Office’s management plan. The administration also scheduled two federal coal lease sales this week in the Powder River Basin, testing the mining industry’s appetite for new reserves.

A competitive lease auction on Monday in Montana attracted one bid: $186,000 for 167 million tons of federal coal associated with the Spring Creek mine — a fraction of a penny per ton compared to past coal lease sales that reaped more than $1 per ton. The low bid stunned industry watchers, and the BLM indefinitely postponed a sale in Wyoming — for 441 million tons — that was supposed to happen Wednesday.