April 6, 2026 — U.S. President Donald Trump has once again proposed making massive cuts to NOAA, even though Congress largely rejected his similar request for fiscal year 2026.
The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget outline recommends a USD 1.6 billion (EUR 1.4 billion) cut to NOAA.
April 6, 2026 — The Trump administration said Friday it is combining two agencies that were separated in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf oil spill. The Interior Department said the overhaul would increase efficiency and speed up permitting for offshore oil and gas drilling.
The new Marine Minerals Administration will bring together the functions of the current Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. Doing so will enable a “streamlined approach” that will maintain existing regulatory protections and rigorous safety standards, he said.
The combined agency will “deliver clearer coordination, better service to the public and stronger, more integrated oversight of offshore energy development,” Burgum said in a statement.
The new name is reminiscent of the old Minerals Management Service, which for decades was the federal agency responsible for overseeing offshore drilling. In April 2010, a deadly explosion destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and discharging nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the sea over the next three months in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
April 3, 2026 — The White House released its fiscal 2027 budget request Friday morning, unveiling plans to continue waging its longstanding war against renewable energy and climate initiatives while boosting support for artificial intelligence and fossil fuels.
The spending blueprint also includes a proposed reorganization for core Interior Department energy offices — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
President Donald Trump’s budget would take a sledgehammer to Biden-era energy and environment programs that the administration has not already decimated, proposing tens of billions of dollars in cuts to everything from electric vehicle chargers to efforts to prosecute certain environmental crimes.
April 3, 2026 — NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service rescinded a regulation that prohibited commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument boundaries. This action was necessary to align fishing regulations with President Trump’s Executive Proclamation Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic to reopen the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.
NOAA is proud to support the Administration’s pledge to restore US seafood competitiveness through the America First Fishing Policy. The President’s Executive Proclamation and NOAA’s regulatory actions come as a direct result of feedback from the US fishing industry, and they will increase economic opportunities for American fishermen.
April 2, 2026 — President Trump has tried to cut funding for virtually every federal program that addresses climate change. But Congress has been pushing back, sometimes with surprising bipartisan support.
This year, lawmakers quietly saved funding for the government’s popular Energy Star program, which ranks appliances based on energy conservation and cost savings. Bipartisan majorities also salvaged weather forecasting, fisheries and climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and even some international environmental aid.
Mr. Trump’s new proposed budget is expected to be made public on Friday, and climate advocates said they were bracing for steep new cuts to environmental programs. The White House declined to comment on the budget but noted that Mr. Trump had already eliminated his top targets, like federal support for wind, solar and other renewable energy.
Advocates for climate action said their modest success last time had given them some hope of again retaining popular programs in next year’s budget.
April 1, 2026 — A powerful panel of Trump administration officials voted unanimously on Tuesday to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.
The panel, the Endangered Species Committee, a high-level group that is often called the God Squad because it essentially holds the power to decide whether a species lives or dies, adopted the move during a brief, closed-door meeting at the Interior Department.
Until Tuesday, the God Squad had convened only three times, and never in the past three decades.
It was the Trump administration’s latest move to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent plant and animal extinctions. In November, the administration proposed to relax restrictions on drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.
To justify the sweeping decision on Tuesday, administration officials said that protections for endangered species had hindered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump calls the Gulf of America. They said that lifting these protections would increase domestic energy supplies and bolster national security.
“When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the meeting.
“Recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative,” Mr. Hegseth said, although he clarified that these concerns predated the Middle East war and the resulting spike in gasoline prices.
The United States is the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, and the Gulf accounts for about 15 percent of U.S. crude oil output.
March 31, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced nearly USD 489 million (EUR 427 million) in grant funding for improving the nation’s ports and shipyards through the Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP).
“The Trump Administration is getting back to basics and investing hard-earned American dollars in restoring the nation’s maritime dominance,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a release. “We’re refocusing on what matters – revitalizing our ports with the latest technology and infrastructure to keep our economy humming.”
March 30, 2026 — This week, the Trump administration announced it had struck an unusual deal. The U.S. government will pay TotalEnergies, a French power generation company, $928 million to scuttle its plans to build two wind farms off the coasts of New Jersey and North Carolina. Together, the projects could have powered some 1.7 million homes.
The deal represents a new wrinkle in President Donald Trump’s campaign to jettison America’s nascent offshore wind industry, which many environmentalists see as key to reducing the country’s carbon footprint. Mr. Trump has criticized wind power as ineffective and costly, and his administration has tried to curtail wind infrastructure development.
“Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in a news release announcing the deal on Monday.
March 26, 2026 — U.S. shrimpers are facing higher fuel prices due to the Iran war, leading to higher operating costs for an industry that is already struggling.
“For a recent 30-day trip, I spent USD 47,000 (EUR 40,740) on diesel before I even left the dock. That is USD 20,000 (EUR 17,337) more for a single trip than the previous year,” Coden, Alabama, U.S.A.-based Zirlott Trawlers owner Jeremy Zirlott said in a release. “U.S. shrimpers operate on razor-thin margins, and right now, the increased cost of diesel makes it nearly impossible to turn a profit in the wholesale shrimp market.”
March 26, 2026 — With the political climate, at least in Washington, working against it, a French energy giant has cut a deal with the Trump administration to cancel its offshore wind lease off Southeastern North Carolina for investing an equal amount in fossil fuels.
The agreement by TotalEnergies is another move that brings into stark question the chance of any wind farms rising in the waters off the Cape Fear coast − at least in the short term.
It also is another front opened by the White House on the future of offshore wind, an energy source that President Trump, a Republican, has vocally criticized since his first term in office.
“The Trump Administration is spending nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop investments in the clean energy we need,” N.C. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said on a social media post. “This is a terrible deal for the people of North Carolina and our country.”
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