Setting group says FBI is visiting local weather activists’ properties as Trump administration rolls again air pollution protections.
Printed On 19 Feb 2026
Environmental group Extinction Revolt has mentioned that local weather change activists related to the group are being investigated by the Trump administration, which can also be brazenly working to roll back environmental protections in the United States.
The group’s New York chapter mentioned that a minimum of seven of its activists have been visited by FBI brokers since Trump’s second time period started final 12 months, together with one one who had two particular brokers from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Job Pressure come to their house on February 6.
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The Division of Justice additionally opened an investigation into the environmental group Local weather Defiance earlier this month in response to what Extinction Revolt mentioned was a “viral peaceable protest”.
“Trump is weaponising the DOJ to assault peaceable protesters with a view to appease a multi-trillion greenback fossil gasoline business that acquired him elected,” Extinction Revolt’s New York chapter mentioned in a press release shared on Instagram.
“We are able to solely assume that they’re feeling threatened by our motion,” the assertion added.
Often known as XR, the activist group garnered media consideration worldwide by disruption, hitting roads, airports and different public transport networks with direct motion protests in opposition to local weather change in main cities.
The environmental group’s international web site says it’s a “decentralised, worldwide and politically non-partisan motion utilizing non-violent direct motion and civil disobedience to steer governments to behave justly” on the local weather emergency.
Activist Greta Thunberg has beforehand attended actions organised by the group.
‘The one largest deregulatory motion in American historical past’
In accordance with the pure useful resource monitoring group International Witness, fossil gasoline firms, together with Chevron and Exxon, donated $19m to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund final 12 months, representing 7.8 % of the whole quantity raised. Quite a few fossil gasoline firms additionally donated to Trump’s re-election marketing campaign.
Trump, who has called local weather change a “hoax” and a “con job”, has taken a number of steps to fulfil his marketing campaign promise to “drill, child, drill” as president, together with increasing oil extraction in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Trump administration additionally lately revoked a 2009 government declaration often known as the “endangerment discovering”, which has been used because the authorized foundation for regulating air pollution beneath the Clear Air Act, which was initially adopted in 1963.
Trump, who described the endangerment discovering as “one of many best scams in historical past”, has claimed that repealing it was “the one largest deregulatory motion in American historical past, by far”.
The transfer has prompted alarm from environmental and well being teams, greater than a dozen of which filed a lawsuit on Wednesday over the Environmental Safety Company’s resolution to withdraw the endangerment discovering, saying eradicating it should result in “extra air pollution, greater prices, and 1000’s of avoidable deaths”.
