Daily Caller
Trump Calls Biden’s Drilling Ban ‘Worst Abuse Of Power I’ve Ever Seen’
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
Kish characterized Biden’s move as “a petulant act of a Hard Left Establishment out to punish 340 million Americans who rejected their calls to bow to their Climate Religion and its vows of poverty.”
The Biden White House said early Monday that outgoing President Joe Biden has ordered huge swaths of U.S. federal waters off-limits to future leasing and drilling for oil and natural gas. The ban includes the entire offshore Atlantic, offshore Pacific, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Northern Bering Sea.
All told, the regions impacted by the ban encompass 625 million acres, an area bigger than the states of Texas and Alaska combined. It is also significantly larger in scope than the Louisiana Purchase, which spanned 530 million acres.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks.”
Ironically, the Biden ban includes the Atlantic areas where his administration has spent billions of dollars subsidizing the construction of massive industrial wind power facilities. Those developments are currently the source of rising concerns related to impacts on sea mammals, seabirds and the once-thriving commercial fishing industry. All are concerns the administration has refused to adequately address in any real way.
Dan Kish, senior fellow at the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research think tank, pointed to the “irony of his proposed windfarms in the same waters he is closing to American oil and gas is they are not going to be built. The electricity they produce is so expensive it is deindustrializing Europe and beginning to topple governments. The only question is whether the governments or the windmills will topple first.”
Kish characterized Biden’s move as “a petulant act of a Hard Left Establishment out to punish 340 million Americans who rejected their calls to bow to their Climate Religion and its vows of poverty.” Kish added that Biden and his White House “couldn’t care less about the national security implications, as witnessed by their feckless record that has lit fires around the world while they try to extinguish our gas stoves at home.”
In an interview with Salem Radio national talk show host Hugh Hewitt Monday, incoming President Donald Trump said he would reverse Biden’s order on his first day in office.
“I see that it has just come across that Biden has banned oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory,” Trump began, adding: “It’s ridiculous. I’ll un-ban it immediately. I have the right to un-ban it immediately.”
Trump acknowledge that the same climate-alarm groups behind the Biden ban will challenge any attempt to rescind it in court, saying, “They’ll do everything they can to make it as difficult as possible. They talk about a transition — they always say they want to have a smooth transition from party to party. Well, they’re making it really difficult. They’re throwing everything they can in the way.”
Trump concluded by telling Hewitt that Biden’s order amounts to “the worst abuse of power I’ve ever seen.”
The White House invoked the drilling ban under Section 12 of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). It is a section of that law that previous presidents — including Barack Obama and Trump himself — have used to authorize similar drilling bans.
A reading of that provision makes it clear that Congress intended it to be used solely for reasons of national security and during national emergencies. Unfortunately, for the prospects of a Trump reversal, the law does not include any provision for revoking such bans.
Previous presidential bans have never been challenged all the way up through the Supreme Court, though a challenge by the Trump Justice Department to Obama’s ban in 2017 resulted in the set-aside being upheld by an Obama-appointed district judge in 2019. Trump’s Department of Justice chose not to challenge the decision.
This is clearly a political power move by the Biden White House, another payoff to the Democratic Party’s big climate-alarm funders. Whether Trump and his appointees can come up with an effective strategy to challenge it remains to be seen, but if Trump’s comments to Hewitt are any indication, the incoming president is fully prepared to take on the fight.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Newt Gingrich
In an amazing show of courage, Vice President J.D. Vance offered an intervention for some of our European allies.
That is the best way to think of the two historic speeches he made in France and Germany last week.
In Paris, Vice President Vance pledged the United States would do whatever it takes to lead the world in the development of Artificial Intelligence. He went on to assert that Europe’s automatic response to regulate technological change rather than adapt to it was doomed to fail.
Dear Readers:
As a nonprofit, we are dependent on the generosity of our readers.
Please consider making a small donation of any amount here. Thank you!
Vance warned the Europeans that the Trump administration would retaliate to protect American high-tech companies from being fined and regulated by the European community.
Then, Vance went to the Munich Security Conference. It is the annual meeting of European leaders concerned about defense and threats to peace. The Vice President shocked the Europeans by launching a frontal assault on the decay of their political system.
As Vance put it:
“But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
He then went through a litany of specific complaints about the behavior of different European countries. They ranged from failing to control immigration, suppressing free speech, and Brussels seeking to control and define futures of independent countries such as Hungary and Romania.
The leading French newspaper, Le Monde (their equivalent of the New York Times) asserted that the American Vice President was declaring “ideological war on Europe.”
Le Monde was right. The European elites have been decaying for at least two generations. They hide behind their privileged status and take ideological positions that feel good but are destructive. Europe’s failures are devastating for most everyday Europeans.
I have personal knowledge about this. I have a Ph.D. in Modern European History – and I have lived in France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. As a young Army dependent, we were living in France when the French Army came back from Algeria, killed the French Fourth Republic and brought back General Charles de Gaulle to establish the Fifth Republic.
It is now the longest serving non-royal government in French history.
The European elites value each other’s opinions more than they value serving the people of Europe. The European elites live in a fantasy world of green policies that destroy industries and jobs, welfare policies which destroy the work ethic, and immigration policies which undermine the popular culture. They simply hope for a peaceful world without a strong military.
Meanwhile, state enforced speech codes protect Islamic extremists at the expense of local citizens.
The result has been a steady decline of European culture, economic development, and defensive capacity.
The Afghan Islamist who wounded more than two dozen people and killed a mother and her two-year-old daughter with a car two days before the supposed security conference signals the willful avoidance of reality at the heart of the elite European worldview.
To be clear, I admire European civilization. I believe America is far stronger and safer if Europe is healthy and capable of growing and defending itself.
I hope vice president Vance’s intervention at least starts European elites thinking about what must be done to revive their continent.
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Mariane Angela
President Donald Trump announced Friday the dismissal of General Charles Brown, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump expressed his gratitude toward Brown for his extensive contributions and leadership, wishing him and his family a prosperous future. Brown’s departure marks a pivotal moment in U.S. military leadership following over 40 years of service.
“I want to thank General Charles “CQ” Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump wrote.
Simultaneously, Trump introduced his nominee for Brown’s successor.
“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a “warfighter” with significant interagency and special operations experience,” Trump said.
Trump said Caine’s appointment comes after he was overlooked for advancement during former President Joe Biden’s presidency.
“General Caine was passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden. But not anymore! Alongside Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine and our military will restore peace through strength, put America First, and rebuild our military,” Trump said. President Trump also announced plans to appoint five additional senior military officials, tasks he has delegated to Secretary Hegseth.
It was reported Thursday that Hegseth plans to dismiss Brown as part of President Trump’s commitment to eliminate “wokeness” from the military. Brown reportedly appears on a list of proposed removals submitted to Congress.
Brown had previously expressed his wish to retain his position even after Trump took office, and according to sources speaking to NBC News in Dec. 2024, Trump seemingly moderated his views on the general. Biden nominated Brown as chairman in 2023, and despite a heated confirmation hearing where senators scrutinized his alleged implementation of racial quotas in Air Force hiring practices, he was confirmed.
Meanwhile, Brown’s replacement, Caine, took office as the associate director for Military Affairs at the CIA on Nov. 3, 2021, after serving as the director of Special Programs at the Pentagon. Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, an F-16 pilot with extensive experience including over 150 combat hours, was commissioned in 1990 and has held numerous key roles, from the White House staff to special operations, and balances his military career with entrepreneurial ventures.
Two New Studies Find Fewer Clouds Cause Warmer Temps
Trump gains ground in war against DEI
Quebecers starting to understand the need for Canadian pipelines
Germany’s Shocking War on Online Speech: Armed Police Raids for Online “Insults,” “Hate Speech,” and “Misinformation”
U.S. Conditionally Approves Avian Flu Vaccine for Poultry
Is Our Five-Year Nightmare Finally Over?
Are We Winning the Patient-to-Doctor Ratio War?
-
Business2 days agoGovernment debt burden increasing across Canada
-
Health2 days agoTrump HHS officially declares only two sexes: ‘Back to science and common sense’
-
Business2 days agoNew climate plan simply hides the costs to Canadians
-
Censorship Industrial Complex2 days agoBipartisan US Coalition Finally Tells Europe, and the FBI, to Shove It
-
Business1 day agoFederal Heritage Minister recommends nearly doubling CBC funding and reducing accountability
-
Alberta1 day agoOpen letter to Ottawa from Alberta strongly urging National Economic Corridor
-
Addictions1 day agoBC overhauls safer supply program in response to widespread pharmacy scam
-
International23 hours agoJihadis behead 70 Christians in DR Congo church