Memos & Research

MEMO: The Top 5 Polluter Giveaways and 69 Anti-Environmental Provisions in Senate Big Ugly Bill

Jul 1, 2025

To: Interested Parties
From: David Shadburn, Legislative Director, League of Conservation Voters
RE: The Top 5 Polluter Giveaways and 69 Anti-Environmental Provisions in Senate Big Ugly Bill


The Senate just passed President Trump’s Big Ugly reconciliation bill, the most anti-environmental piece of legislation in history. Senate Democrats proposed commonsense amendments to soften the blow to working families, public lands, and clean energy jobs, but Senate Republicans rejected every amendment they voted on related to the environment and clean energy. 

Here are the top five polluter giveaways in Senate Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill as it heads back to the House:

  • Permanently sells off millions of acres of our public lands with forced lease sales that will open up our public lands and waters to drilling, mining, and destructive development.
  • Increases families’ energy costs by eliminating clean energy tax credits, making fuel efficiency standards impotent, and gutting affordable clean energy development.
  • Lets polluting billionaires skip the line with corrupt new pay-to-play permitting schemes and other sweetheart deals that allow Big Oil CEOs to jam through massive polluting projects while sidestepping environmental review and community input.
  • Threatens public health and increases medical costs by killing pollution cleanup programs for schools and dirty diesel trucks and buses, all while cutting funding for communities to even be able to track harmful air pollution.
  • Wipes out clean energy manufacturing and hundreds of thousands jobs at just the wrong time, ceding our global competitive edge.

To see exactly what’s at stake as the bill heads to the House, we’ve broken down all 69 anti-environmental provisions in the Senate-passed bill here:

69 Anti-Environmental Provisions

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