Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” Regime Is Now Targeting California’s Coastline

Por Sasha Abramsky — Truthout

The US Commerce Secretary is bullying California with an audit that could strip the state of control over its own coast.

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Earlier this year, as the Trump administration ramped up pressure on California to agree to increased oil and natural gas drilling permits up and down the Pacific Coast, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to the social media platform X to berate the California Coastal Commission, and the Coastal Zone Management Act’s system for maintaining the coast in line with California regulations, for its “obstructionist” and extreme environmental tendencies.

In an unprecedented move, Lutnick ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s auditors — who are in charge of reviewing the regulatory systems of each of the more than 30 coastal and Great Lakes states — to conduct a new audit.

This summer, after a series of in-person and Zoom hearings in which the public expressed overwhelming opposition to increased offshore drilling, it became clear that Lutnick’s audit is intended to reach a predetermined conclusion: that California’s coastal management system — which has been in place since the Nixon era and has successfully interacted during that time with the federal government via the Coastal Zone Management Act — should be defunded to the tune of millions of dollars annually and decertified. It appears that ultimately Lutnick’s audit aims, for the first time in history, to strip states of their right to control their own coastlines.

What made Lutnick’s move even more shameful was that in 2024 the NOAA had completed an audit of the California Coastal Commission and had, according to those who saw the 2025 draft of its findings, given it the equivalent of an A+, praising its work and only finding two minor areas in which it sought improvements.

“If the administration wants to reopen pipelines or do oil and gas drilling off the coast of California, it has been the coastal commission that has been able to ensure environmental safeguards,” a former federal official in the Department of Commerce, who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about retribution being aimed at them and their colleagues who are still with the federal government, told Truthout. In other words, California was doing its job and doing it well.

It appears that ultimately Lutnick’s audit aims, for the first time in history, to strip states of their right to control their own coastlines.

When the Trump administration took power in 2025, however, it put the kibosh on the report and refused to allow its release. Earlier this year, the administration invoked the Defense Production Act to do an end-run around California’s opposition to the reopening of the Sable oil pipeline, off of the Santa Barbara coast, which had ruptured in 2015 and caused an environmental catastrophe.

Now — through attempting to neutralize the California Coastal Commission, and subsidiary organizations such as the Bay Conservation and Development Commission for the waters in the San Francisco Bay — the Trump administration is ramping up pressure on the state to conform to its new “drill, baby, drill” fossil fuel energy priorities and to the administration’s efforts to turn SpaceX, which has launching sites in California, some of which have run into opposition from the coastal commission, into a space-age industrial superpower.

For weeks now, California’s political leaders have been sounding the alarm about what they deem to be the biggest threat to the state’s fabled coastline, and the more than $50 billion that, according to the California Coastal Commission, the coastal tourism economy contributes to California, since high-profile oil spills in the late 1960s tipped the state away from oil development.

Alliances of coastal businesses have gotten involved, horrified at the thought that by mid-2027 there could be an oil and gas rush in California.

Alliances of coastal businesses, wary that ecological damage will impact their bottom line, have also gotten involved, horrified at the thought that by mid-2027 there could be an oil and gas rush in California, and that with that rush will, inevitably, come spills that foul the waters and beaches of the Golden State. Ecological disasters, said Grant Bixby, a Newport Beach realtor who co-founded the Business Alliance for Protecting the Pacific Coast, “affect everybody from beachfront rentals to the coffee shop down the street, to retailers and hoteliers. It’s really bad for local economies when we have oil spills.”

As described by Andre Mouchard in the Orange County Register, opposition to the Trump administration’s plans for California is creating strange bedfellows, bringing together traditional environmentalists with business groups worried about the degradation of California’s coastal regions. Mouchard wrote that the “bickering world of environmental advocates is setting aside differences to collectively battle what they view as President Donald Trump’s push to neuter the California Coastal Commission and, with it, the state’s ability to chart its own environmental future.”

“There’s no question that what they have in mind is a takeover of the California coast and a handover to the oil and gas industry.”

Environmental groups agree with this analysis. Joel Reynolds, senior institutional strategist and attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Truthout that the Trump administration is looking to turn California into “a sacrifice zone” for the oil and gas industry, and is willing to toss aside the rule of law in its efforts to make a quick buck off of California’s offshore resources. His analysis that liberal California is being deliberately targeted is particularly relevant given that the first Trump administration’s efforts to open up offshore drilling sites off of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida were promptly mothballed once GOP governors expressed their opposition in 2020.

“There’s no question that what they have in mind is a takeover of the California coast and a handover to the oil and gas industry,” Reynolds said.

Derek Brockbank, executive director of the D.C.-based Coastal States Organization, explained that the audit “is highly inconsistent with procedures,” adding, “We have concerns for what this means to California and for every other coastal territory and state in the nation.”

Observers also believe that the assault on California is being used as a cudgel to scare other states into preemptively complying with Trump’s efforts to double down on fossil fuel production.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently published detailed maps showing different sectors of California’s coastline and the years in which they would be opened up to bids for oil and gas drilling.

“The review process was designed to elevate the voices of states, local government, and local communities,” Meg Caldwell, ex-director of Stanford University’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program, and one-time chair of the California Coastal Commission, explained to Truthout. Now, however, the Trump people are holding a gun to California’s head with the threat of decertification.

“It is just another step in the administration’s erosion of democracy,” Caldwell argues. “It looks like it is designed to silence those voices. This is a massive power grab. The end game doesn’t look good.”

To date, despite overwhelming public opposition, the Trump administration shows no signs of backing off. In fact, anticipating a federal takeover of California’s coastline, and a subsequent stampede to develop fossil fuel extraction infrastructure, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently published detailed maps showing different sectors of California’s coastline and the years in which they would be opened up to bids for oil and gas drilling.

Like Trump’s other power grabs, this one will almost certainly head to court. The state of California, business groups opposed to offshore drilling, and environmental organizations are already strategizing about how to frame their lawsuits. “The facts don’t support this singling out of California for scrutiny,” said Reynolds. “We expect the administration will decide to defund and decertify the California program, and the next step will be litigation.”

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Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis. Abramsky’s latest book, American Carnage: How Trump, Musk, and DOGE Butchered the US Government, is available for pre-order now and will be released in January. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He also writes a weekly political column. Originally from England, with a bachelor’s in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he now lives in Sacramento, California.

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Fonte: Truthout