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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.

Republicans Are Trying to Give Big Oil Immunity for Causing Climate Chaos

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.

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........

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