Free Republic

The federal government’s 60-day suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on public lands sent shockwaves through the industry in New Mexico and divided industry experts over potential impacts. “It’s very much putting politics above science,” said Ryan Flynn, president and CEO of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. Members of the oil and gas industry and economic experts are weighing the potential impact of the federal government’s 60-day suspension of new ail and gas leasing and drilling permits on public lands. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal) Acting Secretary of Interior Scott de la Vega on Wednesday ordered...

President Joe Biden wants to remove the word "alien" from US immigration law as a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the US "as a nation of immigrants." In a summary of his immigration bill, Biden said he planned to replace the word with "noncitizen." "The language change on the first day of this administration, with Kamala Harris the daughter of immigrants, to me it's not just symbolic ... it's foundational," Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist and undocumented immigrant, told CNN. The US Code defines an "alien" as anyone who's "not a citizen or national of the United States." Several local jurisdictions...

Continuing a flurry of executive action, President Biden signed an order Friday calling on the Labor Department to allow workers to collect unemployment benefits if they quit jobs they fear put them at risk for COVID-19. Pointing to a Gallup Poll finding that found 43% of Americans live in a household where at least one member has a preexisting condition, the White House wrote in a release: “The President is asking the Department of Labor to consider clarifying that workers have a federally guaranteed right to refuse employment that will jeopardize their health and if they do so, they will...

President Biden has revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to keep foreign countries and companies out of America’s bulk power systems – principally entities associated with the Chinese Communist Party – as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” The executive order, which executes key tenets of President Biden’s climate change agenda, was released on the former Veep’s first day in office. Section 7 of the massive order, which includes the revocation of the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, also revokes several climate and energy-focused...