Trump’s Endangered Species ‘God Squad’ Hasn’t Met Despite Orders

President Donald Trump ordered the revival of the rarely convened “God Squad” on his first day in office this year, but eleven months later, the panel that could decide whether plants and animals on the brink of extinction should block development still hasn’t met.

The lack of a God Squad meeting so far shows the limits of the president’s executive orders and the strength of the Endangered Species Act, environmental attorneys say.

If the committee does meet as Trump called for, the meeting could violate the protections for species outlined in the ESA, environmental groups say.

Trump has repeatedly called on the Endangered Species Committee, informally known as the “God Squad,” to advance oil and gas development, logging, and spaceport construction, part of his larger agenda to roll back endangered species protections and regulations that stand in the way of development.

By law, all God Squad records and meetings must be public. The ESA requires the Interior secretary, currently Doug Burgum, to chair the committee, which also includes the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, the Agriculture secretary, and other agency heads.

But Congress created the committee only to address rare federal projects that the US Fish and Wildlife Service determined would jeopardize an endangered or threatened species.

“The committee only meets for jeopardy determinations, and we have not had anything rise to that level,” the US Department of Agriculture said Thursday in an unsigned email, responding to questions about Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ involvement in the committee.

“I was concerned after that first EO that the administration would make aggressive use of the God Squad, but I think the lesson may be that it is difficult to do so,” said Holly Doremus, an environmental law professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

“If and when they invoke the God Squad, I expect litigation to follow,” Doremus said.

No ‘God Squad’ Documents

The God Squad has rarely met since Congress created it in 1978.

It successfully reduced endangered species protections only once, for the whooping crane in 1979 to allow a dam to be built in Wyoming. The committee’s 1992 decision to exempt the northern spotted owl from certain timber sales didn’t stand because the Clinton administration withdrew its request for the exemption.

Trump on Jan. 20 signed an executive order requiring the God Squad to meet “not less than quarterly” to carry out his declaration of a national energy emergency. A March 1 executive order directs the committee to submit a report to Trump outlining how the ESA gets in the way of logging, and for the committee to expedite reviews of imperiled species that block timber harvesting. An August 19 executive order calls on the God Squad to help speed up and promote competition in commercial spaceport development.

But there’s no evidence Burgum has taken any steps to comply with Trump’s orders. The Interior Department and the EPA were unable to produce any documents requested by Bloomberg Law under the Freedom of Information Act describing any plans or agendas for God Squad meetings. Interior’s response to a Bloomberg Law FOIA request showed the committee hasn’t yet met.

The EPA on Dec. 17 referred questions to the Interior Department, which declined to comment. Other agency officials represented on the committee, which includes the Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Neil Jacobs, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The American Forest Resource Council, a wood products trade group whose members obtain lumber from federal forests in threatened northern spotted owl habitat in the Pacific Northwest, hasn’t been following the activities of the God Squad, spokesman Nick Smith said.

Federal agencies have the ability to increase timber harvesting within the owl’s range under existing federal laws in a way that is consistent with the ESA, he said.

‘Uncharted Territory’

Kristen Boyles, managing attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, argues the God Squad hasn’t met because Trump’s use for it “isn’t how the ESA works.”

“The Executive Orders purport to order meetings, actions, and expedited reviews and none of those things are authorized by the Endangered Species Act,” she said in an email. “In fact, following the Executive Orders would violate the ESA. Executive Orders are not law, and they cannot override the law.”

John Leshy, who served as Interior solicitor during the Clinton administration, said Trump’s orders for the God Squad are in “uncharted territory.” He noted the committee has rarely been invoked and has shown reluctance to exempting proposed projects from the ESA.

Trump’s misunderstanding of the ESA’s legal framework “cannot be fixed by an E.O. signed with a big Sharpie,” said Murray Feldman, partner at Holland & Hart LLP in Boise.

Congress designed the committee to respond to US Fish and Wildlife Service findings that a federal action or habitat modification would jeopardize a protected endangered or threatened species, a rare occurrence in the last 50 years, Feldman said.

Trump’s orders “seek to utilize the ‘God Squad’ as some type of advisory panel to make policy recommendations, which was never Congress’s intent,” Feldman said. An executive order “can’t change what Congress has done.”