Anthropic Stole This From Me

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Aug. 24, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET

Anna Malina

By Charles Graeber

Mr. Graeber is the author of “The Good Nurse” and “The Breakthrough” and is one of the named plaintiffs in Bartz v. Anthropic.

We need to talk about a potential A.I. famine.

If we do nothing, starving A.I. chatbots may be left with nothing to eat but their own responses. Think of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy (if you remember photocopies). Quality degrades; mistakes amplify and dominate.

The result is what experts describe as model collapse. Imagine a world where A.I. slop is even worse. It’s not a future we want.

I know this because I did my part to head off where we are now.

Kirk Wallace Johnston, Andrea Bartz and I brought a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic. Our complaint was piracy and copyright violation; Anthropic had stolen our books because it needed them to create a commercial product, a generative A.I. chatbot designed specifically to write like us. But they didn’t ask us or pay us. That seemed unfair, and illegal.

Piracy is a crime as old as gold — or in the modern digital context, Napster. And intellectual property theft is pretty much baked into the A.I. development story. Most, if not all, A.I. companies built their tech on piracy — though they may call it “fair use.”

Anthropic’s story offered a twist. While many A.I. companies scraped the internet (including The New York Times, which is why OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft are currently being sued by the company for copyright infringement) for material, Anthropic also scanned, digitized and later destroyed physical books through a secret and expensive legal workaround.

If this was Anthropic’s legal fig leaf, it worked. The judge found that training the A.I. on physical books that Anthropic purchased was fair use, but illegally downloading and storing millions of copyrighted books, which Anthropic also did, was copyright infringement.

At $1.5 billion, ours was the largest copyright settlement in American history. Nearly half a million works were represented in our class action. After fees and lawyers (who deserve full credit for this case even existing), that works out to about $3,000 per book, which the author has to split with the publisher.

For a writer like me, who spent about 14 years researching and writing two books, that money is hardly life-changing. But in legal circles, it was considered a big win, four times the most common per-work penalty for illegal downloads.

For Anthropic, stealing was a smart business expense.

In 2021, Anthropic was a late but ambitious entrant to the A.I. race. Its goal, according to the fair use order in our case, was to create an artificial intelligence capable of writing that “an editor would approve of,” and that consumers would pay for.

Such a chatbot couldn’t be trained on mere tweets and trolls. It would need to mimic quality human writing at an industrial scale.

The Anthropic founder and chief executive Dario Amodei wanted to avoid the “legal/practice/business slog” of buying and licensing the books the company needed. Stealing was faster and cheaper. The price of virtue was deemed too high. Instead, the company is expected to be valued at $2 trillion in its looming I.P.O., which would make it the largest in history.

But the problem of stolen material won’t go away.

For many authors, it’s potentially ruinous. And this is where an A.I. famine could have its roots.

We had hoped our case would help confirm the protections of copyright in the age of A.I. and the rights of artists and creators to control their own work. And we hoped a judge would rule that our life’s work, in whatever form, was not a free natural resource that could be taken against our will and used to compete with us, if not put us out of work.

That did not happen.

Another judge in the same California district court disagreed, pointedly callingthe analogy between for-profit mimic machines and ambitious schoolchildren “inapt” and casting doubt on the ruling.

There will be other cases, and other judges with other opinions. This question is far from settled. It will be kicking around the courts for a long time.

Claude was built and may still be training on our copyrighted books. I’m not aware of any major A.I. companies doing otherwise.

For several years, authors have had a sense that the harm caused by unlicensed training on books had a negative impact on their livelihoods. A working paper published this month looked at more than 14,000 books sold on Amazon between 2023 and March of this year, putting that harm into hard numbers.

The paper found that the book market has been increasingly flooded with A.I. slop that has financial implications for publishers and authors. The slop confuses consumers and may mess up best-seller lists. Increasingly, even “human-authored” books are contaminated with A.I.-produced material.

For authors, “market dilution” by A.I. slop will result in loss of sales and income. It’s bad and getting worse. The median income of a full-time author is about $20,000. There’s not much further to fall.

But sadly, it’s the A.I.s that may suffer the most. A.I.s can’t keep improving by training only on A.I. output. The model collapse scenario threatens to wipe out whatever gains chatbots like Claude enjoyed from being trained on books in the first place.

And fewer working authors mean fewer original, A.I.-free books. For a ravenous A.I chatbot, this is a potential death spiral. For both authors and Anthropic, it’s a future we should work together to avoid.

One day, hopefully copyright protections will be extended to prevent the unlicensed training of A.I.s.

Until then, we live in a legal gray area, in which giant cash-rich corporations gorge freely on the rights of individual creators. The big ones will continue to eat the little ones unless the little ones can band together.

It’s up to us to demand legislation extending copyright protections in the 21st century. Many members of Congress appear willing; property protections have appeal for both sides of the aisle.

Affirming those copyright protections to include A.I. might even force A.I. companies to hire human writers to create original works for their L.L.M.s to train on. Or perhaps they’ll start spending their treasure like modern Medicis, funding the quality work A.I.s need to stay sharp. At the very least, they might invest in publishing houses and writing programs, fending off model collapse while ushering in a Silicon Era of artistic enlightenment.

I worry for this generation of artists coming of age in yet another technological adolescence, on the brink of so many cultural and economic disruptions.

But I do not worry for the future of art itself. We will always need human mediators to translate the human experience and make the flesh word.

  

A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I.

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 Summary

“A Russian drone with an Nvidia module autonomously targeted a gas station in Zaporizhzhia on July 6, killing Tetiana Bubynets and two others. Experts and commanders attribute the strike to experimental artificial intelligence selecting targets without human control.

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An attack by what Ukrainian officials said was a Russian drone with an Nvidia chip presages a dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans.

Aug. 24, 2026Updated 5:29 a.m. ET

The grave of Tetiana Bubynets, who was killed last month in a drone strike on a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

The grave of Tetiana Bubynets, who was killed last month in a drone strike on a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

By Andrew E. Kramer

Visuals by Nicole Tung

Reporting from Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine

The young woman ran for her life, but it was too late.

A small Russian drone resembling a model airplane swooped down from the sky last month in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. As it tried to navigate toward a gas station, it crashed into a wall and exploded in a hail of shrapnel, killing Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others.

They were among the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have died in Russian airstrikes, but the circumstances of their deaths came with an ominous twist. The drone that killed them was guided by an experimental artificial intelligence system, not a human pilot, according to drone experts, Ukrainian military commanders and the forensic team that examined wreckage from the deadly strike and others in the city.

The drone was programmed by human operators to travel toward a particular gas station, but once it got close, it chose its exact target — most likely propane tanks — on its own, based on its training to recognize such tanks and strike them, the experts and military officials said.

It is a development long watched for in the war in Ukraine, presaging a dystopian future in which killer robots roam the skies making life-or-death decisions that reduce targets to data points.

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of air defenses in Zaporizhzhia. “In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

The aftermath of a strike in Zaporizhzhia last month. Though airstrikes have caused thousands of Ukrainian deaths, Russia’s use of autonomous A.I. drones like the one that killed Ms. Bubynets is a new development.

Workers installing anti-drone nets over a main road in a southern neighborhood of Zaporizhzhia.

Analysis of debris from this attack and others in Zaporizhzhia found that the drones had onboard minicomputers, sold commercially by Nvidia, that made their targeting decisions, the experts and military officials said. Nvidia produces a majority of the chips powering the world’s most advanced A.I. systems.

The presence of Nvidia modules and a lack of antennas on the drones led Ukrainian air defense commanders to surmise that the weapons were guided by an autonomous A.I. system, which was confirmed on further investigation.

Autonomous A.I. systems can be trained on thousands of images to recognize categories like “river,” “military truck” or “person.” Self-targeting drones use their cameras to hunt for these things with greater precision than a human pilot can provide. But opponents of such weapons argue that, without human intervention, drones may be more prone to mistakes or violations of the laws of war, such as by failing to distinguish innocent civilians from combatants.

The use of self-targeting A.I. in the gas station attack, on July 6, would be the first documented case in which civilian deaths were caused by a Russian drone outfitted with such a system, said Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. She added that the Nvidia module “is the best proof” that Russia was experimenting with autonomous A.I.

While an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky has written on social media that Russia was testing self-targeting A.I. systems, the fatalities have not been previously reported, nor have the details of the Nvidia Jetson Orin computer module that was used.

Both Russia and Ukraine were already using A.I. in multiple drone models before the fully autonomous drones emerged. In those earlier models, A.I. is used only for what is known as the “last mile” — the final stage of the attack, after a remote human pilot has selected the target. Fully autonomous A.I. removes humans from the final target selection.

The Nvidia chip in the Zaporizhzhia attack was not encrypted, Ukrainian officials said, so they could see the terrain images that had been uploaded to the module, enabling the drone to track visual landmarks and stay on course. They were also able to examine coding, they said, that revealed what types of targets the drone had been trained to recognize and attack, like propane tanks.

Earlier drone models are generally either piloted by human operators, through radio transmissions or fiber-optic cables, or they are preprogrammed with coordinates. As drones have taken over the battlefield in Ukraine, their pilots have become prime targets.

An autonomous A.I.-guided drone, by contrast, requires no human pilots and can be more accurate than a munition programmed to hit coordinates.

Local air defense officials say that Russia has been aiming for civilian objects like pumps or propane tanks at gas stations in trying out autonomous drones in Zaporizhzhia, along with military recruitment centers. It is not clear why these targets were chosen for the tests.

Vadym Kushnikov, a drone expert at the Kharkiv Aviation Institute in Ukraine, said the drone that killed the three civilians was “a preprogrammed tool trained in virtual reality to track specific objects.”

While traditional software follows step-by-step rules written by a person, an A.I. system derives its own rules by finding patterns across enormous amounts of data, a process called machine learning. That allows it to manage unanticipated situations. It also means no one can fully predict what it might do.

Rights groups and the International Red Cross vehemently oppose the use of A.I. weapons without humans in the loop. Such groups say that autonomous systems essentially leave robots to interpret international law in determining legitimate targets in war.

But some exports argue that, in the future, weapons should in fact be required to have A.I. systems. These weapons are safer, the argument goes, because they are able to make decisions before striking, even if not always perfectly, unlike unguided aerial bombs or ordinary artillery shells that just fall without seeing what they will hit.

The weapon in the fatal strike was flying in a group of about half a dozen drones, according to the regional military governor, the city’s air defense commander and an air defense team on duty that day. None were emitting radio signals, and they had other characteristics associated with Russia’s autonomous A.I. tests, including being launched in a wave, the officials said.

A drone launch operator working on an interceptor drone at his unit’s base in Zaporizhzhia.

While some of the A.I.-guided drones tested by Russia have detonated on impact, others have not and remained intact, Ukrainian officials said. They showed debris from two such drones to reporters for The New York Times. The Times photographed the Nvidia computer module inside the drones and sent the images to the company.

Nvidia confirmed that the photos showed a Jetson Orin minicomputer. Such modules, which cost only a few hundred dollars, have been found on several types of Russian weapons.

In a statement, the company said that the minicomputer was a consumer-grade product “sold to students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications.” Nvidia sells the computer in many countries but not in Russia. It is, though, widely available through resellers, the statement said.

Ukraine, too, has tested self-targeting A.I. systems. Mykhailo Fedorov, the defense minister who was recently ousted, said in an interview with The Timeslate last month that Ukraine tested an entirely autonomous A.I. system in Russian-occupied Crimea over the past several months. Mr. Fedorov said that the devices targeted fuel storage sites and military equipment and that no civilians had been killed.

While the drones in the Zaporizhzhia attack had no antennas to send back data on the tests, Russian forces often fly reconnaissance drones that can record strikes. The city is also believed to harbor Russian spies who report battlefield damage assessments.

The absence of an antenna would not by itself prove that a drone was self-targeting. It could be preprogrammed to fly a route, with computer algorithms like those used for decades in auto-piloting systems for aircraft. But that drone would not need an Nvidia chip.

Russia began test flights of A.I.-guided Molniya drones — a mass-produced fixed-wing model — in May, and started testing self-targeting systems in the V2U, another fixed-wing drone, several months before that, Ukrainian air defense experts said. Some of the V2U tests were only for “last mile” targeting.

In interviews, some residents of Zaporizhzhia, which lies just nine miles from the front, said that the thought of devices buzzing over the city, making their own decisions to kill, brought chills. But Ukrainian cities have been so heavily bombarded for years that life had already been reshaped by less sophisticated drones.

Interceptor drones, piloted (for now) by men and women who are local heroes, are one answer to the drone threat. Anti-drone nets are another, covering about 240 miles of roads in and around Zaporizhzhia.

A drone detector mounted on the dashboard of a public bus that serves outlying villages in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Another defensive measure is camouflage. Plastic sheeting, for example, is propped at odd angles around propane tanks at gas stations, in an effort to fool A.I. image recognition systems.

Moments before the exploding drone barreled toward the gas station on July 6, a group of people huddled by the wall of a nearby apartment building for safety, having already heard blasts as the drones came in waves.

Oksana Ishenko, a station attendant, stood beside Ms. Bubynets. “She was crying from fear,” Ms. Ishenko recalled.

Then some in the group started to shout, “A plane! A plane!” Ms. Ishenko said. A drone was heading their way. Ms. Bubynets and several others bolted, fanning out in a parking lot. After the drone failed to make its way around the apartment building, it detonated before reaching its target.

Ms. Bubynets, who had been studying accounting at Zaporizhzhia National University, lay on the pavement, unmoving, with blood flowing from her nose. She was declared dead at a hospital, said Tetiana Melikhova, one of her professors. The two others killed, Oleksiy Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpiy, 48, died later of their wounds.

“They are training the technology,” Colonel Minaiev, the city’s air defense commander, said of the Russians. A.I. is good but not yet perfect, he added. “They are looking for mistakes and will fix them.”

Evelina Riabenko, Stanislav Kozliuk and Paul Mozur contributed reporting.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.“

 

Trump administration's 75-country visa ban was illegal, judge rules

Michael CopleyAugust 22, 20264:53 PM ET

Federal immigration officers walk through a security checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in March.

David J. Phillip/AP

“A federal judge has struck down a Trump administration ban on issuing immigrant visas to people from 75 countries, saying the policy violated federal immigration law by discriminating on the basis of nationality.

The State Department said earlier this year that it was halting immigrant visas for citizens of Afghanistan, Brazil, Yemen and dozens of other countries because the Trump administration determined people from those nations were likely to need public assistance if they came to the United States.

The policy would have barred the U.S. government from issuing immigrant visas even in cases where consular officers individually assessed applicants and determined they were likely to be self-sufficient in the U.S., according to a ruling Friday by District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in the Southern District of New York.

"In many ways, this is not a challenging case," Vargas wrote. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality in the issuance of immigrant visas, Vargas said. However, the Trump administration's policy banned certain people from receiving immigrant visas "based solely on their nationality," the judge wrote.

Vargas cited a U.S. diplomatic cable that instructed consulates to refuse immigrant visas to applicants who had already been approved but whose printed visas hadn't left the consulate.

Vargas said the Trump administration's policy was "contrary to law" and exceeded the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The judge's ruling vacated the visa ban and also set aside visa denials that were based only on the policy.

A State Department spokesperson told NPR the Trump administration is "protecting the American people by upholding the highest standards of screening and vetting of visa applicants," adding that the administration doesn't comment on ongoing litigation. When the State Department issued the ban, it said the policy would "remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people."

The ban was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to limit legal and illegal immigration. In June, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, rejecting an executive order Trump signed that tried to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because lower court judges ruled it was unconstitutional.

Susan Welber, supervising attorney at The Legal Aid Society, which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the federal government, says the 75-country visa ban was "premised on a fiction" that residents of the targeted nations are likely to use public resources if they come to the U.S.

"Any time that we can fight back against policies that are based on fictions and untruths and prejudices, I think we're making for a more just immigration system," Welber says.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the Catholic Immigration Legal Network and African Communities Together, which provide immigration legal services, as well as six U.S. citizens who filed family-based immigration petitions on behalf of relatives and five "intending immigrants" who filed employment-based petitions on their own behalf.

"The suspension of lawful visa processing across 75 countries separated spouses, parents, and children who were simply following the legal immigration process," Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said in a statement.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said Friday's ruling will allow their clients to proceed through the immigration process.

"For 75 countries' worth of families, this decision means a return to fair, case-by-case review, and a chance to be reunited with their loved ones," said Antionette Dozier, senior attorney for Western Center on Law & Poverty, which represented the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. "No administration gets to override the law because it deems an applicant's nationality unacceptable."

ATTORNEY: When Cops Say "I Smell Alcohol" - Say THIS Immediately

 

Former Atlanta mayors discuss what the city's history could mean for the future | Extended Interview

 

Former Atlanta mayors discuss what the city's history could mean for the future Extended Interview

DOJ Whistleblower Confirms “Antisemitism” Probes Against Universities Were Sham Investigations

 

 

Rise in migrant deaths as 19 bodies found along Arizona border last month

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 Summary

“Pima County reported 19 migrant remains last month, the highest monthly count since 2024, totaling 73 this year. Experts link rising deaths to US policies blocking asylum, with dehydration and exposure as primary causes.

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Pima county figures show highest number of monthly migrant deaths in two years as critics condemn US policy

A section of the southern border wall in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

According to newly released data from the medical examiner’s office in Pima county, Arizona, the remains of 19 migrants, including children, were recovered along the Arizona-Mexico border last month.

The figure accounts for the highest number of monthly deaths in that area since 2024 and brings the number of total remains found to 73 this year, 14 more than the same time period last year.

Experts and immigration advocates say the new data is a reflection of US policy abroad and at home, including the recent blocking of asylum seekers. Despite extreme temperatures caused by global warming and the threat of arrest by ICE, people are still making the perilous journey through Mexico.

“When the current administration is talking about closing the border, I think that they’ve been very effective at closing legal ports of entry and making it darn near impossible for people to actually enter the country or, as certain groups in the country like to say, ‘Come in the right way,’” said Octavio Torres, executive director of the non-profit Humane Borders organization.

The group helps rescue migrants from dehydration and exposure and works alongside Pima county to track migrant deaths. Their data shows that at least 4,505 migrants have died in the Arizona desert over the last 25 years, an average of roughly one every other day.

The most frequent causes of death are dehydration and exposure, but people also die from hypothermia or blunt force trauma caused by passing out and hitting their head on a rock.

Brad Jones, a Humane Borders board member and professor with the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis, said the most recent data reveals a high number of “contemporaneous” deaths compared with recent years. This means the deaths occurred recently rather than representing old remains finally being discovered.

Jones added that it’s often “random happenstance” when someone – a hiker or law enforcement officer, for instance – comes across human remains. The desert can quickly obscure or destroy evidence, and Jones said remains can “disappear without a trace pretty quickly” because of scavengers and animals.

That means the true number of migrant deaths along the southern US border is undoubtedly higher than what’s known.

“There’s estimates that the true number of migrant deaths ranges as high as four times what we’ve seen,” said Jones. “For every migrant’s remains that you find, how many do you not find?”

Amelia Frank-Vitale, an anthropology professor at Princeton University, focuses on what compels people to risk death migrating to the US through harsh terrain like a desert or the Darién Gap, the dense jungle that connects Colombia and Panama.

Oftentimes, she says, the people making these journeys feel like they have no choice at all.

While researching and writing her book Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds, Frank-Vitale traveled to Honduras and met a woman who was preparing to migrate while pregnant.

“This is in the full throes of the Trump administration’s real attacks on immigrants,” Frank-Vitale said. “The actions of ICE are making international news. And still, she thought the best thing for her at this moment is maybe to try and get to the United States.”

Frank-Vitale argues that the US has never fully addressed the role it’s played in creating instability in other countries whose people are now seeking refuge.

But even before the Trump administration largely shuttered the asylum process, only a fraction of people from Central America – or, for that matter, from many parts of the world – were granted asylum.

Torres, the executive director of Humane Borders, shares Frank-Vitale’s frustration with US policies that sow chaos then effectively neglect the people affected by that chaos.

“Ever since Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 under the Clinton administration, it’s all been about prevention through deterrence,” Torres said, referring to a border patrol enforcement strategy that made crossing in safer, more obvious places extremely difficult.

“Out of desperation, people think, ‘How else can I get in?’” Torres said. “And that’s what has driven people into the Arizona desert for the last 32 years.”

The Trump administration turned the CBP One app from a digital appointment-maker to a means of encouraging “self-deportation”, and the administration also revived policies that require many asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases proceed.

As a result, the number of border “encounters” – a data point signifying when law enforcement encounters people at or between ports of entry – have plummeted since the Biden administration. But people are still coming, experts say; the journey is just harder and more lethal.

Jones, the professor from California, compares the resulting deaths to a plane crash.

“Suppose that every single July for 26 years straight, a Boeing 737 with between 100 and 250 passengers crashed right in the Arizona desert,” he said. “We’d be up in arms. You’d be freaking out.”

One difference, he allows, is that deaths in the desert come in “dribs and drabs”.

“But when you accumulate them,” he said, “we’re talking large numbers of deaths in any given year.”

 

How Trump Is Trying to Crush California’s Environmental Policies

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 Summary

“Trump has used at least six federal agencies to undermine California’s environmental policies, including blocking auto pollution limits, funding a coal terminal, paying to cancel wind farms, and ordering a pipeline restart. Lawsuits challenge these actions.

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At least a half-dozen federal agencies have taken action against the state that has long led the nation in environmental protections.

Aug. 20, 2026Updated 8:25 a.m. ET

An oil platform seen from Sands Beach next to Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve in Santa Barbara, Calif.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

An oil platform seen from Sands Beach next to Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve in Santa Barbara, Calif.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

The Trump administration has taken a series of extraordinary steps to attack California’s position as a national leader in environmental protection, enlisting at least a half-dozen federal agencies to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels.

The stakes are high. Because of its market muscle as the world’s fourth largest economy, California’s environmental regulations have influenced the manufacturers of automobiles and other consumer goods. And its green policies have spread to some other states in what’s known as the “California effect.”

But President Trump has marshaled the full power of the federal government to clamp down on the state’s climate initiatives. He has been vocal in his contempt for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat and possible 2028 presidential contender whom he refers to as “Gavin Newscum.”

Mr. Newsom, a loud and pointed critic of Mr. Trump, pledged soon after the 2024 election to insulate California’s environmental policies from a second Trump administration — perhaps making the state an inviting target for a president who has been using government levers to punish perceived enemies.

There are almost too many examples to list.

Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have blocked California from setting its own limits on automobile pollution, which federal law has permitted since the 1970s. The Energy Department has announced $75 million for a new coal export terminal in Oakland, Calif. The Interior Department has paid energy companies to cancel planned wind farms off the coast of California and other blue states. The president ordered a company to restart a pipeline that caused one of the state’s largest oil spills in 2015.

And just last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signaled it could curb the power of the California Coastal Commission, a state agency that has protected the shoreline from threats like oil spills for more than half a century.

Jim Flores of Sable Offshore Corp., right, during an appearance with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, center, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in June.Arafat Barbakh/Reuters

Mr. Trump’s “destructive behavior has grown significantly,” said Jerry Brown, the former four-term Democratic governor of California who made climate change a signature cause. “It’s completely against a traditional Republican doctrine of respecting states’ rights.”

The state has filed a slew of lawsuits to try to undo the administration’s actions.

“Donald Trump attacks California because we are building a future that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels,” Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said in an email. “This fading industry desperately attempts to tighten its grip on the world economy even as clean energy dominates, growing cheaper and faster to deploy than anything they can offer. Follow the money, and you will find the truth behind his war on California’s climate policies: this is a White House run for Big Oil, by Big Oil.”

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration was intervening in California because state policies had led to higher energy prices and oil refinery closures, though analysts say market forces have also fueled these trends.

“Governor Newscum has continued carrying out the left’s costly and unpopular green new scam,” Ms. Rogers said in an email. “President Trump is working relentlessly to reverse the damage done by California Democrats and unleash American energy dominance.”

Richard Goldberg, a former senior counselor for the National Energy Dominance Council, which Mr. Trump created last year to coordinate energy policy, said the White House had genuine policy disagreements with California, but it also saw a political advantage in feuding with Mr. Newsom.

“I would say it’s probably a beneficial byproduct that it happens to be Newsom,” Mr. Goldberg said. “But regardless of who the governor is, California has important energy resources that are needed for the country’s national security.”

Sea lions resting on rocks along the Pacific Ocean at La Jolla Cove in San Diego.Mario Tama/Getty Images

California’s 840 miles of coastline are one of its most treasured resources, drawing millions of tourists and locals annually and stretching from redwood forests in the north to palm-tree-studded beaches in the south.

In his first term, Mr. Trump largely left the coast alone, with the exception of an unsuccessful attempt to spur offshore oil and gas drilling. This time, his administration has sought to bring not only more oil rigs, but also more pipelines and possibly more rocket launches by SpaceX from a coastal military base.

In November, the Interior Department announced a draft plan to allow new oil drilling in federal waters off California for the first time in roughly four decades. The plan called for up to six oil and gas lease sales in those waters, including in an expanse off Santa Barbara where a 1969 oil spill galvanized the modern environmental movement.

Asked about the proposal at the time, Mr. Newsom rolled his eyes and called it “dead on arrival in California.” He said that the state would “absolutely” challenge the plan in court once it was finalized.

The clash over the coast was just beginning, and an offshore oil pipeline would be the next sticking point.

In March, Mr. Trump ordered the Houston-based company Sable Offshore Corp. to restart its pipeline off Santa Barbara, even though state agencies had denied permits for the project, saying it had failed to fix damage that led to a 2015 oil spill. To justify the move, the president invoked a Cold War-era law that the administration said superseded state regulations.

The law, the Defense Production Act, has typically been used in emergencies like hurricanes and the Covid-19 pandemic. In this case, the administration said the emergency was an energy shortage in California fueled by the war in Iran, which had choked global oil supplies.

A sign advertising the presence of a crude oil pipeline at Baron Ranch Trails in Santa Barbara County.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

Yet the administration has also paid energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to cancel planned wind farms in the waters off California.

“It really is the definition of hypocrisy to say that we’re in a national energy emergency and we need to empower companies like Sable, but at the same time, we’re paying taxpayer dollars to not do offshore wind projects,” said Alex Katz, the executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, a nonprofit based in Santa Barbara.

Last week, the administration opened a new front in its efforts to wrest control of the coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration held a public hearing in Santa Monica, Calif., to reconsider the power of the California Coastal Commission, which for more than half a century has had the legal authority to review and object to federal actions or projects that affect coastal resources.

Mr. Trump has long complained about the commission, which once tried to stop him from erecting a 70-foot flag on his oceanfront golf course near Los Angeles. Elon Musk, a Trump ally, has also tangled with the agency over increasing the number of SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

The review could lead to the commission losing federal certification of its programs or federal grants that account for 10 percent of its budget. If the administration succeeds, it could also set a precedent for similar actions in other coastal states.

“There could be an impact on what happens in Oregon if California no longer has this authority,” said Charles Lester, a marine science researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a former executive director of the coastal commission.

A Multi-State Fight

Mr. Trump signed a resolution to revoke California’s power to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035. And Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has urged Congress to rescind waivers for other emissions rules affecting everything from light trucks to lawn mowers.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Another environmental showdown between California and the Trump administration could also reverberate far beyond the state’s borders, affecting vehicles sold across the country.

This fight dates back to the 1970s, when heavy smog choked Los Angeles. In response, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which explicitly allowed California to set automobile pollution standards that were stricter than federal rules, as long as the state obtained waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency. The landmark law also allowed other states to adopt California’s standards.

Ever since, the waivers have helped rein in smog-forming pollutants like soot and nitrogen dioxide that can contribute to asthma and lung disease. They have also been a powerful tool for curbing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.

Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have shattered that dynamic.

Last year, Mr. Trump signed a congressional resolution to revoke a waiver that had allowed California to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035. And in June, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, urged Congress to rescind waivers for four other emissions rules affecting everything from light trucks to lawn mowers.

California has filed multiple lawsuits to maintain its vehicle rules. At a hearing on Wednesday, a Justice Department attorney argued that the state lacked standing to sue over the four additional waivers because Congress hadn’t yet acted on them. A federal judge will soon decide that question.

The outcome of these legal battles could dictate the types of vehicles available at dealerships nationwide, said Casey Katims, the executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of governors working on climate policy. He noted that 11 other states have pledged to follow California’s lead in banning gas car sales by 2035, representing more than 40 percent of the U.S. vehicle market.

“Attempts to block climate progress in California,” he said, “don’t live just in California.”

Brad Plumer contributed reporting.

Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.“