Setting group says FBI is visiting local weather activists’ houses as Trump administration rolls again air pollution protections.
Revealed On 19 Feb 2026
Environmental group Extinction Riot has mentioned that local weather change activists related to the group are being investigated by the Trump administration, which can be brazenly working to roll back environmental protections in the United States.
The group’s New York chapter mentioned that at the least seven of its activists have been visited by FBI brokers since Trump’s second time period started final 12 months, together with one one that had two particular brokers from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Job Drive come to their residence 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 Riot mentioned was a “viral peaceable protest”.
“Trump is weaponising the DOJ to assault peaceable protesters with the intention to appease a multi-trillion greenback fossil gas trade that received him elected,” Extinction Riot’s New York chapter mentioned in an announcement shared on Instagram.
“We are able to solely assume that they’re feeling threatened by our motion,” the assertion added.
Often called XR, the activist group garnered media consideration worldwide by means of disruption, hitting roads, airports and different public transport networks with direct motion protests towards local weather change in main cities.
The environmental group’s world 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’
Based on the pure useful resource monitoring group International Witness, fossil gas corporations, together with Chevron and Exxon, donated $19m to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund final 12 months, representing 7.8 p.c of the whole quantity raised. Numerous fossil gas corporations 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 not too long ago revoked a 2009 government declaration generally known as the “endangerment discovering”, which has been used because the authorized foundation for regulating air pollution underneath the Clear Air Act, which was initially adopted in 1963.
Trump, who described the endangerment discovering as “one of many biggest scams in historical past”, has claimed that repealing it was “the only 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 would result in “extra air pollution, larger prices, and 1000’s of avoidable deaths”.
