President Donald Trump is back in the White House and drilling through the Biden administration’s climate agenda faster than a Texas oil rig on a hot summer day.
Just The News reported that in just his first 200 days, Trump has unleashed a staggering 200 actions to dismantle progressive energy restrictions and boost American oil and gas production, as tracked by the American Energy Alliance (AEA).
Let’s rewind a bit to set the stage: during his campaign, Trump didn’t mince words, calling climate change a “hoax” and promising to halt offshore wind projects while scrapping Biden’s electric vehicle mandates.
The moment Trump was sworn in, he hit the ground running with a flurry of executive orders, including the bold “Unleashing American Energy” directive.
On that very first day, he slapped a moratorium on offshore wind projects, blocked new wind and solar permits on federal lands, and yanked the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
He didn’t stop there—Trump also ended Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas export permits, with the Department of Energy greenlighting the first approval just a month later and several more since.
To understand the scale of this turnaround, recall how Biden’s tenure was marked by a relentless clampdown on traditional energy, starting with canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and issuing a moratorium on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on his first day.
Within a week, Biden had frozen new leasing on public lands and offshore waters, and by May of the following year, he axed leases in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and a sale in the Gulf of Mexico.
Later, Biden withdrew vast swaths of Alaska from oil exploration and blocked leases on 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, actions the AEA cataloged as part of a doubled list of 250 anti-energy moves by the end of his term.
Contrast that with Trump’s second stint, where the Bureau of Land Management started issuing leases on public lands within weeks of his return, a sharp pivot from Biden’s measly average of 219 onshore leases per year compared to Trump’s first-term average of 1,244.
By March, the AEA had already tallied 50 pro-energy actions under Trump, a number that ballooned to 200 by the 200-day mark last week, showcasing a pace that’s nothing short of relentless.
“Some of the things that dragged on for several years, like pulling out of the Paris Agreement during his first term, were done day one,” noted Alex Stevens, communications director for the Institute for Energy Research. Well, Alex, when Trump says he’s going to move fast, he’s not kidding—Biden’s climate legacy didn’t stand a chance against this blitz.
Congress has jumped into the fray, too, with the House passing the Protecting American Energy Production Act in February to stop any president from banning hydraulic fracturing without legislative approval, though it’s still under review in the Senate.
That same month, lawmakers voted to scrap Biden’s methane fee on oil and gas companies, and by July, they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to curb production tax credits that have long propped up renewables.
“Things will probably slow down,” Stevens also mused, betting against another 200 actions in the next 200 days. Slow down? Maybe, but if Trump’s track record is any clue, don’t bet against more surprises as he keeps pushing to put American energy first.