There’s an old Hollywood joke where a screenwriter goes to pitch a romantic comedy, and the producer listens in silence, then exclaims, “Sounds great! Throw in a couple of car chases, and you’ve got a movie!” The joke has endless variants: the screenwriter is pitching a zombie thriller, or a period biopic — whatever the writer pitches, the producer’s punch line remains the same.

That humoresque comes to mind in light of last week’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which is being described, correctly, as sharply circumscribing the ability of litigants to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to stack new review requirements on projects already approved by federal agencies.

Because if you ask anybody who’s trying to build, say, new infrastructure to support the power needs of AI — or just the growth of the digital world generally — the worry isn’t having to get agency approval to break ground. It’s all those car chases that the courts might insist they’ve got to add in before they’ve “got a movie.”

That is, all the studies that must be done that have little to do with either their project or its primary goal.

The case before the court was relatively straightforward. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board (yes, I know, nobody who isn’t in railroads has heard of it; suffice to say it inherited some of the authority of the old Interstate Commerce Commission) approved an 88-mile rail line to connect the rich oilfields of Utah’s Uinta Basin with refineries on the Gulf Coast.

As required by federal law, the board completed an environmental impact statement, which, in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s words, “clocked in at more than 3,600 pages.” The board approved the project.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit threw it out. Why? The pertinent reasons are that although the board considered the environmental impact of the railway line itself, it did not adequately take into account other reasonably foreseeable effects — in particular, that the convenience of carrying oil from the Uinta Basin to the Gulf Coast would increase drilling in the first and refining in the second.

Movie, meet car chase.

The Supreme Court was unanimous in its judgment that the DC Circuit erred, though it split on the reasons. Justice Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, noted that NEPA requires agencies to consider the environmental impact but says nothing about how much weight to give it. He scolded the DC Circuit for not showing sufficient deference to the Surface Transportation Board. (Hold on, didn’t the justices say just last year — oh, never mind.)

Then, he got to the heart of the matter. NEPA requires a federal agency only to consider the environmental impact of the particular project it is being asked to approve — not of “separate projects” that it might generate, such as “a housing development that might someday be built near a highway.”

OK, maybe a NIMBY would prefer that the agency take into account that housing development and its attendant needs — or, in this case, the increase in drilling and refining — but the majority’s legal analysis is not only clear but sensible. Deciding whether oil should be drilled or refineries built is the domain of other agencies, and they will produce their own environmental impact studies. The Surface Transportation Board does only railroads.

Perhaps the justices should have said no more. But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in her concurring opinion, joined by two other justices, the majority also opines on the policy implications. Here’s Justice Kavanaugh:

“NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects.”

And this:

“Fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line. Those that survive often end up costing much more than is anticipated or necessary, both for the agency preparing the EIS and for the builder of the project.

“And that in turn means fewer and more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines, transmission lines, dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subways, stadiums, arenas, data centers, and the like. And that also means fewer jobs, as new projects become difficult to finance and build in a timely fashion.”

All this because, again quoting the majority opinion, “(a) 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development ‘under the guise’ of just a little more process.”

Nicely put — but on the merits of the case, Justice Sotomayor is, of course, correct. Even if NEPA litigation does make building infrastructure enormously difficult, that fact does not seem a proper tool for interpreting the statute.

Nevertheless, even if the policy analysis does not belong in the opinion, I do think the majority gets the argument right. Take a single example: According to a RAND study released earlier this year, by 2027, the power requirements for AI data centers worldwide will approach the total power capacity of California.

By 2030, the study estimates, a single AI training center could have power requirements “equivalent to eight nuclear reactors.” Now imagine all that generating capacity approved by relevant agencies but turned back by the courts under NEPA because the agencies had not sufficiently considered the indirect effects of unrelated projects outside their jurisdiction.

So, here’s the thing: the majority reached the right legal result but should have stayed away from policy. Still, if we’re going to build the infrastructure we need, we have to stop demanding that they throw in all those car chases.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

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BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Friday, a day after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, that he encountered a U.S. administration open to discussion and returned confident that Washington remains committed to NATO.

Merz described his Oval Office meeting and extended lunch with Trump as constructive but also candid, noting that the two leaders expressed different views on Ukraine.

President Donald Trump, left, greets Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz upon his arrival at the White House, Thursday, June 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“Yesterday, in the meeting at the Oval Office, I expressed a distinctly different position on the topic of Ukraine than the one Trump had taken, and not only was there no objection, but we discussed it in detail again over lunch,” Merz said in Berlin after his return.

Thursday’s White House meeting marked the first time the two sat down in person. Merz, who became chancellor in May, avoided the kind of confrontations in the Oval Office that have tripped up other world leaders, including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa.

The two leaders opened with pleasantries. Merz presented Trump with a gold-framed birth certificate of the president’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, who emigrated from Kallstadt, Germany. Trump called Merz a “very good man to deal with.”

The American administration, he said, is open to discussion, listens, and is willing to accept differing opinions.

Add he added that dialogue should go both ways: “Let’s stop talking about Donald Trump with a raised finger and wrinkled nose. You have to talk with him, not about him.”

He said he also met with senators on Capitol Hill, urging them to recognize the scale of Russian rearmament.

“Please take a look at how far Russia’s armament is going, what they are currently doing there; you obviously have no idea what’s happening,” he said he told them. “In short, you can talk to them, but you must not let yourself be intimidated. I don’t have that inclination anyway.”

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Merz, who speaks English fluently, stressed the need for transatlantic trust and said he reminded Trump that allies matter.

“Whether we like it or not, we will remain dependent on the United States of America for a long time,” he said. “But you also need partners in the world, and the Europeans, especially the Germans, are the best-suited partners.

“This is the difference between authoritarian systems and democracies: authoritarian systems have subordinates. Democracies have partners — and we want to be those partners in Europe and with America.”

He reiterated that the U.S. remains committed to NATO, particularly as Germany and others boost their defense spending. Trump has in the past suggested that the U.S. might abandon its commitments to the alliance if member countries don’t meet defense spending targets.

“I have absolutely no doubt that the American government is committed to NATO, especially now that we’ve all said we’re doing more. We’re ensuring that we can also defend ourselves in Europe, and I believe this expectation was not unjustified,” Merz said.

“We’ve been the free riders of American security guarantees for years, and we’re changing that now.”

By DAMIAN J. TROISE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street Friday following a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market.

The S&P 500 index rose 1.2% in morning trading. The benchmark index remains on track to notch a second consecutive winning week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 555 points, or 1.3% as of 10:02 a.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.3%

The gains were broad, with every sector in the benchmark S&P 500 rising. Technology stocks, with their outsized values, gave the market its biggest boost. Chipmaker Nvidia jumped 1.6% and iPhone maker Apple rose 1.9%.

Tesla rose 3.6%, regaining some the big losses it suffered on Thursday when Trump and Musk sparred feverishly on social media.

U.S. employers slowed their hiring last month, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade war. The closely-watched monthly update reaffirmed that the job market remains resilient, despite worries from businesses and consumers about the impact of tariffs on goods going to and coming from the U.S. and its most important trading partners.

President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs continue to weigh on companies. Lululemon plunged 19.4% after the maker of yoga clothing cut its profit expectations late Thursday as it tries to offset the impact of tariffs while being buffeted by competition from start-up brands.

Lululemon joins a wide range of companies, from retailers to airlines, who have warned investors about the potential hit to their revenue and profits because of tariffs raising costs and consumers potentially tightening their spending.

Hopes that Trump will lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with other countries have been among the main reasons the S&P 500 has rallied back so furiously since dropping roughly 20% from its record two months ago. It’s now back within 2.1% of its all-time high.

In the bond market, Treasury yields gained ground. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.47% from 4.39% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks traders’ expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with overnight interest rates, rose to 4.00% from 3.92% late Thursday.

Markets in Asia were mixed and markets in Europe were were mostly higher.

AP writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

By TARA COPP, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s watchdog is looking into whether any of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aides were asked to delete Signal messages that may have shared sensitive military information with a reporter, according to two people familiar with the investigation and documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

The inspector general’s request focuses on how information about the March 15 airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen was shared on the messaging app.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a ceremony at the US cemetery to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings, Friday, June 6, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

This comes as Hegseth is scheduled to testify before Congress next week for the first time since his confirmation hearing. He is likely to face questions under oath not only about his handling of sensitive information but also the wider turmoil at the Pentagon following the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.

Hegseth already has faced questions over the installation of an unsecured internet line in his office that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols and revelations that he shared details about the military strikes in multiple Signal chats.

One of the chats included his wife and brother, while the other included President Donald Trump’s top national security officials and inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Neither the Pentagon nor the inspector general’s office immediately responded to Friday requests for comment on the investigation.

Besides finding out whether anyone was asked to delete Signal messages, the inspector general also is asking some past and current staffers who were with Hegseth on the day of the strikes who posted the information and who had access to his phone, according to the two people familiar with the investigation and the documents reviewed by the AP. The people were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans have said that the information Hegseth posted to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets could have put those pilots’ lives at risk and that for any lower-ranking members of the military it would have led to their firing.

Hegseth has said none of the information was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have said there is no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device.

“I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,” Hegseth told Fox News Channel in April after reporting emerged about the chat that included his family members. “I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”

Trump has made clear that Hegseth continues to have his support, saying during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that the defense secretary “went through a lot” but “he’s doing really well.”

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Hegseth has limited his public engagements with the press since the Signal controversy. He has yet to hold a Pentagon press briefing, and his spokesman has briefed reporters there only once.

The inspector general is investigating Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked and is not approved for carrying classified information. On March 14, one day before the strikes against the Houthis, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of the app.

Trump has said his administration targeted the Houthis over their “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism.” He has noted the disruption Houthi attacks caused through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, key waterways for energy and cargo shipments between Asia and Europe through Egypt’s Suez Canal.

The Houthi rebels attacked more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, between November 2023 until January this year. Their leadership described the attacks as aimed at ending the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.