Oops!! Shitstain's Big Oil Plans For Gulf Of Mexico, California, Would Cut Area Available For Military Exercises

If the United States went to war in the South China Sea, there would be no better place to simulate it than America’s southeastern coast. The U.S. coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean nearly matches up to China’s — minus the Florida Peninsula — with island nations dotting both waters. The region acts as a training zone, allowing troops to deploy from Virginia toward the Gulf, similar to how they would launch from bases in Japan to travel south toward a potential enemy. There are hundreds of open miles for Tomahawk missiles and other weapons to be tested before they are used in combat.

But that critical training ground could soon be at risk. Military leaders and bipartisan lawmakers say a Trump administration plan to allow oil platforms in an empty expanse of the Gulf of Mexico and off of Southern California would obstruct some of the largest military operations areas in the country.

Now this group — which includes Florida’s entire 30-member congressional delegation — is scrambling to overhaul the administration’s five-year leasing plan before it’s finalized in October. “It’s almost strategically backwards,” said Rick Miller, a retired Navy captain and vice chair of the Florida Defense Alliance, a state advisory body. “For a modest potential increase in oil production capacity, we’d be giving up a tremendous amount of national defense capability.”

Last year, the Interior Department issued its draft plan for when and where it would auction offshore oil and gas leases, proposing to expand drilling into a part of the Gulf nearer to Florida in 2029 as well as the entire California coast in 2027, where no new drilling has taken place in more than 50 years.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/05/22/trumps-offshore-oil-drilling-plan-threatens-military-readiness-generals-say/

https://wapo.st/4wGaKak