Environmental groups take Trump administration’s “God Squad” to court

Environmental groups are suing the Trump administration over its decision to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from compliance with the Endangered Species Act, a move they say threatens both the coastal region and a law designed to protect endangered plants and animals.

Lawsuits against the decision by the God Squad, formally called the Endangered Species Committee and made up of several cabinet members, quickly followed. Six lawsuits have been filed against this decision so far, with both Defenders of Wildlife and the coalition he leads National Wildlife Federation and National Parks Conservation Association I sued myself this week.

The Trump administration decision On March 31, for the first time in decades, a panel nicknamed “God Squad”—stemming from his ability to decide whether development is worth the potential cost to an endangered species—he encountered. a request from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that a potential lawsuit in the Gulf of Mexico against oil and gas drilling posed a “threat to national security.”

Endangered species litigation in the Gulf, he wrote, “creates uncertainty and instability that is beginning to chill oil and gas development” in the region and could have “catastrophic consequences for our national security” as the country wages war with Iran.

American oil production was already at a level record high before the commission acted.

“The costly action taken by the Annual Squad to exempt federally authorized oil and gas activities in the Gulf from the Endangered Species Act is as unprecedented as it is illegal,” Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “We are in this fight not only to protect endangered and threatened species that are now in grave danger, but to protect the Endangered Species Act itself, which was enacted to preserve our shared American heritage – a heritage that this administration seems intent on destroying.”

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that God’s squad “has full authority to grant a waiver” under the Endangered Species Act and called the decision necessary “so that America’s energy flows are not disrupted or held hostage.”

Dave Owen, a law professor who studies the Endangered Species Act, said God’s Squad exemptions under the law are rarely invoked because they are often not needed for development to move forward, including in the Gulf, where oil and gas drilling has been prevalent throughout the law’s more than 50-year run.

“We have an administration that wants to be seen creating exemptions from environmental laws or limiting them,” said Owen, who is at the University of California, San Francisco School of Law. “He wants to be provocative, so this is an opportunity to grab the headlines for something that could be done, you know, the same result could be produced through conventional Endangered Species Act compliance procedures, but I don’t think it would be visible enough for this administration’s taste.”

Under Section 7(j) of the bill, the committee has the authority to issue a waiver when the secretary of defense cites a risk to national security. That’s what the administration argued to justify the decision, Owen said, but the exemption was granted under Section 7(h), which entails a longer, public process that was not followed in this case.

That could create legal vulnerabilities in the administration’s decision, he said, not to mention if its national security argument is found to be arbitrary and capricious, given that the administration has claimed an energy emergency while simultaneously canceling solar and wind projects.

On Thursday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) held a press conference with Earth Justice and local Gulf community and environmental groups to oppose deepwater drilling in the region.

During the press conference, Mississippi Gulf Coast resident Katherine Egland recalled seeing the environmental damage done in 2010 when The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster became the largest marine oil spill in US history, releasing more than 210 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Eleven workers died.

“The Gulf Coast is already the most climate-sensitive region in our country,” said Egland, a member of the NAACP’s board of directors. “Despite our disproportionate climate vulnerability, we continue to see ourselves as expendable and sacrifice ourselves for environmentally damaging projects. We should not be neglected and ignored.”

The spill also killed numerous wildlife, including 20 percent of the Rice whale population.

There are only 51 species of the whale left, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a biological opinion 10 months ago that found collisions with oil industry boats in the Gulf of Mexico could threaten the continued survival of the endangered species.

“Nobody takes seriously the idea that our national defense depends on killing a few Rice’s whales in the Gulf,” Owen said.