In at least two executive orders since he took office last week, President Trump has invoked a panel with a telling nickname: the God Squad.

The committee is made up of high-level officials who can override the landmark Endangered Species Act so that development or other projects can proceed even if they might result in an extinction. It’s called the God Squad because its members “literally have the authority over the life and death of the species,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School who, in the late 1970s, had a hand in writing the legislative language that created the God Squad provision.

“They can cause the species to go extinct from the face of the earth,” he said.

The power to convene the committee comes from an amendment to the act itself, but it has rarely been used. And just because Mr. Trump says he plans to use it now, legal experts emphasize, it doesn’t mean he will be successful. There are stringent procedural requirements that have to come first.

Officially named the Endangered Species Committee,ss777 the group is led by the interior secretary and composed of five other senior officials: the secretaries of agriculture and the Army, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Each has a vote.

It also includes one person each from any affected states, whose votes collectively add up to one.

When a federal action in question is deemed to be in the public interest and is nationally or regionally significant, the members of the committee can decide that major economic factors outweigh the Endangered Species Act’s requirements.

If five of the seven votes are in favor of a project proceeding, it can do so.

The God Squad has ruled three times since it was created in 1978. One exemption was denied, and two were permitted.

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