by dap | Jan 19, 2025 | Daily Signal
This week
invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to prohibit oil and gas drilling in most of America’s offshore areas, in perpetuity—or so he thinks. President-elect Donald Trump called the order “ridiculous” and pledged to reverse it immediately.
That’s precisely what Trump should do, but it won’t be easy. In 2019, a federal judge in
tossed out Trump’s revocation of a similar (though far more modest) Obama-era withdrawal, holding that Trump had exceeded his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. While that decision lost most of its relevance when Biden’s election mooted the appeal, any similar effort by Trump will be challenged on the same legal theory.
Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act provides: “The President of the
may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.” The district court reasoned that because the provision doesn’t mention revocation, a withdrawal “without specific time limit” can’t be revoked except by an act of Congress.
In other words, Biden would have no power to modify a
he announced this week, even though no private rights or obligations were impacted. That defies common sense. The evident purpose of Section 12(a) was to make clear that the president has discretion to not lease any particular area, a natural incident of executive authority.
The notion that the power to do something doesn’t imply the power to undo it sounds like it could be a canon handed down from
, but there is no such canon. If there were, the president’s power to appoint officials wouldn’t include the power to remove them.
Congress’ power to establish lower federal courts wouldn’t include the power to dissolve them. The power of agencies to modify or rescind prior rules and regulations could be called into question in thousands of instances.
But the Supreme Court has consistently recognized the power to undo or modify prior actions as implied in all of those instances, suggesting if anything the opposite canon: The power to do something necessarily implies the power to undo it. And even in the context of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, where withdrawals have been rare, President George W. Bush modified several prior withdrawals with no objection from Congress or the courts.
Indeed the district court’s interpretation would plunge the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act into major constitutional problems. If the president can withdraw all the areas under the act from disposition for all time until Congress passes a new law, that would mean that the president in effect has authority to repeal the law altogether.
But repealing a law requires the power to make law, and the president has no such power. The president can only exercise legislative powers under delegation of legislative authority from Congress, and the Supreme Court has said that such delegations must have “intelligible principles” to guide the president’s action.
If the president could permanently withdraw any and all the areas subject to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in his unfettered discretion, the law would fail that basic test. This is all the more true given the intelligible principle enshrined in the law’s explicit purpose: the “expedited exploration and development” of those areas.
The Supreme Court also requires Congress to have spoken clearly in statute before the president claims an unheralded power to transform a major part of the American economy. Its “major questions doctrine” prohibits courts from finding such sweeping powers in ambiguous statutes. All the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act says is that the president may withdraw offshore from development “from time to time,” which implies flexibility, not permanence, and which, as even the district court conceded, renders the statute ambiguous.
Legal issues aside, one marvels at how short-sighted and self-defeating Biden’s withdrawal would be. In the long run the move would have no measurable impact on climate; its main impact would be to preserve vast fossil resources for future generations. In the short term it merely helps oil companies to maximize profits by limiting production, which they would readily agree to do on their own if it weren’t a criminal violation of the antitrust laws.
The climate lobby still has not grasped that curtailing the supply of an essential commodity for which demand is overwhelming only makes people pay more for it. That’s why Biden spent much of his presidency denying responsibility for rising gas prices.
But as the 2024 election showed, people weren’t fooled. His actions this week prove that higher prices were always part of his plan.
©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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by dap | Jan 19, 2025 | Daily Signal
As 2024 drew to a close, examples abounded of ordinary Americans whose
rights proved to be the ultimate defense against criminals.
While the facts of these defensive gun uses were different, none of these encounters is necessarily “unique.” In fact, reliance on armed self-defense is almost routine.
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between
times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that
occur in the United States every year.
For this reason,
publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from past months and years
.)
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in December. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive
.
- Dec. 2, Wildwood, Missouri: Police say that a father of two
after discovering the stranger hiding under the covers of his 11-year-old son’s bed. This was the third in a series of escalating trespassing incidents involving the suspect and the family over the past year.
- Dec. 4, Columbus, Ohio: During a domestic violence incident, a woman
who she said threatened her while her child was present in the home. The man had a history of domestic violence and had served a prison sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl. Court records indicate the man was in a custody dispute with a woman at the time of his death, but it’s not clear whether this was the same woman who shot him.
- Dec. 6, Henderson, Nevada: Two drivers pulled into a shopping center parking lot after one driver suspected the other might have hit his vehicle. When both drivers exited their cars, according to police, one of them
, prompting the second man to draw his own gun and fatally shoot the threatening driver in self-defense. The
wasn’t injured.
- Dec. 8, West Chester, Ohio: A resident fatally
who he says broke into his second-floor condominium through the balcony. According to other residents in the condo complex, the incident occurred after several hours of “yelling and noises” from the unit above the armed victim. However, police have not confirmed whether the two incidents were connected.
- Dec. 13, Greenfield, Indiana: Police say that an employee of an Amazon warehouse fatally
during a confrontation in which the coworker made “aggressive remarks” and “threatened to cause physical harm” to the victim. Witnesses reported that the armed victim attempted to de-escalate the situation by leaving the building and waiting for a ride in the parking lot, but his assailant followed him and was “closing in” on him “in an aggressive manner.”
- Dec. 14, La Luz, New Mexico: A man began banging on the door of a home occupied by a couple and their three children before
. According to police, he ignored multiple demands by the homeowner—who didn’t know the man—to leave and continued walking further into the house toward the children’s bedrooms. At one point, the man “attempted to strike” the homeowner, who fatally shot him with a handgun. Fortunately, neither the homeowner, his wife, nor his children were injured, and the children didn’t witness the shooting, as they were asleep.
- Dec. 19, Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania: Two would-be carjackers who tried to steal a victim’s car at gunpoint had the tables turned on them when the
, as well. The driver shot at the suspects, one of whom was wounded and the other of whom fled but was arrested by police after a brief foot chase, the police report shows. This second suspect—a juvenile with multiple warrants for drug and weapons offenses—had removed his court-ordered ankle monitor and was found in possession of a stolen and illegally modified handgun.
- Dec. 24, Clarksville, Tennessee: On
, an argument broke out in a Walmart between a 19-year-old man and a man and woman who were shopping with their two young children. According to reports, the teenager put a gun to the woman’s head and threatened to kill the couple and their kids. The male
and shot the teen, wounding him. The teen gunman—who police say was the clear aggressor—was charged with four counts of aggravated assault. He’s also accused of participating in a 2022 carjacking that occurred when he and other juveniles escaped from the custody of the state’s Department of Children Services.
- Dec. 26, Lakewood Ranch, Florida: A homeowner
masked intruders who pried open a window and entered his house. The second suspect fled but was quickly apprehended by police, who said the man was a Chilean national whose 90-day visa to stay in the country expired in September. He now faces a felony murder charge for the death of his accomplice, who was also a foreign national with an active warrant out of Illinois for violating parole while serving a sentence for a prior residential burglary, police said. Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells praised the armed homeowner for “doing what he needed to do to protect his home and to protect his family.” He also warned any would-be criminals that they “should expect to be shot” if they break into local homes.
- Dec. 28, Pageland, South Carolina: Local authorities announced that they wouldn’t file criminal charges against a store clerk who fatally shot a would-be robber, saying that surveillance video
that the man first threatened him with a gun.
As these examples demonstrate, more than 230 years after its ratification, the
remains as important as ever. No matter the year, the right to keep and bear arms ensures that ordinary Americans have the means to protect themselves and their communities from violent threats.
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by dap | Jan 18, 2025 | Daily Signal
Seeing homes in Malibu and the
burn to the ground while fire hydrants ran dry is bad enough, but knowing the water shortage resulted from bad bureaucratic decisions makes the horrifying sights even worse.
is everywhere in California. The Golden State borders the Pacific Ocean, which contains countless gallons that could be desalinated to fill reservoirs and feed fire hydrants.
But
discourages desalination plants that would guarantee additional water, and no reservoirs were built with the $2.7 billion authorized in 2014.
Environmentalists prefer blaming
for wildfires, just like the ancient Greeks blaming their gods when things went wrong. It’s passing the buck rather than looking in the mirror.
Acres of fires burned on federal lands from 1916 to the mid-1940s, when carbon dioxide emissions were lower, were as high as levels in the first decade of the 2000s.
In California,
promoted an agenda to get rid of water, energy and minerals, which increased human suffering. The question is how they retain power without people voting them out of office.
This is particularly true when considering the tragedy of the fire, which could have been prevented by water.
State agencies that must approve desalination projects include the State Water Resources Control Board, the California Coastal Commission, the California State Lands Commission, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s West Coast Region, and the six coastal regional water quality control boards. This system is designed to slow progress.
Plus, approval depends on tribal consultation, environmental justice, consideration of marine life, and energy efficiency, among other factors.
California has awarded $120 million for desalination projects, compared to $1.4 billion on charging stations and $500 million for electric school buses. The California Air Resources Board has the power to fast-track clean air regulations.
Surely, if California can afford billions of dollars on electric vehicles, the state can afford to fill its reservoirs with water—especially since the wildfires are doing more harm to the air than gasoline-powered vehicles?
Countries with lower gross domestic product than California have no trouble building desalination plants. Such plants produce over 7 million cubic meters per day in the United Arab Emirates, about 40% of the country’s drinking water. Kuwait and Oman use desalination for about 90% of their drinking water, and Saudi Arabia’s share of desalinated water is 70%.
Bahrain has recently completed its second desalination plant, with new reverse osmosis energy-efficient technology from Veolia Water Technologies, headquartered in France. The plant produces 227,000 cubic meters a day and began operations after 22 months.
The problem is that California’s government has created water scarcity, just as it created energy scarcity and critical mineral scarcity.
California requires 60% of its energy to be created from renewables by 2030, so it has an energy scarcity with high prices. The legislature unanimously passed the Seabed Mining Prevention Act in 2022, which prevents extracting critical offshore minerals, leaving America at the mercy of China.
The environmentalist agenda, which focuses on scarcity rather than abundance, gives power to governments to distribute those limited resources. In times of scarcity, people become dependent on government rather than depending on their own actions.
One of the two houses on his street that survived the 2018 Wolsey Fire in Malibu was owned by Robert Kerbeck, author of “Malibu Burning: The Real Story Behind L.A.’s Most Devastating Wildfire,” who learned in advance how to spray his home with fire retardant and who cut back brush that could feed the flames.
As Kerbeck recently wrote, “We need more water to fight fires, more reservoirs to store the water, and more firefighters with the right kind of equipment to battle these massive wind-driven blazes.”
California’s policies are often based on a myth inside an enigma, to paraphrase Winston Churchill about the Soviet Union. Californians who promoted the agenda of energy, water, and mineral scarcity for the sake of the environment should think again. Nature should not be worshiped at such cost to people.
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