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lauren boebert
Genetic Technology Is No Solution for Species Loss
Rather than celebrating emerging and untested technology attempting to recreate animals that have long since been extinct, our focus must be on the real, present-day threats to existing species facing extinction.
Apr 22, 2025
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum quickly embraced news earlier this month of the misleadingly named “de-extinction technology” introduced by bioscience engineering company Colossal Biosciences. The premature and misguided celebration by Secretary Burgum, among many others, glosses over real, present-day conservation concerns and threatens progress to recover real species teetering on the edge of extinction.
Genetic technology to recreate long extinct species that will live the rest of their lives in captivity, held as curiosities for exhibition and publicity stunts, cannot be viewed as the solution to human-caused extinction.
Rather than celebrating emerging and untested technology attempting to recreate animals that have long since been extinct, our focus must be on the real, present-day conservation concerns and threats to existing species facing extinction. Our research efforts, conservation dollars, and legal tools should be focused on restoring and preserving the species currently on the ground and in need of help.
Genetically altering an animal to mimic one long-extinct species costs millions of dollars that could have been invested to prevent the extinction of over 1,600 species currently identified as endangered.
Instead, politicians vilify the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and claim we can Frankenstein our way to the future where nothing is natural but instead born out of a petri dish and raised in a man-made ecosystem.
If Secretary Burgum and the administration truly believed in wildlife conservation, they would not be opening massive swaths of our public lands to logging, drilling, and mining, nor would they be eliminating regulations critical to safeguarding endangered and imperiled species.
The ESA, a bipartisan federal statute enacted in 1973, has saved 99% of species listed under the law from the brink of extinction, yet has been chronically underfunded for years, starved of the resources it needs to achieve full recovery for imperiled species.
Genetically altering an animal to mimic one long-extinct species costs millions of dollars that could have been invested to prevent the extinction of over 1,600 species currently identified as endangered. In just the past few years, Colossal Biosciences raised over $430 million, enough to fully implement the ESA.
Meanwhile, representatives in Congress, like Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), are directly targeting laws that prevent wildlife extinction, including the ESA.
Rep. Boebert’s recently introduced bill, misleadingly named the “Pet and Livestock Protection Act,” would eliminate ESA protections for wolves in the lower 48 states. This bill does not protect pets and livestock; instead, it harms wolves and ignores both science and the courts, which have repeatedly affirmed that wolves need federal protections.
Rep. Westerman’s bill, the ESA Amendments Act of 2025, would make it more difficult to list species under the ESA, fast-track the elimination of protections for endangered species before they are ready, and remove scientists from the decision-making process.
Make no mistake, these bills and efforts by the Trump administration to kneecap the ESA and other federal conservation laws will undo 50 years of wildlife conservation success and put America’s imperiled wildlife at greater risk of extinction.
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Conservationists Sound Alarm as Republicans Take Aim at Endangered Species Act
"We are in a biodiversity crisis, and Congress is playing with fire," warned one wildlife defender. "These bills would accelerate extinction at a time when we can least afford it."
Mar 25, 2025
Green groups warned this week that a pair of Republican-led bills in the U.S. House of Representatives, including proposals to amend the Endangered Species Act and strip gray wolves of ESA protection, would, as Sierra Club said, "radically undercut the ability of the federal government to protect imperiled wildlife."
On Tuesday, the Republican-led House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries held legislative hearings on four bills, two of which involve the ESA.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said his ESA Amendments Act of 2025—which aims to streamline regulatory and permitting processes—is needed because "the Endangered Species Act has consistently failed to achieve its intended goals and has been warped by decades of radical environmental litigation into a weapon instead of a tool."
However, Sierra Club said Monday that the bill would "amend the ESA beyond recognition."
Congress is trying to kill the Endangered Species Act. New bill would amend iconic law's ability to protect wildlife. Today, a House committee held a hearing on a bill that would drastically limit the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect our country's imperiled wildlife.
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— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) March 25, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Earthjustice warned Tuesday that the legislation "would gut the critical protections that the ESA provides for thousands of imperiled species, upend the scientific consultation process (which has been the cornerstone of American species protection for 50 years), slow listings to a crawl while fast-tracking delistings, and allow much more exploitation of threatened species and shift their management out of federal hands to the states, even while they are still nationally listed."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said that the second bill, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act of 2025—which she introduced in January with Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)—would "remove the ability of progressive judges to get in the way of science and allow states to set their own rules and regulations for managing their gray wolf population" by delisting the species from the ESA within 60 days and prohibiting judicial review of the action.
During his first administration, U.S. President Donald Trumpdelisted gray wolves from the ESA across most of the country, a move that was reversed by a federal judge in 2022.
Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Ellen Richmond said Monday that "this bill is deceptively named and if enacted will directly undermine our nation's landmark conservation laws."
"Wolves play important roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and cutting short their recovery not only harms the species but also the incredible landscapes we all love," Richmond added.
Josh Osher, public policy director for Western Watersheds Project, said Tuesday: "We are in a biodiversity crisis, and Congress is playing with fire. These bills would accelerate extinction at a time when we can least afford it."
"The Endangered Species Act isn't just about saving wolves, grizzlies, or sea turtles—it's about protecting the ecosystems that sustain us all," Osher added. "Weakening these protections pushes our planet further into collapse. Congress must open its eyes and reject these reckless attacks before it's too late."
On Monday, dozens of green groups sent a letter to senior lawmakers on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee urging them to reject the two bills, arguing they would "dramatically weaken the ESA and make it harder, if not impossible, to achieve the progress we must make to address the alarming rate of extinction our planet now faces."
The two bills come amid wider Republican attacks on the ESA by members of Congress and the Trump administration, including Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. In a bid to boost logging on public lands, Trump is planning to establish a so-called "God Squad" committee that could veto ESA protections. DOGE, meanwhile, has fired hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees while ordering a hiring freeze on seasonal workers tasked with species protection.
"The Endangered Species Act is one of the country's most popular and successful conservation laws, and Donald Trump wants to throw it in the garbage to pad the bottom lines of his corporate supporters," Sierra Club deputy legislative director for wildlife and lands protection Bradley Williams said on Monday. "Since day one of his administration, Trump has shown again and again that he wants to hand over control of our public lands and waters to billionaires and corporations. Imperiled wildlife will suffer the consequences."
"For more than 50 years, the United States has made amazing progress bringing species back from the brink of extinction," Williams added. "It's because of the ESA that species like the grizzly bear and bald eagle are living symbols of America and not just photos in a history book. If Trump and his allies in Congress get their way, that progress won't just come to a screeching halt—it could be completely reversed."
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Progressives Condemn GOP Attempts to Blame Biden for Trump Rally Shooting
"This stuff is basically cooked up in a lab to incite further violence," said one critic of comments made by Sen. J.D. Vance, Rep. Mike Collins, and other allies of Trump.
Jul 14, 2024
As federal law enforcement officials launched a full investigation into the shooting at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, journalists and political observers expressed fear that the act of violence would ramp up political division and turmoil in the United States ahead of the November elections.
Boston Globe reporter James Pindell was among the journalists at the rally who shared that Trump supporters "turned on the media"—a frequent target of Trump during his presidency—after the shooting.
"The crowd was angry," he wrote. "Middle fingers were everywhere. They asked the press if they were happy and blamed the media. 'You did this,' they said to reporters."
Allies of Trump including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), and former White House adviser Stephen Miller immediately placed blame with President Joe Biden, claiming the attack was the result of warnings that electing the former president to a second term would threaten democracy.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) denounced Collins' claim that Biden "sent the orders," calling it "a continuation of the bullshit rhetoric that drives political violence."
"A likely assassination attempt and gun violence on Trump is awful on many levels," said Pocan. "Adding jet fuel to the political climate is unbecoming of a member of Congress."
Trump, who spread baseless lies that the 2020 election was rigged against him and urged his supporters to riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Congress was certifying the results, has said he would act as a dictator on "day one" of his potential presidency.
Dozens of people who worked in his administration helped to write Project 2025, a far-right political agenda aimed at consolidating power with the president and dismantling parts of the federal government, and he has named political opponents he aims to prosecute and pledged to deploy the military to stop political protests.
"One response to Trump's attempted shooting (apparently by a registered Republican) we must NOT take is to stop framing the existential nature of this election," said political organizer Aaron Regunberg. "The problem isn't Democrats saying Trump is attacking our democracy—the problem is that he's attacking our democracy."
One audience member was killed and two were seriously injured after the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, fired several shots from a rooftop near Butler Farm Show, where the rally was held.
Trump was escorted off the stage after a bullet "pierced the upper part of his right ear," The New York Times reported. The Secret Service reported that Crooks had been killed after firing his weapon, and that officials found an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle near his body.
Authorities did not identify a motive for the shooting.
Crooks was registered as a Republican in his hometown; records also showed that someone named Thomas Crooks donated $15 to a liberal voter turnout campaign called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.
"This remains an active and ongoing investigation," said the FBI in a statement Sunday, as law enforcement agents closed down all roads leading to the home of the suspect's family in Bethel Park in the Pittsburgh area.
David Hogg, who survived the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting and co-founded March for Our Lives, said the gunman's ability to fire at the president and kill an audience member while in the presence of Secret Service agents and police is the latest proof that people across the U.S. are vulnerable to gun violence due to a lack of strict gun control laws, which Republican lawmakers have long refused to pass.
"What happened today is unacceptable and what happens every day to kids who aren't the president and don't survive isn't either," said Hogg. "It's insane we have such a major problem with gun violence in America that no one—not even a presidential candidate—is safe."
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