Meet the 'God Squad,' the Powerful Endangered Species Panel That Just Pared Back Protections

A committee of high-ranking officials dubbed the “God Squad” for its power to determine the fate of endangered species has approved an exemption to federal protections for just the third time in its nearly 50-year history.

The panel of Trump Administration officials on Tuesday voted unanimously to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from environmental safeguards in place to protect the endangered wildlife living in its waters.  

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who requested the exemption, told the Endangered Species Committee during a meeting at the Interior Department that it was “a matter of urgent national security” and a response to “ongoing Endangered Species Act litigation that threatened to halt oil and gas production” in the gulf. 

But the decision to grant the exemption met with condemnation from environmental groups and activists. Protestors gathered outside the Interior Department, chanting and holding up signs bearing slogans including “Don’t Play God.”

“The fact that the Secretary is requesting this exemption for national security reasons is shocking,” Beth Lowell, the U.S. vice president of Oceana, the largest international ocean conservation advocacy organization, tells TIME. “The intent from this exemption is really supposed to be an emergency, and we just don't see that at this point … This exemption is just cutting out the safety net that the ocean wildlife need.”

The meeting marked the first time the so-called God Squad had convened since 1992, over three decades ago. Here’s what to know about the committee and the potential impact of its Tuesday decision. 

What is the God Squad?

The Endangered Species Committee was created in 1978 as a part of an amendment to the Endangered Species Act, signed into law five years earlier. 

The committee was established to create a process for carving out potential exemptions to the law, which agencies may apply for “if the jeopardy that is expected to result from a proposed agency action cannot be avoided and the agency proposing the action nonetheless wishes to go ahead with the action,” according to an Endangered Species Act primer from the Congressional Research Service. 

The committee can decide to grant an exemption “despite future harm to a species,” per the primer. At least five votes are required to pass an exemption. 

The God Squad had previously reached decisions on just three applications for exemptions over the course of more than four decades.

In 1979, it voted unanimously to grant an exemption for the construction of the Grayrocks Dam and Reservoir on the Platte River in Wyoming, a heavily trafficked stop-over site for migrating whooping cranes, listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The same year, the panel denied another exemption request for a dam, the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River, halting the project due to its potential harm to endangered snail darter fish. Congress later stepped in to allow construction of the dam to proceed despite the panel’s decision, however.

In 1992, the last time the God Squad convened, it voted in favor of allowing the Bureau of Land Management to carry out timber sales in a forest in Oregon that was a habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl species. 

Three other cases were resolved before the committee was called on to make a final decision on exemption applications.

Who is on the committee?

The committee is composed of six permanent members: the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of the Army, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The current permanent members of the committee include Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the current chair of the panel; Agriculture Secretary Brooke  Rollins;  Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll;  Acting CEA Chairman Pierre Yared ; EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin; and NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs.

What did the committee decide on Tuesday, and what’s at stake for wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico? 

Burgum said during its meeting on Tuesday that the panel would “be issuing an exemption from the requirements of the [Endangered Species Act] for all oil and gas exploration, development and production activities associated with the … outercontinential shelf oil and gas program.”

The exemption marks the latest move by the Trump Administration to weaken environmental protections. Previously, in November, the Administration proposed multiple rules rolling back the Endangered Species Act.

Hegseth told the committee on Tuesday that “recent hostile action” by Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global crude oil flows, “highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative.”

“To be secure as a nation, we need a steady, affordable supply of our own energy…This is not just about gas prices, it’s about our ability to power our military and protect our nation,” said Hegseth, who was seated next to Burgum. “That vital energy supply is under threat.” 

Lowell tells TIME that the Gulf of Mexico is home to 20 threatened, endangered species that include sea turtles, manta rays, sharks, and, notably, the Rice’s whale.

National Marine Fisheries Service scientists have determined that only about 50 of these baleen whales remain in the gulf, where they live year-round.

“We really should not be putting profits over species protection, especially when we're talking about extinction,” Lowell says.