Trump's Arctic Drill Plan Challenged by Environmental Groups

The obscure provision had been used to preserve coral reefs and walrus grounds -- and environmentalists said it was appropriate for Obama to seize it to protect fragile, remote Arctic waters from energy development.

The law doesn’t give presidents the power to undo a withdrawal of territory once it’s made, the environmentalists said. It’s Congress which has the authority to manage territory belonging to the federal government, and the president can regulate it only to the extent Congress authorizes him to do so, the groups said in the complaint.

"Until Trump, no president has ever tried to reverse a permanent withdrawal" made under that law, the conservation groups said in a joint statement. “President Trump’s April 28 executive order exceeds his constitutional and statutory authority and violates federal law."

Trump has ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to consider scheduling new sales of drilling rights along the U.S. coastline, with an eye on annual auctions of territory in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska and the mid- and south-Atlantic. A surge in domestic drilling could unleash American " dominance" in energy production, Zinke told oil industry executives gathered at a summit in Houston.

Trump’s executive order seeking to ban people from six mostly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. and his threat to cut off some funding to so-called sanctuary cities have been challenged successfully, so far, with judges blocking their implementation.

The case is Kanam v. U.S. Department of Interior, 17-cv-00010, U.S. District Court, District of Alaska (Fairbanks.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net; Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net; Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net Joe Schneider, Michael Hytha


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