The Knives Are Out: NGOs and Dark Money Groups Prepare To Attack Trump’s Energy Deregulation and "Drill Baby Drill"Policies

Environmental lawyers get ready to unleash an onslaught of lawsuits

Grok's rendition of President Trump’s “drill baby drill” policy

One of President Trump's campaign promises is to enact pro-energy policies that encourage the US oil and gas industry to “drill baby drill.” He got off to a good start on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, by signing a barage of energy-related executive orders and memoranda, including “Unleashing American Energy,” “Declaring a National Energy Emergency”, “Temporary Withdrawal of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) from Offshore Wind Leasing”, “Pausing Approvals of Renewable Energy on Public Lands and Water,” and “Restarting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Export Permits.” He also withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, rescinded Biden-era energy and climate policies, and took actions to end perceived electric vehicle mandates.

President Trump has already delivered on many of his promises, including:

• Promoting “big beautiful coal” by exempting 47 coal-fired generation plants from mercury and air toxics limits.

• Ending the Interior Department's requirement for “green analyses” on thousands of oil and gas leases.

• Allowing companies to email the Environmental Protection Agency to seek presidential exemptions from nine clean-air regulations, including mercury limits for power plants and limits on hazardous air pollutants in plastic production.

• Facilitating new pipelines: The US Army Corps granted emergency status for the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel, a 4-mile tunnel for the 645-mile Line 5 that crosses through the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. The pipeline carries over 20 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario.

• Slashing regulations: President Trump recently signed an executive order designed to boost energy production by setting “expiration dates” on all existing energy rules and regulations to ensure he did not miss anything related to energy. The order also said any new regulations should have a five-year expiration unless they are deregulatory. Furthermore, all future regulations will have a five-year expiration requirement unless explicitly extended to “ensure American energy regulations are continually reviewed and updated to keep up with modern technology and need.”

Not surprisingly, after enjoying four years of doing their best to destroy the US energy industry by imposing unachievable environmental rules and subsidizing unreliable wind and solar generation, NGOs and dark money groups are gearing up to stop President Trump from slashing energy regulations. Reuters reported on April 22, 2025:

U.S. environmental groups say they are hiring lawyers and preparing for a major legal showdown with President Donald Trump's administration over its rapid-fire and sweeping efforts to sidestep federal regulations on oil, gas and coal development.

The preparations will pose a test for the Trump administration’s strategy since January of relying mainly on emergency authorities and executive orders to slash what it views as obstructions to a surge in fossil fuel energy production.

Reuters interviewed and reported some of the groups gearing up to hit the Trump administration with lawsuits:

Environmental group Earthjustice said it is hiring attorneys as it prepares to challenge some of Trump’s moves. The organization has 10 lawyer positions currently posted and wants to increase that amount substantially this year, adding to its existing stable of around 200 lawyers, it said.

Earthjustice and other groups say they want to be ready to sue once Trump’s agencies begin to implement his directives, including his order to sunset all federal energy regulations. President Trump's proposal is almost comically illegal," said Sambhav Sankar, Earthjustice senior vice president for programs. "if any federal agency actually tries doing this, we'll see them in court.”

Earthjustice's Sankar said his organization expects to have to challenge the administration's actions repeatedly over the coming years. He pointed to the government's resistance to a U.S. Supreme Court order that it facilitate the return of a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and now being held in a notorious prison in El Salvador.

They really are kicking it into high gear now," Dan Goldbeck, director of regulatory policy at the conservative think tank American Action Forum, said in an interview. They are trying to push some of these legal doctrines a bit to see if they can implement a new policy framework. (emphasis added)

A key strategy of these groups is to wait until the administration takes decisive action on Trump's orders:

We can't sue over the president's delusional thinking, but what we can do is sue when agencies try to implement that delusional thinking," said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP).

Normally in impact litigation, once you win a case, the government changes its behavior in other similar cases to comply with the precedent, said Sankar, adding that he did not expect the administration to follow precedent anymore.

My take

The Trump administration faces significant hurdles in its attempt to deregulate and restructure the US energy sector, especially the opposition from NGOs, dark money groups, and some states, with their untested legal theories, emergency declarations, and biased judicial activism.

The biggest problem facing President Trump's goal of restructuring and deregulating the US energy sector is time. The clock is ticking with only three years and nine months remaining in his term. If his party loses seats in the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms, restructuring will become even more difficult.

The Trump administration has made unbelievable progress in deregulating the US energy industry in just three months. The challenge now is to fight off the legal challenges designed to delay, delay, and delay.

Thank you for reading “Thoughts about Energy and Economics.” This publication is reader-supported, so please “like” it, share it with friends and colleagues, and become a paid subscriber. Your support is greatly appreciated!