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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
‘Another Outrageous, Criminal Act’: US and Israel Bomb University Known as ‘MIT of Iran’
Iran's first vice president called the attack a new "symbol of Trump's madness and ignorance."
Apr 06, 2026
A wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Monday hit and extensively damaged Sharif University of Technology, a leading Iranian educational institution that is widely known as "the MIT of Iran" and seen as one of the world's top engineering schools.
The attack on the Tehran university—one of dozens of education sites bombed by the US and Israel since they launched their war on Iran in late February—sparked outrage inside Iran and around the world. Mohammad Reza Aref, an engineer currently serving as Iran's first vice president, said the attack on Sharif University "is a symbol of [US President Donald] Trump's madness and ignorance."
"He fails to understand that Iran's knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites," Aref wrote. "No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble."
The National Iranian American Council called the bombing "another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war."
"This was a center of learning, not a military target," the group wrote on social media, highlighting video footage showing a building in ruins. "The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in Iran is deeply disturbing and will only deepen insecurity for the US and Israel. End this war."
US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the lone Iranian American in Congress, noted that Sharif University has "produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies."
"Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?" Ansari asked.
Another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war: U.S.-Israeli strikes have bombed one of the world’s most prestigious universities in Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. This was a center of learning, not a military target. The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in… pic.twitter.com/GE6J8WhgMC
— NIAC (@NIACouncil) April 6, 2026
Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi reported from Tehran that the university was "severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound's mosque and laboratories."
Vira Ameli, an Iranian global health researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford, decried the US-Israeli strike on Sharif University, where she spent time as a postdoctoral fellow.
"To wake to the news of this war crime, at a distance and unable to return, is difficult to articulate," Ameli wrote. "And yet history has made one thing clear: Iran is not a country undone by bombardment."
Iranian authorities say US-Israeli attacks have hit at least 30 of the nation's universities, including the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology. The US and Israel have justified some of the attacks by claiming the universities were involved in military-related activities.
"Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not," journalist Natasha Lennard wrote in a column for The Intercept last week. "By stated US and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools."
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'The Agents Were Lying': ICE Exposed Yet Again by Video of Minneapolis Shooting
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said "bare due diligence" would have exposed ICE officers' falsehoods.
Apr 06, 2026
Video footage obtained by The New York Times has exposed lies told by two federal immigration enforcement agents about the circumstances leading up to a non-fatal shooting in Minneapolis that occurred on January 14.
According to a Monday report from the Times, the video directly contradicts claims made by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that they were attacked by assailants armed with a shovel and a broom for around three minutes before the agents opened fire and wounded one of the attackers.
"Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent," reported the Times. "It shows no sustained attack with a shovel."
Federal prosecutors had initially pursued assault charges against Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg by the ICE officers during the January confrontation, and fellow Venezuelan national Alfredo Aljorna.
However, the government abruptly dropped charges against the two men in February, and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that two federal officers appear “to have made untruthful statements” about the incident.
The Times noted that the government had access to the video of the shooting hours after it took place.
However, one source told the paper that prosecutors didn't watch the video until three weeks after they filed charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, and instead relied on "the ICE agent’s statement and an FBI agent’s affidavit describing the footage."
This revelation prompted a rebuke from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who told the Times that "bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying."
Trump administration officials have come under fire in recent weeks for lying about shootings involving federal immigration officials, such as when former US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem falsely claimed that slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was aiming “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement."
In reality, video footage showed Pretti never drew his handgun during his confrontation with federal immigration officers, while also clearly showing that officers disarmed him before they opened fire.
Noem also falsely claimed that slain ICE observer Renee Good had attempted "an act of domestic terrorism" by trying to run over a federal immigration officer with her car, even though footage clearly showed Good turning her vehicle away from the officer in an attempt to get away from the scene.
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Iran Says Trump Will Go Down as a 'Supreme War Criminal' If He Follows Through With Threat
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 06, 2026
Iranian officials on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that his name will be "etched in history as a supreme war criminal" if he follows through with his threat to wage total war on Iran's civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media following Trump's Easter-morning outburst that "threats to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) constitute war crimes under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Article 52)."
"The president of the United States, in his capacity as the highest-ranking official of his country, has openly threatened to commit war crimes—an act that entails his individual criminal responsibility before the International Criminal Court and any competent national court," Gharibabadi added, vowing that Iran "will deliver a decisive, immediate, and regret-inducing response" to any attack.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said Trump's threats are "an indication of a criminal mindset."
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," Baghaei said in an interview on Sunday. "Threatening to attack a country's critical infrastructure, energy sector, it would mean that you want to put at risk the whole population."
Absolute bombshell. Iran's Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei accuses the Trump administration of a criminal mindset and public incitement for genocide. Threatening a nation's critical infrastructure puts the entire population at risk. The White House has completely abandoned morality. pic.twitter.com/HcBZGZho5p
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 5, 2026
The US and Israel have already done significant damage to Iran's civilian infrastructure. The country's deputy health minister said Monday that more than 360 healthcare, education, and research centers have been hit by US-Israeli strikes, and dozens of medics have been killed since the bombing began on February 28.
But Trump on Sunday threatened an indiscriminate assault, telling Fox News that if the Iranians "don't make a deal and fast," he is "considering blowing everything up and taking the oil."
"You're going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country," the president said, setting a new deadline of 8 pm ET for the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's remarks came after he published a deranged post on his Truth Social platform demanding that Iran "open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Analysts and lawmakers in the US echoed Iranian officials' warnings that Trump's threatened attacks would constitute war crimes.
"Trump's advisers are telling him to hit civilian sites because it will cause unrest and potentially topple the regime. But just think about the insanity of this plan: kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to cause a national panic," US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote. "Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME."
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that "any lawmaker who votes for supplemental funding for the war on Iran or against war powers resolutions to end it will be fully complicit in the war crimes threatened here, as well as those already committed by this unhinged and unfit Commander in Chief."
The US president's renewed threats came amid reports of a diplomatic effort, mediated in part by Pakistan, to enact a 45-day ceasefire to provide space for a lasting resolution to the war.
Axios reported that the talks are seen as "the only chance to prevent a dramatic escalation in the war that will include massive strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure and a retaliation against energy and water facilities in the Gulf states."
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