When the Trump administration’s Department of Commerce ordered a review of California’s oversight of coastal resources involving industrial uses such as offshore oil production, rocket testing and desalination, more than 300 people turned out Aug. 10 to tell the administration to keep its hands off.
Since 1972, California has preserved, protected, developed and, where possible, restored or enhanced its coastal zone through the California Coastal Commission. The special hearing, organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was the Trump administration’s first step toward taking that authority away. Since taking office, the administration has slashed funding for the federal agency and curtailed its regulatory authority while shifting decision-making power from scientists to political appointees.
The administration is seeking to open the state’s waters and shoreline to offshore drilling, new underwater pipelines and other environmentally damaging changes, potentially rolling back environmental protections established over the past 50 years.
Even before the hearing began, California state officials, tribal leaders and environmental groups organized a raucous rally of 100. Another 15,000 people added their voices by submitting online statements opposing the review. While several elected officials spoke, most speakers represented environmental organizations, ranging from the Natural Resources Defense Council to the LA Maritime Institute. Approximately 150 people from dozens of organizations up and down the coast signed up to make statements.
Before NOAA hearing officers, Pete Stauffer, senior ocean protection manager for the Surfrider Foundation, described the organization as a grassroots environmental group dedicated to protecting and enjoying oceans, waves and beaches for all people.
“I want to express Surfrider’s strongest objection to the federal administration’s reopened and targeted review of California’s Coastal Management Program,” Stauffer said.
Stauffer and representatives of other environmental organizations called the review “politically motivated,” arguing that the administration was targeting California’s ability to protect its coastline and posing an existential threat to the state’s ability to protect ocean health, beach access and coastal communities. They said California’s program is a national model with a proven record of protecting the state’s coastal and ocean resources.
Irene Cook, representing the Society of Fearless Grandmothers in Santa Barbara, said the review was “not a process that’s a legitimate part of our democracy.”
“Like so many other vital underpinnings of our society in 2026, this review is just another tool of an authoritarian regime corrupted by extreme wealth, intent on serving only their corporate donors to the sole purpose of profit at the expense of public health and safety,” Cook said.
Kevin Schmidt, a scientist with the Wichita Chumash Foundation, said he opposed NOAA’s review of the California Coastal Management Program.
Schmidt argued that the projects under consideration would “strip-mine California’s coast” at an incalculable cost to cultural resources, Indigenous lifeways, local economies, commercial and recreational fisheries, tourism and the state’s aesthetic beauty.
“California state regulatory bodies have long managed coastal developments carefully, balancing conservation efforts with economic development,” he said.
Justin Cummings, a Ph.D. biologist and co-chair and founder of Save My Coast Coalition, who served on the Coastal Commission for several years, spoke in support of maintaining the program. He said that between 2010 and 2022, more than 7,300 oil spills occurred in federal waters, averaging more than one spill per day for 12 years.
“By expanding offshore drilling off our coast, it’s not a question of if an oil spill will happen but when,” Cummings said.
Others pointed out that for 57 years, California has rejected new offshore oil leasing in state waters and for more than four decades has consistently opposed new federal leasing.
Lisa Gillfilan of Oceana, an international advocacy organization dedicated to ocean conservation, said, “Everyone in this room knows the federal government is considering new offshore oil and gas.”
Grant Bixby of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Pacific Coast said the organization represents more than 65,000 businesses, hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of customers who believe offshore oil and gas development is bad for business.
Kate Huckleberry, former head of the California Coastal Commission, said 90.7% of projects were approved through what she described as a rigorous process.
The organization Azul pointed to a national poll of Latino voters that found 80% were more likely to vote for candidates they viewed as ocean champions. Seventy-eight percent supported bans on new offshore oil and gas drilling.
Leah Yananton, representing Codepink, asked NOAA to reject plans to weaken the Coastal Management Program and respect the 10th Amendment (in laymen’s terms, the federal government cannot take power not expressly granted by the U.S. Constitution. Those powers are expressly reserved to the states, or the people).
Yananton called what the Trump administration is trying to do beyond “politically motivated” but an example of corporate tyranny like the corporate-driven militarization of space that this administration has taken up.
“Corporations with federal contracts are given more rights than we the people,” Yananton said.
This columnist, who is also an educator with the LA Maritime Institute and member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, likened the administration’s anti-science, climate-change-denial attack on the California Coastal Commission to the ongoing dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, our unions and progressive environmental legislation.
The Sierra Club distributed a set of talking points noting that the Trump administration is putting private industry interests, fossil fuels and corporate projects ahead of federal and state laws to protect our coastlines, marine ecosystems and the communities and commerce that depend on them.
The Sierra Club accused the Commerce Department of ordering a performance evaluation focused solely on spaceport infrastructure, offshore oil production, pipeline maintenance, desalination projects and undersea cables. It said the directive made clear that the commission was being targeted because of its refusal to find offshore oil drilling and SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg consistent with the California Coastal Act.
Mark Friedman is an educator at the LA Maritime Institute and a member of the International Association of Machinists.