By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration announced on Thursday new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems, as President Donald Trump seeks to expand U.S. oil production.

The oil industry has been seeking access to new offshore areas, including Southern California and off the coast of Florida, as a way to boost U.S. energy security and jobs. The federal government has not allowed drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Florida and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995, because of concerns about oil spills. California has some offshore oil rigs, but there has been no new leasing in federal waters since the mid-1980s.

Since taking office for a second time in January, Trump has systematically reversed former President Joe Biden’s focus on slowing climate change to pursue what the Republican calls U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market. Trump, who recently called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” created a National Energy Dominance Council and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-high U.S. energy production, particularly fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has blocked renewable energy sources such as offshore wind and canceled billions of dollars in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects across the country.

Even before it was released, the offshore drilling plan has been met with strong opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is eyeing a 2028 presidential run and has emerged as a leading Trump critic. Newsom pronounced the idea “dead on arrival” in a social media post. The proposal also is likely to draw bipartisan opposition in Florida. Tourism and access to clean beaches are key parts of the economy in both states.

FILE – Workers prepare an oil containment boom at Refugio State Beach, north of Goleta, Calif., May 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Plans to allow drilling off California, Alaska and Florida’s coast

The administration’s plan proposes six offshore lease sales off the coast of California.

It also calls for new drilling off the coast of Florida in areas at least 100 miles from that state’s shore. The area targeted for leasing is adjacent to an area in the Central Gulf of Mexico that already contains thousands of wells and hundreds of drilling platforms.

The five-year plan also would compel more than 20 lease sales off the coast of Alaska, including a newly designated area known as the High Arctic, more than 200 miles offshore in the Arctic Ocean.

All offshore areas “with the potential to generate jobs, new revenue and additional production to advance America’s energy dominance should be considered for inclusion,” the American Petroleum Institute and other groups said in a joint letter to the Trump administration in June.

The groups cited California’s history as an oil-producing state. “Undiscovered resources could be readily produced given the array of existing infrastructure in the area, particularly in southern California,” the letter said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Opposition from California and Florida

Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican and Trump ally, helped persuade Trump officials to drop a similar offshore plan in 2018 when he was governor. Last week, Scott and fellow Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody’ co-sponsored a bill to maintain a moratorium on offshore drilling in the state that Trump signed in his first term.

“As Floridians, we know how vital our beautiful beaches and coastal waters are to our state’s economy, environment and way of life,″ Scott said in a statement. “I will always work to keep Florida’s shores pristine and protect our natural treasures for generations to come.”

A Newsom spokesman said Trump officials had not formally shared the plan, but said “expensive and riskier offshore drilling would put our communities at risk and undermine the economic stability of our coastal economies.”

California has been a leader in restricting offshore oil drilling since the infamous 1969 Santa Barbara spill that helped spark the modern environmental movement. While there have been no new federal leases offered since the mid-1980s, drilling from existing platforms continues.

Newsom expressed support for greater offshore controls after a 2021 spill off Huntington Beach and has backed a congressional effort to ban new offshore drilling on the West Coast.

A Texas-based company, with support from the Trump administration, is seeking to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill. The administration has hailed the plan by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. as the kind of project Trump wants to increase U.S. energy production as the federal government removes regulatory barriers.

Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term reversing former President Joe Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts. A federal court later struck down Biden’s order to withdraw 625 million acres of federal waters from oil development.

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Environmental and economic concerns over oil spills

Democratic lawmakers, including California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, warned that opening vast coastlines to new offshore drilling “would devastate coastal economies, jeopardize our national security, ravage coastal ecosystems, and put millions of Americans’ health and safety at risk.”

Oil spills “not only cause irreparable environmental damage, but also suppress the value of coastal homes, harm tourism economies and weaken coastal infrastructure,” the lawmakers said in a letter signed by dozens of Democrats. One disastrous oil spill can cost taxpayers billions in lost revenue, cleanup costs and ecosystem restoration, they said.

Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental group Oceana, called the Trump administration’s latest plan “an oil spill nightmare.”

Coastal communities “depend on healthy oceans for economic security and their cherished way of life,” he said. “We need to protect our coasts from more offshore drilling, not put them up for sale to the oil and gas industry. There’s too much at stake to risk more horrific oil spills that will haunt our coastlines for generations to come.”

By KATHY McCORMACK, Associated Press

It’s the ultimate homecoming photo — a smiling family rushing to reunite with a U.S. Air Force officer in 1973 who spent years as a POW in North Vietnam, his oldest daughter sprinting ahead with her arms outstretched, both feet off the ground.

“Burst of Joy,” the iconic black-and-white image capturing the Stirm family at Travis Air Force Base in California, was published in newspapers throughout the nation. Taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder, it won a Pulitzer Prize and has continued to resonate through the years, a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

On Veterans Day, former Lt. Col. Robert Stirm, seen in the photo in uniform with his back to the camera, died at an assisted living facility in Fairfield, California, his daughter, Lorrie Stirm Kitching, confirmed Thursday. He was 92.

“It’s right in my front foyer,” Kitching, 68, of Mountain View, said of the photo. She was 15 when that moment of her running to hug her father that St. Patrick’s Day was forever preserved.

“Just the feelings of that and the intensity of the feeling will never leave me,” Kitching told the AP in an interview. “It is so deep in my heart, and the joy and the relief that we had our dad back again. It was just truly a very moving reunion for our family, and that feeling has never left me. It’s the same feeling every time I see that picture.

“And every day, how grateful I am that my father was one of the lucky ones and returned home,” she added. That was really a gift.”

Stirm was shot down over North Vietnam

Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderbird was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.

He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.

McCain and Stirm had known each other. They shared a wall in solitary confinement and communicated through a tapping code.

“John McCain tapped in this joke. First time Dad laughed in jail,” Kitching said. “I just wish I knew what that joke was,” she said. “I’m sure it was something very ribald.”

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Photo represented heartbreak for Stirm

Stirm, who was 39 when the photo was taken told the AP 20 years later that he had several copies of it, but didn’t display it in his house. He had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release.

“I have changed drastically — forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter read in part. “Bob, I feel sure that in your heart you know we can’t make it together — and it doesn’t make sense to be unhappy when you can do something about it. Life is too short.”

Stirm said the photo “brought a lot of notoriety and publicity to me and, unfortunately, the legal situation that I was going to be faced with, and it was kind of unwelcomed.”

The couple divorced a year after Stirm returned from Vietnam and both remarried within six months.

They came together for weddings and other family events. Loretta Adams died in 2010, of cancer. She was 74.

“It hurt really deeply,” Kitching said. “She told him she wanted to make the marriage work. But she was being up front and honest. So every story has two sides, and I know very well just how difficult it is to understand the two sides.”

Stirm retired from the Air Force in 1977 after 25 years of service. He joined Ferry Steel Products, a business his grandfather started in San Francisco. He also had worked as a corporate pilot.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Donald Trump has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans’ concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, “We hear you” and “there’s a lot more work to do.”

But the American people need to have “a little bit of patience,” Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News.

The vice president’s remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this month’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

Vance said the Trump administration has “made incredible progress” in tackling cost-of-living concerns as they worked to undo policies from former President Joe Biden.

“As much progress as we’ve made, it’s going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming. We believe that we’re on the front end of it,” Vance said.

Trump, whose tariffs have contributed to higher prices for many goods, has insisted that prices are down, pointing to gas and egg prices specifically. The president has said Democrats’ arguments about affordability during the election were “a con job,” and saying “I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less.” However, in recent days he has shifted his response, acknowledging that there is room for consumer prices to drop further.

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Vance addresses Republican infighting

Vance was asked about recent high-profile rifts within Trump’s Make America Great Again coalition. Trump broke with one of his most loyal backers, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, over her complaints he was spending too much time on foreign policy and had dragged his feet on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump also has been reluctant to disavow white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, touching off turmoil on the right.

Vance did not directly address the recent infighting, but said he thinks the debates within the party are healthy. “It’s totally reasonable for the people who make up this coalition to argue,” about issues, said Vance, who often publicly engages in online debates on his X account.

But Trump’s MAGA coalition needs to remember, “that we have a lot more in common than we do not in common” and that supporters are up against “a radical leftist movement.”

“Have our debates — but focus on the enemy, so that we can win victories that matter for the American people,” Vance said.

The vice president and former senator said Republicans have to keep their coalition united, especially heading into next year’s midterm elections that determine control of Congress.

He said the working class voters who elected Trump to the White House don’t necessarily turn out to vote in midterm elections and said Republicans need to motivate them.

“I think that’s one of the lessons that we learned in Virginia and New Jersey is that when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, you’ve got to give people something to actually believe in, something to be inspired by, to get out there and vote,” Vance said. “They’re not going to vote just because you have an ‘R’ next to your name.”

By WAFAA SHURAFA

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — A pair of Israeli strikes in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis early Thursday killed five people, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory over a roughly 12-hour period to 33. The strikes have been some of the deadliest since Oct. 10 when a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect.

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The renewed escalation came after Israel said that its soldiers had come under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday. Israel said that no soldiers were killed and that the military responded with strikes.

Four Israeli airstrikes on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis late Wednesday and early Thursday killed 17 people, including five women and five children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital.

In Gaza City, two airstrikes on a building killed 16 people, including seven children and three women, according to officials at the Al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the city where the bodies were taken.

Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre.” In a statement, Hamas denied firing toward Israeli troops.

Palestinians mourn loved ones

At Nasser Hospital, scores of people gathered to offer funeral prayers for those who were killed in the Israeli strikes. Women wailed in mourning over the bodies of loved ones wrapped in white burial shrouds.

Among the mourners was Abir Abu Moustapha, who lost her three children, ages 1, 11 and 12, and her husband in an Israeli strike on Wednesday that hit their tent. She squatted beside their bodies as they were prepared for burial.

Sabri Abu Sabt bids farewell to his granddaughter, Ayloul, who was killed in an Israeli army strike, during her funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

“My children are gone. What can I say? And my husband, my most precious. May God have mercy on them,” Abu Moustapha said. “How was it my children’s fault that they had to die? Why was it their fault that they died in front of my eyes?”

Ceasefire again under pressure

Hospital officials said that the bodies came from both sides of a line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits Gaza in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.

The strikes came shortly after the U.N. Security Council gave its backing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza. The plan empowers an international force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

But there are still questions over how the plan will be implemented, especially after Hamas rejected it. The group said that the force’s mandate. which includes disarmament, “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect, though they haven’t stopped entirely.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported more than 300 deaths since the truce began. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages — dead or alive — to Israel.

The deaths are among the more than 69,000 Palestinians killed since Israel launched its sweeping offensive more than two years ago in response to Hamas killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people in the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war. Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records seen as a reliable estimate by the U.N. and many independent experts.

Mourners pray over the bodies Palestinians killed in an Israeli army strike, during their funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

The remains of 25 hostages have been returned to Israel since the ceasefire began. There are still three more in Gaza that need to be recovered and handed over. Hamas returned 20 living hostages to Israel on Oct. 13.

Israel targets Hezbollah

The Gaza strikes coincided with a barrage of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday on what the Israeli military said said were Hezbollah sites in the country, including weapons storage facilities. A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, the deadliest of Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.

The Israeli military said that Hezbollah was working to reestablish itself and rebuild its capacity in southern Lebanon, without providing evidence. It said that the weapons’ facilities targeted were embedded among civilians and violated understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Israel agreed to a ceasefire and withdrew from southern Lebanon last year and Lebanon agreed to quell Hezbollah activity in the area.

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on a car in the southern Lebanese village of Tiri killed one person and wounded 11, including students aboard a nearby bus, the Lebanese Health Ministry and state media said. The state-run National News Agency said that the school bus happened to be passing near the car that was hit.

Israel’s military later said that it killed a Hezbollah operative in the drone strike.

Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war