"Drill Baby Drill": Trump's Oil And Gas Plan To Defeat US Inflation

US Energy policy took center stage during President Donald Trump's Congress address on Tuesday, with his emphatic "drill baby drill" approach. Referring to his oil and gas plans, the President said America has "more liquid gold under our feet than any nation" which could defeat inflation and dramatically lower costs.

He blamed his predecessor Joe Biden's administration for rising food and fuel prices and said, "a major focus of our fight to defeat inflation is rapidly reducing the cost of energy."

He stressed that under the Biden administration over 100 power plants had closed and said that America was opening up many of those power plants right now.

"That's why on my first day in office, I declared a national energy emergency,' he said.

Trump continued, "We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth...I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it...By unleashing American energy, we will defeat inflation and dramatically lower costs. ... It's called drill baby drill."

This includes plans for a "gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska" and expanding critical mineral production.

Republicans joined Trump in the last line, yelling "drill baby drill" along with him.

In related development, as Trump distances itself from the Biden era's green energy policies, the United States has also ended pollution tracking by its embassies that had been a vital source of data, especially in Beijing.

As Trump slashes overseas and environmental spending, the State Department cited "budget constraints" as it said it was ending the Air Quality Monitoring Program's transmission of data.

"The current budget climate requires us to make difficult cuts and, unfortunately, we cannot continue to publish this data," a State Department spokesperson said.

Historical data will remain on a site of the Environmental Protection Agency, but live data stopped Tuesday and will remain down unless funding is restored, the State Department said.

The United States since 2008 has monitored air quality through embassies -- as a service to Americans overseas but also, increasingly, as a way to share accurate scientific data that may otherwise be censored overseas.