Biden halts coastal oil and gas drilling weeks before Trump’s inauguration: Live

Donald Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung released the following statement regarding the attempt to stay the sentencing of the president-elect in following his 34-count hush-money conviction:

“Today, President Trump’s legal team moved to stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt. The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the state constitution of New York, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed. The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”

A jury convicted the president-elect in May 2024 based on the evidence presented during a lengthy trial.

Lawyers for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader, have formally asked Donald Trump for a pardon for his actions on January 6, 2021.

Tarrio is currently serving a 22-year prison term after being convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the US Capitol.

President-elect Trump takes office in two weeks.

Donald Trump’s legal team has filed a motion to stay the sentencing of the president-elect in his hush-money case, which was set for January 10 on Friday by Judge Juan Merchan.

Trump has reportedly been reassured by a top Republican that his controversial pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has enough backing from the GOP to be confirmed by the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told the president-elect that the former Fox News host has the required number of votes to survive the confirmation process, CBS News reports.

However, speaking to the same network’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Thune said that the process would be fair but reiterated that the nominees would all have to “make their case in front of the committee.”

Rudy Giuliani will testify for a second day as he faces the possibility of being held in contempt of court for dodging court orders to hand over his property.

Attorneys for two election workers he defamed have tried unsuccessfully to begin taking possession of a long list of his property following a jury’s $148 million defamation verdict in 2023.

Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan is overseeing the property transfer case.

On Friday, Trump’s former attorney and the former New York City mayor testified for three hours, claiming that he doesn’t know where some of his possessions are, or if he ever had them to begin with. He admitted to withholding his grandfather’s watch from the election workers and bizarrely claimed he doesn’t use a calendar and did not believe that evidence orders for “all” communications included emails.

Here’s what you need to know:

A deal that would see Elon Musk’s SpaceX take over secure communications for the Italian government is reportedly back on track and nearing final approval after Italy’s prime minister met with Trump this weekend.

Bloomberg reports that the burgeoning agreement “appeared to move forward” after right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni met with the president-elect on Saturday at Mar-a-Lago, where the incoming commander-in-chief continues to hold court ahead of his inauguration.

Here’s our political editor David Maddox on what yesterday’s extraordinary attack on Farage by Musk means for the billionaire’s relationship with the president-elect, who has frequently championed by the Brexiteer and is unlikely to be pleased about a broadside that implicitly questions his own political judgement.

The president-elect is facing criticism for premiering a documentary over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago about an allied lawyer who helped him strategize about how to overturn the 2020 election results.

The film, The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare of Justice, profiles lawyer John Eastman, who helped Trump formulate an unprecedented, illegal plan to use Congress and then-vice president Mike Pence to overturn the certification of the 2020 election results.

The documentary examines “growing evidence that a two-tiered justice system has emerged, where conservative figures face severe penalties,” according to its creators.

Other election-deniers were also at the event, including his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former trade official Peter Navarro, who helped devise a separate plan from Eastman’s to reject the 2020 results and later spent time in prison for being in contempt of the January 6 congressional committee.

President Joe Biden has moved to ban new offshore oil and gas development along most US coastlines, a decision that President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to boost domestic energy production, may find difficult to reverse.

The White House said on Monday that Biden will use his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.

The ban will affect 625 million acres of ocean.

Biden said the move was aligned with both his climate change agenda and his goal to conserve 30 per cent of US lands and waters by 2030.

He also invoked the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, saying the low drilling potential of the areas included in the ban did not justify the public health and economic risks of future leasing.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement.

“It is not worth the risks.”

The announcement comes as Trump has pledged to reverse Biden’s conservation and climate change policies when he takes office later this month.

During his term, Biden limited new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, drawing criticism from drilling states and companies.

But the Lands Act, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling, does not grant them the legal authority to overturn prior bans, according to a 2019 court ruling.

That order came in response to Trump’s effort to reverse Arctic and Atlantic Ocean withdrawals made by former President Barack Obama at the end of his presidency.

Even Trump used the law to ban sales of offshore drilling rights in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida through 2032. Biden’s decision will protect the same area with no expiration.

Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, on X, called Biden’s decision “disgraceful” and reiterated Trump’s campaign pledge to increase US drilling, without offering details.

An oil and gas industry trade group said the decision would harm American energy security and should be reversed by Congress.