Dec 4 (Reuters) – Florida’s entire U.S. congressional delegation on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to leave their state out \u200bof a plan by his administration to expand oil \u200cand gas drilling to new coastal areas, saying it would threaten the state’s \u200cmilitary and tourism industries.<\/p>\n
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT<\/p>\n
The letter to Trump from Florida Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody and the state’s 28 members of the House of Representatives was a rare bipartisan pushback against the \u2060Republican president’s policies. Most \u200cof Florida’s members of Congress are Republicans.<\/p>\n
KEY QUOTE<\/p>\n
“The risks posed by new offshore drilling far outweigh any \u200dshort-term gains,” the lawmakers said in their letter.<\/p>\n
BY THE NUMBERS<\/p>\n
More than 50,000 jobs in the Florida Panhandle are tied to operations at military facilities \u200bconnected to the Gulf Test Range, a vast area over \u200cthe Gulf of Mexico where advanced weapons and air combat tactics are tested, the letter said, noting that drilling would result in encroachment of the Gulf Test Range.<\/p>\n
Florida beaches generate $127.7 billion a year in tourism spending and support 2.1 million jobs.<\/p>\n
CONTEXT<\/p>\n
The Interior Department \u2060last month unveiled a proposal that \u200bopened the door to future leasing in \u200bthe eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico, which has long been protected from energy development because it \u200dis used for \u2060military testing and training. Florida officials, including Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, have opposed changes to that policy.<\/p>\n
Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, \u2060is on the eastern side of the state.<\/p>\n
THE REPLY<\/p>\n
The White House did \u200cnot immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200cNichola Groom; Editing by Leslie Adler)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 4 (Reuters) – Florida’s entire U.S. congressional delegation on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to leave their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3853,409,28,30,29,12205,24756,41181],"class_list":["post-71882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-ashley-moody","tag-donald-trump","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-panhandle","tag-offshore-drilling","tag-tourism-industries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}