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Trump Proposal Called a 'Death Sentence for Plants and Animals on the Brink of Extinction'
"Humanity's survival depends on biodiversity, and no one voted to fast-track extinction," one conservationist stressed. "This is a five-alarm fire."
Apr 09, 2025
A leading conservation group is sounding the alarm over a new Trump administration attack on threatened and endangered species: an attempt to redefine "harm" as it relates to a key federal law.
The law? The Endangered Species Act (ESA), a longtime target of U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, despite being signed in 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Tuesday noticed that the Department of the Interior—now led by Trump appointee Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry—sent a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review.
The Monday proposal is not yet available, but on a public online dashboard it is titled, "Redefinition of 'Harm.'" There is also a Tuesday submission from the Department of Commerce titled, "Defining 'Harm' Under the Endangered Species Act."
CBD called it "the first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants and animals headed toward extinction."
"The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis."
Under the ESA, people cannot "take" an endangered species of fish or wildlife—and take is defined as "harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect." Within that definition, harm means injuring or killing wildlife.
The law states that "such act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering."
Noah Greenwald, CBD's co-director of endangered species, explained Tuesday that "weakening the definition of harm would cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act and be a death sentence for plants and animals on the brink of extinction."
"The Trump administration has been systematically killing protections for our air, water, wildlife, and climate like a vicious cancer," he continued. "The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis. We'll keep fighting for each and every one of these plants and animals."
"Unless habitat destruction is prohibited, spotted owls, sea turtles, salmon and so many more animals and plants won't have a chance," Greenwald warned. "Humanity's survival depends on biodiversity, and no one voted to fast-track extinction. This is a five-alarm fire."
TRUMP TO ENDANGERED SPECIES: DROP DEAD! The Trump administration launched a process to redefine what it means to “harm” threatened & endangered species, the first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants & animals headed toward extinction. biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...
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— Ted Zukoski (@tedzukoski.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 4:04 PM
The redefinition push is just part of the GOP's assault on the ESA. As Common Dreamsreported in late March, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have been working to advance a pair of laws, the ESA Amendments Act, which aims to streamline regulatory and permitting processes, and the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, which would strip federal protections from the gray wolf within 60 days and prohibit judicial review of the action.
There have also been direct attacks on the law from the White House. When Trump returned to office in January, he swiftly declared a "national energy emergency" intended to deliver on his promise to "drill, baby, drill" for climate-wrecking fossil fuels. A section of the executive order effectively says the ESA can't be an obstacle to energy development, which concerned conservationists.
"This executive order, in a lot of ways, is a gift to the oil and gas industry and is being sold as a way to respond to the emergency declaration by President Trump," Gib Brogan, a campaign director with conservation group Oceana, toldThe Associated Press in January. "There is no emergency. The species continue to suffer. And this executive order will only accelerate the decline of endangered species in the United States."
CBD's Greenwald also blasted the order at the time, declaring that "with U.S. oil production at an all-time high, the real national emergencies are the extinction crisis and climate change."
"We're losing plant and animal species at an unprecedented rate, and our planet is heating up with dangerous speed," he stressed, just weeks after the conclusion of the hottest year in human history. "Extinction and climate change are chewing up the web of life that ultimately supports virtually everything we know and love, and Trump's order will only accelerate the destruction."
"This executive order is a death warrant for polar bears, lesser prairie chickens, whooping cranes and so many more species on the brink of extinction," he added. "This unconscionable measure is completely out of step with most Americans, an overwhelming majority of whom support protecting species from extinction and preserving our natural heritage. We'll use every legal tool we can to ensure dangerous fossil fuel projects don’t drive species to extinction."
The president continues to pursue fossil fuel-friendly executive actions. On Tuesday, he signed multiple orders that aim to boost the coal industry—which Jason Rylander of CBD's Climate Law Institute said "take his worship of dirty fossil fuels to a gross and disturbingly reckless new level."
"Forcing old coal plants to keep spewing pollution into our air and water means more cancer, more asthma, and more premature deaths," Rylander noted. "This is yet another assault on efforts to preserve a livable climate, and it's now abundantly clear that Trump's promise to give America the cleanest air and water was a bold-faced lie."
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Watchdogs Warn Trump Pick for Interior Will Assist Corporate Attack on Public Lands
The Trump administration is "plotting to sell off America's national public lands to their billionaire friends, and Kate MacGregor is the perfect henchwoman."
Apr 02, 2025
Watchdog groups are warning that U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Kate MacGregor—who they call a friend of the fossil fuel industry—will be an enthusiastic accomplice in the Trump administration's efforts to open up public land to oil and gas leasing.
Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk "are plotting to sell off America's national public lands to their billionaire friends, and Kate MacGregor is the perfect henchwoman," said Alan Zibel, a research director with the watchdog Public Citizen, in a statement on Wednesday.
MacGregor, an energy company executive who was deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration from early 2020 until January 2021 had her confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Oil Change International's U.S. campaign manager Collin Rees blasted MacGregor over her testimony, including support for legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) that would require the Interior Department to hold two offshore oil and gas lease sales per year for 10 years.
MacGregor's previous time in the Interior Department, showed she "prioritized fossil fuel interests over the good of the American people."
"Her support for a decade of at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales is completely incompatible with avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis, as well as the Department of Interior's mandate to protect public lands and waters," Rees said.
In 2017, as an aide to then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, MacGregor helped successfully fast track a permit for an oil firm to begin fracking on a patch of farmland in Oklahoma, according to 2019 reporting from the investigative outlet Reveal.
"While a senior staffer of the House Committee on Natural Resources, she developed strong ties to the energy industry and its lobbyists," according to Reveal. "In recent years, she has also built a public profile as an advocate of offshore oil drilling and a foe of any environmental rules that might limit energy production."
According to a record of her work calendar, which was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the nonprofit publication Pacific Standard, MacGregor met over 100 times with extractive industry groups or representatives between January of 2017 and January of 2018, when she was at the Department of the Interior but not yet the deputy secretary.
Pointing to MacGregor's background, executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US Tony Carrk said that with MacGregor's nomination, Trump "continues to build a dream team of big oil and gas shills to ravage America's public lands, while taxpayers and our environment deal with all the fallout."
Zibel of Public Citizen also noted that "public lands belong to all Americans, not wealthy corporate executives."
Meanwhile, Public Citizen is also sounding the alarm on the expected appointment of Matt Giacona, a lobbyist for the National Ocean Industries Association—which represents oil, gas, and wind companies working offshore—to head the Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The current person leading BOEM is retiring, according to Politico Pro.
In response to the potential appointment of Giacona to BOEM, which oversees offshore energy production in deep waters, director of Public Citizen's energy program Tyson Slocum on Wednesday said: "Trump Appointing a Big Oil lobbyist to oversee deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico shows that the administration's goal is to empower and enrich powerful corporations at the expense of everyone and everything else."
"This continues the clear trend of Trump turning federal agencies and the public good into profit opportunities for powerful corporate interests," he said.
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'Vulnerable Children' at Risk as Trump Halts Legal Aid for Unaccompanied Migrant Youth
The move was denounced by one immigrant rights advocate as "an affront to American values."
Feb 19, 2025
Migrant rights advocates are forcefully denouncing the Trump administration's move this week to cut off legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children.
Multiple organizations said Tuesday that they had received a "stop-work order" emailed from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Among them was Acacia Center for Justice. CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez shared a partly redacted copy on social media.
"Acacia's Unaccompanied Children Program provides legal representation to over 26,000 children in and released from Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, protecting children from trafficking, abuse, and exploitation, helping immigration courts run smoother, and ensuring a modicum of due process, so that children navigating the immigration system alone understand their rights and legal obligations," the group's executive director, Shaina Aber, said in a Tuesday statement.
"This decision flies in the face of ensuring children who have been trafficked or are at risk of trafficking have child-friendly legal representatives protecting their legal rights and interests," Aber continued. "The administration's decision to suspend this program undermines due process, disproportionately impacts vulnerable children, and puts children who have already experienced severe trauma at risk for further harm or exploitation."
Immigrant Defenders Law Center president and CEO Lindsay Toczylowski similarly said Tuesday that "the safety and welfare of children in government custody should be the primary concern of our elected leaders. Today's decision by the Trump administration to eliminate access to counsel for 26,000 children is an affront to American values. The Trump administration is abandoning children for the sake of politics and leaving kids to fend for themselves against our complex immigration system."
According toMother Jones, in addition to causing about 26,000 children to lose their legal representation—absent outside funding—the new order will lead to about 100,000 kids "missing out on programs designed to educate them about their rights."
President Donald Trump is known globally for forcibly separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border during his first term and last year campaigned on various harsh immigration policies, including mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship. Since returning to office last month, the Republican has taken steps to enact his anti-immigrant agenda.
"Trump's decision to slash a 20-year-old program meant to safeguard the rights of the most vulnerable among us will only cause more chaos in our immigration courts and violates our commitment to children's safety," said Toczylowski. "We will continue to fight for their right to legal representation and to uphold our ethical and professional obligations. We urge the government to restore services immediately to protect children's rights. Our government will be judged by how it treats children in its care. By all standards, this administration is failing them and self-inflicting a black eye as the rest of the world watches."
National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) executive director Mary Meg McCarthy said Tuesday that "the Trump administration continues to choose politics over the rule of law and cruelty over humane treatment of children." She also said that "this denial of congressionally appropriated funding violates federal law," and mirrors Trump's "mass firings and funding cuts of essential programs and agencies across the U.S. government."
As McCarthy explained:
Decades ago, Congress passed the bipartisan Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) that recognized the unique vulnerability of children who travel alone to seek protection in the United States. The TVPRA codified the federal government's obligation to ensure these children have legal representation so they do not face the risk of deportation without due process. Most unaccompanied children are eligible for permanent status in the United States under current laws. Attorneys help them safeguard their rights under U.S. law, connect them to essential services, and shield them from exploitation and trafficking
[...]
Last month, NIJC and other legal service providers successfully sued the Trump administration following the unlawful stoppage of another congressionally funded legal service program. The administration's failure yet again to uphold its legal and ethical duties does not eliminate NIJC attorneys' ethical obligations to the hundreds of children we've committed to represent. We call on members of Congress to vocally oppose this egregious abuse of power by the executive branch.
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center wrote in a lengthy email about the order that "MIRC condemns this cruel action from the Trump administration, designed to inflict further suffering on vulnerable children and families," including victims of labor trafficking and child abuse.
MIRC also noted that "abruptly terminating statutorily mandated services violates the TVPRA, as well as the government's clear obligations to children that it has otherwise agreed to during litigation, including the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) and the relatively recent Ms. L v. ICE settlement designed to prevent family separation, among other critical protections."
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