02 June 21
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Robert Reich | The Greatest Danger to American Democracy
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Website
Reich writes: "The greatest danger to American democracy right now is not coming from Russia, China, or North Korea. It is coming from the Republican Party."
Only 25 percent of voters self-identify as Republican, the GOP’s worst showing against Democrats since 2012 and sharply down since last November. But those who remain in the Party are far angrier, more ideological, more truth-denying, and more racist than Republicans who preceded them.
And so are the lawmakers who represent them.
Today’s Republican Party increasingly is defined not by its shared beliefs but by its shared delusions.
Last Friday, 54 U.S. senators voted in favor of proceeding to debate a House-passed bill to establish a commission to investigate the causes and events of the January 6th insurrection. This was 6 votes short of the number of votes needed for “cloture,” or stopping debate – meaning any further consideration of the bill would have been filibustered by Republicans indefinitely.
So there will be no investigation.
The 54 Senators who voted yes to cloture – in favor of the commission – represent 189 million Americans, or 58% of the American population. The 35 who voted no represent 104 million Americans, or 32% of the population.
In other words, 32% of American voters got to decide that the nation would not know about what happened to American democracy on January 6.
Furthermore, the 35 who voted against the commission were all Republicans. They did not want such an inquiry because it might jeopardize their chances of gaining a majority of the House or Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They also wanted to stay in the good graces of Donald Trump, whose participation in that insurrection might have been more fully revealed.
Eight of these Republicans voted against certifying Joe Biden as president on January 6. Some of their constituents were responsible for the insurrection in the first place.
The Republican Party is also pursuing new laws in many states making it harder for likely Democrats to vote and opposing voting reforms in Congress.
It is actively purging any Republican who has temerity to criticize Trump. They have removed from her leadership position Liz Cheney, who called Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot the greatest “betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Local Republicans leaders have either stepped down or been forced out of their party positions for not supporting Trump’s baseless election claims or for criticizing the former president’s role in inciting the deadly Capitol riot.
American democracy is at an inflection point.
Senate Democrats must get rid of the filibuster and push through major reforms – voting rights, as well as policies that will enable more Americans in the bottom half – most of them without college educations, many of whom cling to the Republican Party – to do better.
In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that the survival of American democracy depended on the adoption of policies that comprised the New Deal. In that Depression decade, democracy was under siege around the world, and dictators were on the rise.
Joe Biden understands that America and the world face a similar challenge. And like FDR, Biden is making a strong case that the adoption of his policies will buttress democracy against the forces of tyranny, not only as an example to the rest of the world but here at home.
President Biden toured the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Okla., on Tuesday. It was the first time a president visited the area to address one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in American history. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/NYT)
Biden Acknowledges, Commemorates the Massacre of Blacks by Whites at Tulsa
Grace Panetta, Business Insider
Panetta writes: "President Joe Biden headed to Oklahoma on Tuesday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the devastating Tulsa massacre, one of the deadliest race riots in United States history."
Biden, along with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge and senior White House advisors Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond, toured the Greenwood Community Center and gave remarks in the afternoon.
As Biden noted, he is the first president ever to travel to Tulsa to mark an anniversary of the race massacre. He received a standing ovation from the assembled audience when he held a moment of silence, and said: "My fellow Americans, this was not a riot, this was a massacre."
Biden acknowledged that the story of the massacre has "told in silence" and "cloaked in darkness," for decades adding, "But just because history is silent doesn't mean that it did not take place And while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing."
"To all those lost so many years ago, to all the descendants of those who suffered, to the community, that's why we're here, to make sure America knows the story in full," Biden said.
Biden also unveiled new White House initiatives to tackle the racial wealth gap in the US during his speech on Tuesday, which include measures to support Black-owned businesses and combat systemic housing discrimination and redlining.
In the 1921 massacre, a mob made up of white residents, with support from city officials, killed and injured hundreds of Black Tulsans and looted and destroyed countless businesses, eviscerating a vibrant business community including a street dubbed Black Wall Street.
The massacre followed mounting racial animus towards Black Americans, a resurgence in the presence of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and aggressive efforts to disenfranchise and segregate Black citizens in the state during the Jim Crow era.
The incident itself was set off after a white female elevator operator accused a 19-year-old Black shoeshiner named Dick Rowland, who worked in the Greenwood district, of sexually assaulting her on May 30, 1921. Her allegation prompted a lynch mob to descend on the courthouse where Rowland was being held. The charges against Rowland were dropped after the massacre.
In all, the mob is estimated to have killed as many as 300 Black residents of Tulsa and burned down huge swaths of the Greenwood business district, a neighborhood of the city where Black-owned and managed businesses thrived. The riot also displaced thousands of Black Tulsans, with the Red Cross estimating that over 1,200 homes in the area were burned down and hundreds more looted.
"Hell was unleashed, literal hell was unleashed," Biden said in his speech.
The history of the massacre was swept under the rug for decades, with local media outlets and scholars discouraged from studying or shedding light on the incident. And, as Insider's Taylor Ardery reported, the massacre was even excluded from many Oklahoma public school curriculums.
"We can't just choose to learn what we want to know, and not what we should know," Biden said, acknowledging the "clear effort" to "erase" the massacre "from our memory, our collective memories, from the news and every conversation."
Now, local community leaders, advocates, and the few living survivors of the attack are calling on the US to confront the painful history of the attack and are advocating for financial reparations for the lives and businesses destroyed.
City officials are also exhuming gravesites where massacre victims were believed to be buried for archaeological research and DNA testing.
Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post: 'I have a reputation that I respond to people when they ask for help, even if it takes a long time. And it's very time consuming, but I do.' (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)
'Our Society Is Totally Nuts': Fauci Emails Lift Lid on Life in Eye of the COVID Storm
Richard Luscombe and Martin Pengelly, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "As Anthony Fauci, the US's leading infectious diseases official, grappled with the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, he was pulled in many directions."
Communications from America’s top infectious diseases expert shed light on panic and confusion in early stages of pandemic
Donald Trump’s White House, which was downplaying the dangers, was demanding he portray the outbreak on their terms; the media was hungry for answers; and Fauci’s email inbox was constantly full with officials, the public and celebrities offering advice and seeking information about the world’s deadliest health crisis for a century.
Insight into the pressure that was heaped upon Fauci, the head of the national institute for allergy and infectious diseases, comes from thousands of pages of his communication records obtained by the Washington Post and the BuzzFeed news site, separately, and published on Tuesday.
The emails offer a window into the chaos, panic and confusion of the time, and of the considerable difficulties Fauci faced as a prominent figure in the White House coronavirus taskforce serving Trump as the Republican US president.
As Fauci, kept on as a leading Covid adviser to Joe Biden, recently told the Post: “I was getting every single kind of question, mostly people who were a little bit confused about the mixed messages that were coming out of the White House and wanted to know what’s the real scoop.
“I have a reputation that I respond to people when they ask for help, even if it takes a long time. And it’s very time consuming, but I do.”
Among the emails obtained by the Post is one in which he speaks of the “crazy people in this world”, whom Fauci appeared to blame for politicizing the crisis, and who ultimately led to him receiving a full-time security team amid threats from extremist critics.
Others detail his wrangling with White House officials, including an exchange with Marc Short, an aide for the then vice-president, Mike Pence. The context is unclear, but according to the heavily redacted email Short wrote: “You correctly noticed the symptoms but misdiagnosed the root cause.”
“Thanks for the note. Understood,” is Fauci’s reply.
Others show correspondence with counterparts in other countries, such as a reply to George Gao, director of the Chinese center for disease control and prevention. Gao appeared to be seeking Fauci’s forgiveness for the words “big mistake” that were attributed to him in relation to his American counterpart in an article early on in the crisis about the US not advising the public to wear masks.
“That was [a] journalist’s wording. Hope you understand,” Gao wrote.
“I understand completely. No problem. We will get through this together,” Fauci replied.
US-China tensions have been high throughout the pandemic but the US is now investigating whether the virus, discovered in Wuhan province, came from animals, as has been the scientific community’s position for some time, or whether there is truth to the theory that the virus was being studied in a laboratory and “escaped”.
Among the most revealing emails are those from wealthy or influential correspondents. In one dated 3 April last year, Fauci refers to a conversation with the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, about a “collaborative and hopefully synergistic approach to Covid-19” with Gates’s charitable foundation.
Gates’s foundation director, Emilio Emini, says he is “seriously worried” about the health of Fauci, then 79, given his busy schedule. Fauci thanks Emini for his concern and says: “I will try to engage as much as I can given my current circumstances.”
There are also email exchanges with the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, about the creation of a coronavirus information hub on social media, and one with the actor Morgan Freeman who offers to get Covid-19 messaging out to his 100,000 Twitter followers.
Almost every email from Fauci is unfailingly polite and ends with a simple sign-off: “Tony”. And hidden amid the stacks of weighty correspondence are brief moments of humor, such as a 7 April 2020, exchange with an unidentified recipient, forwarding a link to an online news article headlined: “Cuomo Crush and ‘Fauci Fever – Sexualization of These Men Is a Real Thing on the Internet.”
“It will blow your mind,” Fauci writes. “Our society is really totally nuts.”
An undocumented immigrant mother and her infant son are released from detention with other families at a bus depot in McAllen, Texas on July 26, 2018. (photo: Loren Elliott/Reuters)
Biden Administration Formally Ends Trump-Era 'Remain in Mexico' Immigration Policy
Olafimihan Oshin and Rafael Bernal, The Hill
Excerpt: "The Biden administration on Tuesday formally nixed the 'Remain in Mexico' program, the latest in a series of moves to dismantle the Trump administration's restrictive immigration policies."
The program, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), was a cornerstone of Trump's border management policy; it forced potential asylum seekers to stay in Mexico to wait out the result of their case in U.S. immigration court.
In a memo ending the program Tuesday, Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the MPP did not help with enhancing the border management.
The move was first reported by Reuters.
President Biden paused MPP shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, and has allowed into the country around 11,000 people who were in the program according to Reuters.
The formal end of MPP comes days after the Department of Homeland Security officially banned family separations for prosecutions of illegal border crossings, another Trump administration policy designed to slow the asylum process.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif), chairwoman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations, released a joint statement Tuesday applauding the announcement.
"This policy was a stain on our nation’s history and our longstanding tradition of protecting refugees and asylum seekers," Thompson and Barragán wrote.
“Despite Republican efforts to misrepresent U.S. asylum law and smear those fleeing violence and seeking asylum, we must remember that it is completely legal to come to the U.S. border and seek asylum. While the process has been underway to dismantle MPP and bring asylum seekers in the country, more still needs to be done to help those hurt by the policy and we look forward to working with the Administration on those efforts. We must ensure we have a just and humane asylum processing system,” they added.
Biden has faced criticism over his immigration policies from both the right and left, from one end for discontinuing Trump's restrictive approach and from the other for not moving quickly enough to dismantle it.
But the administration has sped up the pace of reform, drawing praise for moves like the end of MPP, family separations and providing safe haven to Haitian immigrants in the United States.
“This is a huge victory. The forced return policy was cruel, depraved, and illegal, and we are glad that it has finally been rescinded," said Judy Rabinovitz, an attorney for the ACLU who led the organization's legal challenge against MPP.
Still advocates for a return to broad application of asylum law say obstacles remain, including a measure known as Title 42, which allows U.S. border officials to quickly expel anyone crossing the border without authorization — including potential asylum seekers — under the guise of protecting from the spread of COVID-19.
"The administration must follow through on this announcement by ensuring that everyone who has been subjected to this policy can now pursue their asylum cases in the United States, in safety and without additional trauma or delay. And it must swiftly move to dismantle the Trump administration’s other attacks on the asylum system, including the unconscionable ‘Title 42’ order,” said Rabinovitz in a statement.
A Kargu rotary-wing attack drone loitering munition system manufactured by the STM defense company of Turkey. A U.N. report says the weapons system was used in Libya in March 2020. (photo: Emre Cavdar/STM)
A Turkish Military Drone With a Mind of Its Own Was Used in Combat, UN Says
Joe Hernandez, NPR
Hernandez writes: "Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield."
Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system — or LAWS — has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone.
"If anyone was killed in an autonomous attack, it would likely represent an historic first known case of artificial intelligence-based autonomous weapons being used to kill," Zachary Kallenborn wrote in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The assault came during fighting between the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord and forces aligned with Gen. Khalifa Haftar, according to the report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya.
"Logistics convoys and retreating [Haftar-affiliated forces] were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 ... and other loitering munitions," the panel wrote.
The Kargu-2 is an attack drone made by the Turkish company STM that can be operated both autonomously and manually and that purports to use "machine learning" and "real-time image processing" against its targets.
The U.N. report goes on: "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."
"Fire, forget and find" refers to a weapon that once fired can guide itself to its target.
The idea of a "killer robot" has moved from fantasy to reality
Drone warfare itself is not new. For years, military forces and rebel groups have used remote-controlled aircraft to carry out reconnaissance, target infrastructure and attack people. The U.S. in particular has used drones extensively to kill militants and destroy physical targets.
Azerbaijan used armed drones to gain a major advantage over Armenia in recent fighting for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Just last month, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly used drones to drop tear gas on protesters in the occupied West Bank, while Hamas launched loitering munitions — so-called kamikaze drones — into Israel.
What's new about the incident in Libya, if confirmed, is that the drone that was used had the capacity to operate autonomously, which means there is no human controlling it, essentially a "killer robot," formerly the stuff of science fiction.
Not all in the world of security are concerned.
"I must admit, I am still unclear on why this is the news that has gotten so much traction," Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter.
Franke noted that loitering munitions have been used in combat for "a while" and questioned whether the autonomous weapon used in Libya actually caused any casualties.
Jack McDonald, a lecturer in war studies at King's College London, noted that the U.N. report did not make clear whether the Kargu-2 was operating autonomously or manually at the time of the attack.
While this incident may or may not represent the first battlefield killing by an autonomous drone, the idea of such a weapon is disquieting to many.
A global survey commissioned by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots last year found that a majority of respondents — 62% — said they opposed the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems.
Israeli missiles brought down a tower housing Al Jazeera, AP, and other media offices in Gaza City on May 15. (photo: Ashraf Abu Amrah/Reuters)
'The Israeli Military Wants to Shut Down News Coverage': Palestinian Journalists on the Front Line
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "More than a dozen Palestinian journalists were recently arrested by Israeli authorities after attempting to report the news under often 'extremely stressful and dangerous' conditions."
Reporters Without Borders says 13 Palestinian journalists are currently being held in Israeli facilities.
ore than a dozen Palestinian journalists were recently arrested by Israeli authorities after attempting to report the news under often “extremely stressful and dangerous” conditions.
Two Palestinians – journalist Zeina Halawani and cameraman Wahbe Mikkieh – were released late Monday to house arrest after being detained by Israeli security forces last week in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
They were trying to cover protests over the pending expulsion of Palestinians from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers.
After five days in jail, the judge at Jerusalem’s Central Court released them on bail of 4,000 shekels ($1,230) each and ordered them to be under house arrest for a month, forbidding them from communicating with each other for 15 days.
“The police accused the two of assault, obstructing police work, and of making threats,” their lawyer Jad Qadamani told Al Jazeera.
However, video footage of the day’s events and their arrest was shown to the judge that contradicted police evidence.
“The police wanted to keep them locked up for further investigation but they lacked sufficient evidence,” said Qadamani.
“However, the file on them has not been closed either, but I believe there is no case for the district attorney to press charges.”
Mikkieh told Al Jazeera the message the Israeli police was trying to send was meant to frighten journalists.
“The occupation forces claimed that I tried to obstruct the arrest of my colleague Zeina and that I assaulted the occupation army. That did not happen,” said Mikkieh, who was hit on the head with the butt of a gun causing him to bleed, describing the five days in prison as the hardest in his life.
Halawani said she was accused of assault, raising the Palestinian flag, and inciting young men to attack police.
“None of that is true. I have bruises on my body where I was beaten by two policewomen,” she told Al Jazeera as she described the terrible conditions in prison where she could hear children crying through the night.
Despite their ordeal, both journalists remained defiant with Halawani vowing to continue “publishing the truth and facing the occupation”.
While their experience was traumatic they got out with only minor injuries.
Rajai al-Khatib, a Palestinian journalist who works for Jordanian and Italian TV and has been covering the news in Jerusalem for many years, said he has lost count of the number of times he was attacked by Israeli forces.
“I’ve been injured many times in the past, but over the last month during coverage of the pending expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, and the invasions of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the behaviour and attitude of the Israeli forces has deteriorated,” he said.
“My leg was broken by a rubber bullet near Jerusalem’s Old City several weeks ago and I had to go to hospital.
“On another occasion, my camera was smashed and I was also beaten from behind by Israeli police while in Sheikh Jarrah.
“The police are getting personal and their actions seem like retaliation against journalists for the negative media coverage they are receiving internationally,” al-Khatib told Al Jazeera.
‘Extremely stressful’
Many Palestinian journalists, holding various media cards, have been blocked from entering Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli police claiming they require an Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) card, but al-Khatib said his GPO card failed to protect him.
“Being a journalist here is extremely stressful and also dangerous and my family worry about me constantly.”
Reporters Without Borders reported on May 28 that 13 Palestinian journalists were being held in Israeli “administrative detention”, or detention without trial.
Al Jazeera’s Alaa al-Rimawi, 43, was arrested by Israeli soldiers in Ramallah in April. He subsequently went on a hunger strike resulting in his administrative detention being shortened from three months to 45 days.
On May 21, an Israeli judge ordered an 11-day extension to the administrative detention of another Palestinian journalist, Al Ghad TV cameraman Hazem Nasser, who was arrested at an Israeli checkpoint at the entrance to the occupied West Bank town of Tulkarem, on his way back from filming a crackdown by Israeli soldiers on Palestinian protesters in Nablus, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported.
Israel ranked 86 out of 180 countries, according to CPJ’s World Press Freedom Index for 2021, which accused the Israeli authorities of “hounding Palestinian reporters”.
“Israeli authorities must cease arresting and attacking journalists, who play a vital role reporting the news and bringing clarity amid chaos,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa representative Ignacio Miguel Delgado.
Palestinian journalists face an uphill battle reporting from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
During the year 2020, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) monitored and documented 408 violations of the media in the occupied West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and the Gaza Strip.
MADA reported that “215 violations were committed by the Israeli authorities while various Palestinian authorities committed a total of 96 violations in the West Bank and Gaza”.
‘Shut down news coverage’
Dozens of Palestinian activists have also been rounded up by Palestinian intelligence over the last few weeks in the West Bank over their criticism of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
“Several websites regarded by the PA as opposition media have been inaccessible since 2017,” said CPJ.
CPJ’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index ranked the PA at 132 on the world freedom scale.
However, the most egregious violations against the media were committed during Israel’s recent assault on Gaza after rockets were fired from the coastal territory on Israel, which in turn followed violent events in East Jerusalem.
Palestinian journalist Yousef Abu Hussein in Gaza was killed when his home was bombed by the Israelis.
A separate Israeli air raid also wounded at least two Palestinian journalists working for the Turkish Anadolu news agency.
CPJ said at least 18 local and international media outlets in Gaza City, including Al Jazeera and The Associated Press, were bombed during Israeli military attacks.
Israeli officials have said the Al Jazeera and AP office building had been infiltrated by Hamas members, but have yet to provide evidence to back the allegation.
“In less than a week, Israel bombed the offices of at least 18 media outlets, and it’s difficult to reach any conclusion other than that the Israeli military wants to shut down news coverage of the suffering in Gaza,” said Delgado.
A polar bear in the Beaufort Sea, off the Alaskan coast in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (photo: Steven J. Kazlowski/Alamy)
Trump Had Allowed Oil and Gas Leases in the Arctic. Now Biden Is Taking Them Back
Tegan Hanlon, Alaska Public Media
Hanlon writes:
he Biden administration Tuesday took its first steps toward reversing the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain to oil drilling, by suspending leases issued in the final days of the Trump administration.
Biden, on the campaign trail, vowed to adopt permanent protections for the refuge. And then, on his first day in office, he ordered a “temporary moratorium” on oil and gas leasing in the northernmost slice of the refuge, called the coastal plain.
His Interior Department now says it will conduct a new environmental review of the Trump administration’s oil and gas leasing program for the coastal plain, while addressing what it called “legal deficiencies.”
All activities related to the program — including the nine oil leases approved under Trump — are suspended until the review is complete, the Interior said in a written statement. The department will then decide whether the leases should be “reaffirmed, voided, or subject to additional mitigation measures,” it said.
Mixed reaction
Alaska’s all-Republican Congressional delegation and governor blasted the Interior’s decision on Tuesday, while environmental groups applauded it.
“The Biden administration’s actions are not unexpected but are outrageous nonetheless,” said a statement from U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Murkowski was a key player in opening the refuge’s coastal plain to oil development in 2017, after 40 years of debate.
The coastal plain is home to migrating caribou, polar bears, birds and other wildlife. It also potentially sits atop billions of barrels of oil, according to federal estimates.
Some Indigenous Iñupiat leaders in the village of Kaktovik, which sits within the coastal plain, support oil exploration, while the Gwich’in, who live to the south and subsist on caribou, are opposed.
“Hopefully today’s news won’t go as far as outside-of-Alaska NGO green groups have requested in an ongoing lawsuit, which aims to void the leases that were awarded earlier this year and lock down ANWR forever,” North Slope Borough Mayor Harry Brower said in a statement.
But Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, is hoping Biden does just that: Cancels the existing oil leases and bans drilling in the coastal plain.
“This is good news,” she said in a phone interview from Fairbanks. “We were expecting more. But, you know, we’ll take what we got. And we do understand that they have to follow their laws, something that the former administration refused to do.”
Lease sale goes bust
The existing oil leases stem from the first-ever lease sale in the refuge, held on Jan. 6.
It was a controversial sale, snarled in lawsuits and opposition.
Critics said it was rushed, sloppy and a threat to animals and the environment. But supporters said drilling in the refuge is good for jobs and the country’s energy independence.
The sale ended up drawing little interest: No major oil companies bid on the leases. Instead, two smaller ones each picked up a single lease, and the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority picked up seven — it’s first time ever holding federal oil leases.
The leases last for 10 years, and work wasn’t expected to begin on them anytime soon.
Alan Weitzner, the state authority’s executive director, underscored that the leases are contracts.
The suspension frustrated him. By Tuesday afternoon, he said, he had not heard from the Interior directly, and instead learned of its decision in news reports and in its written statement released to the public.
“Very disappointed, surprised that they’re identifying what currently, to us, are unknown deficiencies within the program itself,” he said.
Weitzner said he’ll wait until the Interior finishes its review to figure out next steps.
Meanwhile, Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy described the lease suspension as an “assault on Alaska’s economy” and pledged to use “every means necessary to undo this egregious federal overreach.”
Dunleavy and Alaska’s congressional delegation argue that the suspension goes against the federal law that opened the coastal plain to drilling and ordered the Interior to hold two lease sales there.
‘Whiplash’
The Biden administration’s suspension comes on the heels of its decision to defend ConocoPhillips’ major oil drilling development called Willow, to the west of the refuge in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. That project got the go-ahead under the Trump administration.
Alaskans are likely suffering “whiplash,” said a statement Tuesday from Anchorage Sen. Josh Revak, chairman of the state Senate Resources Committee. Revak criticized Biden’s move to pause oil leasing in the refuge.
“Alaska is known internationally as a shining example of environmentally responsible resource development, and yet this administration is stifling economic development and jobs here at home while giving a green light to Russian natural gas projects halfway across the globe,” he said.
Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, was among those disappointed by the Willow news last week, and applauding the Biden administration on Tuesday, while also asking that it do more.
“Until the leases are canceled, they will remain a threat to one of the wildest places left in America,” Miller said in a statement. “Now we look to the administration and Congress to prioritize legislatively repealing the oil leasing mandate and restore protections to the Arctic Refuge coastal plain.”
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