
Biden administration lacked the authority to cancel oil and gas leases in Alaska refuge, judge rules
A federal judge in Alaska on Tuesday ruled the Biden administration lacked the authority to cancel seven oil and gas leases that had been issued for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason said terms of a 2017 tax law that set the stage for the first-ever lease sale in the refuge's coastal plain in early 2021 suggested that leases could only be canceled by a court order. She sent the matter back to the Department of Interior for further action.
President Donald Trump upon his return to office in January signed an Alaska-specific executive order that among other things had sought to rescind the lease cancelation.
The tax law called for two lease sale offerings by late 2024 in the refuge's coastal plain, a roughly 1.5 million acre (more than 6 million hectare) swath of the vast refuge that borders the Beaufort Sea and is home to such wildlife as polar bears, caribou and birds. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state corporation, was the major bidder in the first sale, which was held in the waning days of the first Trump administration. Small companies won two other leases but gave them up.
Gleason in 2021 had rejected calls by drilling opponents to halt that first lease sale until underlying lawsuits were resolved.
The second sale, held shortly before Biden left office, drew no bids. It was criticized by Alaska political leaders as too restrictive to attract interest, but environmental groups pointed to a lack of interest from oil companies as a reason to put the long-running debate over whether to allow drilling to rest.
Tuesday's decision, in a case brought by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority against the Interior Department and federal officials, is the latest twist in the decades-long fight.
Gwich'in leaders have opposed drilling on the coastal plain, which they consider sacred, citing its importance to caribou they rely upon. Leaders of the Iñupiaq community of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, have expressed support for drilling, as have Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state's congressional delegation.
Dunleavy in a statement lauded the decision: "Now the leasing program can move forward and could result in more safe, secure energy production right here in Alaska.'
Gwich'in leaders and environmental groups vowed to keep fighting.
"While we are deeply disappointed by today's ruling, we want to be clear that this decision does not diminish our determination to protect these sacred lands,' Raeann Garnett, First Chief of the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, said in a statement.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
RFK fires CDC's ACIP members: What does that mean for Americans?
Noel Brewer, a professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, had been on the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), since July 2024 before the firings blindsided him. "It's surprising... shocking," he said. "None of us had any idea that this was coming, so it came out of the blue and it was not something that's ever been done before with ACIP." Kennedy plans to replace the fired members with new people "currently under consideration," according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy's decision marks a reversal from what a key Republican senator said the Trump Cabinet member had promised during his confirmation hearings earlier this year. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said Kennedy had promised to maintain the advisory committee's current composition. "If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes," Cassidy said. In a June 9 post on X, Cassidy said he's in contact with Kennedy to ensure that ACIP won't "be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines." Kennedy says "a clean sweep" will "reestablish public confidence in vaccine science," and some who follow the Make America Healthy Again movement praise his decision, but former health officials and medical experts worry the firings will sow more distrust in the public health system and impede access to vaccines. "An important part of our social contract is trust and introducing unnecessary chaos and disruption violates that trust," said Cathy Bradley, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. Vaccine guidance: RFK Jr. fires entire 17-member CDC vaccine board. Here are the vaccines they recommended What does ACIP do? After the Food and Drug Administration approves a vaccine, ACIP reviews the scientific evidence to create guidance on who should receive it based on age, preexisting medical conditions and other factors. The CDC director approves these recommendations, which shape guidance from other medical organizations and insurance coverage. In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said the committee has been "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest," citing evidence from 25 years ago. Brewer said the committee has since strengthened its vetting process, which typically takes a year from nomination to member status. "All ACIP members go through a vetting for conflicts of interest," he said. "We're not allowed to have them during our time, we're not allowed to accept money from drug companies for consulting or grants, we're not allowed to sue them." Members are required to disclose any conflicts of interest, which are published on the CDC website. Meetings are also open to the public, typically livestreamed on the CDC website, and are open for public comment. "It's a very open and transparent process which leads to a body of individuals with different types of expertise," said Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC. "Pulling information from decades ago to disparage the ACIP was ludicrous." Can Americans still get vaccinated? Vaccine guidance regarding all the shots recommended for adults and children remains in place, for now, which means eligible patients should have access to these vaccines. But Dr. Tina Tan, a pediatric infectious disease physician and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said that may change as Kennedy appoints new members to the advisory committee. She fears the administration could walk back certain vaccine recommendations, similar to how Kennedy dropped COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women on May 27. Changing vaccine recommendations could impact how private insurance companies cover certain vaccines, Tan said, which could deter Americans from getting vaccinated and fuel outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. ACIP also determines which vaccines are included in the Vaccines for Children program, which provides vaccines to children whose parents or guardians may not be able to afford them. Changes made to the program would be a "great concern for public health," Brewer said. It's also unclear if COVID-19 vaccines will be available in the fall, he said. The committee met in April to discuss the COVID-19 shot, among other vaccines, but Kennedy canceled the vote that would have made recommendations for the fall. ACIP is scheduled to meet again between June 25 and June 27 with its new committee members, according to the HHS statement. More details: RFK Jr. fires entire CDC vaccine advisory panel What parents should know Doctors and public health experts urge parents to continue discussing vaccine options with their pediatricians and primary care providers. Tan also said professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Medical Association are working together to ensure that children have access to vaccines despite possible changes to the recommendations. She encourages parents to look to these national organizations for guidance and support, and to vaccinate their children if they're not up to date with their shots. "They need to get up to date now, given the fact that access to vaccines at this moment shouldn't be an issue," she said. "The American public needs to understand that the federal agencies that were in place before... they're not going to be the same now." Adrianna Rodriguez can be reached at adrodriguez@


The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Trump's travel ban is here: What to know as U.S. shuts the door
An unconventional approach melding immigration reforms and national security policy has resulted in the most dramatic restructuring of admissions policy in a generation, with the second Trump administration taking full advantage of a rare do-over in government. President Trump bans travel from 12 nations, partially restricts entry from seven others Trump expands first term policies to target new countries The Supreme Court in 2018 gave Trump permission to keep out foreign nationals whose presence the administration says would be detrimental to U.S. interests. Trump reinstituted and expanded a program last week that puts full or partial restrictions on travel to America from the citizens of 19 nations, with notable exceptions. Citizens of 12 countries were completely banned from entry beginning on June 9: Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Visitors from another nine countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, were hit with partial immigration and travel bans. More: LA, Olympic officials have 'every confidence' travel ban won't disrupt 2028 Games Athletes, relatives and coaches traveling for sporting events like the 2026 World Cup and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028 were exempted. So were immediate family members of some existing visa holders, Afghan nationals who were employed by the U.S. and ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran. Trump's administration also said Chinese students connected to China's communist party or studying in critical fields would no longer be welcome. And tried to stop international students from studying at Harvard. A leaked State Department cable also revealed the administration may require prospective international students at other universities to undergo social media vetting. The administration has also taken steps to deport pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Trump crackdown on legal entry draws less attention On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that slammed America's doors to new refugees, halting admissions from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq and other war-torn countries. Trump moved to end temporary protected status for roughly 350,000 Venezuelan nationals in February, and is not expected to renew TPS for an upcoming batch. His administration also declined to extend TPS for Afghans and rescinded an extension for 521,000 Haitians that had been approved by the Biden administration. Citizens of Cameroon, in West Africa, will lose the protections in June. Without an extension, Hondurans' TPS will expire in July. Supreme Court lets Trump revoke safe-haven program for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans The administration also ended humanitarian parole for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela immigrants, making them eligible for deportation. Trump's claw-back of temporary protected status for citizens of countries experiencing conflict - a program run through the Department of Homeland Security that former President Joe Biden greatly expanded - also removes work authorizations and deportation protections. Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump is pursuing the "same sort of anti-legal immigration push" he pursued in his first term, the refugee program was substantially curtailed. "The areas that he has the clearest legal authority over are the ones that he is reducing," Nowrasteh said. While the number of refugees who come to America varies from year to year, 60,050 people were admitted in 2023, according to DHS. Trump's administration is only allowing refugees from one nation, white South Africans known as Afrikaners. He has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that they are the victims of genocide. Stephen Miller, the president's Homeland Security adviser, told reporters in May, as he sought to justify the policy, that the U.S. refugee program has historically been used as a solution to global poverty and it should not be. "Wherever there's global poverty or wherever there is dysfunctional governments, then the U.S. refugee program comes in, swoops them up, relocates them to America, and you have multi-generational problems," Miller said. "The U.S. refugee program has been a catastrophic failure." Trump administration cites national security concerns The administration has cited broad national security concerns for many of its actions while refusing to go into detail on individual cases. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters during a May 29 briefing that seemingly disparate actions such as Trump's slashing of foreign aid, directives to universities and revisions to visas were all part of the administration's pledge to get serious about security. Bruce, who was being pressed to say how many Chinese students would be affected by new visa restrictions, stressed: "What the story is here is that the issue of being serious about safety for the country matters, and we're going to look at that at every single front." Trump's approach "perhaps has not been done before," Bruce said in the remarks, which preceded Trump's travel ban. An analysis of State Department data by the American Immigration Council, which opposes Trump's moves, found the policy could prevent 34,000 immigrant visas and more than 125,000 non-immigrant visas - typically for business and tourism - from being issued each year. The group's analysis of 2022 data found that 298,600 people from affected countries came to the United States. The countries included were identified by the Trump administration as nations "for which vetting and screening information is so deficient" to warrant a full or partial travel ban and those whose nationals "pose significant risks of overstaying their visas in the United States." Of the countries on Trump's list, Haiti had the most overstays in 2023, by far. Stephanie Gee, the senior director for U.S. Legal Services at the International Refugee Assistance Project, a group that has taken Trump to court, criticized "very arbitrary exceptions" for people like athletes. "I think it raises questions around that rationale that they're picking and choosing how to say and when to say somebody is a national security threat," she said. Trump did not explain in his order why athletes were a lesser concern. But the Olympics allows athletes from all nations to participate, and Los Angeles is hosting in 2028. Contributing: Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY


The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
LaMonica McIver indicted for confrontation with ICE officers in Newark
"While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve," Habba said in a post on X. McIver was visiting the facility along with fellow Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez. An altercation occurred after officers arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who attempted to join the trio in their visit. McIver is said to have then "slammed her forearms" into immigration officers, according to the criminal complaint against her. If convicted, she could face up to 17 years in prison for all three counts. Was it an overreaction? Trump deploys thousands of National Guard, Marines to Los Angeles The congresswoman has denied the accusations, saying they are unjustified. "The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation," McIver said in a statement reacting to the indictment. Members of Congress, by law, can visit immigrant detention facilities unannounced. McIver's lawyer, Paul Fishman, who served as U.S. attorney in New Jersey during the Obama administration, said that the "legal process will expose this prosecution for what it truly is -- political retaliation against a dedicated public servant who refuses to shy away from her oversight responsibilities." The indictment came the same day voters in New Jersey took to the polls to pick their Democratic and Republican nominees for governor. Baraka, whose arrest sparked McIver's standoff with officers, ran for the Democratic nomination but lost to Rep. Mikie Sherrill. Contributing: Sarah Wire, USA TODAY; Katie Sobko,