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MCAA Government Affairs Update for the Week of October 20, 2025: The Latest Developments Impacting Our Industry

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As part of its ongoing commitment to protecting your livelihood and setting the stage for a bright future, MCAA has secured the services of Longbow Public Policy Group to advise our MCAA Government Affairs Committee (GAC). GAC Chair, Jim Gaffney will be passing along information relative to our industry on a regular basis.

On Monday, October 20, 2025 MCAA Lobbying Firm, Longbow Public Policy Group provided the following information:

Trump Administration

  • The MCAA is continuing its advocacy despite the ongoing government shutdown, which entered its third week after the Trump Administration took action last week to reprogram funds to alleviate impending deadlines that could serve as a pressure point to bring congressional leaders to the table. The week started with President Trump ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID,” which required the Pentagon to redirect $8 billion of unobligated research, development, testing, and evaluation funds from the prior fiscal year to cover the military’s payroll. The Administration also moved money around to ensure that the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) supplemental food program for low-income women and children continues during the shutdown and is working to find money to pay federal law enforcement, including U.S. Capitol Police and immigration officers who are continuing to work. But there is not enough money to pay everyone doing critical functions for the federal government. Last Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned that the Energy Department would begin furloughing contractors at the National Nuclear Security Administration due to the shutdown. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged that the ongoing government shutdown is beginning to affect the U.S. economy—potentially costing as much as $15 billion per week.
  • Despite the shutdown, the Administration is continuing to take trade actions of interest to MCAA members. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) last Friday issued a notice eliminating and amending certain Section 301 trade actions previously announced on April 23, 2025 to spur U.S. shipbuilding, including a proposal to suspend liquefied natural gas (LNG) export licenses for companies that failed to meet requirements for shipping fuel on U.S.-built LNG tankers starting in the second half of the decade to “avoid potential short-term disruptions to the LNG sector.” Comments on this and other proposed modifications are due by November 10, 2025 and should be submitted through the USTR’s comment portal using Docket ID USTR-2025-0017. This followed a statement last Wednesday on the Administration’s strategy to address China’s threats to manipulate the market for strategic goods, such as rare earth minerals. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the Trump Administration would backstop domestic production and suppliers in allied nations by establishing price floors across a range of strategic goods. The measures could include the U.S. taking equity stakes in more companies, similar to the deal the Administration announced in July with rare earth miner MP Materials. Additionally, the Administration plans to create a strategic mineral reserve. Secretary Bessent justified centralized, national industrial policy as necessary to compete against China’s non-market economy and to ensure U.S. self-sufficiency in critical industries.
  • MCAA’s work to unwind the prior Administration’s decarbonization agenda also continued last week. Policies hostile to natural gas and oil continue to be rolled back as the nation’s primary banking regulatory agencies (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) withdrew interagency Principles for Climate-Related Financial Risk Management for Large Financial Institutions. These principles created a framework requiring federally-regulated financial institutions with more than $100 billion in total consolidated assets to manage their climate-related financial risks with a particular focus on reducing not only the use of, but also funding for oil and gas development that the previous administration viewed as a leading cause of climate change and air pollution. The agencies now reject the idea that principles specific to climate-related financial risk are necessary because they say their existing safety and soundness standards require all supervised institutions to have effective risk management commensurate with their size, complexity, and activities. A prepublication notice of this rescission of interagency guidance is available here.
  • As MCAA continues monitoring the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and pending nominees to restore the Board’s quorum to operate and the Board’s General Counsel. While these nominees remain pending in the U.S. Senate, last Wednesday the NLRB filed a lawsuit asserting NLRA preemption of a California law giving the state’s Public Employment Relations Board authority to certify union elections and adjudicate unfair labor practice charges in instances where the NLRB lacks a quorum or when the state determines that the board has ceded its authority. California’s Public Employment Relations Board historically has overseen union elections and disputes involving state and local government employees, but the new law extends its jurisdiction to include private sector workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act.
  • As a strong advocate of nuclear energy, MCAA was encouraged last Tuesday by the U.S. Army’s launch of the Janus Program, a nuclear energy initiative to strengthen both national security and the domestic nuclear industry. The program will deploy Army-regulated nuclear microreactors by 2028 using a fast-track contracting and permitting model. The reactors will be commercially owned and operated, with the Army providing oversight and technical support.
  • In another positive development regarding nuclear energy, last week, MCAA received word about (and was encouraged to participate in) an October 23, 2025 Department of Energy meeting of a Defense Production Act (DPA) consortium to discuss development of voluntary agreements and plans of action to utilize DPA authorities to expand domestic production of nuclear power. The consortium is composed of companies involved in the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as end-users of nuclear power. Further details on the consortium and its work are available here. Any interested MCAA members can sign up to listen to the meeting online here. The meeting follows DOE’s August 25, 2025 interim final rule establishing procedures at 10 CFR 821 for reaching DPA agreements with domestic nuclear energy companies to expand U.S. nuclear power production pursuant to President Trump’s May 23, 2025 Executive Order 14032, “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base.” The meeting will be held on October 23, 2025 from 10am to 11am ET at the Nuclear Energy Institute at 1201 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20024.
  • Trustees of MCAA health plans may be interested to learn that as the 2026 Medicare open enrollment period started last Wednesday, experts are predicting a “nightmare” for many enrollees as Medicare insurers get rid of plans, trim popular benefits, and increase out-of-pocket deductibles and other costs. Medicare insurers are reportedly making these changes to improve the profit margins of their plans. They accept that these changes will make their Medicare Advantage plans less attractive to consumers and cause enrollment in these plans to shrink for the first time in 15 years. It is unclear what impact declining enrollments in Medicare Advantage may have for health plans.

Congress

  • The partisan divisions in Congress over the shutdown deepened last week, threatening to extend the stalemate. The week started with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) predicting the shutdown could become the longest in history and vowing not to negotiate until Democrats relented on their healthcare demands and voted to reopen the government. The week ended with the Senate, for the tenth time since the government shutdown began, failing to advance the House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the federal government. The vote was 51-45, short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome Democrats’ filibuster. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), John Fetterman (D-PA), and Angus King (I-ME) again voted with all Republicans. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) appeared to move in Senate Democrats’ direction last Thursday by promising Democrats a vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies after the shutdown ends. But his gesture did not generate too much good will as Senate Democrats blocked an effort later in the day by Senate Republicans to take up the House-passed FY 2026 Defense appropriations bill, which many hoped could serve as the foundation for a potential minibus package to pass the Transportation-HUD, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Labor-HHS spending bills. Speaker Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) did agree last Wednesday to participate in a televised C-SPAN debate about the government shutdown as it entered its third week. The debate will air on C-SPAN’s new show Ceasefire at a yet-to-be announced date.

Around the Country

  • Last week, lobbying continued to enact the MCAA-supported Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery (SPEED) Act. While funding continues to flow to Trump Administration efforts to enhance the power grid to accommodate data center buildouts, bipartisan efforts to enact federal permitting reform to speed these projects has stalled because of the Trump Administration’s hostility towards renewable energy projects. Many Democrats are open to permitting reform, but even those who have joined Republicans in prior efforts to improve the federal permitting process are withholding support for more transformational permitting reform legislation out of fear that President Trump won’t allow wind, solar, and other types of clean energy projects to benefit from the reforms. This fear was reinforced last week as the Administration continued to cancel clean energy projects for which funding has already been appropriated and obligated. Last week’s cancellations included $50 million awarded to American Battery Technology, Co. to design and construct a plant to manufacture battery cathode-grade lithium hydroxide used for the production of clean energy storage systems. These developments also come as the Trump Energy Department finalized a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to AEP Transmission to upgrade nearly 5,000 miles of power lines in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia primarily serving fossil fuel-powered grids. The loan guarantee is part of the Trump Administration’s new “Energy Dominance Financing” program that aims to boost grid capacity and reliability amid rising power demand from data centers..
  • As part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to expand domestic nuclear energy, last Wednesday, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Nuclear Site in Richland, Washington launched its Low-Activity Waste Facility, marking a major milestone in treating and immobilizing radioactive tank waste by turning it into glass. This achievement meets the Department of Energy’s October 15, 2025 Consent Decree commitment with Washington State and demonstrates the facility’s ability to produce high-quality immobilized glass on schedule. By reaching this milestone, DOE’s efforts now shift toward safely operating the facility, advancing treatment of high-level waste, and accelerating cleanup of the 56 million gallons of legacy radioactive and chemical waste stored in 177 underground tanks—remnants of the nation’s World War II and Cold War efforts. Separately, last Monday, California-based startup Radiant Industries announced plans to build a nuclear reactor manufacturing facility at a Department of Energy site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The reactor will be built on land that was originally part of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. Radiant aims to break ground in early 2026 and begin producing its 1-megawatt Kaleidos reactors by 2028. If approved by federal regulators, Radiant’s Oak Ridge site would become the first place in the U.S. mass-producing portable nuclear generators.
  • Last Wednesday, it was confirmed that the Trump Administration is backing Sable Offshore Corp.’s effort to restart oil production off the southern California coast, nearly a decade after a catastrophic pipeline spill shut the operation down. With federal support—including moves to roll back offshore drilling bans and fast-track permitting—Sable aims to revive the aging infrastructure it acquired from ExxonMobil despite ongoing legal challenges, multimillion-dollar fines, and strong opposition from California and environmental groups. The company has also indicated plans to bypass state oversight by operating in federal waters and exporting oil by tankers.
  • As we continue advocating for permitting reform to expand construction of new data centers, the backlog of projects is growing. Last Wednesday, BlackRock’s AI infrastructure consortium revealed that it is spending $20 billion to acquire Aligned Data Centers, which is operating or developing 50 data center campuses. The deal marks the first investment of the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership composed of BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, MGX, Microsoft, and Nvidia that is seeking to raise up to $100 billion to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure. This comes as a Nvidia-backed AI startup called Poolside announced plans to build a massive data center complex in West Texas called the Horizon Project that will generate its own power using natural gas produced in the Permian Basin. The companies are betting the project’s proximity to natural gas resources could reduce costs and improve the long-term viability of the data center, as many planned facilities across the U.S. have been built without power generation capabilities. The companies also plan to build out a massive data center powered by electricity from the Hoover Dam on the border between Nevada and Arizona. Finally, last Monday, Bloom Energy announced a $5 billion agreement with Brookfield Asset Management to deploy “fuel-flexible” fuel cells capable of running on natural gas, biogas, or hydrogen to power AI data centers. Because these systems operate independently of the electric grid, they can be installed quickly to help meet growing power demand. Bloom Energy has already deployed hundreds of megawatts of its fuel cells through partnerships with utilities such as American Electric Power and data center developers including Equinix and Oracle.
  • Growing private sector investment in nuclear power continues to create opportunities for MCAA contractors engaged in large-scale energy and infrastructure projects. On October 10th, Bechtel Group, one of the world’s largest engineering and construction firms, projected that the United States could have as many as ten large nuclear power plants under construction by 2030 or 2031. Bechtel Chief Operating Officer Craig Albert said the company’s outlook is based on a new “shared risk” construction model that distributes financial and schedule risk more evenly among contractors, utilities, and suppliers.
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