The Trump administration said national security concerns drove its decision to convene a committee that can sweep aside endangered species restrictions on offshore oil drilling.
In a court filing Wednesday defending the March 31 meeting — which the Center for Biological Diversity sued last week to block — the Department of Justice argued that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has deemed the meeting a matter of national security.
Efforts to stop it, the department said, are both “baseless” and “speculative.”
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“The meeting itself won’t cause irreparable harm,” the Department of Justice wrote in its Wednesday filing. “Fears about how an unspecified future Committee action may affect animals in the Gulf of America is speculative.”
