Sort & Cull

Thirty days left in the Obama administration and you can rest assured it won't end quietly.

President Barack Obama and the Canadian government joined forces on Tuesday to ban drilling in parts of the Arctic. Obama specifically announced a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic.

As the New York Times reported, Obama used piece of a 1953 law to create the U.S. side of the ban. The president's ban will surely be challenged in court, but as the New York Times stated, the provision Obama used has no case law to determine a precedent.

The move is seen as one of Obama's last attempts to create policies to deal with climate change that President-elect Donald Trump will have a difficult time to overturn. http://nyti.ms/…

The Arctic drilling ban comes after USDA issued new livestock marketing rules last week, including an interim final rule that would make it easier for poultry producers to challenge alleged abusive practices poultry companies. Essentially, under the Packers and Stockyards Act, courts have ruled in cases between poultry growers and poultry companies that a grower has to demonstrate a company's action against the individual grower also harmed the entire poultry market for all growers. Under the interim final rule, growers would not have to meet such a standard.

Major livestock groups strongly criticized the rule, though other farm groups announced their support for it. Some lawmakers, including the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said they would work to overturn the rule.

On Monday, the administration finalized a rule to protect streams and groundwater from waste-water pollution linked to coal mining. The mining industry and lawmakers from mining states condemned the rules. http://bit.ly/…

It's likely more rules are coming before President Obama leaves office. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Republicans plan to use the Congressional Review Act to push to cancel rules when Congress reconvenes in January. http://bloom.bg/…

Bloomberg reported in that same article that one rule Congress might not be able to reverse is the Department of Labor push to boost overtime pay for as many as 4 million people. The time frame for Congress to deal with that rule might be lost.

Chris Clayton can be reached at chris.clayton@dtn.com

Follow me on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN

(AG)

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