Good news….bad news…good news…
The saga continues of the Trump administration’s relentless actions to dismantle the Endangered Species Act. This turbulent ride is characterized by a series of aggressive regulatory rollbacks, the historic reconvening of a powerful “death warrant” committee, and the undaunted response (litigation) cycle by resolute advocacy groups- defending wildlife. The Endangered Species Act has prevented more than 99 percent of listed species from going extinct. It is popular, with 90% of Americans supporting the Act.
The Good:
March 30th, 2026
Trump’s Endangered Species Act rollbacks have been overturned.
A federal court ruled that – four key provisions that implement the Act (issued in 2019) under the first Trump administration – are unlawful. The Endangered Species Act is our county’s most successful law for preventing extinction and protecting wildlife. Transparency and oversight are critical to the Endangered Species Act’s success. This is a huge win for endangered species across the country.
The Bad:
March 31st, 2026
Extinction Committee’ Allows Oil Drillers to Ignore Species Protections in Gulf of Mexico
This week the Federal Endangered Species Committee – also known as the Extinction Committee or God Squad, met behind closed doors and voted unanimously to allow an exemption to the Endangered Species Act – waiving environmental rules- allowing offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This vote was pushed forward- without any regard for the imperiled wildlife – that rely on these waters for survival. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requested this exemption “for reasons of national security.” This is the first meeting- in over three decades – of the Extinction Committee named as such because its members have the extraordinary power to decide whether our nation’s endangered wildlife live or die and suffer extinction. Advocacy groups are working tirelessly to safeguard the Endangered Species Act.
The Good:
April 2nd, 2026
Gulf and environmental groups sued the Trump administration over its decision to strip Endangered Species Act protection from imperiled species threatened by oil-and-gas offshore drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico. “In a moment of self-made crisis, the Trump administration has decided to manipulate the law to entrench offshore oil drilling in the Gulf for decades to come, even if it destabilizes entire ecosystems that communities and businesses depend on,” said Steve Mashuda, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Oceans Program.
Read more….
March 30th, 2026
Federal Court Strikes Down President Trump’s Attacks Against Endangered Species Act, Restores Bedrock Environmental Law to Pre-Trump Status— Ruling derails future attempts to weaken law
Oakland, CA —
A federal court struck down President Trump’s attacks against the Endangered Species Act (ESA), restoring key values of the bedrock environmental law to the status it held for decades before the first Trump administration attacked the bedrock environmental law. After a seven-year legal saga, the Northern District of California Court found that a series of regulations from 2019 and 2024 were in clear violation of the statute, and ordered those regulations immediately vacated. The ruling will derail ongoing efforts by the current Trump administration to further weaken the ESA.
The ruling reaffirms that federal agencies must use the best available science when assessing harm to species, they cannot ignore incremental harm to critical habitat, and the agencies must firmly commit to any measures relied upon to reduce harm to imperiled plants and animals.
Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and WildEarth Guardians, represented by Earthjustice, challenged regulations issued seven years ago by the first Trump administration, as well as inadequate rules issued under President Biden.
“Extinction is forever, and today’s ruling strikes down regulations that deprived vulnerable species of a last chance at survival,” said Ben Levitan, Earthjustice senior attorney. “This ruling sends a strong signal to the Trump administration that its pending plans to further weaken the rules will violate the law.”
“For more than 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has been one of the most successful conservation laws we have,” said Joanna Zhang, endangered species advocate with WildEarth Guardians. “This victory gives vulnerable species and the ecosystems we all rely on a chance to recover in the face of the climate crisis and relentless pressure from extractive industries.”
“I’m thrilled the court rejected these efforts to gut endangered species protections and eviscerate a law Americans love,” said Ryan Shannon, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re in an extinction crisis that demands urgent action to prevent thousands of animal and plant species from disappearing forever. Trump is hellbent on serving corporations at the expense of endangered wildlife, but thankfully the law protects these critters and the places they live. Now Trump must obey it.”
“Today’s ruling reversed changes aimed at gutting some of the Endangered Species Act’s most important protections for the habitats of species facing extinction,” said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Karimah Schoenhut. “Thankfully, the court rejected this unlawful attempt to allow the piecemeal destruction of critical habitat and to undermine the Act’s protections against jeopardizing protected species.”
Background: The first Trump administration carried out a series of unprecedented attacks against the Endangered Species Act, prompting a legal fight that culminated in today’s ruling.
During the Biden administration, some of the first Trump administration’s damage was undone through new regulations. But those efforts ultimately fell short of restoring the ESA to its full protection purpose. The legal fight went on.
Though most of this set of regulations have been invalidated, the current Trump administration has again proposed rules that undermine protections for threatened and endangered species. Any new regulations will need to consider the Court’s reasoning today before they are finalized.
The Trump administration has also proposed to reverse a 50-year understanding of the statute that could open the door to widespread destruction of habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife. This change may be finalized soon, even though it has been met with fierce public and scientific opposition.
Additionally, President Trump is convening a committee of his own appointees to effectively decide the fate of endangered species for projects whose approvals would otherwise violate the law. Tomorrow, the Trump administration will bring together its “Extinction Committee” for the first time to potentially override protections under the Endangered Species Act for all oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, which could drive the Gulf’s most imperiled creatures, including sea turtles, whales, fish, rays, and corals, to extinction.
Trump also issued an executive order on the first day of his new term declaring an “energy emergency” that specifically named the ESA, setting up an effort to eventually subvert the law in the name of fossil fuel extraction and private corporate interests.
Meanwhile, the ESA remains one of the most popular and effective conservation laws ever enacted in the U.S., with 84 percent of Americans in support of it today. The ESA has had a 99% success rate, saving numerous species including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, the gray wolf, and many other iconic animals that would have otherwise disappeared forever. Humans also benefit immensely from the bedrock environmental law, which helps keep ecosystems intact that impact everything from agriculture to clean water access and disease prevention.
The ESA is needed more than ever today, with over one-third of plants and animals in the U.S. at risk of extinction, in large part due to human activities that destroy habitat, overexploit and kill species, pollute water systems, and speed up climate change.
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March 31, 2026
‘Extinction Committee’ Allows Oil Drillers to Ignore Species Protections in Gulf of Mexico
Panel of appointees aligns with “national security” rationale from Secretary of Defense
Contacts
Jackson Chiappinelli jchiappinelli@earthjustice.org
Washington, D.C. —
This morning, for the first time in 34 years, a committee of political appointees with the power to condemn imperiled species to extinction met to review a request for an exemption to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The panel — formally known as the Endangered Species Committee but sometimes referred to as the “Extinction Committee” or the “God Squad” — voted to grant the exemption. The committee has only convened three times since Congress amended the Act in 1978 to consider exemptions in extreme circumstances where there was an irreconcilable conflict between a project and the survival of a species.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked for the meeting to be held to exempt all offshore oil-and-gas drilling activities across the Gulf of Mexico from the ESA, citing reasons of “national security.” Oil production in the Gulf is not currently constrained by the ESA. No permits have been denied, nor have any development plans been rejected, due to the law. Even oil drillers recently told a federal court that current protocols — which already lead to widespread injury, harassment, and loss of endangered marine life — are not causing disruption to their operations. The unprecedented blanket exemption could serve as a death sentence for already imperiled marine life including whales, sea turtles, manatees, fish, rays, corals and birds.
Steve Mashuda, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Oceans Program, issued the following response:
“The Trump administration is exploiting its self-made gas crisis to get rid of protections for endangered whales and other imperiled species in the Gulf of Mexico. Secretary Hegseth and his Extinction Committee claim this will eventually cut costs for Americans strained by gas prices, but Gulf communities know what unrestrained drilling will really bring: devastating oil spills and the destruction of ecosystems and coastal economies. Earthjustice and our partners will go to court to stop this illegal order.”
Exempting the oil industry’s Gulf of Mexico operations from the Endangered Species Act will not reduce prices at the pump. The U.S. is producing more oil than any nation in history and is the world’s top producer of gas (and is a net exporter of both). The Gulf specifically has seen steady oil-and-gas production and is poised to see an increase given the industry’s push into deeper Gulf waters, where there are more oil deposits, but where extraction becomes exponentially more dangerous.
A Rice’s whale — one of the world’s rarest whales — observed in the western Gulf of Mexico in 2024.
The species is the only large whale species that lives year-round in North American waters.
(Paul Nagelkirk / NOAA Fisheries – NMFS ESA/MMPA Permit #21938)
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April 2, 2026
Gulf & Environmental Groups Sue Trump Administration Over Decision to Exempt All Gulf Oil-and-Gas Activities from Endangered Species Act
Jackson Chiappinelli, Earthjustice, jchiappinelli@earthjustice.org
Joanie Steinhaus, Turtle Island Restoration Network, joanie@tirn.net
Alex Horn, Healthy Gulf, alex@healthygulf.org
Ginny Roscamp, Sierra Club, ginny.roscamp@sierraclub.org
Lindsay Tice, Friends of the Earth U.S, ltice@foe.org
Washington, D.C. — Gulf and environmental groups sued the Trump administration over its decision to strip Endangered Species Act protection from imperiled species threatened by oil-and-gas offshore drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico. The unprecedented blanket-exemption would leave numerous Gulf species and ecosystems unprotected and vulnerable to extinction, including the critically endangered Rice’s whale, sea turtles, fish, rays, corals, and birds.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked a 1978 Endangered Species Act provision that allows an Endangered Species Committee (commonly known as the “Extinction Committee” or “God Squad”) to wipe out protections for imperiled species. Secretary Hegseth directed the small group of President Trump’s appointees to grant the free pass for offshore drillers, citing “national security” reasons even though no oil and gas industry proposals or permits have been denied due to the Endangered Species Act. Offshore drillers even recently told a federal court that current species protections (which still enable imperiled marine life deaths, injury, and harassment) are not disrupting their operations.
The groups — Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice — are suing the Trump administration for abusing the national security exception under the Endangered Species Act, which does not allow the robust review process required under the law to be forfeited or voided.
The groups filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“In a moment of self-made crisis, the Trump administration has decided to manipulate the law to entrench offshore oil drilling in the Gulf for decades to come, even if it destabilizes entire ecosystems that communities and businesses depend on,” said Steve Mashuda, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Oceans Program. “This ‘go-ahead’ to offshore drillers to extract oil and gas in extremely sensitive ocean areas while killing whales, turtles, and many other species is unnecessary and shameful. This abuse of the law won’t lower gas prices, and it will only sell out the Gulf to an industry that has left some of the worst environmental scars our country has ever seen. We are asking the court to stop this illegal order.”
“The Extinction Committee’s vote to absolve oil and gas companies from adhering to the Endangered Species Act is an unprecedented act that will have disastrous consequences for the Gulf,” said Martha Collins, Healthy Gulf Executive Director. “Communities want greater protections for Gulf species, and this is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to silence those voices.”
“Using war with Iran as cover, the Trump administration has invoked the rarely-used Endangered Species Committee ‘God Squad’ to wage a new war — on endangered sea turtles and whales in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Todd Steiner, founder of Turtle Island Restoration Network.
“The Trump administration is playing god with our most vulnerable wildlife by deciding which endangered species are worth saving and which can be sentenced to extinction to pad oil and gas profits,” said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “The Endangered Species Act and the long-needed protections it requires to prevent species’ extinction do not disrupt oil production in the Gulf. We are suing to stop the Trump administration from abusing national security concerns to seek politically motivated exemptions that weaken protections for endangered species nationwide.”
“The Trump Administration’s unprecedented use of the God Squad is rife with illegalities,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director for Friends of the Earth. “Public participation has been evaded and a baseless national emergency has been declared without evidence of need or urgency. Meanwhile, the critically endangered Rice’s whale – of which only 51 remain on the planet – has been placed in the administration’s crosshairs, all to benefit oil and gas interests. The buck stops here: we are holding the Extinction Committee and involved officials accountable in court and are confident that justice will continue to carry the day.”
Background
The Endangered Species Committee has only convened three times since Congress amended the Act in 1978 to allow for exemptions in extreme circumstances where species protection was irreconcilable with a particular project. Only twice has it decided to exempt specific projects from Endangered Species Act protections — and one of those decisions (regarding spotted owls) was subsequently overturned in court.
In every prior case, there has been a singular project up for consideration by the committee, and a single species whose fate was hanging in the balance. Yesterday’s meeting marks the first time the committee has ever considered a request based on “national security” concerns. It is also the first time that an exemption has been granted for an entire industry, for sweeping actions that have the potential to affect at least 20 endangered and threatened species. Rice’s whales, the only whales that live year-round in the Gulf, have already diminished to around 50 individuals and could become the first human-caused extinction of a whale species in recorded history.
The Endangered Species Act has long served as a bulwark against rampant destruction of species habitat, preserving ecosystems that keep marine life alive and that humans rely on for everything from food to economic security to recreation to cultural practices.
President Trump has repeatedly attacked or attempted to circumvent the Endangered Species Act. Just this week, a federal court struck down a series of regulations from the first Trump administration, restoring key values of the bedrock environmental law.
