March 27, 2026 — On March 31, the “God Squad” of endangered species in the U.S. will convene for the first time in more than 30 years
They will discuss whether to exempt oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico from Endangered Species Act protections—a move that could make the Rice’s Whale extinct, activists claim.
March 18, 2026 — The Trump administration plans to convene the so-called God Squad, a high-level federal panel that has the power to override protections under the Endangered Species Act, for a meeting related to oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico.
The meeting, scheduled for March 31, will be the first time in three decades that the group, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, will gather.
Notice of the meeting was released on Friday and officially published in the Federal Register on Monday. The Gulf, which the administration calls the Gulf of America, is home to the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a species that exists nowhere else. According to the latest available federal estimates, around 50 of the animals remain on Earth.
Information in the notice announcing the meeting, called by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, is sparse.
“The Committee is meeting regarding an exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities in the Gulf of America associated with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Program,” the notice states.
When emailed for additional information on what had prompted the move, the Interior Department declined to directly answer questions and repeated the published information. But President Trump has wanted the God Squad to convene since he returned to office last year.
March 9 2026 — The Trump administration did not receive a single bid for its offer of new offshore oil and gas exploration opportunities in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, dealing a blow to President Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill,’ agenda.
The attempted sale of rights to drill in more than 1 million acres was the first of six offshore oil and gas auctions in Alaska that Republicans mandated last year when they passed Mr. Trump’s sweeping tax law.
It was seen as a key test of the industry’s appetite for investment in a state that Mr. Trump has called a “natural resource warehouse,” and essential for his “energy dominance” agenda of maximizing domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal. On Wednesday, though, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledged that no drilling companies submitted bids.
“This is a huge embarrassment for Trump’s Alaska fossil fuel fantasy,” said Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
November 24, 2025 — The Trump administration has released a plan for offshore oil and gas leasing that would open up almost all Alaska marine waters to development, along with the entire Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Alaska portion of the plan proposes 21 lease sales through 2031, five of them in Cook Inlet, two in the Beaufort Sea, two in the Chukchi Sea and the others in other marine areas. Those include a lease sale in a newly designated “High Arctic” area that lies beyond the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and where U.S. territorial rights are not yet clear.
The only federal Alaska offshore area without a proposed lease sale is the North Aleutian Basin, where oil leasing is under an indefinite ban to protect salmon-rich Bristol Bay.
November 21, 2025 — Californians were already gearing up for battle even before the Trump administration released a draft plan on Nov. 20 that proposes a broad expansion of oil and gas drilling and lease sales along America’s coasts, including California, Alaska and west of Florida.
The Department of the Interior announced as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales across 21 of 27 existing Outer Continental Shelf planning areas, covering roughly 1.27 billion acres. That includes 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of America and six along the Pacific coast.
The plan quickly drew opposition from state leaders and environmental groups – and support from some business organizations. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office fully opposes the plan.
October 20, 2025 — A group of United States lawmakers have proposed tweaking federal law that allows offshore oil and gas operators to transform decommissioned rigs into artificial reefs, claiming the marine habitats support the domestic fishing industry.
According to the bill’s sponsors, offshore oil and gas platforms are already “thriving habitats for marine life,” and the Marine Fisheries Habitat Protection program would provide a pathway for companies to work with the state and federal governments to turn platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, currently referred to as the Gulf of America by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, into “permanent artificial reefs,” instead of fully removing them as required under current law.