FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Interior on Thursday oversaw agreements with Republican governors to speed up the permitting process for building infrastructure.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed memorandums of understanding with Permitting Council Executive Director Emily Domenech at the Department of the Interior, hosted by Secretary Doug Burgum.
“The important things for Americans that depend on this infrastructure, because it helps increase safety, lower costs, and improve their quality of life, is that we can build great things in America, build them safely, build them smartly, and build them quickly without all this red tape increasing the cost for taxpayers and slowing down the gains that you get when this essential infrastructure is built,” Burgum told The Daily Signal in an interview after the signing.
The states opted in to the “FAST-41 process,” syncing state and federal limits to make building faster.
The $7.4 billion Korea Zinc project, to build a smelter in Tennessee, will likely be the first project listed under the agreement with the state, Domenech told The Daily Signal.
The Trump administration hopes all 50 states will sign similar MOUs to speed up building.
“We want to be able to coordinate with state permitting so that we can move things quicker, so we don’t have these sort of unnecessary delays that happen across the board,” Domenech said.
Burgum expects Alaska to sign a similar agreement in the near future.
The Permitting Council signed its first statewide MOU in August 2025 with Alaska. The agreements with Tennessee and Idaho build on that MOU by becoming the first commitments to align state and federal permitting timetables.
This will speed up the process of projects like the Alaska LNG pipelines, a $44 billion infrastructure initiative that is a priority for the president, Burgum said.
The Permitting Council is also holding meetings with blue states to work on agreements. Domenech is particularly focused on Pennsylvania and Arizona, she said.
“We’ve got a little ways to go to negotiate those agreements, but we’re hopeful that we can find some common ground,” she said.
As the Trump administration emphasizes affordability initiatives ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Burgum expects the agreements will lower prices for average Americans.
“We have $1.5 trillion or higher amount of capital projects that are being held up by permitting,” Burgum said in an interview with The Daily Signal.
“If we can release those projects, whether that’s horizontal infrastructure that helps lower the price of energy, pipelines, transmission lines, water infrastructure, ports, highways, surface transportation, all of those things that lower the cost of transportation, lower the cost of delivery, lower the cost, everyday life gets better and cheaper.”
The memorandums of understanding are expected to speed up the process of building data centers.
When asked by The Daily Signal how the Trump administration would prevent these centers from raising energy prices for consumers, Burgum said data centers that are connected to their own grids can actually lower prices.
“It’s like a BYOP,” he said. “If you want to build a data center and bring your own power, you’re not tapping in or competing with consumers for their power.”
When Burgum was governor of North Dakota, his agreement with a new data center lowered the price of energy in a rural area, he said.
“We can win the AI arms race, and we can do it without raising prices, possibly even lowering prices for consumers,” he said.
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for “The Daily Signal.”
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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Trump can get it done. Would Kameltoe ever think of this? Have data centers provide their own energy? What an idea. Go ahead democrats walk out of President Trumps speech to the Congress and the Union. Have your little meeting with brainiac Joy Reid. You couldn’t come up with this in a billion years. President Trump
is what this country needs. The democrats are done.
Trump is doing what we know he can do, and that’s get the country running on the right track again! So happy we have him and hopefully can keep the Demoncrats out of that office in 2028 too.
Every time Trump comes up with another way to improve our systems I can’t help but wonder why on earth that wasn’t already done by someone before him!?!
Due to incompetence or fear? Nobody before Trump bothered with even obvious fixes. Afraid to risk their political reputation or career by rocking the boat? Or maybe they just didn’t know how? How to look at the big picture, identify the problems, and think like a businessman to focus on solutions.
Trump is a problem solver; they were merely politicians.
I did and you didn’t post it. President Trump is what we need in this country. Kameltoe would never have come up with data centers providing their own power. They want to destroy this country and make every citizen poor to rely on the largesse of the democrats. The people are still paying for their livelihood. Govt doesn’t have any money. It’s all tax money the people paid by working hard and now the dems want us all on the dole to vintrol
us. That is why they hate President Trump the GOP and the MAGA movement because they are the patriots pro Americans. The dems want to destroy her.
I am grateful for Burgum’s experience…..look at the boom in gas production in N.D. He can get it done and seems to appreciate the president’s support also.
Another GREAT IDEA FROM 47 AND HIS CABINET (THE GREATEST CABINET EVER ASSEMBLED IN AMERICAN HISTORY).
** Good luck getting ANY of the Socialist/Communist run Blue States to get on board. DemoRATS LOVE ENDLESS RED TAPE, DOZENS OF EXPENSIVE AND UNNECESSARY REGULATIONS, ABSURD AND COSTLY EPA IMPACT STUDIES, AND MEETING AND SATISFYING THE MIND-BOGGLING STEPS IN THE PERMITTING AND INSPECTION PROCESSES.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE:
Building identical homes, say a modest 2-story, 4-bedroom, 3-bath, full unfinished basement home in a RED State VS a BLUE State from start to finish:
Red State (start to finish): 9-12 months, cost $425,000 to $575,000
Blue State (start to finish): 2-5+ years, cost $1.5 million to $3+ million.
Property taxes (and ALL OTHER TAXES), WILL BE 2-3 TIMES HIGHER IN A BLUE STATE than in a Red State.
WHY IS THIS? SEE ** ABOVE.
Perhaps it should have been called BLUE Tape? Seems more likely to me!
Trump has an active and innovative mind. That’s why the Troglodyte Democrats hate him.
I can see the socialist/democrats pulling their hair out over this and planning their next move to counter common sense. Go president Trump! The socialist/democrats have nothing to offer and soon will not even be able to cover their tracks with the help of their supporters. Pray for God’s will to be done. MAGA!
CUT local bureaurcry alone see the Eaton & Pacific Palasides fire victims alone
CUT DC Regualtions
Streamline mortages etc
CUT overhead excess
The more you keep Government out of the market place the more you unleash the potential for business to excel.
It would appear that blue states could care less about infrastructure as evidenced by companies abandoning large investments. California is on the forefront of this travesty on two fronts: 1. Environmentally putting existing companies out of business. 2.Making it impossible to build new businesses due to regulatory red tape. Of course I’m referring to oil refineries being shut down. It is almost impossible to conceive that companies would sacrifice millions of dollars of existing infrastructure because of state and federal government restrictions, but here we are. Can’t build a new one, can’t run the existing one. Refineries aren’t the only thing that can’t be built, electrical power plants are on the endangered list as well. No businesses can be built without government say so. When the planes stop flying and traffic stops moving or when the lights go out, these stupid politicians will be ready to blame anyone else but themselves. But at least the air will be clean.
Only a living God the Father of one Son, Jesus Christ and their blessed Holy Spirit can save us from these plans being carried out in this country. God help us I pray. Learn, discover their end goal and pray God’s will alone be done. Repent.
I don’t fully understand the ramifications of these YUGE data centers. Are there hot water runoff problems or some other effluent problems we don’t know about? It would seem smart on the Trump administration’s part to come up with a list of possible problems like the energy supply problem and a solution for each. People might be more willing to commit to these centers in their areas if they knew the full scope. While they’re waving the energy thing in our faces, are they sliding other worse things in the back door?
Now I got feedback from AMAC that my imput is too short so after this first waste of a sentence I will repeat what I said. And what I said is that we should rename it BLUE Tape instead of Red. Are you happy now AMAC? You didn’t use to waste people’s time so until recently. If this is because you switched to an AI system than please switch back! What you have now is vastly underperforming!
does this mean poisoning agriculture & residential water for AI cwnters
I’d believe it when I see it. I’ve heard people say things will be good for us, then it happens and it’s bad.
What is MOU???!