By JM Rieger and Lauren Gardner

Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday again slammed an Interior Department proposal to block areas in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from future oil and gas exploration, a plan Murkowski called “unacceptable” and said violated the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). “What this administration is doing is moving forward into essentially de facto wilderness,” Murkowski said. “What the president is doing is not unlike what we are seeing with the selective interpretation of the Affordable Care Act or immigration, where he is unilaterally acting. He is ignoring the law from 1980, ANILCA.”