By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration over its decision this week to remove Endangered Species Act protections from species threatened by oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
On Tuesday, a group of administration officials called the Endangered Species Committee met for only the fourth time in its history. Also known as “the God Squad,” it’s made up of six high ranking federal officials, led by the interior secretary.
The group voted unanimously to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from environmental safeguards that have been put in place to protect the endangered wildlife in its waters. The decision came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on March 13 that it “was a matter of national security” and a reaction to pending litigation “that threatened to halt oil and gas production” in the Gulf.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and Healthy Gulf. They say that the Trump administration is abusing the national security exemption under the Endangered Species Act, and that more than two dozen species now protected as either threatened or endangered are directly at risk. And they contend that Hegseth’s finding is entirely arbitrary.
The groups are represented by Earthjustice, an environmental law organization.
“The Gulf is home to some of the nation’s most treasured wildlife, including more than two dozen species protected as either threatened or endangered under the ESA,” the lawsuit says. “They include the critically imperiled Rice’s whale — with only about 50 individuals remaining, Florida manatees, the endangered whooping crane — one of the first species to be protected under the ESA, and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle — the most endangered sea turtle in the world.”
Other species threatened include the Gulf sturgeon, the Nassau grouper, the oceanic whitetip shark, the giant oceanic manta ray, the queen conch and the smalltooth sawfish, said Joanie Steinhaus, ocean program director for the Turtle Island Restoration Network, in a virtual briefing.
“The Trump administration’s decision to illegally eviscerate the Endangered Species Act is a corrupt and unnecessary gift to polluters,” said Tampa Bay Area Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor in a virtual press conference.
Environmental advocates believe the decision is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, with the U.S. a net exporter of oil and the now the top oil and gas producer in the world. The Department of the Interior said Wednesday that U.S. energy production reached record levels in 2025, with offshore oil production totaling more than 714 million barrels, the highest annual output on record, according to a press release.
Steve Mashuda, managing attorney in Earthjustice’s Oceans Program, said the decision puts the Endangered Species Act “in a shredder” based on the alleged loophole that the Endangered Species Committee has just discovered.
“That loophole was national security,” he said. “If the Secretary of Defense can make a determination that it’s in the interests of national security, then the Endangered Species Committee must grant the exception. That is wrong.”
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Banner photo: A veterinarian prepares to clean an oil-covered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf in 2010. (NOAA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
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