Congress
Trump promises to undo Biden lame-duck drilling ban
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday vowed to quickly reverse President Joe Biden’s lame-duck push to ban oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coast.
Trump said in a radio interview that he plans to undo Biden’s policy “immediately” after he takes office later this month, although doing so would likely require help from Congress.
The incoming president slammed Biden’s offshore drilling ban Monday in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. Biden announced earlier Monday — two weeks before Inauguration Day — that he was banning new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline.
“It’s ridiculous. I’ll unban it immediately,” Trump said. “It’ll be changed on Day One. I can change it immediately.”
Reversing Biden’s move would likely require an act of Congress, where Republicans hold majorities but where a reversal could face opposition from coastal lawmakers who oppose drilling off their home states’ shores.
Biden moved Monday to block offshore oil and gas leasing of 625 million acres where the White House said the environmental and economic risks of drilling outweigh their “limited fossil fuel resource potential.” The White House and environmentalists see the move as a way to bolster Biden’s conservation legacy as he prepares to leave office.
But Trump and his industry allies are furious about the outgoing administration’s move that could hamstring the incoming administration’s plans to expand domestic fossil fuel production.
The Biden team is “always saying, ‘Oh, no, we want to have a smooth transition from party to party,” Trump said Monday. “Well, they’re making it really difficult. They’re throwing everything they can in the way.”
Biden’s ban — including areas along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea off the Alaskan coast — covers areas with minimal oil and gas production.
Still, industry groups and Republicans called for lawmakers to move quickly to unravel the policy that could tie the new administration’s hands on drilling in those areas.
“We call on Congress and the incoming Administration to use all available tools to reverse this policy,” said Christopher Guith, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement Monday that Congress “will use every tool, including reconciliation, to restore and unleash these revenues, fueling conservation, coastal resilience, and energy independence, and ensuring America — not OPEC, Russia or China — leads the world.”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the move is part of the outgoing administration’s work “to make bold and enduring changes that recognize the impact of oil and gas drilling on our nation’s coastlines.”
The climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement’s Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay praised the Biden ban as a “massive victory for our generation and for communities on the front lines of oil and gas extraction.”
Trump’s expected efforts to undo the drilling ban could lead to clashes on Capitol Hill or in the courts. A federal judge in 2017 struck down a Trump move to reverse Obama-era offshore drilling restrictions, finding that only Congress could do so.
As he prepares to take office in two weeks, Trump also assailed Biden administration spending on climate and clean energy programs — including wind turbines — in his radio interview Monday.
“They’re giving out trillions of dollars in nonsense and Green New Deal crap that isn’t worth a damn thing,” Trump said.
Trump, a longtime critic of wind turbines, accused the Biden administration of “putting windmills all over the place that are destroying every beautiful plain and field and mountain.
“It’s so sad when you fly over the country and you see all these horrible-looking structures, half of them are closed down, rusted and rotted. Their life is over. You know, they last a very limited period of time, and then everybody just leaves them,” he said. “They’re just destroying the beauty of our country. It’s hard to believe environmentalists like windmills.”
Congress
Markwayne Mullin’s DHS nomination not at risk from Rand Paul, Thune says
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is confident Sen. Markwayne Mullin will be confirmed as the next secretary of Homeland Security despite a contentious exchange with fellow GOP Sen. Rand Paul at a hearing Wednesday.
Paul, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sharply questioned the Oklahoma senator about past remarks that he “understood” why Paul suffered a heinous assault from a neighbor in 2017. Mullin refused to apologize for the remark.
“Those two obviously have some history, and it’s, you know, personal stuff,” Thune said. “They’ve got to work through it. I mean, in the end, this is about the job, and it’s about making sure that we got the right person there. I think Markwayne is the right person for the job.”
Asked if he was still confident Mullin can be confirmed, Thune said, “Yeah.”
Paul has scheduled a committee vote on Mullin for Thursday. While Paul’s vote is in serious doubt, Mullin could win over Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has expressed support for Mullin previously and said Wednesday he would approach the nomination “with an open mind.”
“I haven’t been rocked by some mic-dropping kind of moments,” Fetterman told reporters after the hearing.
Congress
Mullin says he regrets calling Alex Pretti ‘deranged’
Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he regretted calling Alex Pretti “deranged” but stopped short of offering a direct apology to Pretti’s family.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” the Oklahoma Republican said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday to serve as the next Homeland Security secretary. He was referring to his past comments regarding the U.S. citizen killed by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota back in January, who some conservatives in the immediate aftermath labeled a “domestic terrorist.”
It was a stronger concession than Mullin gave just moments earlier, when he refused to apologize for calling Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, a “snake.” Still, when pressed by the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, Mullin would not commit to apologizing to Pretti’s family until the conclusion of an investigation into the incident.
“If I’m proven wrong, then I will,” Mullin said.
Regarding Renee Good, another U.S. citizen killed by immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota earlier this year, Mullin refused to retract comments he made at the time of Good’s death, specifically that agents were justified in killing her. He told BLN in January that agents “had the right to defend themselves.”
He said he would wait for the findings of the investigation into Good’s killing to comment further; Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) countered that the Trump administration is currently blocking state and local inquiries.
Congress
Mullin markup still on
A committee vote on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s confirmation as Homeland Security secretary remains on track for Thursday despite a fiery sparring session Wednesday between the Oklahoma Republican and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chair of the panel that must approve his nomination.
A spokesperson for Paul said after the tense exchange — during which Mullin refused to apologize for comments saying he “understood” why Paul was violently assaulted in 2017 — that the committee vote “is on for tomorrow.”
As chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Paul has wide latitude to schedule action on Mullin’s nomination.
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