The Trump administration has pursued regulatory changes over the past 20 months aimed at accelerating industrial development projects. A key tool in this effort is FAST-41, formally known as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, which was originally enacted under President Barack Obama in 2015 to streamline federal review for large-scale infrastructure projects. The administration expanded FAST-41’s scope in July 2025 through an executive order that added artificial intelligence data centers and related mining activities to the list of eligible critical infrastructure projects.
A similar legislative effort is underway through the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, which passed the Senate this week. Unlike FAST-41, which applies only to designated projects, BAAJA would broadly reform environmental statutes including the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act to accelerate permitting across all infrastructure projects. Environmental organizations have raised concerns that such reforms could disproportionately benefit fossil fuel, mining, and data center projects while limiting regulatory oversight of environmental impacts.
In late October, Montana became the 11th state to formalize an agreement with the federal Permitting Council regarding FAST-41. Under this memorandum of understanding, the federal government will assist Montana in identifying eligible infrastructure projects, provide resources to state agencies, and coordinate state and federal permitting timelines through a unified dashboard. Montana currently has three mining or exploration projects with transparency designations under FAST-41: the Sheep Creek Project, Blue Copper, and the Stillwater Mine. State officials and industry representatives view the agreement as beneficial for streamlining development, with the predictability of timelines seen as particularly valuable for attracting investment to mineral-exploration ventures.
Experts note that the effectiveness of this federal-state collaboration remains uncertain, particularly regarding how much discretion states will exercise in selecting projects for expedited listing and whether dual permitting processes will genuinely reduce timelines given the substantial personnel and resources required to process applications.
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