{"id":392115,"date":"2019-01-08T21:53:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/despite-shutdown-trump-is-pushing-forward-plans-to-drill-in-arctic\/"},"modified":"2019-01-08T21:53:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:53:34","slug":"despite-shutdown-trump-is-pushing-forward-plans-to-drill-in-arctic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/despite-shutdown-trump-is-pushing-forward-plans-to-drill-in-arctic\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Shutdown, Trump Is Pushing Forward Plans to Drill in Arctic"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<aside class=\"series-card row\">\n<div class=\"series-image small-4 columns\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/series\/planet-or-profit\/\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2018_0129n-porp-200x113.jpg\" class=\"attachment-hd_thumbnail size-hd_thumbnail\" alt=\"Planet or Profit?\" srcset=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2018_0129n-porp-200x113.jpg 200w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2018_0129n-porp-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\"\/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The Bureau of Land Management has confirmed that it is moving forward with public meetings to rework management plans for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite many other Interior Department activities remaining frozen, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alaskapublic.org\/2019\/01\/04\/despite-shutdown-trump-administration-continues-work-to-begin-oil-drilling-in-anwr\/\">Alaska Public Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration is thus ensuring that many other employees within the Interior Department continue working toward opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, even as national parks remain closed.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2018 the Trump administration took the first step toward oil and gas drilling in the wildlife refuge by officially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2018\/04\/19\/trump-administration-takes-initial-step-steps-toward-oil-and-gas-drilling-alaskas-arctic-national-wi\/533176002\/\">launching a 60-day review process<\/a> for holding a lease sale in the pristine area.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the administration has worked consistently toward opening the wildlife refuge to drilling, even despite the government shutdown that Trump himself caused.<\/p>\n<p>Opponents of the efforts to push drilling forward have criticized the move, pointing out how obvious the contrast is between this and the lack of staffing at national parks that is leading to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/national-parks-suffer-vandalism-overflowing-toilets-during-government-shutdown\">overflowing garbage, vandalism and unattended public toilets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Bridget Psarianos, a staff attorney with the nonprofit public interest environmental law firm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trustees.org\">Trustees for Alaska<\/a>, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alaskapublic.org\/2019\/01\/04\/despite-shutdown-trump-administration-continues-work-to-begin-oil-drilling-in-anwr\/\">Alaska Public Media<\/a> that it is \u201cunusual\u201d behavior for the Bureau of Land Management to move forward with public meetings despite a government shutdown.<\/p>\n<div class=\"banner_wrapper\" style=\"\">\n<div id=\"banner-247293\" class=\"banner subscribe-banner  banner-247293 bottom vert custom-banners-theme-default_style\" style=\"\"><a class=\"custom_banners_big_link\" href=\"#\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"banner_caption\" style=\"\">\n<div class=\"banner_caption_inner\">\n<div class=\"banner_caption_text\" style=\"\">\n<p><strong>Uncompromised, uncompromising news<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Get reliable, independent news and commentary delivered to your inbox every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Trustees for Alaska represents several environmental organizations that have sued the Trump administration over oil development in Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>In her remarks to Alaska Public Media, Psarianos \u2014 who formerly worked as project manager for the Bureau of Land Management\u2019s Alaska office as an Interior Department employee \u2014 added: \u201cWhen I was with the government, I never saw anything like that happen. Generally, all nonessential work was basically shut down and employees are not even&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/despite-shutdown-trump-is-pushing-forward-plans-to-drill-in-arctic\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bureau of Land Management has confirmed that it is moving forward with public meetings to rework management plans for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite many other Interior Department activities remaining frozen, according to Alaska Public Media. The Trump administration is thus ensuring that many other employees within the Interior Department continue [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":370517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-392115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}