Sheldon Whitehouse’s line is the one that stuck: “This is how you blow up a permitting deal.” He’s a sponsor of the Senate bill, so he’s not a neutral witness. But he’s also just correct about the mechanics.

The point of permitting reform, as sold, is speed. A permit arrives sooner, and fewer lawsuits chew on it afterward. But a developer financing a project doesn’t really care how fast the stamp arrives if the stamp can be taken back. The thing being bought is durability. So the Justice Department moving to revoke permits on projects that already have them isn’t a side skirmish. It’s a live demonstration of the exact risk the bill claims to retire, delivered while the bill’s backers are still counting votes.

I keep thinking about the Grist headline from two weeks ago, the one about this bipartisan bill tearing the climate movement apart. Part of that fight was whether to trust the other side to honor what a statute says. Now there’s a fresh data point on that question, and it’s not a flattering one for the trusting camp.

Taleb would say the tail was always the executive branch. You can write the rules to shave the median wait from five years to two, and it won’t matter if one agency can reach back and un-sign things. The distribution you care about lives out there.

There’s also a quiet irony that the same day’s feed has NextEra raising $5.7 billion for federal energy “hubs.” Money is still being committed on the theory that the paper holds. Maybe it does. Which of those two stories do lenders read more closely?

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