Headline Roundup • March 31st, 2019
Federal Judge Finds Trump's Order to Oil Drilling in Open Arctic Waters Unlawful
Summary from the AllSides News Team
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New York Times (News)
In a major legal blow to President Trump’s push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Mr. Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.
The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Barack Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawal from drilling of about 120 million acres of Arctic Ocean and...
President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed bans on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean, a U.S. judge said in a ruling that restored the Obama-era restrictions.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in a decision late Friday threw out Trump’s executive order that overturned the bans that comprised a key part of Obama’s environmental legacy.
Presidents have the power under a federal law to remove certain lands from development but cannot revoke those removals, Gleason said.
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A federal judge in Alaska has reinstated a ban on oil-and-gas drilling in vast swaths of the Arctic Ocean, potentially undermining a central part of the Trump administration’s effort to expand offshore drilling.
Mr. Trump will need congressional authority, according to the ruling, to reopen drilling in Arctic areas and smaller parts of the Atlantic Ocean that the Obama administration put off limits just weeks before President Obama left office.
