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Trump Proposal to Weaken Endangered Species Act Will 'Accelerate the Extinction Crisis,' Green Groups Warn
The proposal "could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth," said the Sierra Club’s executive director.
Nov 19, 2025
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm about a slate of new proposals from the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which they say will put more imperiled species in danger to line the pockets of the wealthy.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it would once again roll back several key provisions of the ESA. Many had been in place for decades before they were slashed during President Donald Trump's first term. They were then restored under former President Joe Biden.
"These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach, delivering certainty to states, tribes, landowners, and businesses while ensuring conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry.
But some of the nation's leading environmental groups say the proposals will allow the government to flout science and approve new projects that will destroy the habitats of vulnerable creatures and accelerate the already worsening extinction crisis.
“The ESA is one of the world’s most powerful laws for conservation and is responsible for keeping 99% of listed species from extinction,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.
The group said the changes "could accelerate the extinction crisis we face today." According to a 2023 investigation by the Montana Free Press, the ESA has prevented 291 species from going extinct since it was passed in 1973. At that point, around 40% of all animals and 34% of plants were considered at risk of extinction according to NatureServe, a nonprofit that collects conservation data.
“The ESA is only as effective as the regulations that implement it," Davenport said. “Rolling back these regulations risks reversing the ESA’s historic success and threatens the well-being of plant and animal species that pollinate our crops, generate medicine, keep our waterways clean, and support local economies.”
One of the rules being rolled back requires species to receive "blanket" protections when they are added to the list of threatened species. Instead of those blanket protections—which protect these newly-added species from killing, trapping, and other forms of harm—the FWS will instead create individual designations for each species.
According to Jackson Chiappinelli, a spokesperson for Earthjustice, some of the species that would lose protection under this rule would be the Florida manatee, California spotted owl, greater sage grouse, and monarch butterfly, which it said could remain unprotected for years after being listed.
Another major change would let the government consider "economic impacts" when deciding which habitats are required to be protected. In 1982, Congress modified the ESA to clarify that the secretary of the interior must make decisions "solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available," an amendment specifically intended to prevent economic factors from overawing environmental concerns.
The Interior Department said "the revised framework provides transparency and predictability for landowners and project proponents while maintaining the service’s authority to ensure that exclusions will not result in species extinction."
But Chiappinelli contends that the change would "violate the letter of the law" and warns that "the federal government could decide against protecting an endangered species after considering lost revenue from prohibiting a golf course or hotel development to be built where the species lives."
"If finalized, the rules would bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses, obstruct the ability to list new protected species, and make it easier to remove those now on the federal endangered or threatened list," said Ian Brickey, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club.
The proposed rules would also reduce the requirements for other federal agencies to consult with wildlife agencies to determine whether their actions could harm critical habitats. It also eliminates the requirement for agencies to "offset" habitat damage when approving new projects, such as logging or drilling, that harm protected species.
“Without rigorous consultations,” Davenport said, “projects could push species like the northern spotted owl and Cook Inlet beluga whale closer to extinction.”
The new proposals follow several efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections for endangered species. Earlier this year, it proposed weakening the half-century-old definition of what counts as "harm" to endangered species to exclude habitat destruction.
The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has proposed rescinding the 2001 "Roadless Rule," which has shielded nearly 45 million acres of protected national forest from logging, oil and gas drilling, and road construction.
Amid the government shutdown, the administration announced its intent to lay off more than 2,000 Interior Department employees, including 143 from the FWS, though a federal judge blocked those layoffs.
It also attempted to sneak a provision into July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have mandated the sale of millions of acres of public lands, but it was stripped out in the Senate following fierce backlash.
"The Trump administration is stopping at nothing in its quest to put corporate polluters over people, wildlife and the environment," said Loren Blackford, the Sierra Club's executive director. "These regulations attempt to undermine the implementation of one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, and they could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth."
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Warren, Jayapal Introduce Bill Aimed at Curbing Corporate Meddling in Regulations
“While Donald Trump keeps selling away influence over our government, we’re fighting to ensure the rules are being written to help working Americans, not corporate interests," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Nov 19, 2025
Two progressive Democrats are teaming up to push legislation to curb corporate America's capture of the federal government's regulatory process.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday announced a new bill called the Experts Protect Effective Rules, Transparency, and Stability (EXPERTS) Act that aims to restore the role of subject matter experts in federal rulemaking.
Specifically, the bill would codify the Chevron doctrine, a 40-year legal precedent overturned last year by the US Supreme Court, which held that courts should be broadly deferential to decisions made by independent regulatory agencies about interpretations of congressional statutes.
The legislation would also push for more transparency by requiring the disclosure of funding sources for all "scientific, economic, and technical studies" that are submitted to agencies to influence the rulemaking process.
Additionally, the bill proposes speeding up the regulatory process by both "excluding private parties from using the negotiated rulemaking process" and reinstating a six-year limit for outside parties to file legal challenges to agencies' decisions.
In touting the legislation, the Democrats pitched it as a necessary tool to rein in corporate power.
“Many Americans are taught in civics classes that Congress passes a law and that’s it, but the reality is that any major legislation enacted must also be implemented and enforced by the executive branch to become a reality,” said Jayapal. “We are seeing the Trump administration dismantle systems created to ensure that federal regulation prioritizes public safety. At a time when corporations and CEOs have outsized power, it is critical that we ensure that public interest is protected. This bill will level the playing field to ensure that laws passed actually work for the American people."
Warren, meanwhile, argued that "giant corporations and their armies of lobbyists shouldn’t get to manipulate how our laws are implemented," and said that "while Donald Trump keeps selling away influence over our government, we’re fighting to ensure the rules are being written to help working Americans, not corporate interests."
The proposal earned an enthusiastic endorsement from Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert, who described it as "the marquee legislation to improve our regulatory system."
"The bill aims directly at the corporate capture of our rulemaking process, brings transparency to the regulatory review process and imposes a $250,000 fine on corporations that submit false information, among other things," she said. "The bill is essential law for the future of our health, safety, environment, and workers. Public Citizen urges swift passage in both chambers."
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'Should Be Immediately Disbarred': Trump-Picked Prosecutor's Blunder in Comey Case Leaves Experts Stunned
"I honestly didn't even know this was a mistake you could make," said one observer.
Nov 19, 2025
Legal experts and reporters reacted with shock on Wednesday after Trump-appointed interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan acknowledged that a grand jury never voted on the operative indictment filed against former FBI Director James Comey.
Politico reports that the admission appears to have put the Comey prosecution "in serious jeopardy," as Halligan told US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff the grand jury never saw the final indictment that was handed down in September that charged Comey with one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding.
The final indictment was a revised version of an originally proposed three-count indictment that needed to be changed after the grand jury rejected one of the proposed charges against Comey.
Former federal prosecutor Ken White attempted to piece together exactly what Halligan did in a post on Bluesky.
"So here’s what apparently happened: they tried to indict Comey on the last day of the statute with a three-count indictment," he explained. "The grand jury rejected one. Rather than cross it out or indicate on the indictment that only two of the three counts were voted upon, Halligan creates a new indictment, which shows only the two counts they true billed, and has the foreperson sign it without presenting it to the grand jury."
Assistant US Attorney Tyler Lemons told Nachmanoff that it was necessary to revise the indictment on short notice after grand jurors no-billed one of the charges since the statute of limitations for Comey's alleged crimes was set to expire within mere hours.
"They really had no other way to return it," he told the court.
Nonetheless, many observers expressed shock that Halligan could make such an elementary error that could singlehandedly get the entire case against Comey dismissed.
"Lindsey Halligan should be immediately disbarred," wrote Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at the Georgia State College School of Law, in a post on X.
Political and leadership consultant Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, a former human rights attorney, also believed that Hallingan should face severe consequences for pushing forward with an indictment that had not been voted on by a full grand jury.
"This should result in the interim US Attorney losing her bar license," she wrote on Bluesky. "Never, in almost 30 years as an attorney, have I heard of this big of an intentional fuck up before a grand jury."
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) argued that Halligan's actions were enough to justify her termination as interim US attorney.
"In a normal Department of Justice not run by hacks and sycophants and malicious clowns," he wrote, "Lindsey Halligan would resign and the indictment against James Comey would be dismissed."
Quinta Jurecic, a longtime legal journalist who writes for The Atlantic, said that she found Halligan's error to be "impressive" because "I honestly didn't even know this was a mistake you could make."
Anti-Trump attorney George Conway, meanwhile, encouraged his followers on X to "please remember to give thanks to the Lord that Trump and his people are so unbelievably incompetent."
Maya Sen, a political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School, drew a line between the quality of legal competence in the Comey case and a three-judge panel in Texas shooting down the administration's efforts to redraw Texas' congressional map as part of a mid-decade gerrymandering scheme.
"High levels of incompetence between this and the DOJ-TX gerrymandering situation," she wrote on X. "It's hard to find people with high levels of competence and expertise when maximizing on ideological and personal loyalty, and this is a problem for [Republicans] in the age of educational polarization."
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