Court Allows Endangered Species ‘God Squad’ to Meet Tuesday (1)

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum can convene the Endangered Species Committee, or “God Squad,” on March 31 to approve the Pentagon’s request to exempt all Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations from the Endangered Species Act because of national security needs, a judge ruled Friday.

Judge Rudolph Contreras of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, denied the Center for Biological Diversity’s motion for a temporary restraining order that would block the committee from meeting.

Contreras said he hasn’t been convinced he has jurisdiction to issue a restraining order.

The Justice Department said the God Squad’s meeting Tuesday is so important that any delay would jeopardize national security.

A delay “would implicate national security” and magnify “irreparable harm the government would suffer if the meeting were blocked or delayed,” Justice Department attorney Bradley Craigmyle argued.

Craigmyle said the Defense Department’s justification for the exemption will be made public Tuesday.

Contreras is allowing the committee to meet on YouTube despite the Center’s contention that Congress intended for the meeting to be open to an in-person attendance.

The Endangered Species Committee is known as the “God Squad” because it can allow a plant or animal to go extinct.

The Justice Department argued in a March 25 court filing that the committee is required to grant the requested exemption based on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s national security finding.

The Center for Biological Diversity argued in a March 26 court filing that such an argument is “absurd.”

“It would turn Secretary Hegseth into an ESA overlord able to run roughshod at will over the ESA’s carefully crafted scheme ‘affording endangered species the highest of priorities,’” the Center argued in the filing, quoting a 1978 Supreme Court case.

Eric Glitzenstein, the Center’s director of litigation, argued Friday that the Justice Department’s position grants Hegseth limitless power to exempt all manner of industrial activities, including logging and mining, from the ESA on national security grounds.

“It’s disappointing that the court didn’t immediately stop Hegseth’s reckless power grab, but this is just the first battle in a longer fight to protect the Gulf’s endangered whales and turtles,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement after the hearing.

Burgum chairs the committee, which last met in 1992 and includes Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and several other officials.

The Trump administration last year found future drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could force the endangered Rice’s whale into extinction. Only 51 still exist, the National Marine Fisheries Service said.

The case is Ctr for Biological Diversity v. Burgum, D.D.C., No. 1:26-cv-00940, 3/27/26.