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For Immediate Release
January, 23 2023, 04:48pm EDT
Contact:
Kayley Shoup, Citizens Caring for the Future, (575) 302-7587, kayley.shoup.ccff@gmail.com
Rose Rushing, Western Environmental Law Center, (505) 278-9577, rushing@westernlaw.org
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Lawsuit Aims to Defend Climate, Clean Air From Fracking in New Mexico’s Permian Basin
Biden Administration Approved Trump-Era Oil, Gas Leases
SANTE FE, New Mexico
Conservation groups, led by citizens from Carlsbad, N.M., filed suit today to overturn the Biden administration’s approval of nearly 6,000 acres of oil and gas leases in southeast New Mexico’s Permian Basin.
Originally authorized by the Trump administration, the challenged leases were sold just days before President Biden took office and announced a pause on new federal oil and gas leasing to protect the climate. In spite of Biden’s promise, the U.S. Interior Department formally approved the Trump-era leasing on May 12, 2021.
By auctioning these lands, the Interior Department handed the industry the right to extract and produce oil and gas, opening the door for massive amounts of climate and air pollution. In spite of this, the agency refused to disclose the costs of more oil and gas development and to take steps to limit or even prevent new development to protect people and communities.
“Those of us living in Carlsbad continue to be alarmed by our ever-degrading air quality and environment in the region,” said Kayley Shoup with Citizens Caring for the Future. “Any direction you look in southeast New Mexico your eyes will be met with rigs, flares and pollution at a mass scale. This devastation can even be seen in space as NASA has recently identified a super-emitting site mere miles from Carlsbad. Unmitigated oil and gas production on public lands here in New Mexico has already taken away our health and has stifled our ability to nurture industries such as agriculture. We see leasing out our public lands for years to come as a direct attack on our ability to build a viable economy in our region in the future. A future where the curtain will inevitably be drawn on oil and gas production once and for all.”
“Oil and gas companies are extracting record profits while outsourcing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to the public,” said Rose Rushing, a Farmington-based attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “The most marginalized communities in New Mexico are usually the most affected by the oil and gas industry’s toxic legacy in our backyards, and also stand to suffer the most from climate change. Frontline communities are being forced to pay for oil and gas extraction with our health and climate stability. The science is clear: We must stop drilling for oil and gas if we are going to avert catastrophic climate change.”
Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, challenges the Biden administration’s decision to uphold the Trump-era leases. It targets the administration’s failure to address the harm from expanded oil and gas extraction to the climate and regional air quality.
“By going forward full steam with the January lease sale, the Bureau of Land Management is in violation of its moral and ethical responsibility for the common good and land trust stewardship, foundational to the agency,” said Sister Joan Brown of New Mexico/El Paso Interfaith Power and Light. “The Bureau must take seriously its responsibility to reduce climate pollution, health risks, and address care for the sacred lands in New Mexico.”
Oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s largest oil producing regions, is a huge source of air pollution and has fueled a surge in smog in the region, especially in the town of Carlsbad. It’s also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and gas in the Permian is a huge source of potent methane gas and when it’s burned it releases massive amounts of carbon.
Recent reports indicate that unchecked fracking in the Permian Basin will unleash more than 55 billion metric tons of carbon by 2050, exhausting 10% of the global carbon budget needed to limit worldwide average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“While it’s shameful President Biden is not living up to his promise to pause new oil and gas leasing to protect the climate, it’s even more shameful he’s rubberstamped Trump-era leases,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “For the climate, we have to stop selling our public lands out to the oil and gas industry.”
Several analyses show climate pollution from the world’s already producing fossil fuel developments, if fully developed, will push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius. Avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of already-developed fields in the ground.
“Any expansion of fracking leases belies climate science and promises more harm to frontline communities and endangered animals like lesser prairie chickens,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This lawsuit will hold the Biden administration accountable to its own climate, environmental justice and biodiversity goals.”
In 2022 the Biden administration agreed to reconsider millions of acres of oil and gas leases approved by the Trump administration. That agreement, however, did not include the leases sold in New Mexico in January 2021.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
'This Crisis is Expanding': Trump's Iran War Escalates as Houthis Launch Missile at Israel
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?... The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing," said one journalist.
Mar 28, 2026
The Houthis on Saturday took credit for launching a ballistic missile at Israel, opening a new front in the war US President Donald Trump illegally started with Iran nearly one month ago.
As reported by Axios, the attack by the Houthis signals that the Yemen-based militia is joining the conflict to aide Iran, which has been under aerial assault from the US and Israel for the past four weeks.
Although the Houthi missile was intercepted by Israeli defenses, it is likely just the opening salvo in an expanding conflict throughout the Middle East.
Axios noted that while the Houthis entered the war by launching an attack on Israel, they could inflict the most damage on the US and its allies in the region by shutting down the strait of Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea.
"Doing that," Axios explained, "would dramatically increase the global economic crisis that has been created due to the war with Iran" and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has sent global energy prices skyrocketing.
Sky News international correspondent John Sparks reported on Saturday that the Houthis' entrance into the war shows that "this crisis is expanding, it is escalating."
'This crisis is expanding and escalating.'
Houthi rebels in Yemen have confirmed they launched a missile at Israel, marking the Iran-backed group's first involvement in the war.
@sparkomat reports live from Jerusalem
https://t.co/Leuc4SnGfG
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/TmlyFHkCZN
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 28, 2026
Sparks argued that the Houthis' decision to fire a missile at Israel signals that "the geographical spread of this conflict is expanding," adding that "the Houthis have shown the ability to attack shipping in the Red Sea and the waters around the Arabian Peninsula."
Sparks said that even though Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio "have been projecting confidence" about having the war under control, "it's not playing out that way... on the ground."
Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, argued that the Houthis' main value to Iran isn't launching strikes on Israel, but their ability to increase economic pressure on the US.
Citrinowicz also outlined ways the Houthis could further drive up the global price of energy.
"This raises a key question: whether the Houthis will escalate further by targeting Saudi infrastructure and shipping lanes more directly, or whether they will preserve this capability as an additional lever of pressure as the conflict evolves," he wrote. "With each passing day of the conflict, particularly in light of its expanding scope against Iran, the likelihood of this scenario materializing continues to grow. It is increasingly not a question of if, but when."
Journalist Spencer Ackerman similarly pointed to the Houthis' ability to cause economic havoc as the biggest concern about their entrance into the conflict.
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?" he asked rhetorically. "The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing."
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Assault on Journalists Shows How Israeli Military Acts 'In Service of The Settler Movement': CNN Reporter
"Messiah complexes, talk of revenge, and the use of force against journalists are just symptoms of what's been happening to the army over the past three years," said one Israeli journalist.
Mar 28, 2026
Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces on Friday were caught on camera assaulting and detaining a crew of CNN journalists while they were reporting from the occupied West Bank.
A video of the incident posted on social media by CNN Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond shows the CNN crew walking near the Palestinian village of Tayasir, which in recent days has come under assault from Israeli settlers who established an illegal outpost in the area.
The crew are then accosted by armed members of the IDF, who order them to sit down. After the crew complies with their commands, the soldiers come to seize the journalists' cameras and phones that are being used to record the incident.
A soldier then puts CNN photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold and forces him to the ground. Writing about the assault later, Theophilos said that the soldier "pushed and strangled me," adding that this kind of violence "is just a symptom of the IDF's actions in the West Bank."
According to Diamond, the CNN crew were subsequently detained for two hours. During that time, Diamond wrote, it became clear that the ideology of the Israeli settlers movement was "motivating many of the soldiers who operate in the occupied West Bank" and that the Israeli military regularly acts "in service of the settler movement."
For instance, one IDF soldier acknowledged during conversations with the CNN crew that the settler outpost near Tayasir was unlawful under both international and Israeli law, but insisted "this will be a legal settlement... slowly, slowly."
The soldier also said he wanted to exact "revenge" on local Palestinians for the death of 18-year-old Israeli settler Yehuda Sherman, who was killed last week by a Palestinian driver. Palestinians who witnessed Sherman's killing have said that the driver was trying to stop Sherman from stealing sheep.
The IDF issued an apology to CNN over the incident, insisting that "the actions and behavior of the soldiers in the incident are incompatible with what is expected of IDF soldiers."
However, this apology was deemed insufficient by Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios.
"Apologies are not enough," he wrote on social media. "There is a need for clear accountability. 99.9% of the time there is zero accountability."
The soldiers' actions also drew condemnation from Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg, who argued that problems in the IDF have only grown worse under the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Messiah complexes, talk of revenge, and the use of force against journalists are just symptoms of what's been happening to the army over the past three years," Peleg said. "The chief of staff and the commanding general can write another thousand letters and wave flags all they want, but the process already seems irreversible."
Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan argued that incidents like the one captured by CNN are all too common for the IDF.
"The Israeli army arrests and assaults journalists, while settlers who commit horrific crimes against Palestinian civilians enjoy total impunity," he wrote. "This is state-backed terrorism."
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'Gutter Racist' Hegseth Blocks Promotion of 'Exemplary' Black and Female Army Colonels
"Today’s news isn’t an anomaly," said leaders of the Democratic Women's Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus, "it is a part of a coordinated and sustained strategy to undermine and erase women and people of color."
Mar 27, 2026
In what's being called an "exceedingly rare" move, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of two Black and two female colonels to one-star generals,
The New York Times reported Friday that some senior US military officials are questioning whether Hegseth acted out of animus toward Black people and women after the defense secretary blocked the promotion of the four officers despite the repeated objections of Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, who touted what the Times called the colonels' "decadeslong records of exemplary service."
Military officials told the Times that Hegseth's chief of staff, Lt. Col. Ricky Buria, got into a heated exchange with Driscoll last summer over the promotion of another officer, Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant—a combat veteran of the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—to command the Military District of Washington, DC.
Such a promotion would have placed Gant in charge of numerous events at which she would likely be seen publicly with President Donald Trump. According to multiple military officials, Buria told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer.
Pete Hegseth looked at a list of qualified officers and decided Black leaders and women had to go.That’s not leadership. It’s discrimination in plain sight.And every Republican who stays silent is complicit.
[image or embed]
— Rep. Norma Torres (@normajtorres.bsky.social) March 27, 2026 at 10:10 AM
A shocked Driscoll reportedly replied that "the president is not racist or sexist," an assessment that flies in the face of countless racist and sexist statements by the president, both before and during both of his White House terms.
Buria called the officials' account of his exchange with Driscoll "completely false."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to discuss the matter beyond saying that Hegseth is “doing a tremendous job restoring meritocracy throughout the ranks at the Pentagon, as President Trump directed him to do.”
Military officials told the Times that one of the Black colonels whose promotion was blocked by Hegseth wrote a paper nearly 15 years ago historically analyzing differences between Black and white soldiers' roles in the Army. One of the female colonels, a logistics officer, was held back because she was deployed in Afghanistan during the US withdrawal whose foundation was laid by Trump during his first term. It is unclear why the two other colonels were denied promotions.
Although more than 40% of current active duty US troops are people of color, military leadership remains overwhelmingly comprised of white men. Hegseth, who declared a "frontal assault" on the "whores to wokesters" who he said rose up through the ranks during the Biden administration, told an audience during a 250th anniversary ceremony for the US Navy that "your diversity is not your strength."
Hegseth has argued that women should not serve in combat roles, although he later walked back his assertion amid pushback from senators during his confirmation process. Still, since Trump returned to office, every service branch chief and 9 of the military’s 10 combat commanders are white men.
Leaders of the Democratic Women's Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus issued a joint statement Friday calling Hegseth's blocking of the four colonels' promotions "outrageous and wrong."
"The claim that Hegseth’s chief of staff told the army secretary Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events is racist, sexist, and extremely concerning," wrote the lawmakers, Reps. Yvette Clarke (NY), Teresa Leger Fernández (NM), Emilia Sykes (Ohio), Hillary Scholten (Mich.), and Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.).
"Time and time again, Trump and his administration have shown us exactly who they are—attacking and undermining Black people and women in the military, public servants, and women in power," the congressional leaders asserted. "It is clear they are trying to erase Black and women’s leadership and history."
"Today’s news isn’t an anomaly, it is a part of a coordinated and sustained strategy to undermine and erase women and people of color," their statement said.
"We've long known that Pete Hegseth is an unfit and unqualified secretary of defense appointed by Trump," the lawmakers added. "So it is absurd, ironic, and beyond inappropriate that he of all people would deny these promotions to officers with records of exemplary service. America's servicemembers deserve so much better.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement reading, "If these reports are accurate, Secretary Hegseth's decision to remove four decorated officers from a promotion list after having been selected by their peers for their merit and performance is not only outrageous, it would be illegal."
"Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers," Reed added.
Several congressional colleagues weighed in, like Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a decorated combat veteran who lost her legs when an Iraqi defending his homeland from US invasion shot down the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting. Duckworth said on Bluesky: "He says he wants to bring meritocracy back to our military. He says he has our warfighters' backs. But here he is, the most unqualified SecDef in history, denying troops a promotion that their fellow warfighters decided they've earned. Hegseth is a disgrace to our heroes."
Other observers also condemned Hegseth's move, with historian Virginia Scharff accusing him of "undermining national security with his racism and misogyny," and City University of New York English Chair Jonathan Gray decrying the "gutter racist" who "should be hounded from public life for the damage he’s caused."
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