Inside the Beltway, they call this group the “God Squad”—and for good reason. Officially known as the Endangered Species Committee, it holds the rare, federally sanctioned power to exempt projects from the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. By order of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the committee is meeting for the first time in more than 30 years to consider an exemption for “oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities” in the Gulf of Mexico. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly insisted Burgum that call the meeting, on national security grounds.)
The principal species in question is the Rice’s whale, a majestic creature that has navigated the Gulf since long before humans named it—and renamed it—but was only identified as a distinct species in 2021. As the only baleen whale to live exclusively in American waters, it has earned the nickname “America’s whale”—and there are only around 50 of them left in our world. There is a certain irony to the fact that a species so closely identified with America now faces existential risk from policies advanced in the name of putting America first.
But President Trump has made his allegiance to those companies well known, and so his administration clearing a path for the companies to drill away in the Rice’s whales’ territory in the Northern Gulf—at the same time that the president wages a war on offshore wind that he justifies in part by claiming the turbines harm whales.
If the federal government has abdicated its moral duty, the responsibility falls on the places where the water actually runs and the herons actually nest. I am speaking to the cities, counties, and townships that govern the ground beneath your feet.
A town council can protect its wetlands—not because Washington gave them permission, but because wetlands are the kidneys of the watershed, and the watershed belongs to the people who live within it. A county board can mandate riparian buffers to intercept the nitrogen and pesticides that would otherwise flow downstream into a Gulf of Mexico plagued by “dead zones.” Every acre of native vegetation required by a local ordinance is a refusal to trade a living ecosystem for the sterile, impervious surfaces of suburban sprawl.
Some will say that a riparian buffer in a Midwestern township cannot save the Rice’s whale. They are right, but that’s not my point. The open oceans are beyond the jurisdiction of a local zoning board, but the creeks that feed those oceans are not. The forests that hold the soil that filters into those creeks are not. The wetlands that buffer every community from its own worst impulses are not. And the zoning codes that spread us so thin across the landscape that a car becomes the only way to exist—making us dependent on the very industry now pushing to disregard a critically endangered whale—are not beyond local reach either. What hundreds of planning commissions decide, collectively, is not a footnote to federal policy. It is the policy that actually touches ground.
A lawsuit has been filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to challenge the convening of the God Squad and their purported agenda and authority—specifically objecting to the unprecedented use of a sweeping national security exemption to bypass the usual Endangered Species Act procedures. If the challenge is successful, a judge could issue an injunction delaying the meeting and ultimately hear the full merits of the case, which could take years. This only buys some time for the Rice’s whale. Time, in this case, is not relief but a question: Is this a pause before extinction or a turning point?
Hence then, the article about trump s god squad might vote for a whale s extinction this week was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump’s “God Squad” Might Vote for a Whale’s Extinction This Week )
Also on site :