December, 10 2018, 11:00pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Natural Resources Defense Council – Anne Hawke, 646.823.4518, ahawke@nrdc.org
Oceana – Dustin Cranor, 954.348.1314, dcranor@oceana.org
Southern Environmental Law Center – Mike Mather, 434.333.9464, mmather@selcva.org
Earthjustice – Maggie Caldwell, 415.217.2084, mcaldwell@earthjustice.org
Center for Biological Diversity – Kristen Monsell, 914.806.3467, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
Coastal Conservation League – Caitie Forde-Smith, 252.714.4790, caitiefs@scccl.org
Sierra Club – Gabby Brown, 914.261.4626, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
Surfrider Foundation – Angela Howe, 949.732.6414, ahowe@surfrider.org
Groups Sue Feds to Stop Seismic Airgun Blasting in Atlantic Ocean
First step toward offshore drilling jeopardizes critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, puts marine life at risk
Charleston, S.C
Leading environmental groups sued the federal government today to prevent seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. This extremely loud and dangerous process, which is used to search for oil and gas deposits deep below the ocean's surface, is the first step toward offshore drilling. If allowed, seismic airgun blasting would harm marine life, including whales, dolphins, fish and zooplankton - the foundation of the ocean food web.
The lawsuit, filed in South Carolina, claims that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) in late November. Those permits authorize five companies to harm or harass marine mammals while conducting seismic airgun blasting in an area twice the size of California, stretching from Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The legal complaint is HERE.
The government has estimated that seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic could harass or harm marine mammals like dolphins and whales - which depend on sound to feed, mate and communicate - hundreds of thousands of times. Seismic airgun blasting would also jeopardize the iconic North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species, according to 28 leading right whale experts.
Below are statements from the groups involved in the lawsuit:
"This action is unlawful and we're going to stop it," said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana. "The Trump administration's rash decision to harm marine mammals hundreds of thousands of times in the hope of finding oil and gas is shortsighted and dangerous. Seismic airgun blasting can harm everything from tiny zooplankton and fish to dolphins and whales. More than 90 percent of the coastal municipalities in the blast zone have publicly opposed seismic airgun blasting off their coast. We won this fight before and we'll win it again."
"The Trump administration has steamrolled over objections of scientists, governors and thousands of coastal communities and businesses to enable this dangerous activity. Now it wants to steamroll the law," said Michael Jasny, director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Allowing seismic blasting at this scale in these waters is not consistent with the laws that protect our oceans."
"Ignoring the mounting opposition to offshore drilling, the decision to push forward with unnecessarily harmful seismic testing defies the law, let alone common sense," said Catherine Wannamaker, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). "An overwhelming number of communities, businesses, and elected officials have made it clear that seismic blasting-a precursor to drilling that no one wants-has no place off our coasts."
"Seismic airgun surveys pose a dual threat to the biologically rich waters off the Atlantic coast," said Steve Mashuda, managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice. "Their continuous blasts can injure and deafen whales, dolphins and other marine life, and they are the sonic harbingers of even greater risks associated with offshore oil and gas drilling."
"The Trump administration is letting the oil industry launch a brutal sonic assault on North Atlantic right whales and other marine life," said Kristen Monsell, ocean program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Right whales will keep spiraling toward extinction if we don't stop these deafening blasts and the drilling and spilling that could come next. That's why we're taking the administration to court."
"South Carolina has spoken: We don't want offshore oil and gas drilling," said Laura Cantral, executive director at Coastal Conservation League. "Seismic blasting is a big step in that direction, threatening our fragile coast and economy. We will firmly defend our communities and vulnerable marine life."
"Seismic blasting poses unacceptable risks to vulnerable marine wildlife, especially the critically imperiled North Atlantic right whale," said Jane Davenport, senior staff attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. "The species already faces effective extinction within a few short decades. The right whale simply cannot withstand the direct harm and habitat degradation seismic blasting will cause."
"Seismic testing and offshore drilling is incompatible with our coast in North Carolina," said Todd Miller, executive director at North Carolina Coastal Federation. "There's never a window that would be a good time for seismic testing to happen. Studies show that seismic affects the behaviors of marine mammals, fish and zooplankton, and seismic is harmful for fisheries. And on top of all that, it's a precursor to offshore drilling which is strongly opposed here in North Carolina."
"With a vibrant commercial fishery industry and the only known calving ground for endangered North Atlantic right whales just off our coast, Georgians oppose seismic testing for offshore oil exploration and the threats it poses to our state's wildlife, wild places, and quality of life," said Alice Keyes, vice president at One Hundred Miles. "Our coastal communities have spoken out for years against seismic testing and offshore drilling because they understand what's at stake--risks to our coastal economy and wildlife ranging from right whales to zooplankton. We are proud to stand with our fellow Georgians and thousands of others across the East Coast in opposition to this dangerous plan."
"As usual, the Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to give favors to the fossil fuel industry, whatever the cost to coastal communities and wildlife," said Athan Manuel, program director at Sierra Club. "We will continue to fight back against their dangerous plans to subject our coasts to seismic blasting and expanded offshore drilling."
"Seismic testing can be harmful and even fatal to the hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals in the Atlantic," said Angela Howe, legal director at the Surfrider Foundation. "This litigation is aimed at protecting the Atlantic Ocean from the destruction of seismic testing, which is the first step of proposed offshore oil drilling. We will continue to stand up to protect our marine environment and our ocean ecosystems for this and future generations."
As of today, opposition and concern over offshore drilling activities in the Atlantic includes:
- Governors of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire
- More than 240 East Coast state municipalities
- Over 1,500 local, state and federal bipartisan officials
- An alliance representing over 42,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families
- All three East Coast Fishery Management Councils
- Commercial and recreational fishing interests such as Southeastern Fisheries Association, Snook and Gamefish Foundation, Fisheries Survival Fund, Southern Shrimp Alliance, Billfish Foundation and International Game Fish Association
Background
In April 2017, President Trump issued an executive order to expedite permitting for harmful seismic airgun blasting, reversing the previous administration's decision to deny all pending permits for such activity in the Atlantic.
The Obama administration concluded that the "value of obtaining the geophysical and geological information from new airgun seismic surveys in the Atlantic does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys' acoustic pulse impacts on marine life."
NMFS issued permits to five companies on November 30, 2018. Before those companies can begin seismic airgun blasting, they must also receive permits from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
A recent economic analysis by Oceana finds that offshore drilling activities, including seismic airgun blasting, along the Atlantic threaten over 1.5 million jobs and nearly $108 billion in GDP, and would yield less than seven months'-worth of oil and less than six months'-worth of gas.
A May 2017 poll by Oceana, NRDC and the International Fund for Animal Welfare revealed that 76 percent of Americans support protecting marine mammals from threats, including injury and death resulting from offshore oil and gas drilling.
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
(212) 727-2700LATEST NEWS
'An Attempt to Silence the Public's Voice': Trump Moves to Accelerate Oil Project Approvals
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency.'"
Apr 24, 2025
The Trump administration announced late Wednesday that it is moving to implement new permitting procedures designed to speed up reviews and approvals of oil and gas development, a plan that environmentalists called an attack on the public's right to weigh in on projects that would directly impact communities across the United States.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by billionaire oil industry ally Doug Burgum, said the new permitting measures would "take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most," citing President Donald Trump's declaration of a "national energy emergency" at the start of his second term.
"In response, the Department will utilize emergency authorities under existing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act," the agency said.
The expedited permitting procedures will apply to crude oil, fracked gas, coal, and other energy sources favored by the president, according to the Interior Department.
Notably absent from Interior's list are wind and solar, which accounted for a record 17% of U.S. electricity generation last year. As it has moved to boost the fossil fuel industry—the primary driver of the global climate emergency—the Trump administration has canceled grants and halted construction for renewable energy projects.
"The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement that the Interior Department's announcement of accelerated permitting procedures for dirty energy "is an attempt to silence the public's voice in decision-making, taking away tools that ensure our communities have a say in the fossil fuel project proposals that threaten our water, land, and public health."
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency,'" said Rees. "The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer and is expanding extraction faster than any other nation. The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Alejandro Camacho, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on social media that the Trump administration is "once again disregarding the law, environment, and even market data. Ignoring environmental laws to approve dirty projects claiming an energy emergency that does not exist."
"Meanwhile, he's killing massive private wind power projects," Camacho added. "Sounds like an emergency to me."
The permitting announcement comes days after an internal document, leaked on Earth Day, showed that Trump's Interior Department intends to prioritize weakening environmental protections and opening federal lands to fossil fuel extraction.
The department is also "looking at whether to scale back" national monuments, including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, The Washington Postreported Thursday.
"Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments' potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries," according to the Post.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Michigan's Democratic AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," said one attorney.
Apr 23, 2025
Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
Backed by FBI agents, officers broke into homes in Ypsilanti, Canton, and Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning. Video uploaded to social media by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, showed officers battering down the door to a Ypsilanti house before others rushed into the home barking commands with guns drawn and pointed at the residents.
"No search warrant was provided," someone says in the video as the invaders crashed through the homes' locked front door. People in the house said their phones and other electronic devices and possessions, including vehicles, were taken.
🚨BREAKING | Officials Confirms Raids in Multiple Cities; TAHRIR Coalition Says FBI Agents, Michigan State Police, and Local Officers Targeted Pro-Palestine Organizers
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
MLivereported that people inside the home were handcuffed and moved to the porch outside before being released about 15 minutes later.
The pro-Palestine advocacy group TAHRIR Coalition rallied supporters to two of the homes. Video posted on YouTube shows members of a crowd that gathered outside the Ypsilanti house taunting the agents as they came in and out of the home.
According toDrop Site News, Ann Arbor police said that the investigation involves "reported crimes" committed in the city and other jurisdictions.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed bureau agents took part in the raids, which he described vaguely as "law enforcement activities."
Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told the Detroit Free Press that the raids "were not related to protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan," but were "in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism."
"There is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants," Wimmer added.
However, Liz Jacob, an attorney with the Sugar Law Center in Detroit, noted that "everyone who was raided has taken part in protest and has some relationship to the University of Michigan."
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," Jacob added.
Jacob said seven people were targeted in Wednesday's raids. No arrests were made. The attorney also noted that the warrants were signed by Judge Michelle Friedman Appel, whose jurisdiction includes Huntington Woods, where vandals painted graffiti and inflicted other damage at the home of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker while the Jewish man and his family slept inside last December.
Last month, vandals also damaged the Ann Arbor home of Provost Laurie McCauley.
The Graduate Employees' Organization, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, said one of its members was detained during Wednesday's raids.
"We strongly condemn the actions taken today and all past and present repression of political activism," the group said. "We urge University of Michigan administrators, the regents of the University of Michigan, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to end their campaign against students and stop putting graduate workers in harm's way."
Dawud Walid, the Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that "we call into question the aggressive nature of this morning's raids of activists' homes, which follows the recent misuse of prosecutorial power in Michigan and throughout our country against pro-Palestinian activists."
"In any other context, such minor infractions would be handled by local law enforcement or referred to local, elected prosecutors—not escalated to federal intervention," Walid added. "This disproportionate response further fuels the perception that Muslim and Arab students, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are being treated overly hostile by law enforcement compared to those who commit harm toward American Muslims."
According to CAIR:
This recent escalation comes on the heels of prior arrests and charges brought by the Michigan attorney general's office against University of Michigan student protesters for minor, nonviolent infractions—including misdemeanor trespassing—during peaceful demonstrations advocating for Palestinian human rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for the University of Michigan to divest from companies complicit in the occupation and violence.
After Nessel announced criminal charges—some of them felonies—for 11 University of Michigan Palestine defenders last September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said the attorney general was "going to set a precedent, and it's unfortunate that a Democrat made that move."
"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs," Tlaib said. "But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."
At the federal level, the Trump administration has been arresting and initiating deportation proceedings against international students who have taken part in pro-Palestine campus protests. Although the government admits the targeted individuals have committed no crimes, immigration law allows the removal of foreign nationals deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After Trump DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children. This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Apr 23, 2025
The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an "administrative error" and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.
The news that Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were "moved to a safe house by supporters" after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.
"I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions," said Vasquez Sura. "So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I'm scared for my kids."
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family's address, according to the newspaper's lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republicpublished a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that "the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family's address in the document it posted online," sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
He was "mistakenly" deported to prison camp, and it was just a "slip-up" that they then posted his wife's address. Bullshit. If these are all accidents, who's getting fired?
[image or embed]
— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children," MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X Wednesday. "This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Several others responded on the social media platform Bluesky.
"These fascists didn't stop at abducting Abrego Garcia, they've now doxxed his wife, forcing her into hiding," said Dean Preston, the leader of a renters' rights organization. "The Trump administration is terrorizing this family. Speak up, show up, resist."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, similarly declared, "The Trump administration is terrorizing this woman."
Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst for the Project On Government Oversight's Constitution Project, openly wondered "if publishing Abrego Garcia and his wife's home address violates federal or (particularly) Maryland laws."
"Definitely unconscionable and further demonstration of bad faith/intimidation," Hawkins added.
While Abrego Garcia's family seeks refuge in a U.S. safe house, he remains behind bars in his native El Salvador—despite the Supreme Court order from earlier this month and an immigration judge's 2019 decision that was supposed to prevent his deportation. Multiple congressional Democrats have flown to the country in recent days to support demands for his freedom.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular