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oil and gas drilling
Reject the Budget Bill That Sells off Alaska and Our Rights Along With It
Buried in Congress’ latest budget proposal is an unprecedented power grab that threatens both wild Alaska and the foundations of public oversight.
May 07, 2025
The House Natural Resources Committee majority just unveiled the worst piece of legislation for the environment in history—a bill that wouldn’t just sell off Alaska but that would threaten democracy and environmental protections across the country. The proposed “budget” reconciliation legislation is saturated with destructive provisions that would set our nation’s conservation legacy back for decades.
Don’t be distracted by the chaos. This “energy dominance” bill is not about good budgeting. It’s a clear handout to fossil fuel executives and a key part of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell off your public lands to wealthy oil, gas, and mining corporations for unchecked industrialization.
Starting with the threats to wild Alaska alone, you can find an unprecedented and sweeping giveaway of our nation’s lands and waters. Mandated industrialization, the override of environmental standards, cutting out the public—the text reads like something drafted in an oil tycoon’s boardroom.
This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.
First, the Arctic. Despite a well-documented history of failure, the bill would force the Department of the Interior to reinstate leases from a failed 2021 oil and gas lease sale in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That sale intended to pay for the last round of Trump billionaire tax cuts—a sale for which not one major oil company showed up to bid and less than 1% of projected revenues were collected. Taxpayers are still waiting for their money. Nevertheless, today’s bill would mandate four more lease sales in the refuge over the next decade, as well as lease sales in the Western Arctic every two years.
From there, the bill attempts to rewrite environmental law by declaring that rushed approvals are automatically in compliance with landmark statutes like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
That’s not laziness—it’s an attempted authoritarian overreach.
In practice, that could look like agencies having just 30 days to approve permits—like those deciding whether seismic blasting can legally harm or kill polar bears—with no public input and zero accountability.
Then comes the most egregious power grab: The bill attempts to strip away judicial review of government decisions in the Arctic Refuge. Only the State of Alaska or oil companies could sue. The Gwich’in people, who have stewarded this place as their cultural homeland since time immemorial? Silenced. The basic democratic rights of the American public? Quashed. The same gag order appears for the Western Arctic, attempting to halt litigation over the Willow project and prevent future legal challenges to drilling by Iocal Indigenous communities or others.
And the hits keep coming.
The bill would require another six offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next 10 years in the waters of Cook Inlet, each covering no less than a million acres. Once again: environmental review sidestepped, public legal challenges all but erased.
The bill would also amend ANILCA to mandate approval of the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial corridor that would cut through National Park and Bureau of Land Management lands, disrupt caribou migration, and threaten subsistence for Alaska Native communities. Just like with Arctic drilling, this provision lets corporations sue the government to fast-track approvals while denying that same legal access to impacted Indigenous communities and the public. This language should terrify anyone who cares about tribal sovereignty or public lands.
Also hidden within the bill is language that would increase national timber harvest by 25%, possibly including the old-growth forests of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska—some of the most carbon-rich and ecologically important temperate rainforests on the planet. And it would slash funding for federal land management, threatening the long-term care of public lands from Denali to the Everglades.
So, what do Americans get in return? Not much. These fossil fuel handouts won’t lower energy prices, fix the deficit, or benefit future generations. The last Arctic Refuge lease sale brought in pennies on the dollar and had no impact on gas prices or our dangerous dependence on oil. This bill won’t boost revenue; it just fast-tracks extraction while silencing oversight.
Here’s the truth: This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.
We need Congress to reject this toxic package. Because our public lands—and our democracy—aren’t up for sale.
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In First Major Climate Challenge to Trump 2.0, Groups Work to Block Offshore Drilling Once Again
Climate campaigners defeated the president's offshore drilling push during his first term, and they are pledging to do so again.
Feb 21, 2025
Climate advocates are expressing confidence as they file the first major environmental legal challenges to U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, with the legal group Earthjustice noting that campaigners were victorious during Trump's first term when they sued to stop him from gutting protections from offshore oil drilling.
"We defeated Trump the first time he tried to roll back protections and sacrifice more of our waters to the oil industry," said Earthjustice managing attorney Steve Mashuda on Wednesday as the organization filed a challenge against an executive order Trump signed on his first day of his new White House term. "We're bringing this abuse of the law to the courts again."
Trump urged oil and gas companies—which poured nearly $450 million into efforts to get him and other anti-climate Republicans elected last year—to "drill, baby, drill" as he signed the order hours into his second term.
The order rolled back former Democratic President Joe Biden's ban on offshore drilling over more than 625 million acres of coastal territory, including parts of the Gulf of Mexico that were impacted by BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which killed 11 people and devastated local ecosystems and businesses.
"Trump tried this illegal move to undo protections during his first administration, and he failed. We will keep working to ensure he won't be any more successful this time around."
As Common Dreamsreported in January, Biden invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect areas of the U.S. coasts from future oil and gas leasing, and a federal judge ruled in 2019 that withdrawals under the law cannot be revoked without an act of Congress.
"When nearly 40% of Americans live in coastal counties that rely on a healthy ocean to thrive, removing critical protections shows how little care Trump has for these communities," said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney at Sierra Club, which joined the lawsuit along with climate groups Oceana, Greenpeace, the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, and other organizations. "Trump tried this illegal move to undo protections during his first administration, and he failed. We will keep working to ensure he won't be any more successful this time around."
Earthjustice noted that a poll conducted by Ipsos last year on behalf of Oceana found that 64% of Americans want elected officials to keep offshore areas off-limits for new oil and gas leasing. Climate scientists have consistently warned that new fossil fuel projects have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C or as close to it as possible.
The majority of Americans support ocean protections from offshore drilling. Trump's executive order to rescind protections from offshore drilling is not just illegal – it's deeply unpopular. We're in court to protect coastal communities, public health, regional economies, and marine ecosystems.
— Earthjustice (@earthjustice.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 11:28 AM
The possibility of fossil fuel drilling near coastal communities threatens "the health and economic resilience of millions of people who rely on clean and healthy oceans for everything from tourism to commercial fishing," said Earthjustice.
Trump is pushing to open up new areas for offshore drilling even as fossil fuel production in the U.S. has surged to record highs in recent years. He has claimed the country faces an "energy emergency" even as the oil industry has not yet begun drilling in 80% of the millions of public acres of water where it already holds leases.
"Trump's putting our oceans, marine wildlife, and coastal communities at risk of devastating oil spills and we need the courts to rein in his utter contempt for the law," said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is also involved in the legal action. "Offshore oil drilling is destructive from start to finish. Opening up more public waters to the oil industry for short-term gain and political points is a reprehensible and irresponsible way to manage our precious ocean ecosystems."
In a separate legal challenge, several climate action groups are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to reinstate a 2021 federal ruling that blocked Trump from rolling back offshore protections that had been introduced by the Obama administration in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
"The Arctic Ocean has been protected from U.S. drilling for nearly a decade, and those protections have been affirmed by the federal courts," said Sierra Weaver, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. "Though these coastlines have been protected, the administration is showing no restraint in seeking to hand off some of our most fragile and pristine landscapes for the oil industry's profit."
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The Dangerous Thinking Behind Trump's Attempt to Rename the Gulf of Mexico
The name change signals a territorial and economic claim over these waters and their resources, further cementing U.S. imperial ambitions in the region.
Feb 06, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" isn't just another absurd stunt or another example of his outlandish behavior. It signals a much deeper, more troubling agenda that seeks to erase historical identity and assert imperial domination over a region already suffering under a long history of interventionist policies. At its core, this is a move to expand the U.S. empire by erasing Mexico's presence from a geographical feature recognized for centuries.
The name "Gulf of Mexico" has existed since the 16th century. Its recognition is supported by international organizations such as the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). These organizations ensure that place names remain neutral and historically accurate, preventing nations from distorting or erasing cultural and historical ties to specific regions. Mexico has formally rejected this renaming, emphasizing that no country has the right to unilaterally change the identity of a shared natural resource that spans multiple borders. This is a matter of respect for international law and sovereignty, which the Trump administration has ignored in favor of pursuing nationalistic expansionism.
Erasing "Mexico" from our maps isn't an aberration. It's part of a long pattern of anti-Mexican racism in the U.S., ranging from political scapegoating and border militarization to violent rhetoric that fuels hate crimes. But this move goes beyond that. It fits into a much larger U.S. strategy of controlling the Western Hemisphere, which dates back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which claimed the U.S. had the right to dictate who influences Latin America. Over time, this ideology has come to justify U.S.-backed military interventions, coups, and economic manipulations in the region aimed at securing U.S. interests and ensuring that Latin America remains in a subordinate position.
While Trump's attempt to erase "Mexico" from the Gulf of Mexico may appear symbolic, it could have devastating consequences.
Not only is the Gulf of Mexico a site of historical importance, but it is also rich in oil and natural resources. This fact is no coincidence. The United States has a long history of trying to control these resources including backing oil company boycotts against Mexico’s nationalized industry in the 1930s and signing trade agreements that favor U.S. companies over Mexican sovereignty. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico signals a territorial and economic claim over these waters and their resources, further cementing U.S. imperial ambitions in the region.
Companies like Google Maps, which has announced plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America after Trump's executive order, are just playing into the billionaire-fueled power grab that advances a racist, nationalist agenda of domination and imperialism. Even if Google only applies this change in the U.S., it still normalizes the idea that facts can be rewritten to serve a political agenda. At a time when diplomacy and mutual respect should be prioritized, honoring the internationally recognized name would send a clear message that Google values historical accuracy, global cooperation, and good neighborly relations.
The Gulf of Mexico is more than just a body of water; it is a shared resource of immense ecological, economic, and cultural significance for Mexico, the United States, and the world. It plays a critical role in regional trade, fisheries, and energy production, hosting some of North America's most important offshore oil reserves. The United States has long considered Latin America its "backyard," and this is another proof that its imperial ambitions are still alive.
The environmental devastation already occurring in the Gulf region is evidenced by devastating oil spills and the degradation of marine ecosystems. This destruction is further compounded as U.S. and foreign companies continue to exploit the region's resources with no regard for the long-term damage.
The movement to rename the Gulf of Mexico fits into a broader pattern of anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States that has often manifested in political scapegoating, hateful rhetoric, and border militarization. Such rhetoric fuels violence and hate crimes against Mexican and Latino communities. While Trump's attempt to erase "Mexico" from the Gulf of Mexico may appear symbolic, it could have devastating consequences. It reflects a disregard for historical truth, an aggressive assertion of U.S. superiority, and the continuation of exploitative colonialist practices that harm both the environment and Latin American people.
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