Trump resurrects ‘God Squad’ to bend the ESA

By Michael Doyle, Hannah Northey | 01/23/2025 01:40 PM EST

The committee that decides the fate of endangered species is rarely summoned. But the president’s “energy emergency” could change that.

A northern spotted owl sits on a tree branch.

A northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, sits on a tree branch in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, Oregon. Don Ryan/AP

The Trump administration is putting its faith in an empowered “God Squad” that might help energy projects maneuver around Endangered Species Act obstacles.

In verse meant to be far-reaching, President Donald Trump’s new executive order designating an “energy emergency” strengthens what the landmark environmental law formally calls the “Endangered Species Act Committee.”

Popularly known as the God Squad, given the committee’s authority to pass a judgment on a species’ fate, it has rarely been summoned since Congress authorized it in 1978 amendments to the ESA.

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“The God Squad hasn’t met in forever,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin director. “It has kind of been irrelevant.”

That now changes with Trump’s executive order, although the real-world consequences remain open to question.

Resurrecting the group — made up largely of high-ranking federal government officials — could prompt more ESA exemptions and flex more muscles against what the executive order calls “obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure.” The committee, for the first time, will start meeting regularly to assess the ESA writ large, the order states.

Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, attended all four of the committee’s proceedings between 1978 and 1992. He characterized Trump’s executive order as both “specious” and unlikely to affect many species.

Parenteau, who also helped craft the underlying law, said the group does not have jurisdiction until an entity seeks an ESA exemption. That effort must meet specific criteria, including a formal consultation process with a biological finding that concludes a project threatens the survival of a protected species.

He pointed to a 2019 study showing that federal officials rarely issue such opinions.

“It’s not a standing committee. You don’t convene the committee on a quarterly basis to do anything,” said Parenteau, who represented both the National Wildlife Federation and the Fish and Wildlife Service before the group. “The committee [lacks authority] until it has before it an application for an exemption that meets the criteria of the law.”

Donnelly likewise added that jeopardy biological opinions are rarely issued.

Trump’s executive order, though, also empowers the God Squad by directing that it convene quarterly to “identify obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure specifically deriving from implementation of the ESA or the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”

From these meetings, the committee might come up with what the executive order calls “regulatory reform efforts” along with “procedural” and “interagency improvements.”

“Certainly if they’re required to meet, then I imagine that they will discuss potential reforms, which may get the ball rolling faster,” said Jeff McCoy, a senior attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights-focused law firm.

A reinvigorated God Squad is just one aspect of the order’s ESA reach.

The order also directs agencies to employ “to the maximum extent permissible” provisions of the ESA that loosen requirements during declared emergencies.

These provisions allow for consultations with the FWS or NOAA Fisheries to be “conducted informally” in emergency situations, which federal regulations identify as “situations involving acts of God, disasters, casualties, national defense or security emergencies, etc.”

The regulations add that formal consultations will start once “the emergency is under control.” So long as Trump sticks with the energy emergency designation, the speedier informal consultations would seem to be sufficient.

The squad

The ESA sets out strict rules for the protection of species listed as threatened or endangered.

Congress in 1978 amended the original 1973 law to allow for some more regulatory flexibility under certain circumstances.
The amendment established the Endangered Species Act Committee, which can overrule the ESA determinations made by the FWS and NOAA Fisheries.

Its members are leaders of six federal agencies including the Interior Department, EPA and NOAA, as well a representative from each affected state.

But over more than 40 years, the committee has only completed action in three cases, involving dams in Tennessee and Wyoming and timber sales in Oregon jeopardized by the threatened northern spotted owl. Three other cases were started but resolved early, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The exemption process is a complex affair, and even without extensions, could take 280 days,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a report several years ago.

The Trump executive order calls for a much faster track, stating that the Interior secretary shall “ensure a prompt and efficient review” in order to have the committee make an initial determination within 20 days and then “resolve the submission” within another 140 days.

“I think they would probably only act if there was a really important project that was completely halted,” McCoy said, adding that he thinks “most energy projects will be able to quickly consult informally and move on.”

The 2019 study reported that NOAA Fisheries biologists conducted 19,826 informal and 4,934 formal consultations from January 2000 through June 2017.

Formal consultations result in a biological opinion. These usually include conservation recommendations, which sometimes anger one side or another.

Biological opinions, for instance, have been at the center of water delivery decisions concerning California’s delta smelt, an endangered species Trump denounced in a recent Truth Social post as an “essentially useless fish.”