The Trump administration is rolling back Biden-era regulations that blocked energy development in Alaska’s national petroleum reserve.

The Biden administration restricted oil exploration and drilling across 13.3 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska (APR-A) last year in a move that angered industry, state, and tribal leaders. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Monday that the Trump administration would reverse those rules.

“Congress was clear: the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska was set aside to support America’s energy security through responsible development,” said Burgum in a statement. “The 2024 rule ignored that mandate, prioritizing obstruction over production and undermining our ability to harness domestic resources at a time when American energy independence has never been more critical. We’re restoring the balance and putting our energy future back on track.”

Alaska’s sole representative in the U.S. House, Nick Begich, celebrated the news.

“Alaska’s right to self-determination is being restored. Thank you @SecretaryBurgum and @POTUS for your leadership and recognizing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential,” he wrote in a post on X.

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Last year, the Biden administration issued final rules banning oil and gas drilling across 10.6 million acres in the oil reserve. Over another roughly three million acres, the administration put added protections in place. The rules locked up more than half of the state’s roughly 23 million-acre petroleum reserve.

The Biden administration also denied the state a permit to build a 211-mile industrial road through the Alaskan wilderness to reach a large copper deposit.

Biden’s Interior Department cracked down on development in the preserve after the administration approved the Willow Project, an $8 billion oil development project in Alaska. The approval ignited protest against the Biden administration from environmental groups. The administration then cracked down on oil and gas development in Alaska while fuel prices in the United States remained high.

The entire preserve “contains a mean estimate of 895 million barrels of oil and a mean estimate of 52.8 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas,” according to an Institute for Energy Research fact sheet.

The Department of the Interior on Monday said that former President Joe Biden’s action “exceeds the agency’s statutory authority under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976.”

“The 2024 rule significantly expanded procedural requirements and created a presumption against oil and gas activity in approximately 13 million acres designated as ‘Special Areas’ unless operators could prove minimal or no adverse effects on surface resources. These provisions not only lack a basis in the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act but undermine the BLM’s obligation to carry out an effective and timely leasing program,” the Interior Department said.

President Donald Trump has prioritized developing the United States’ domestic oil and gas resources. He has also marked out Alaska’s resources for development, in particular.

One of Trump’s first moves as president was to direct a streamlined regulatory process for development in Alaska, covering not just oil and gas, but mining, forestry, fishing, and other industries.

WASHINGTON—The Education Department has launched two investigations into high-profile, Title IX-related cases that occurred during President Joe Biden’s administration, The Daily Wire can first report.

As part of its observance of the first “Title IX Month” — celebrated in place of Pride Month — the Education Department will launch probes into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado. These investigations will be conducted by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

Each of these probes will deal with a case that garnered national outrage and attention for allowing males in intimate female spaces.

NEW: The Education Department has declared June “Title IX Month” rather than Pride Month. It’s also launching probes into two high-profile cases that developed under President Biden’s watch: one in Colorado and the other in Wyoming.

Details first in @realDailyWire: pic.twitter.com/SZDmjvWMoT

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) June 2, 2025

University of Wyoming

Members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Wyoming sued the university and Artemis Langford, a male who identifies as a woman, after Langford joined their sorority and lived in their sorority house. The girls accused Langford of watching them shower and change and making inappropriate comments — and having visible erections as he watched them.

“Langford states that he is transgender and that he self-identifies as a woman. His behavior, however, does not reflect a man living as a woman let alone a man attempting to ‘consistently live’ as a woman,” the girls said in their lawsuit, as The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu previously reported. “Other than occasionally wearing women’s clothing, Langford makes little effort to resemble a woman. He has not undergone treatments to create a more feminine appearance, such as female hormones, feminization surgery, or laser hair removal.”

In August 2023, the lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge who declined to define what a woman was.

“The University of Wyoming chapter voted to admit — and, more broadly, a sorority of hundreds of thousands approved — Langford. With its inquiry beginning and ending there, the Court will not define ‘woman’ today,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson, a Reagan appointee, in his decision. “The delegate of a private, voluntary organization interpreted ‘woman,’ otherwise undefined in the nonprofit’s bylaws, expansively; this Judge may not invade Kappa Kappa Gamma’s freedom of expressive association and inject the circumscribed definition Plaintiffs urge.”

The University of Wyoming did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jefferson County Public Schools

The second investigation deals with Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado, where an 11-year-old girl was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as a transgender girl while on a cross-country school trip, as The Daily Signal first reported. This was not the only incident of its kind within the district, as The Daily Wire reported.

Jefferson County School District’s “Transgender Students” policy requires that all students on overnight visits are to be roomed by their gender identity, rather than their actual sex, according to a September 2024 lawsuit first reported by The Daily Wire.

NEW: This week we sat down with Joe + Serena Wailes, the parents of an 11-year-old girl shocked to discover on her school trip that she had been assigned to share a bed with a boy who identified as a trans girl.

Joe and Serena share their nightmare story with @DailySignal: pic.twitter.com/w847Oi7nnO

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) December 21, 2023

Though the district shared this policy with trans-identifying students and chaperones, it did not share the policy with students or their parents, who were unaware of the policy until their children found themselves rooming with students and chaperones of the opposite gender on trips.

“I was really upset,” the child’s mother, Serena Wailes, told The Daily Signal in December 2023. “One, I was really upset that she was put in that situation at 11 years old—I don’t feel that is fair to put kids in that kind of situation—and two, that we were not even given the information that this was a possibility before the trip. The whole time they’re saying, ‘Girls on one floor, boys on another, they’re not going to be in each other’s rooms unless it is pre-approved.’ So we’re going through this whole process, not even recognizing that this is a possibility.”

The girl’s father, Joe Wailes, told The Daily Signal that his wife called him from the hotel and filled him in on what had occurred.

“I felt a bit helpless,” he said at the time. “I was 2,000 miles away. My daughter is scared in a bathroom trying to get herself out of a situation. It was a frustrating experience, and I just really felt like it was not a situation my daughter should be put in.”

In another instance, according to the 2024 lawsuit, the school district placed an 18-year-old female student— who identified as a man but only a week earlier had identified as female — in a cabin with 11 and 12-year-old boys, where she allegedly supervised their changing and showering.

Jefferson County Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.