Pentagon Called ‘God Squad’ to Cut Protections for Endangered Whales in the Gulf of Mexico

The Defense Department is invoking national security concerns to try to exempt the oil industry from protecting endangered whales in the Gulf of Mexico.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a meeting of administration officials known as the “God Squad,” who are empowered to give rare exemptions to the Endangered Species Act, set for late March, according to a new legal filing.

“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,” DOD lawyers wrote in a legal filing defending the meeting.

The committee has only given two exemptions since 1978. One was for the whooping crane threatened by the creation of a dam, and another was for the spotted owl at risk from a logging project.

In this case, the world’s remaining roughly 50 Rice’s whales, which live only in the Gulf of Mexico, are at a high risk of extinction.

This is the first time national security concerns have been cited as the reason to exempt protections for endangered species. The Trump administration’s legal filing did not detail the exact national security issues.

When the administration first announced a meeting of the “God Squad,” it was not clear where the request was coming from. Typically, such meetings are set after companies or developers file formal requests for exemptions.

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the administration over the meeting, saying it violated the normal procedures. Hegseth’s central role and the national security claims were revealed only because the administration was forced to defend its decision in court.

“It’s grotesque for Pete Hegseth to use national security as a pretext for giving the oil industry a free pass to wipe out America’s most endangered whales,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Offshore oil in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Trump administration has renamed the “Gulf of America,” already makes up about 13% of all US crude production — a level reached without exemptions from the Endangered Species Act. Production is expected to increase in 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.