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doug burgum
'As Horrific as It Is Illegal': Trump 'God Squad' Blasted for Attack on Endangered Species
"This administration cannot recklessly play God with our shared American heritage at Secretary Hegseth's arbitrary say-so," said one conservationist.
Mar 31, 2026
The Trump administration's so-called "God Squad" swiftly came under fire from conservationists on Tuesday after voting unanimously for an "unprecedented" exemption allowing fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico to ignore policies intended to protect endangered species.
In the lead-up to the snap meeting, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC federal court, and the administration confirmed in a filing last week that US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the Endangered Species Committee, organized the gathering at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's request.
The closed-door but livestreamed meeting proceeded as scheduled after a federal judge declined to block it. The New York Times reported Tuesday that as protesters rallied outside the Department of the Interior, Hegseth told the panel inside that "when development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country."
"Recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative," Hegseth claimed, though he emphasized that the administration's position on the matter preceded President Donald Trump's war on Iran, which has caused a surge in gasoline prices.
While a spokesperson for the oil and gas industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, welcomed the vote on regulations for what president calls the Gulf of America, Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared that "this amoral action by Pete Hegseth and Trump's cronies is as horrific as it is illegal, and we'll overturn it in court."
The center plans to update its suit to challenge Hegseth's "unfounded" national security determination and the unlawful exemption granted by the committee on Tuesday.
"Americans overwhelmingly oppose sacrificing endangered whales and other marine life so the fossil fuel industry can get richer," said Hartl. "This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Trump and his lackeys kowtowing to Big Oil."
"The fossil fuel industry has certainly gotten its money's worth from supporting Trump's reelection. I'm sure CEOs are gleeful about this vote, hoping to make even more money by sacrificing our country's wildlife and gutting environmental protections," he added. "When we overturn this heartless, cowardly act by Hegseth and the goons on the extinction committee, it's important for people to remember who failed to speak out against their actions."
It’s propaganda to call this group “The God Squad.”God creates life.This is “The Death Panel.”That’s all.
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— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) (@doctorvive.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 11:10 AM
In addition to Burgum, the panel includes the agriculture and Army secretaries; the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrators; and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Tuesday was only the fourth time the committee has convened since it was created by Congress nearly five decades ago, according to the Times.
"In a farcical piece of political theater consisting of high-level officials reading scripted remarks and engaging in zero deliberation, the Trump administration stripped America's wildlife heritage in the Gulf of Mexico of essential protections. The Endangered Species Act has not slowed an iota of oil from being extracted from the Gulf," Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a post-meeting statement. "I cannot stress enough how unprecedented and unlawful this action is."
"Invoking national security cannot justify potentially pushing the Rice's whale—or any of our nation's irreplaceable wildlife species—into the abyss of extinction," he asserted. "If this administration were truly concerned about national security, it would focus on what will protect our quality of life and a secure future for all Americans. That includes healthy lands and waters that support people and the wildlife that we love and rely upon."
Bowman added that "this administration cannot recklessly play God with our shared American heritage at Secretary Hegseth's arbitrary say-so. We will fight this injustice every step of the way."
While Trump and his appointees have worked to serve the fossil fuel industry and roll back Endangered Species Act protections throughout both of his terms, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, suggested that, despite Hegseth's claims, Tuesday's meeting was tied to the new war in the Middle East and its consequences around the world.
"Trump's attempt to use secret meetings to sidestep the law and end key protections is a dangerous precedent by an unpopular administration that failed to understand the consequences of starting a war in the Middle East," she said. "Using 'national security' as justification to take shortcuts with legal requirements is a dangerous move with far-reaching implications."
"The Endangered Species Act requires that documents and meetings must be open to the public, yet the administration is cloaking this decision in secrecy," she explained. "Fossil fuel companies are not requesting this waiver, nor is any other industry—instead the Trump administration is using its war in Iran to justify a power grab that will do nothing to lower the price of fuel here in the US."
The night before the meeting, Save Our Parks projected messages onto the facade of the Interior Department building: "Doug Burgum's Playing God With America's Public Lands & Wildlife," "Burgum's Censoring Science, History, and the Truth," and "GOD SQUAD ENTER HERE."
Jayson O'Neill, a spokesperson for Save Our Parks, said that "Burgum has a 'god complex' over America’s parks, public lands, and wildlife. Throughout his entire tenure in the DC swamp, Burgum has used the heavy hand of government to muzzle the truth, limit public participation, strip science from decisions, and even whitewash and censor our history."
"Now, Burgum and his so-called 'God Squad' are continuing this failed leadership, ignoring science and public opinion to serve the interests of his buddies in the oil industry," he added. "Burgum's censorship is as unpopular as it is un-American."
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Unprecedented God Squad Meeting Could Push Gulf Species Toward Extinction
If the defense secretary forces the God Squad to grant this sweeping—and unprecedented exemption—all the threatened and endangered creatures, both large and small, that call the Gulf waters and coastlines home will be at risk.
Mar 27, 2026
The Trump administration has made clear from day one that it intends to dramatically expand fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and in federal waters, with no regard for the consequences to wildlife or the public interest. In the latest jaw-dropping move, late on the night of March 25, government lawyers revealed in a court filing that, on March 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly contacted Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to demand he convene a meeting of the Endangered Species Committee, or “God Squad.”
Secretary Hegseth’s rationale for the convening is based on a false narrative that “national security” reasons dictate that the God Squad must grant an Endangered Species Act (ESA) exemption for all oil and gas activities the Interior Department authorizes in the Gulf of Mexico.
On March 16, Burgum publicly announced a snap God Squad meeting on March 31 to consider exempting oil and gas activities in the Gulf from the ESA’s requirement that federal agencies avoid taking actions likely to jeopardize the continued existence of endangered and threatened species. The cryptic notice gave no indication that “national security” reasons warranted the meeting—the first in 35 years.
Certainly, none of the detailed statutory prerequisites to a God Squad vote have been met, and no complete exemption application has been teed up for the committee to consider, let alone for the public to examine.
No administration, Republican or Democratic, has ever tried to write itself a blank check to ignore the ESA’s requirements.
It cannot be a coincidence that Secretary Hegseth demanded a God Squad meeting just two weeks after the United States launched airstrikes across Iran. Iran has now blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies. The result: Global oil prices have spiked, and Republicans are on the ropes. But bypassing the ESA to further the administration's massive plans to expand Gulf oil production will do nothing to help Americans facing higher energy, food, and consumer goods prices today.
The truth is that the ESA has never stood—and is not now standing—in the way of oil and gas development in the Gulf. To assert otherwise is a red herring.
In fact, data shows that the ESA almost never stops projects.
Defenders of Wildlife’s Center for Conservation Innovation analyzed over 88,000 US Fish and Wildlife Service ESA consultations that took place between 2008-2015 and found that not a single project was halted or extensively altered due to a jeopardy finding. Most projects were not even delayed, and only two consultations resulted in a jeopardy finding.
And for a jeopardy opinion, the wildlife agency must try to develop a “reasonable and prudent alternative” that allows the project to go forward while avoiding jeopardy. The wildlife agency works closely with other federal agencies to ensure their actions can proceed without risking a species’ extinction.
If the defense secretary forces the God Squad to grant this sweeping—and unprecedented exemption—all the threatened and endangered creatures, both large and small, that call the Gulf waters and coastlines home will be at risk. From the critically endangered Rice’s whale with only 51 surviving animals to the beloved Florida manatee, from the tiny Alabama beach mouse and five sea turtle species to the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale and more—all will suffer the consequences if their ESA protections are ripped away.
No administration, Republican or Democratic, has ever tried to write itself a blank check to ignore the ESA’s requirements.
Invoking “national security” cannot justify potentially pushing the Rice’s whale—or any of our nation’s irreplaceable wildlife species—over the brink of extinction. If this administration were truly concerned about national security, it would focus on what is most important to Americans—a healthy environment; clean, renewable energy sources; an abundant and affordable food supply; public lands to recreate on; and the protection of our country’s shared heritage of treasured lands, waters, and wildlife.
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Emergency Lawsuit Filed to Stop Trump Admin Meeting That Could Drive a Whale Species to Extinction
“Burgum’s Extinction Committee is immoral, illegal, and unnecessary,” said the head of the Center for Biological Diversity, which warns it could put the final nail in the coffin of the extremely endangered Rice's whale.
Mar 18, 2026
An environmental organization is suing to stop the Trump administration from illegally convening a meeting that could allow oil and gas companies to drive an extremely endangered whale species to extinction.
On Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity filed an emergency lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a federal district court in Washington, DC, seeking to block him from convening the Endangered Species Committee, more commonly known as the “Extinction Committee,” on March 31.
This committee is sometimes referred to as the "God Squad" because its members have the power to grant exemptions to the Endangered Species Act that can result in the extinction of imperiled species.
Led by the interior secretary, it has seven total members who can vote to override regulations. Five of them are senior executive officials: the secretaries of agriculture and the Army, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Each affected state also receives a delegate to the committee, but they collectively receive just one vote. Five votes of seven are needed to grant an exemption.
In the federal register, Burgum announced earlier this week that the committee would meet at the end of the month “regarding an Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of America oil and gas activities," referring to the Gulf of Mexico by the name preferred by President Donald Trump.
The Center for Biological Diversity said Burgum was seeking to override a requirement for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico to drive boats at safe speeds in order to protect the nearly extinct Rice’s whale from strikes.
These whales, named after the cetologist Dale Rice, who first recognized them as distinct from other whales in 1965, were not formally recognized as a new species until 2021.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, only about 51 Rice's whales remain after BP's catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which devastated their population.
Last May, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion concluding that their continued existence—as well as that of other whale and sea turtle species—was under threat from boat strikes, since Rice's whales spend most of their time in the top 15 meters of water, which often puts them on a collision course with oil vessels.
The agency issued guidance requiring oil industry ships to travel at slower speeds in the eastern Gulf, saying that if they were followed, lethal collisions would be “extremely unlikely to occur” and that the species would be protected.
The Extinction Committee could override this rule, but it has only been convened three times in its history, and not since 1991, when then-President George H.W. Bush used it to open up timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest that endangered the habitats of spotted owls, which were considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The Extinction Committee is invoked so rarely because the circumstances for its use, as outlined in law, are extremely narrow: It can only be convened within 90 days of a biological opinion by the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service concluding that a federal action is likely to jeopardize a species. They must also determine that there is no “reasonable and prudent alternative” to the action the government plans to take.
In its lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity says that neither of these criteria has been reached, since the Fisheries Service issued its opinion 10 months ago and already established a reasonable alternative: slowing down the boats.
"Slowing boat speeds is not just reasonable, it’s easy, and it’s the absolute minimum the oil and gas industry can do to save Rice’s whales from extinction,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group said Burgum is also flouting other requirements of the law, including that the meeting be presided over by an administrative judge and have a formal hearing with public comment. No judge has been appointed by Burgum, and the meeting is only scheduled to be livestreamed on YouTube, with no forum for public input.
“Burgum’s Extinction Committee is immoral, illegal, and unnecessary,” Suckling said. “There’s no emergency, no legal basis to convene the committee, and no legal way to approve the extinction of Rice’s whales. This sham is nothing more than Burgum posturing for Trump and saving the fossil fuel industry a few dollars by allowing its boats to drive faster and more recklessly.”
If Rice's whales were to go extinct, they could be the first ever large whale species to be driven out of existence by human activity in recorded history. Earthjustice says that the rollback of boat speed restrictions and other activities by the Trump administration—including the approval of the first BP oil field in the Gulf since the 2010 spill—are putting other species at risk too.
The scheduled March 31 meeting, said the group, "could kick off a months-long process to decide whether to give special treatment to the oil industry by allowing offshore drilling to go forward even if it would lead to the extinction of Gulf species."
“The marine species in the Gulf are our natural heritage. There’s no imaginable justification to sacrifice them,” said Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice's managing attorney for oceans. "It’s beyond reckless even to consider greenlighting the extinction of sea turtles, fish, whales, rays, and corals to further pad the oil industry’s pockets at the public’s expense. Giving carte blanche to industry also takes us further away from renewable energy that is cleaner, cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient than ever before.”
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