Endangered Species Act of 1973

We can still hold it off with medicines, but I'm concerned that if this persists, it will lead to worse illnesses.

And the Trump administration's moving to gut a key provision of the Endangered Species Act, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times.

Under the memo's reinterpretation, only intentionally harming an animal would break the law.

Accidental killings or injuries due to economic activity would not.

Andrew Mergen, a law professor at Harvard University, said, quote, "'What the administration's proposing to do is take all the force out of what we've all understood the act to mean—don't kill endangered species.' What they seem to be saying in this document is, it doesn't matter if you killed an endangered species if you didn't mean to," unquote.

Twenty-one attorneys general have filed a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the new Endangered Species Act rules.

And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

In 1973, when I was three years old, our nation did something that was abomination.

We legalized abortion and passed the Endangered Species Act.

The same year, we said, let's protect the spotted owls and kill the babies.

You need to know this, we are God's men, and we are pro-God, and we are pro-life, and we wanna be fruitful and multiply, and we wanna increase in number, and we wanna fill the earth and subdue it, and if we have dominion, we will not apologize for it, we will exercise it.

We can still hold it off with medicines, but I'm concerned that if this persists, it will lead to worse illnesses.

And the Trump administration's moving to gut a key provision of the Endangered Species Act, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times.

Under the memo's reinterpretation, only intentionally harming an animal would break the law.

Accidental killings or injuries due to economic activity would not— Andrew Mergen, a law professor at Harvard University, said, quote, What the administration's proposing to do is take all the force out of what we've all understood the act to mean—don't kill endangered species.

What they seem to be saying in this document is it doesn't matter if you killed an endangered species if you didn't mean to, unquote.

Twenty-one attorneys general have filed a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the new Endangered Species Act rules.

And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

We can still hold it off with medicines, but I'm concerned that if this persists, it will lead to worse illnesses.

And the Trump administration's moving to gut a key provision of the Endangered Species Act, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times.

Under the memo's reinterpretation, only intentionally harming an animal would break the law.

Accidental killings or injuries due to economic activity would not— Andrew Mergen, a law professor at Harvard University, said, quote, What the administration's proposing to do is take all the force out of what we've all understood the act to mean—don't kill endangered species.

What they seem to be saying in this document is it doesn't matter if you killed an endangered species if you didn't mean to, unquote.

Twenty-one attorneys general have filed a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the new Endangered Species Act rules.

And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

Oh, you go.

And gutting the Endangered Species Act, Kim says, I can't.

I just can't.

This from a man whose sons murder animals in cold blood.

This from a man who's never welcomed a cat or a dog into his home.

He's a sociopath.

Yeah, they're, of course they're going after the Endangered Species Act.

They go after everything that is good and decent and right and humane and sane.

But Trump's decided that he wants to get rid of the rule.

And what's at stake is Over 400 species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act will be at risk.

Over 25 million people who depend on clean drinking water that come from our roadless forests, their water will be at risk.

Costs will increase.

So yes, the species large and small would be affected because so many wildlife make their home in these unfragmented and undeveloped forests.

So our report focused on species that are already imperiled.

They are already being protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Some have critical habitat designated and some unfortunately do not, but they're still protected under the act.

On Friday, September 4th, 2026, the President of the United States sat in the Oval Office with a group of ranchers and signed an executive order about wolves.

The order tells the Interior Department to study whether gray wolves still need protection under the Endangered Species Act.

That's all it does.

It starts a review.

Go back to the first Earth Day, April 1970.

Twenty million Americans in the streets, about one out of every ten people alive in the country at the time.

Out of that moment, in four years, came the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

And those were not even close votes.

Atlantic salmon used to migrate up Maine rivers by the thousands.

That's before the population was decimated by habitat destruction over fishing and hydro dams, and given federal protection under the Endangered Species Act almost 30 years ago.

Today, the only salmon left on the US East Coast are found in a few Maine rivers, and the effort to reintroduce them to the lower Kennebec has taken a generation.

You know, it's still we're going from a handful of fish up to our biggest year was about 150 fish here on the Kennebec River.