Saving Seafood

Opponents seek injunction to halt Empire Wind

June 13, 2025 — Commercial fishermen and opponents of the Empire Wind project asked a federal court to immediately halt pile driving and construction activity, weeks after the Trump administration allowed construction to resume.

The coalition, which filed a lawsuit June 3 in U.S. District Court, returned to ask for a preliminary injunction June 12, according to the group Protect Our Coast New Jersey.

Energy company Equinor would build an array of 54 turbines on its 80,000-acre federal lease near the approaches to New York Harbor. The plan dates back to December 2016 when Equinor (then known as Statoil) first won a lease sale by the federal Bureau of Ocean energy Management.

Commercial fishing advocates have long opposed wind projects in the area, citing nearby fishing grounds like the Mud Hole and Cholera Bank with historic mixed trawl fisheries, and sea scallops, the Mid-Atlantic’s most valuable fishery.

Protect Our Coast New Jersey contends the renewed construction poses “imminent, irreversible harm to marine life, fishing grounds, the seafood supply chain, and coastal economies.”

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Trump bid to shrink monuments could prompt big legal battle

June 13, 2025 –Armed with a new legal directive arguing that presidents have the power to abolish national monuments created by their White House predecessors, President Donald Trump is expected to move to eradicate or shrink sites — and trigger a legal fight that could find its way to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) published an opinion Tuesday overturning nearly 90-year-old guidance that said presidents could not revoke national monument status.

Lanora Pettit, who serves as deputy assistant attorney general, wrote that the Antiquities Act of 1906 not only allows the president to set aside existing public lands to protect areas of cultural, historical or scientific interest, but also grants the power to rescind existing sites that “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections.”

That opinion — which serves as legal advice to the executive branch, rather than a binding court ruling — could set the stage for a fresh legal battle over the 119-year-old law. Critics of the Antiquities Act have urged Trump to take the fight to the nation’s highest court and ensure the law is curtailed. The administration has been taking a look at monuments that could be targeted, focused on sites with the potential for mineral extraction.

“It’s quite obvious this opinion was done to try and justify something they plan to do going forward,” said Mark Squillace, the Raphael J. Moses professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School.

“That’s not to say the court might not agree with the opinion,” he added. “The court may be inclined to try and pull back on the Antiquities Act.”

Debate over the Antiquities Act tends to divide along political lines, with Republicans and other critics arguing that Democratic presidents have abused the law to set aside sprawling swaths of land that could otherwise be open to extractive industries, grazing or other uses.

Opponents have long seized on language in the law that requires a monument to “be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

But proponents point to decades of legal precedent supporting presidential prerogative to create monuments of any size, which dates back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 creation of what was then the 800,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument.

The first Trump administration made clear it aligned with critics, initiating a massive review of monuments created since 1996 under then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Read the full article at E&E News

Local, regional groups sue to halt Empire Wind project

June 13, 2025 — The U.S. government and several entities involved in the offshore Empire Wind 1 turbine project are being sued by environmental and fisheries groups seeking to halt construction, after an April stop work order on Empire Wind 1 was lifted by the U.S. Department of the Interior on May 19.

The plaintiffs in the suit, filed on June 3, hail from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and include groups like Protect Our Coast NJ, Clean Ocean Action Inc., Massachusetts-based ACK for Whales, the Fisherman’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach and Miss Belmar, Inc.

The suit alleges that the rescindment of the stop work order is “incomplete and failed to safeguard the ecology of our seacoast and the livelihoods it supports,” the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Bruce Afran, said in a press release obtained by The Ocean Star last week.

“President Trump halted the Empire Wind project due to the Biden Administration’s failure to adequately assess the environmental harm posed by these offshore wind turbines and the impact on our coastal fishing industry,” he said. “None of those critical issues have been resolved. We are asking the federal court to reinstate the stop work order because the project’s federal approvals were incomplete and failed to safeguard the ecology of our seacoast and the livelihoods it supports.”

A representative from Equinor, the Norwegian multinational company that owns the Empire Wind project, did not respond to a request for comment by press time Thursday.

The plaintiffs contend that the project, which would place 54 wind turbines approximately 20 miles east of Long Branch in a triangular area of water known as the New York-New Jersey Bight, would cause environmental disruptions “in one of the Atlantic’s most ecologically sensitive areas.”

Read the full article at Star News Group

 

Trump can revoke national monument designations, Justice Department says

June 12, 2025 — President Donald Trump has broad authority to revoke protected land designated as national monuments by past presidents, the Justice Department said in a new legal opinion.

The May 27 legal opinion from the Justice Department found that presidents can move broadly to cancel national monuments, challenging a 1938 determination saying monuments created under the Antiquities Act cannot be rescinded and removed from protection.

The memo could serve as a legal basis to attempt to withdraw vast amounts of land from protected status. Trump’s administration wants to prioritize fossil fuel and energy development, such as drilling for oil and gas and mining for coal and critical minerals, including on federal lands.

“For the Antiquities Act, the power to declare carries with it the power to revoke,” the Justice Department memo states. “If the President can declare that his predecessor was wrong regarding the value of preserving one such object on a given parcel, there is nothing preventing him from declaring that his predecessor was wrong about all such objects on a given parcel.”

The DOJ memo mentioned two California national monuments designated by former President Joe Biden shortly before leaving office. In Trump’s first term, the president shrank the size of two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante, and reduced the size of a national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

Biden restored the three areas upon taking office and designated or expanded 12 national monuments during his term.

Environmental groups blasted the DOJ opinion.

Read the full article at CNN

Trump’s NOAA cuts clash with seafood competitiveness goals

June 12, 2025 —  During a Republican-led hearing touting U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on restoring American seafood competitiveness, Democrats and assembled witnesses questioned whether the administration’s actions align with its stated purpose.

“I hope to work with the administration and my colleagues and the majority to achieve that goal, but I don’t see how the administration is going to succeed when it spent the last four months haphazardly cutting the funding and workers that our fisheries rely on,” U.S. Representative Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said during a House Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee hearing title “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

SOUTH CAROLINA: McMaster, Fry call on White House to uphold ban on offshore oil and gas drilling

June 12, 2025 — Some of Donald Trump’s closest political allies are urging him to continue a moratorium on offshore gas and drilling leases along the South Carolina coast as the White House pursues its broader domestic energy policy.

“There is no question that our country must unleash American energy, expanding domestic production, cutting red tape and reassuring our energy independence,” U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-7th District, wrote in a Tuesday latter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “At the same time, I believe energy development must be pursued in a way that respects the distinct economic and environmental realities of each region.”

Fry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested that Burgum keep in place a 2020 Trump memorandum exempting South Carolina from offshore oil and gas projects until at least 2032.

Read the full article at WBTW

Justice Department says Trump can cancel national monuments that protect landscapes

June 11, 2025 — Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes.

A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren’t warranted.

The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump weighs changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration’s push to expand U.S. energy production.

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said that at Trump’s order, “his Justice Department is attempting to clear a path to erase national monuments.”

Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a “massive land grab.” He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast.

Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves and restored the monuments.

The two monuments singled out in the newly released Justice Department opinion were designated by Biden in his final days in office: Chuckwalla National Monument, in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California.

The Democrat’s declarations for the monuments barred oil and natural gas drilling and mining on the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla site, and the roughly 225,000 acres Sáttítla Highlands site near the California-Oregon border.

Chuckwalla has natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and is home to rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard. The Sáttítla Highlands include the ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

ALASKA: Trump’s cuts to fisheries science have industry and conservation groups sounding the alarm

June 10, 2025 — Alaska’s fishing industry and environmental groups don’t always agree. But this week, they were on the same side — both warning that recent cuts to federal fisheries science could jeopardize Alaska’s oceans.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which helps set fishing rules in federal waters, wraps up its meeting Tuesday in Oregon.

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials attending the meeting, the Alaska Science Center has lost 51 employees since February — about a quarter of its staff.

“You can’t lose 51 people and not have that impact our ability to provide our products in a meaningful and timely way,” said Bob Foy, who directs NOAA’s science operations in Alaska. “It’s been a challenging process.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds

June 10, 2025 — The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds.

Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached “safe” levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology.

The fall in ocean pH is “a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,” Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement.

The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change.

Some of the biggest changes in deep water are happening off the coast of western North America, home to extensive crab and salmon fisheries, the study found.

Read the full article at The Hill

Federal judge raises issues with states’ lawsuit against Trump offshore wind freeze

June 6, 2025 — More than a dozen states, including Massachusetts, have an uphill battle if they’re to succeed in their legal efforts to lift President Donald Trump’s memorandum against offshore wind development.

Attorneys for the states of Massachusetts and New York appeared on Thursday before federal Judge William G. Young, prepared to argue that he should grant a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s effective freeze of offshore wind permitting. But the hearing didn’t happen, with the judge “collapsing” the injunction motion.

Young said he needed more specificity from the states on the harm they’ve incurred and the alleged legal violations by federal agencies. The case will be heard again next week, but instead, with a hearing on a motion to dismiss it. (The judge is treating the Trump administration’s filing opposing a preliminary injunction as a motion to dismiss the case.)

“I’m not clear again… that I understand what the specific harm is,” Young said, noting he understands there have been economic impacts on “an important industry.” “But in the context of litigation, I need, I think, some more specificity as to what are the specific harms to specific projects in specific states.”

“It would appear both from the record and from the president’s public statements that he’s opposed as a matter of policy to offshore wind farm energy generation. I think that’s indisputable,” Young continued.

In that vein, Young asked whether the requisite licenses would be issued by the federal government following a court ruling, given the administration’s position on wind. Experts interpreted “licensing” to regard permitting and permits.

Timothy Fox, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, said Young’s remarks “strongly suggested that the Trump Administration may prevail.”

“Perhaps most significant,” Fox said by email on Thursday, the judge appeared to declare that ‘the power to license is the power to withhold a license.’”

Young’s points echoed some of those raised by the Trump administration in its May 29 filing opposing the preliminary injunction request.

“Plaintiffs and Intervenor fail to show standing, fail to identify any final agency action on which to base their claims, fail to identify statutory violations on the part of Defendants, disregard the considerable agency discretion and flexibility in the relevant statutory regimes, and otherwise fail to state a claim,” stated the U.S. Department of Justice.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light