WASHINGTON — Reactions on Capitol Hill were mixed after President Donald Trump signed an order extending an offshore drilling moratorium on the Atlantic coast from Florida to South Carolina through 2032.

Florida lawmakers overwhelmingly say more must be done to protect the state’s coastlines.

The decision surprised some lawmakers and energy industry executives, two years after his administration announced an expansion of oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters.

The White House was originally in favor of offshore drilling, but it backed off two years ago after pushback from former Florida Governor / now Senator Rick Scott. 

“Every time I kept telling him the same thing,” Scott said. “One, it’s important environmentally. Two, it’s important for our military. Three, it’s important to Floridians,” Scott said in an interview with Spectrum News.

Critics claim the president has gutted most environmental protections, and this latest move was designed just to secure Florida votes.

“It’s a political stunt, it’s a cruel joke on Floridians,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Florida, 14^th District) said.

Castor, the chairwoman of the select committee on the climate crisis, is still pushing legislation that would permanently ban drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

“If President Trump meant what he said, he actually would have called for my bill with Representative Francis Rooney, which would permanently ban oil drilling off the coast of Florida,” she said.

Outgoing Representative Francis Rooney (R-Florida, 19^th District) doesn’t doubt the move was politically motivated.

“Look this is politics; people do things around election time a lot,” Rooney said in a Zoom interview with Spectrum News.

"I don’t think it lessens the need to go ahead and ultimately have this thing memorialized in a piece of legislation. I don’t totally trust the Department of Interior would be fully behind this if the president wasn’t pushing it,” Rooney added.

The bill by Castor and Rooney passed in the House of Representatives last year but has not been taken up by the Senate. 

“We need a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling, one that is established by law, not by an executive order that can be rescinded after the election,” Castor said.

While both Florida senators support that legislation, the real challenge lies with the Senate majority leader.

“I don’t think Senator [Mitch] McConnell has shown much interest in doing that,” Rooney admitted. “I think it would take a pretty big push from the president.”

Last month, the Trump administration announced a plan to open Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil and gas drilling.