We prove that (possibly charged) test fields satisfying the null energy condition at the event horizon cannot overspin/overcharge extremal Kerr-Newman or Kerr-Newman-anti de Sitter black holes, that is, the weak cosmic censorship conjecture cannot be violated in the test field approximation. The argument relies on black hole thermodynamics (without assuming cosmic censorship), and does not depend on the precise nature of the fields. We also discuss generalizations of this result to other extremal black holes.