Biden Expected to Throw Environmentalists One More Bone

It would appear that Joe Biden saved his best for last.

Biden is expected to issue an order to ban new offshore drilling projects permanently.

He is also expected to do this via a decades-old law that would block Trump from being able to reverse the order.

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Biden is expected to issue an order on Monday via the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Donald Trump has already pledged to reverse every climate order that Biden has issued that he can, but this would not be one of them.

Orders under this act give the president the authority to block new projects, but the law does not cite any way for these orders to be reversed.

In fact, Donald Trump used this law himself during his first administration to block offshore drilling off the coast of Florida and South Carolina for a decade.

The order was extended from July 1, 2022, to June 20, 2032.

At the time, Trump stated, “This protects your beautiful gulf and your beautiful ocean, and it will for a long time to come.”

And if you are wondering if this law has been tested in the courts, it has, when Donald Trump tried to undo a ban put in place by Barack Obama for offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic Ocean.

Trump challenged the ban, but it was upheld by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in 2019.

She ruled that the only way such an order could be reversed was via an act of Congress.

Since this is not a budgetary order, Republicans would need 60 votes in the Senate to have it passed, which is not likely to happen.

Realistically, the only way that Trump would be able to lift Biden’s ban would be to add it to spending legislation that was being forced through via reconciliation.