This is the fourteenth edition of the Biden Tracking newsletter. This week, the Biden Administration was sued over their approval of a major Alaskan Oil Drilling project and withdrew a land-swap deal that would have allowed a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This week we will also look into the Biden Administration’s claim they had no legal authority to stop that major Alaskan Oil Drilling project It is Monday, March 20th, 2023, day 790 of the Biden Presidency.
If you’re interested in learning more about topics in my newsletter, everything underlined contains a link to a news article that goes into futher detail on the subject.
Tuesday, March 14th (Day 784)
On Monday, the Biden Administration officially approved the Willow project in northwest Alaska which now becomes one of the largest oil drilling projects in history. (If you are interested in learning more about the project click here to see my newsletter from last week.) One of the Biden Administration’s arguments for approving the project is that they were legally obligated to approve it. ConocoPhillips already had leases on the land, and the Biden Administration said they had little legal standing to stop the project. If they had stopped it, they argued, they would have likely faced a costly lawsuit which, if they had lost, could have resulted in significant fines for the government. But Legal Planet, a collaboration between faculty at UC Berkeley School of Law and UCLA School of Law, which “provides insight and analysis on energy and environmental law and policy” disagrees. Legal Planet argues that the Endangered Species Act, which theoretically prohibits agencies from taking actions that jeopardize the continued existence of listed species, or the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, which directs the Biden administration to constrain the exercise of existing lease rights to limit environmental harm, could have been used by the Biden Administration to stop the project. The environmental harm of the project, and oil drilling in general, is pretty much undisputed. There will be adverse effects from this kind of large-scale drilling, the Biden Administration is clear about this in its environmental impact statement. However, I was able to review this statement and the Biden Administration spends very little time discussing a hypothetical “no action” proposal, which would mean the project not going forward. The Biden Administration spends most of the impact statement comparing different somewhat scaled-down versions of the project. Suggesting that there was no initiative in the Biden Administration to even consider the project not happening. Other articles have made it clear that interest groups lobbied the Biden Administration hard to move the Willow Project forward. I have a hard time believing that the Biden Administration really felt they had no other choice but to approve the project. The Biden Administration is already being sued though for their decision to approve the project, more on that later in the newsletter.
On Tuesday, the Biden Administration announced they were withdrawing a land-swap deal that would have allowed a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, moving to protect a vast wild area originally protected under President Jimmy Carter. In May, Carter joined the fight to stop the deal, asking a court to vacate a ruling that would have allowed the deal to continue. At that time the Biden Administration did not have a public opinion on the swap. Despite the announcement on Tuesday, the Biden Administration isn’t totally opposed to the road. They are still leaving open the possibility of some form of land swap in the future, to enable the construction of a road, one possibly different from what was envisioned during the Trump years.
Biden Signs an Executive Order Expanding Background Checks on Gun Sales
On Tuesday, President Biden signed an executive order that would expand the definition of a gun dealer so that more firearm sales require the seller to conduct a background check. Specifically, Biden’s order tells the Justice Department to clarify when gun sellers meet the legal definition of being “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, meaning their sales would require background checks. In theory, the order should require private individuals who engage in repeated gun sales to register and run background checks. The order is a requirement of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the gun law Congress passed last year.
Wednesday, March 15th (Day 785)
On Wednesday, the conservation group Earth Justice, on behalf of the conservations groups Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace USA, and the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Biden Administration over their approval of the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Trustees for Alaska filed a similar legal challenge on behalf of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and conservation groups. The groups argue that “the project would cause irreparable harm to the environment, Arctic wildlife and nearby people who depend on the land for subsistence” and “Interior has relied on a mistaken conclusion that it could not deny nor meaningfully limit the project…The Biden administration had the authority to stop Willow — yet chose not to.” This is not the first time conservation groups sued to stop the approval of the Willow project. After its initial approval under the Trump Administration, conservation groups successfully lobbied a court to stop the project because the Bureau for Land Management had not properly assessed the project’s full climate impacts or considered alternatives that would lessen the project's overall impacts.
The Biden Admin Demands That TikTok’s Chinese Owners Sell Their Stakes in the App.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden Administration is demanding that TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their stakes in the video-sharing app or face a possible U.S. ban. The Biden Administration is concerned that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could be a security concern. There is some question about the legality of a ban of the app, however. In 2020, the Trump administration sought to force a sale of TikTok to U.S.-majority ownership. However, TikTok successfully stopped the sale in court, arguing that such a sale would violate a law known as the Berman amendments, which exempt cross-border communications from the president’s powers to address national security threats through economic sanctions. Biden’s attempt a banning TikTok would likely result in a similar court battle.
Other News: