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Trump Extinction Plan Guts Endangered Species Act
Today, against a backdrop of recent reports of global mass extinction, the Trump administration released final regulations weakening the Endangered Species Act, the nation's most effective tool in saving wildlife from extinction.
WASHINGTON
Today, against a backdrop of recent reports of global mass extinction, the Trump administration released final regulations weakening the Endangered Species Act, the nation's most effective tool in saving wildlife from extinction. The Trump Extinction Plan would gut critical endangered species protections by making it much more difficult to extend protections to threatened species, delaying lifesaving action until a species' population is potentially impossible to save; making it more difficult to protect polar bears, coral reefs, and other species that are impacted by the effects of climate change; allowing economic factors to be analyzed when deciding if a species should be saved; and making it easier for companies to build roads, pipelines, mines, and other industrial projects in critical habitat areas that are essential to imperiled species' survival.
These changes come in the wake of tremendous public opposition to weakening the protections of the Endangered Species Act. After the proposed rules were announced, more than 800,000 public comments were submitted opposing the changes. Last fall, 105 Members of Congress and 34 U.S. Senators sent letters to Trump's Department of the Interior to protest the harmful rollbacks. Ten states and the District of Columbia are also on record opposing the weakening of the Endangered Species Act as are more than 30 tribal nations.
The Endangered Species Act has been extremely effective; more than 99 percent of animals, plants and insects protected by the law have been saved from extinction. Endangered Species Act protection has saved some of the nation's most celebrated wildlife including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, American gray wolf and humpback whale. A 2018 survey found that four out of five Americans support the Endangered Species Act and just one in ten say they oppose it.
In response groups issued the following responses:
"Undermining this popular and successful law is a major step in the wrong direction as we face the increasing challenges of climate change and its effects on wildlife. The Endangered Species Act works; our communities-- both natural and human-- have reaped the benefits. This safety net must be preserved." -- Lena Moffitt, Our Wild America Campaign Senior Director, Sierra Club
"We are in the midst of an unprecedented extinction crisis, yet the Trump Administration is steamrolling our most effective wildlife protection law. This Administration seems set on damaging fragile ecosystems by prioritizing industry interests over science. We intend to fight these regulatory rollbacks so that we can preserve the natural world for generations to come." -- Rebecca Riley, Legal Director of the Nature Program, Natural Resources Defense Council
"The US Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to rescind these longstanding regulations eliminates many essential conservation tools that have protected imperiled species and their habitats for decades. With this drastic revision of core components of the ESA, the current administration is favoring industry at the expense of vulnerable wildlife. Increased threats from development and a changing climate necessitate the strong and full enforcement of the ESA now more than ever." -- Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute
"The Endangered Species Act protects ocean wildlife such as the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, which faces a multitude of threats. The genius of the Endangered Species Act is its recognition that not only do we need to protect vulnerable species, but also allow them to recover so they no longer need the protection of the Act. The Trump Administration's new regulations allow federal agencies to water down key elements of the law, putting the North Atlantic right whale and other endangered wildlife at greater risk of extinction." -- Lara Levison, Senior Director, Federal Policy for Oceana
"It is particularly egregious that the Trump Administration is steamrolling through unpopular rules that were issued by a Secretary of Interior who is under multiple investigations. Losing our biodiversity isn't something that any American can afford. We don't live in an enclosed man-made bubble--our health and safety, the health and safety of our children and grandchildren, our access to clean air and water, actually depends on biodiversity." -- Leda Huta, Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition
"The US Fish & Wildlife Service's decision to dismantle further the Endangered Species Act in favor of special interest groups will decrease critical protections and add increased pressure to species and entire ecosystems causing immeasurable death and destruction to wildlife and their habitat. The ESA has proven to be the most important law to preserve wildlife, and the American public must fight to uphold those critical protections." - Angela Grimes, CEO of Born Free USA
"Trump and Bernhardt's rollbacks undermine the very purpose of the Endangered Species Act which is to prevent extinction, recover imperiled animals and plants, and protect the ecosystems on which they depend. These rollbacks are a gift to their pals in industry that squarely violates federal law, which is why we're going to court." -- Drew Caputo, Earthjustice Vice-President of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife, and Oceans.
"At a time when nature is facing unprecedented challenges from a changing climate and the increasing sprawl of the human footprint on native habitats, weakening the Endangered Species Act is the last thing we should do. The ESA is a law that has worked brilliantly well for many decades because it gets the politics out of the way and requires all decisions affecting the fate of rare and imperiled plants and animals to be based solely on science instead. The proposal to tinker with the law that saved species ranging from the bald eagle to the black-footed ferret to the peregrine falcon is a cynical move designed to permit the extinction of the Earth's rich diversity of life." -- Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project
"As the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), releases a report detailing the deteriorating state of ecosystem health and the predicted mass loss of biodiversity, the Trump Administration is attempting to weaken Federal ESA protections that remain essential to facilitate species and habitat protection. Human population growth and conversion of natural habitats has led to environmental change unparalleled in history. We must do everything we can to maintain healthy populations of plants and animals in a time of rapid disappearance. Our very lives may depend on us paying our debts to the land and seeking balance between a growing human population and the diminishing resources of our planet." --Chris Bachman, Wildlife Program Director, The Lands Council
"Threatened and endangered fish, wildlife and plants in our national parks already face habitat changes and impacts of a climate crisis that is accelerating each year. Instead of working with Congress and states to better protect and restore wildlife as the climate changes, the Trump administration is reinterpreting the Endangered Species Act to weaken protections. The National Parks Conservation Association strongly opposes these final rules." -- Bart Melton, Wildlife Director for the National Parks Conservation Association.
"Weakening the Endangered Species Act is yet another example of the Trump administration's careless disregard for our nation's public lands and wildlife, and a blatant giveaway to extractive industries. It is especially egregious considering the recent U.N. report indicating that nearly 1 million species are threatened with extinction. We need to strengthen and fully fund the Act, not tear it down. We won't stand for it, and we will fight back to protect our natural heritage." --Taylor Jones, endangered species advocate, WildEarth Guardians
"The most comprehensive assessment of biodiversity ever completed was released earlier this year and shows that more than one million species are at risk of extinction. These species are inextricably linked to our own well-being, livelihoods, economies, food security, and overall survival. Gutting key protections of the Endangered Species Act is precisely the wrong action for the U.S. to be taking at this critical point in time. We must protect and conserve vulnerable species so that we may all thrive together." - Beth Allgood, U.S. Country Director, International Fund for Animal Welfare
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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'They're Not Just Cutting Medicaid': GOP Bill Would Trigger Over $500 Billion in Medicare Cuts
"This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare."
May 21, 2025
The sprawling reconciliation package that House Republicans are rushing through committee would trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released late Tuesday.
The CBO analysis, requested by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), came just hours before Republicans convened a dead-of-night House Rules Committee hearing on the budget legislation as they scramble to meet their Memorial Day deadline.
If enacted, the Republican bill would add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade by delivering another round of tax cuts skewed to the rich, partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and other programs.
According to the CBO, the bill's addition to the deficit would trigger a process known as sequestration under the Statutory Pay‑As‑You‑Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010, a law long reviled by progressives that requires spending cuts equal to legislation's average deficit impact.
Unless lawmakers offset the deficit impact of the Republican bill or agree to waive the PAYGO requirements—which the GOP measure does not do—the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "would be required to issue a sequestration order not more than 14 days after the end of the current session of Congress (excluding weekends and holidays) to reduce spending by $230 billion in fiscal year 2026," the CBO said.
"The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."
Under PAYGO, automatic Medicare cuts are capped at 4%. The CBO estimates that the Republican legislation would trigger roughly $45 billion in Medicare cuts in 2026 and a total of $490 billion in cuts to the program between 2027 and 2034.
"This Republican budget bill is one of the most expensive—and dangerous—bills Congress has seen in decades," said Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "The nonpartisan CBO makes it clear: The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."
"This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare," Boyle added. "It's reckless, dishonest, and deeply harmful to the middle class."
Boyle highlighted the CBO's findings during his testimony at the House Rules Committee hearing, which began in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
"This is really the breaking news," Boyle said. "Over the last several months, there's been no discussion of Medicare at all. There has been of Medicaid, but not of Medicare."
"Because of the size of the deficits, because of the PAYGO or Pay-As-You-Go Act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion," Boyle continued. "The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare."
Boyle: "This is really the breaking news ... because of the size of the deficits, because of the paygo act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion. The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare." pic.twitter.com/29mGQj0mgi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 21, 2025
Boyle and other Democrats said the looming Medicare cuts amount to a betrayal of President Donald Trump's vow to shield the program—a promise that was included in the GOP's 2024 election platform.
"They're not just cutting Medicaid," said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), referring to the reconciliation bill's roughly $600 billion in proposed cuts to the healthcare program for low-income Americans. "They're cutting Medicare too."
House Budget Committee Democrats wrote on social media that "Trump promised to protect Medicare."
"He lied," they added.
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Rising Seas From Fossil Fuels Threaten Inland Migration 'Never Witnessed in Modern Civilization'
With governments "scaling back their already meager" actions to tackle climate breakdown, said one ecologist, "our present-day human culture is on a suicide course."
May 20, 2025
Less than six months away from the next United Nations summit for parties to the Paris climate agreement, scientists on Tuesday released a study showing that even meeting the deal's 1.5°C temperature target could lead to significant sea-level rise that drives seriously disruptive migration inland.
Governments that signed on to the 2015 treaty aim to take action to limit global temperature rise by 2100 to 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels. Last year was not only the hottest in human history but also the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C. Multiple studies have warned of major impacts from even temporarily overshooting the target, bolstering demands for policymakers to dramatically rein in planet-heating fossil fuels.
The study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environmentwarns that 1.5°C "is too high" and even the current 1.2°C, "if sustained, is likely to generate several meters of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures."
"To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesize to be closer to +1°C above preindustrial, possibly even lower, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a 'safe limit' for ice sheets," the paper states, referring to Antarctica and Greenland's continental glaciers.
Co-author Jonathan Bamber told journalists that "what we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1 centimeter a year of sea-level rise."
"If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you're going to see massive land migration on scales that we've never witnessed in modern civilization," said the University of Bristol professor.
In terms of timing, study lead author Chris Stokes, from the United Kingdom's Durham University, said in a statement that "rates of 1 centimeter per year are not out of the question within the lifetime of our young people."
- YouTube
There are currently around 8.18 billion people on the planet. The study—funded by the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council—says that "continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world's coastal populations, with an estimated 1 billion people inhabiting land less than 10 meters above sea level and around 230 million living within 1 meter."
"Without adaptation, conservative estimates suggest that 20 centimeters of [sea-level rise] by 2050 would lead to average global flood losses of $1 trillion or more per year for the world's 136 largest coastal cities," says the study, also co-authored by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Andrea Dutton and University of Massachusetts Amherst's Rob DeConto in the United States.
DeConto said Tuesday that "it is important to stress that these accelerating changes in the ice sheets and their contributions to sea level should be considered permanent on multigenerational timescales."
"Even if the Earth returns to its preindustrial temperature, it will still take hundreds to perhaps thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover," the professor explained. "If too much ice is lost, parts of these ice sheets may not recover until the Earth enters the next ice age. In other words, land lost to sea-level rise from melting ice sheets will be lost for a very, very long time. That's why it is so critical to limit warming in the first place."
Not really a surprise We are already committed to a 12m+ sea-level rise, sufficient to drown every coastal town and city on the planet The only question is how long will this take www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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— Prof Bill McGuire (@profbillmcguire.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
While the paper sparked some international alarm, Stokes highlighted what he called "a reason for hope," which is that "we only have to go back to the early 1990s to find a time when the ice sheets looked far healthier."
"Global temperatures were around 1°C above preindustrial back then, and carbon dioxide concentrations were 350 parts per million, which others have suggested is a much safer limit for planet Earth," he said. "Carbon dioxide concentrations are currently around 424 parts per million and continue to increase."
The new paper continues an intense stream of bleak studies on the worsening climate emergency, and specifically, looming sea-level rise. Another, published by the journal Nature in February, shows that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
Despite scientists' warnings, the government whose country is responsible for the largest share of historical planet-heating emissions, the United States, is actually working to boost the fossil fuel industry. Upon returning to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump declared an "energy emergency" and ditched the Paris agreement.
Responding to the new study on social media, Scottish ecologist Alan Watson Featherstone called out both the U.S. and U.K. governments. He said that with many countries "scaling back their already meager and [totally] inadequate actions to address climate breakdown, our present-day human culture is on a suicide course."
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The 'Iron Stache' Is Back: Wisconsin Ironworker Randy Bryce Announces 2026 House Run
"With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress."
May 20, 2025
As congressional Republicans and the administration of President Donald Trump set their sites on slashing vital social services, former union ironworker-turned-progressive Democratic U.S. House candidate Randy Bryce announced Tuesday that he will seek to oust the incumbent Trump ally in 2026 and help save Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Bryce—also known as the "Iron Stache" due to his prominent moustache—is a disabled veteran who launched his 2018 campaign with a viral video skewering then-House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) attacks on healthcare. Bryce, who raised over $7 million with donations averaging around $25, won the Democratic primary but lost to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) in the 2018 general election.He aims to face Steil in the next cycle.
"Every great story begins with a spark. Ours began in 2018, when one man stood up to Washington," Bryce said in an ad released Tuesday announcing his new campaign for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District seat. "Now, as old enemies come out of the shadows, we need him one more time."
"Trump promised to bring manufacturing back," Bryce continued. "Eight years later, we're still waiting. We can't afford to wait any longer—not for jobs, or healthcare, or a damn living wage."
"This isn't about left versus right," he added. "This about the billionaires versus the rest of us, and we've got the numbers!"
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported Tuesday:
At the time, Bryce ran on supporting "Medicare for All" legislation, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and boosting unions. He remains a member of the Ironworkers Local 853 and in the years since his first campaign, he said, has served as a union representative, worked with Social Security Works, an advocacy group seeking to expand Social Security, and more recently has helped people with disabilities find work.
Like his ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Bryce believes that Democrats lack a coherent vision for defeating Trumpism and the oligarchy that's enriching itself at the expense of working-class Americans.
The solution? "With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress," Bryce toldCapital Times associate editor and Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols on Tuesday, referring to de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief and world's richest person, Elon Musk.
Working-class Dem Randy Bryce Takes On Trump Ally Bryan Steil For Key Wisconsin House Seat. — Bryce is the union Ironworker whose 2018 challenge to Speaker Paul Ryan went viral and, ultimately, saw Ryan decide to quit. Bryce says he’s running in 2026 to save Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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— John Nichols (@nicholsuprising.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 8:20 AM
"What Trump's doing, and what Bryan Steil is helping him do, is really scaring people," Bryce told Nichols. "I'm talking to veterans, to people who rely on Medicaid, to families that can't keep up with rising prices, to workers. They're all angry."
"You've got an administration that is strangling the Social Security system, laying off people, cutting services," he added. "The Republicans in Washington are pulling what's left of the rug out from under us. I just think this is a going to be an election where people in the 1st District say, Enough!"
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