Environmental groups say the FBI is visiting the homes of climate activists as the Trump administration rolls back pollution control measures.
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Published February 19, 2026
The environmental group Extinction Rebellion announced that climate change activists associated with the group are being investigated by the Trump administration. The Trump administration is also openly working to rollback U.S. environmental protection policies.
At least seven activists have been visited by FBI agents since President Trump’s second term began last year, including one who had two special agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force visit his home on February 6, according to the group’s New York branch.
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The Justice Department also launched an investigation into the environmental group Climate Defiance earlier this month after Extinction Rebellion claimed it was a “peaceful protest due to the virus.”
“Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department to attack peaceful protesters in order to appease the multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry that got him elected,” the New York chapter of Extinction Rebellion said in a statement shared on Instagram.
“We can only assume that they feel threatened by our movement,” the statement added.
The activist group, known as XR, attracted media attention around the world through direct action protests against climate change in major cities and vandalism attacks on roads, airports and other public transport networks.
It is a “decentralized, international, and politically bipartisan movement that uses nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to compel governments to act justly” in response to the climate emergency, according to the environmental group’s global website.
Activist Greta Thunberg has previously participated in actions organized by the group.
“The largest deregulation measure in American history”
Fossil fuel companies including Chevron and Exxon contributed $19 million to President Donald Trump’s establishment fund last year, representing 7.8% of total donations, according to natural resources watchdog Global Witness. Many fossil fuel companies also donated to Trump’s re-election campaign.
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and “the work of con artists,” has taken several steps to fulfill his “drill, baby, drill” campaign promise as president, including expanding oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Trump administration also recently revoked a 2009 government declaration known as a “critical finding” that had been used as the legal basis for pollution regulations under the Clean Air Act, first adopted in 1963.
President Trump called the discovery of the danger “one of the greatest frauds in history” and claimed its repeal was “the largest deregulatory move ever in American history.”
The move has alarmed environmental and health groups, more than a dozen of which filed a lawsuit Wednesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to rescind the endangered finding, arguing that removing the finding would result in “more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths.”
