Even as Congress tries to work through must-pass budget bills and other important topics, the world keeps interfering.

A case in point: last Thursday, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing on ways to help the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accelerate the permitting process for broadband projects. But permitting was not the only thing on lawmakers’ minds: less than a day earlier, ABC announced it had suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel “indefinitely” after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Kimmel and obliquely threatened the network. Subcommittee Democrats used the hearing to blast Carr and the Trump administration for, in the words of ranking Democrat Doris Matsui (D-CA), making a “direct attack on the First Amendment” by seeming to tie ABC’s broadcast license to policing Kimmel’s comments.

Kimmel’s comments, as most people know, related to the shocking murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk at an event in Utah the week earlier. That killing has cast an ever deeper pall over Washington, as partisans try to assign blame to the other side and lawmakers express growing alarm about their own safety.

Kirk’s murder comes months after a Democratic state senator and her husband were murdered in their Minnesota home in a politically motivated shooting, and follows the two assassination attempts on then-candidate Donald Trump in 2024; the attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022; the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; the 2017 shooting of several Republican lawmakers at a softball practice; and on and on. Neither side has a monopoly on violence, it would seem, but they do share an obligation to lower the temperature.

The tensions also are adding to the obstacles in keeping the government open, with the end of the fiscal year only days away. Republicans are trying to pass a “clean” continuing resolution that would keep government open for an additional seven weeks. But Democrats are insisting on additional measures, including extensions of health insurance subsidies under Obamacare that are slated to expire at the end of the year. Neither plan received the needed 60 votes when they came up in the Senate Friday, demonstrating that the sides are increasingly locked into their positions as the clock ticks down towards September 30.

With some lawmakers (and administration officials) blaming each other for the rising tide of violence, the atmosphere is not conducive to the compromise and collaboration needed to keep the government open. Hopefully the “better angels of our nature,” as summoned by another victim of political violence, will prevail.

Meanwhile, About that Permitting

When they weren’t debating the Kimmel suspension, members of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology did discuss permitting reform. Republicans generally expressed support for a number of bills to help the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accelerate the process – including at least one that would exempt certain small projects from NEPA and Section 106 of NHPA. Subcommittee chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) cited an example from his home state – a project he said was delayed “because it has to do a historic preservation review despite the fact that it was on previously disturbed terrain that likely already had a review” – to argue that outdated and burdensome permitting rules were keeping many Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Democrats, meanwhile, expressed skepticism about Republican plans, arguing, as ranking Democrat Matsui stated, that “mandating arbitrary deadlines and rubber-stamp approvals . . . bulldozes local expertise and safeguards.” She said that the real problem is that permitting offices at the state, local and Tribal levels are “often understaffed and under-resourced.”

That hearing came a week after a similar hearing in the House Natural Resources Committee, which examined three bills designed to address permitting. Two of the bills are relatively non-controversial: one would require the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to provide more data about the effect of NEPA on projects, while the other would seek to upgrade technology used to report and share permitting reviews across government agencies.

But the third, and largest, bill is likely to encounter partisan resistance. As reported two weeks ago, the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act would make much more far-reaching changes to NEPA.

Meanwhile, the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of House members seeking middle ground solutions, announced a permitting reform framework last week. Among other recommendations, the framework suggests that the ACHP “engage with other federal and federal-state entities to improve consistency across states” under Section 106, and that federal agencies “replace outdated paper systems with centralized, cloudbased platforms for all permitting processes and mandate shared data systems and strict adoption timelines to make interagency coordination more efficient.”

ACRA is reviewing the recommendations, as well as the legislation the two hearings discussed, to ensure that any improvements to the permitting process maintain the balance between building infrastructure we need and protecting our nation’s historic properties.

Speaking of the FCC. . .

Even as Congress explores changes to NEPA to speed broadband deployment, the FCC is considering amending its regulations. In light of recent legislative and legal changes to NEPA, in August the FCC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking suggesting exempting certain projects from the NEPA definition of a major federal action and from the NHPA definition of an undertaking.

ACRA has submitted comments in response to the FCC’s notice. In those comments, ACRA points out that changes to NEPA do not alter the Commission’s obligations under Section 106: “recent changes to NEPA – whether statutory, through regulation or via court decision – do not affect the statutory definition of an undertaking under NHPA.”

Recognizing the FCC’s responsibility to ensure the rapid, efficient deployment of communications infrastructure, ACRA’s comments point out that “the Commission – like all federal agencies – also has responsibilities to consider the effects of its actions on historic properties – including those where the action is either funded in whole or in part by the agency, or whether its jurisdiction is direct or indirect.”

The FCC is likely to vote on these changes at an upcoming meeting, although the timing is not certain.