by Debra Heine
President-Elect Donald Trump vowed Monday to “terminate” Joe Biden’s last minute executive orders, such as his new “permanent” ban on future offshore drilling, and other “money wasting hoaxes.”
Biden announced his latest executive action on Monday, to “permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo,” according to CNN.
Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
“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.”
Trump will supposedly need the approval of Congress to undo Biden’s drilling ban.
The action, which CNN reported on Friday, invokes the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law that gives presidents broad authority to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing and development.
The law does not give presidents explicit authority to revoke the action and place federal waters back into development, meaning President-elect Donald Trump would have to get Congress to change it before he could reverse Biden’s move.
Nevertheless, in a post on Truth Social, Trump expressed confidence that his administration will be able to “terminate” Biden’s EO in short order.
“Biden is doing everything possible to make the TRANSITION as difficult as as possible, from Lawfare such as has never been seen before, to costly and ridiculous Executive Orders on the Green New Scam and other money wasting Hoaxes,” he wrote. “Fear not, these ‘Orders’ will all be terminated shortly, and we will become a Nation of Common Sense and Strength. MAGA!!!”
Meanwhile, Trump’s incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt wrote in a post on X, “This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
Trump on Monday also told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would undo the ban.
“Look, it’s ridiculous. I’ll unban it immediately,” Trump said. “I have the right to unban it immediately,” he insisted. “What’s he doing, why is he doing it?”
The President-Elect added: “We have oil and gas at a level that nobody else has and we are going to take advantage of it and when I see someone say he’s gonna ban 625 million acres, he doesn’t even know what that is. He even doesn’t know what 625 million acres would look like and we can’t let that happen to our country,” Trump said. “It’s really our greatest economic asset.”
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
“Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean.”
This is a number too large for most (including me) to comprehend. So, I decided to reduce this land area to a more manageable mental image (if my math is correct, but I am old now, and sometimes, as the old saying goes, my mental mathematics ‘does not compute’). But, here goes—-
625 million acres is 976,562.5 square miles.
The land area of the State of Alaska is 665,384 square miles.
The land area of the State of Texas is 268,556 square miles.
The land area of State of Tennessee is 42,143 square miles.
Thus, aggregately, the land area of the aforesaid three States is 976,083 square miles. But this is still not quite enough aggregate land area to be equivalent to 625 million acres.
The land area of the City of Los Angeles, California is, currently, 469 square miles (i.e., as I am sure you can appreciate, the land area of a municipality can change).
And this is STILL NOT ENOUGH AGGREGATE LAND AREA, BY ABOUT 10.5 SQUARE MILES to equal the land area that corrupt Old Joe Biden put off limits to oil and gas drilling by President Trump with but the ‘stroke of his pen’.
Thought you would like to know.