On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. Several Wyoming officials released statements congratulating President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance and sharing their optimism for the new administration.
On the same day, President Trump signed multiple executive orders, including several related to energy, which multiple Wyoming officials also praised.
Governor Mark Gordon, who was also present at the inauguration, released the following statement: “The energy-related executive orders signed by President Trump are a win for US energy and Wyoming. After four years of attacks on Wyoming’s core energy industries, we now can look forward to an immediate change in approach. President Trump recognizes Wyoming’s role in a return to energy dominance. I look forward to working with an Administration that recognizes fossil fuels as essential to our way of life.”
Senator John Barrasso shared his views, saying: “President Trump is unleashing a new era of American energy dominance. Today’s executive orders prove that the Trump-Vance administration is serious about taking the handcuffs off of affordable, reliable, American energy. They’re serious about cutting the political red tape that froze innovation, hurt consumers, and sent prices soaring. Unleashing American energy means lower prices and more opportunities at home. It means more safety and stability abroad. American energy was the rocket fuel for the security and prosperity we saw under the first Trump administration. We’ve made America energy dominant before. Working with President Trump, we can do it again.”
Senator Cynthia Lummis also weighed in with the following statement: “Western states – especially Wyoming – have spent the last four years shackled by Biden’s Big Government regulations that empowered unelected bureaucrats to lord over the west, crippling our domestic energy industry at the expense of tens of thousands of American jobs and our national security. President Trump is wasting no time slashing restrictive regulatory red tape and is beginning the task of unleashing American energy. Today’s executive orders are a huge win for the west that will create thousands of good paying jobs, facilitate the production of America’s natural resources and lower prices for the American people. I look forward to working with the Trump administration to forge a path toward American energy dominance.”
Other voices responded to Trump’s energy-related executive orders with criticism, including Policy Director Rachael Hamby with the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group based out of Denver, Colorado. Hamby said: “Claiming there’s an energy ‘emergency’ when America’s oil and gas production is at an all-time high is laughable. The only emergency today is that Donald Trump’s oil billionaire friends want to enrich themselves even faster while ripping off American taxpayers and trashing our public lands. There is an actual crisis today: 2024 was the hottest year on record, and the Earth crossed the 1.5-degree warming threshold. Floods, fires, and extreme weather claim thousands of American lives and cost our economy billions of dollars each year. Today’s executive order is Donald Trump’s attempt to double down on the drivers of climate change while the rest of the world recognizes the true threat. It’s especially ironic that Trump is focused on increasing drilling in Alaska, a state that is warming much faster than the rest of the world. The good news is that the energy transition is underway whether or not Donald Trump supports it. His oil billionaires may want to slow down American ingenuity and progress, but wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with new storage technologies, are getting cheaper by the day. Trump’s second term is off to a predictable start, but the country can see he is on the wrong side of history.”
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