Pentagon Seeks Species ‘God Squad’ Exemption for Gulf Oil (1)

The Pentagon is behind the first-ever request to convene the “God Squad” to exempt all oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act due to national security reasons, the Justice Department said in a Wednesday court filing.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is convening the Endangered Species Committee March 31 because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a “national-security determination” under the Endangered Species Act, according to the filing in a lawsuit challenging the meeting filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.

“On March 13, 2026, the Secretary of War notified the Secretary of the Interior that the Secretary of War found it necessary for reasons of national security to exempt from the ESA’s requirements all Gulf of America oil and gas exploration and development activities” associated with the Interior Department’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Program, the Justice Department said in its filing.

Pat Parenteau, an emeritus law professor at the Vermont Law School, said the ESA’s national security exemption has never before been invoked.

The Endangered Species Committee is known as the “God Squad” because it can allow a plant or animal to go extinct. The Center for Biological Diversity sued in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking an injunction and a temporary restraining order to prevent the God Squad from convening.

The group argues the legal requirements for the committee to convene haven’t been met, and a planned YouTube livestream of the meeting is insufficient to meet the legal requirement for it to be public. A court hearing on the motion for a restraining order is scheduled for Friday morning.

If the Pentagon’s request for an exemption were upheld in court, federal agencies wouldn’t need to consult with each other on any endangered species impacts of oil and gas development, no mitigation measures would be required, and no permits would be needed for companies to kill or harass endangered animals, Parenteau said.

The oil and gas industry needs a more streamlined, coordinated federal approach to offshore development in the Gulf, “where duplicative requirements, delayed bureaucratic action and ongoing lawsuits have created uncertainty and hindered progress,” said Holly Hopkins, vice-president of Upstream for the American Petroleum Institute.

“We support targeted flexibility that minimizes impacts on endangered species while ensuring a clear, durable path for safe, responsible development critical to U.S. energy security,” Hopkins said.

Records Not Immediately Public

The Justice Department said in its filing the committee “shall grant an exemption” for any agency action if the secretary of defense deems it necessary for national security.

The Center for Biological Diversity says the committee must publicly disclose the God Squad’s records under the ESA, but the Justice Department said an attempt to impose a “rolling disclosure obligation” has no support in the law.

The law “says nothing about when the Committee must make its records publicly available,” the Justice Department said.

The YouTube livestream is sufficient to make the meeting public, because “Congress said nothing about the means by which Committee meetings must be made open to the public,” the Justice Department argued.

The plaintiff has no standing to sue, and it can challenge whatever decision the God Squad makes in court after the fact, the Justice Department said, calling the Center’s emergency motion “extraordinary” because it attempts to block the committee from “simply holding a meeting.”

“Rather than watch the livestream, Plaintiff rushed to court, speculating about the Committee’s future action, speculating about future injury to animals, and asking this Court to step in before any Committee action and prevent the Committee from ever meeting,” the Justice Department said in the filing.

The Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. The Interior Department hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment about the exemption request. However, it said in its brief that the Interior secretary “has not received an application for an exemption.”

“Hegseth is illegally perverting a narrow, pressure-release mechanism within the Endangered Species Act by asserting he can essentially suspend the law whenever he wants,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Thursday.

President Donald Trump, when he declared a national energy emergency in January 2025, called on the Endangered Species Committee to meet regularly to seek ways to exempt energy projects from the ESA. The declaration also invoked emergency provisions in the ESA to set aside concerns for imperiled species to promote development.

The Pentagon’s request tests the legal limits of an emergency declaration and the degree to which that can circumvent normal administrative procedures and Congressional directives, said Sam Kalen, an environmental law professor at Indiana University.

“We have seen some courts express discomfort with allowing the abrogation of normal procedural protections and requirements, but we don’t have enough case-law in this area of law to assess how a court might rule,” Kalen said.

Military Readiness Key

If successful, an ESA exemption under the Pentagon’s request and Trump’s emergency order “would provide an opportunity for an administration to seriously undermine Congress’ decision to protect endangered species except in those highly unusual circumstances,” Kalen said.

The national security exemption in the ESA was added out of concern for military readiness if a federal agency declared an endangered species would affect military operations, Parenteau said.

But Hegseth’s determination isn’t yet public, and it’s unclear how endangered species are hobbling offshore oil operations because the ESA hasn’t previously prevented oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico, he said.

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.

Interior announced the God Squad meeting March 13, the same day as BOEM approved BP Plc’s $5 billion Kaskida oil project in the Gulf. Congressional Democrats in August urged the bureau to reject the ultra-deep project because the extreme conditions it will operate in risk another blowout similar to BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Andrew Mergen, a Harvard Law School environmental law professor and former Justice Department litigator, said a Pentagon request for an ESA exemption is a “worst case scenario for folks who care about whales and the law.”

The case is Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Burgum, D.D.C., No. 1:26-cv-00940, 3/25/26.