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An ethics and accountability organization is calling for a special investigation into U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, for a sweetheart deal he enjoys: A $1 million luxury home bought for him about the time he was elected and to which he has complete access.

Without paying rent.

It is the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust that charges that Warnock is living rent-free in a home that Ebenezer Baptist Church bought in 2022 for $989,000 just as he was elected to the Senate, but he “has not included any information about being provided housing on his financial disclosure report.”

He does report an annual “income” from the church of just under what the Senate determined is a maximum amount a senator can “earn” from an outside source, a limit that was about $32,000 in 2023.

In a letter to Sen James Lankford, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, the organization said, “The rules which allow for a senator to accept lodging or housing are only applicable in a narrow set of circumstances—they are not an open-ended loophole that can be abused. Aside from the letter of the law laid out here, which is extremely clear and persuasive, this is a matter of plain common sense.

“It is difficult to fathom any citizen could look at this situation (a U.S. senator being a part-time employee of an organization that happens to buy him a million-dollar house to live in for free after he was elected to Congress, and after which he sells his own house) and not think something potentially very wrong is afoot. One must ask, if the laws written do not prohibit this particular situation or, at a bare minimum, at least merit a mere investigation, then what were they even written for? It is inarguable that the known facts do not appear to comply with the Senate ethics rules.”

Implicated in the situation are ethics rules and conflicts of interest and corruption.

“Senators must conduct themselves according to the Senate Ethics Rules and the Senate ‘may discipline a member for any misconduct, including conduct or activity which does not directly relate to official duties, when such conduct unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole.’ One theme throughout federal law and Senate Ethics rules is that members may not generally accept anything of value unless an identified exception applies, and if they do accept something it must be disclosed to the public. These laws address both conflicts of interest and corruption of members of Congress. Senator Warnock’s acceptance of lavish housing and failure to disclose it implicates federal law and several Senate rules,” the complaint explained.

A report at the Free Beacon noted that the free home for Warnock, “came equipped with a plethora of luxury accommodations, including a 100-bottle wine fridge, a bluetooth-enabled cooking range, and remote-controlled privacy curtains.”

The complaint noted the free home is “a great deal for Warnock, but it may violate Senate ethics rules that limit how much lawmakers can accept from outside employment.”

“This is a matter of plain common sense,” FACT executive director Kendra Arnold said in the complaint.

Possible standards being violated include the Ethics in Government Act.

Arnold explained the salary, plus the free housing appear to be “excessive and unreasonable for the services he is actually performing.”

The Free Beacon explained, “Arnold’s belief that Warnock’s housing benefit is excessive is shared by Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church by the civil rights icon in 1965. Brinson said during an interview with a local activist in March that King ‘would have never endorsed’ church funds being used to facilitate luxury living for its pastor. Brinson said Ebenezer Baptist Church’s housing allowance was designed to provide modest accommodations for its pastors.”

The report also pointed out that the church itself was involved in a scandal over housing and its costs, when, while underwriting Warnock’s living arrangements, officials there “tried to evict residents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for as little as $28.55 in past-due rent” from a low-income apartment building the church owns.

A new report in the Federalist is warning that the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a new campaign with the goal of attacking, even eliminating, Christianity.

The new rules, to become effective May 1, are needed to fight “extremism,” the party charges, and will require foreign missionaries to get government approval for lectures, sermons and group activities.

“Additionally, the regulation includes a comprehensive set of restrictions that prohibit foreign missionaries from engaging in activities such as ‘Recruiting religious believers among Chinese citizens and appointing religious clergy,’ ‘Organizing and carrying out religious education and training,’ ‘accepting religious donations from Chinese organizations and citizens,’ and producing, distributing, and selling religious materials.”

Violators, the CCP charges, are criminals.

A report by Breitbart charges the agenda is “to formally end Christian missionary activity.”

And persecution.org explains the reason: Fear of churches.

“The CCP has long viewed independent religious activity with suspicion, arguing that religious loyalty is at odds with the ultimate loyalty demanded by the Communist Party. The government labels independent religious activity as cultish and extremist, regardless of its theological roots, and demands that all Christian religious activity take place within the confines of state-run churches.”

The Federalist report explained, “The new regulation is the latest example of the CCP’s deep-seated animosity toward all religions, especially Christianity. Between the 1980s and early 2000s, China’s Christian population surged significantly, with estimates in 2018 indicating it may range from 100 to 200 million — outnumbering the nearly 100 million members of the CCP itself.

“The CCP, an atheist organization, is alarmed by the rapid growth of Christians. One of the CCP’s worst fears is that the devotion to God could erode loyalty to the party and thus threaten its very legitimacy. As a result, the CCP sees Christianity as an existential threat.”

China’s chief, the report said, has worked to force all faiths and churches to “align” with the CCP agenda, to persecute believers who fail to follow his orders, and use laws the attack religion.

The report explained, “A well-known instance of the sinicization of Christianity is the CCP’s insistence on selecting Catholic bishops. This practice clearly violates the Catholic Church’s principle that only the pope has the authority to appoint bishops. Other examples of sinicization include authorities’ instruction that both Catholic and Protestant congregations must prioritize patriotism over religion. In some impoverished areas, local officials compelled villagers to replace posters of Jesus with portraits of Xi Jinping and Chairman Mao, despite Mao in particular being responsible for the worst mass murders in human history.”

The report noted the CCP even has made plans to “retranslate and annotate the Bible to align with socialism and establish a correct understanding of the text.”

Primary targets of the CCP now are “house churches,” those that do not seek approval of the government to operate.

“The website of China Aid, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for religious freedom, is filled with stories of religious persecution under the Communist regime,” the report said. “For instance, local police in Suizhou City, Hubei Province, arrested 28 Christians from a house church on charges of ‘using a cult organization to undermine the implementation of the law.’”

The 2025 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in fact, places China among the worst violators of religious freedom globally.

China previously had banned anyone under 18 from entering a religious site or getting religious education, claiming the goal is to establish “a correct worldview.”

“This draconian enforcement has led to the closure of Sunday schools and youth summer camps, as well as legal threats directed at Sunday school teachers, church leaders, and parents,” the report said.

President Donald Trump unleashed an attack on his own chairman of the Federal Reserve on Monday, calling Jerome Powell “a major loser” and “Mr. Too Late.”

His verbal assault on Truth Social focused on the possibility of cuts in interest rates.

“‘Preemptive Cuts’ in Interest Rates are being called for by many,” Trump began.

“With Energy Costs way down, food prices (including Biden’s egg disaster!) substantially lower, and most other ‘things’ trending down, there is virtually No Inflation.

“With these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted they would do, there can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.

“Europe has already ‘lowered’ seven times. Powell has always been ‘To Late,’ except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected. How did that work out?” Trump concluded.

With a history in investment banking, Powell became a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors after being nominated to the post by Barack Obama in 2012.

During his first term, President Trump elevated Powell to chairman of the Fed in 2018, succeeding Janet Yellen, and Powell was renominated to the position by Joe Biden.

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A federal judge has canceled a Joe Biden-era rule that required businesses to promote abortion.

The rule, perpetrated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Biden, demanded that employers provide abortion-related leave and other practices that violated the beliefs of a multitude of business operators and owners.

A report in the Washington Stand explained the impact of the ruling from Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee to the District Court of North Dakota, is that 9,000 Catholic businesses now do not have to grant abortion leave and other practices contrary to their beliefs.

The EEOC under Biden, who promoted abortion in a multitude of ways throughout his presidency, had issued rules creating a new meaning to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act so that abortion was promoted.

“The actual language of the PWFA requires protections for ‘pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,’” the report explained. Biden expanded that to say, “current pregnancy, past pregnancy, potential pregnancy, lactation (including breastfeeding and pumping), use of birth control, menstruation, infertility and fertility treatments, endometriosis, miscarriage, stillbirth, or having or choosing not to have an abortion, among other conditions.”

The report said that move “effectively reversed the pro-life effect of the law, and the explicit inclusion of fertility treatments also ran afoul of the religious convictions of some Catholics.”

The challenge was brought by the Catholic Diocese of Bismarck and the Catholic Benefits Association representing 9,000 Catholic businesses. They charged it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Traynor granted a preliminary injunction last year and now has made that permanent.

In his ruling, he concluded, “The CBA is likely to succeed on the merits of the RFRA violation claim because the law forces members to choose between expressing sincerely held beliefs and compliance. This harm is irreparable and upholding constitutional rights always weighs in favor of the public interest and an injunction. The agency should have known it would not be allowed to force individuals to violate sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Other cases also had challenged Biden’s agenda.

The Washington Stand commented, “The entire scenario serves as a reminder of the Biden administration’s troubling record of anti-Catholic bias. As ironic as it may seem, political appointees of the nation’s second Catholic president distorted the meaning of a pro-life law to require employers to subsidize abortion and other practices objectionable to Catholics. These actions were not only lawless but fruitless, as they provoked Catholics to challenge the rule in court, where they easily won. But what else could we expect from an administration whose suspicion of Catholics ran so deep that they installed undercover agents in Catholic parishes to spy on their worship services?”

The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) sent letters to members of the National Panhellenic Conference’s (NPC) 26 sororities Wednesday urging them to tell NPC to keep sororities open only to women.

IWF’s “Tell National Panhellenic Conference And Sorority Leadership: Save Our Sisterhood” letter, first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, urges sorority members to sign on to the campaign to protect sororities from biological males amidst a push by the NPC to allow men to join historically women-only spaces. The campaign has already garnered 1,000 letters from sorority women across the country.

“Today’s sororities were founded in the late 1800s when women were not openly welcomed in college settings,” the letter reads. “Sadly, the very organization whose mission has been to support and empower women through single sex environments, has turned its back on women in the name of social convenience.”

Save Our Sisterhood Open Letter 0425 p7 by jesse

NPC in 2020 appointed several diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultants who pushed the sororities to begin allowing men who claim to be women into the organizations, IWF’s letter alleges. The DEI team intended to address “racism and racial injustice” and review policies that “significantly benefited white women and others with privilege,” according to their website.

A 2020 blog post by NPC titled “We Hear You And We Are Listening” also stated the organization intended to reconsider “norms and practices that create barriers facing potential members based on racial identity, ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, religious beliefs, ability and socioeconomic status, among others.”

Several chapters have since been forced to admit males.

“[W]hy are these leaders not standing up for women? Why are our organizations, whose mission is to support our young women, surrendering to efforts to erase the very concept of women as a distinct biological category?” the letter asks. “We call on NPC and all NPC sororities to return to their stated missions of advocating for women and vigorously defending their right to provide a single-sex environment.”

“Sororities were created to give women a place on college campuses,” Hannah Holtmeier, a senior at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and Independent Women ambassador, told the DCNF. “By allowing men to invade sororities we are taking a step backwards and robbing women of all the opportunities that come from being a member. I’ve grown and learned so much from being in Kappa and it’s sad to think about young girls not getting the chance to experience Greek Life like I have.”

Holtmeier is also a plaintiff in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma, a lawsuit challenging a University of Wyoming sorority chapter for initiating a man who allegedly “upended the privacy and intimacy of the sorority home including by watching the women change, taking unwanted photographs, and asking invasive sexual questions.”

NPC sororities represent over 5 million women.

“NPC promises within their mission statement to preserve a women’s only sorority experience,” Jaylyn Westenbroek, an Independent Women ambassador and another plaintiff in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma, told the DCNF. “It’s time to hold them to their own values of what has been promised to every member. These women’s only spaces can only be preserved if NPC steps up to recognize real women.”

“It is our duty to hold NPC accountable for their actions,” Independent Women ambassador and lawsuit plaintiff Allie Coghan told the DCNF. “They have robbed us of the sisterhood we were promised when we joined. This is supposed to be something that ‘never happens’ and if it can happen in Wyoming, then it can happen anywhere. All 26 NPC sororities need to recognize what is happening and stand up for women. NPC needs to return to its original mission and support women before there is no Greek life left. After all NPC is nothing with out its members.”

NPC did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the letter is part of a national campaign and added data reflecting the amount of letters garnered since launch.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, who worked to instill progressive influences on the global church while maintaining unity with conservatives amid years of turmoil, died Monday morning, Vatican camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced.

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, at the age of 88 at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. pic.twitter.com/jUIkbplVi2

— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) April 21, 2025

He was 88 years old.

I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.

I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 21, 2025

“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church,” Farrell announced.

Today I met with the Holy Father Pope Francis. I am grateful for his invitation to meet, and I pray for his good health.

Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/SIhU9gYQl2

— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) April 20, 2025

Pope Francis met briefly with U.S. Vice President @JDVance on Easter Sunday. The private audience lasted a few minutes. They exchanged Easter greetings, and the pope gave Vance a Vatican tie, rosaries and a set of three large chocolate Easter eggs for his kids. pic.twitter.com/v48BsukaDQ

— EWTN News (@EWTNews) April 20, 2025

Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen confirmed on Sunday that hardworking American taxpayers funded his trip to El Salvador so he could meet with an alleged MS-13 gang member currently held at the CECOT prison.

Last week Van Hollen met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wife beater and alleged MS-13 gang banger who was deported for illegally residing in Maryland – and YOU paid for his political stunt.

Fox News anchor Shannon Bream asked Van Hollen, “Who did pay for this trip?”

“This was an officially cleared congressional trip – cleared on a bipartisan basis,” Van Hollen said.

“So taxpayer dollars?” Shannon Bream asked.

“Yes, like every other trip,” Van Hollen said.

WATCH:

@ChrisVanHollen confirms taxpayers paid for him to fly to El Salvador and sip margaritas with a deported illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member pic.twitter.com/xByXzeRoYi

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 20, 2025

On Wednesday, the corrupt Maryland Senator flew all the way to El Salvador for a photo op in his fight to smuggle deported MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US.

“I just landed in San Salvador a little while ago, and I look forward to meeting with the team at the U.S. embassy to discuss the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen said.

“I also hope to meet with Salvadoran officials and with Kilmar himself. He was illegally abducted and needs to come home,” he added.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now home in his native country of El Salvador and Van Hollen tried to actually take him out of his home country and smuggle him over the US border.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an El Salvadorian national who was illegally residing in Maryland. In 2019, an immigration judge ordered Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of the dangerous MS-13 gang, removed from the US. Additionally, an immigration appellate court also upheld the immigration judge’s decision. Abrego Garcia was given ‘due process.’

But this wasn’t good enough for Van Hollen.

On Thursday, after he was denied entry into the CECOT prison, Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia.

“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return,” Van Hollen said alongside a photo of the two sitting down for coffee.

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return. pic.twitter.com/U9y2gZpxCb

— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025

El Salvador’s Bukele mocked Van Hollen and posted of a photo of him enjoying margaritas with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele said on X.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador! pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025

On Friday, Van Hollen accused El Salvador’s government of planting the drinks.

“About Margaritagate, I don’t know if you guys are following this or not but President Bukele, after I met with Kilmar, did this tweet showing us at a table with these two glasses – so, here’s what happened…when I first sat down with Kilmar we had glasses of water on the table and as we were talking one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice – and I don’t know if it’s salt or sugar around the top but they look like margaritas,” Van Hollen said accusing the El Salvadoran government of a conspiracy to frame him.

“Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us and if you want to play a little Sherlock Homes …nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or what it is…this is the lesson in the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on,” Van Hollen said before he trashed Trump.

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

PALM BEACH, Florida – Is the Democratic Party suffering from dementia, or was this intentional?

The party is celebrating Easter this year by honoring recent Democrat presidents, with a glaring exception: the most recent commander in chief in the person of Joe Biden.

The party’s official X account on Sunday posted a “Happy Easter!” message, featuring family-holiday photos of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/C6lnY5jazq

— Democrats (@TheDemocrats) April 20, 2025

Reaction to the omission was curious.

“Why’d you leave out the most recent Democrat president?” asked one X user.

Why’d you leave out the most recent Democrat president pic.twitter.com/RPsK24e0QU

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 20, 2025

You forgot to include last year when KJP had to dress as the Easter bunny so she could point Biden in which direction to walk in order to cover up his dementia. “Sharp as a tack” pic.twitter.com/TKSRejhumO

— Trump World (@Louaye1980) April 20, 2025

https://t.co/JomsWmWqsT

— Monika (@MonikaMusing) April 20, 2025

pic.twitter.com/by6kLgGzyi

— Bill Simmons (@billsimmonslive) April 20, 2025

Meanwhile, as WorldNetDaily reported, President Donald Trump shredded Biden in his own Easter greeting.

“Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

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‘Sinister’: Trump uses Easter to torch ‘lunatics’ and ‘weak, ineffective’ judges allowing U.S. invasion to continue

Not everyone has the patience of a saint — but Antonia Salzano’s son, Carlo, did.

With Carlo Acutis’ canonization by Pope Francis just one week away, he’s already been globally heralded as the first-ever millennial saint.

“The more Eucharist we receive, the more we become like JESUS so that on this earth we will have the foretaste of Heaven.”

Blessed Carlo Acutis pic.twitter.com/xCyQXKdJN2

— Jan (@RosaryMum) April 17, 2025

But his mother, admittedly, never shared the same concern for her spiritual life.

The Trump administration intends to overhaul the Endangered Species Act by changing what it means to harm an endangered or threatened species as part of the larger White House campaign to spur economic growth through deregulation, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

The president has long loathed red tape of the green variety, and one White House official predicted that overhauling the act “will have a seismic, real-world effect on the ability to build.”

“Environmental is the biggest tool for stopping growth,” Trump said during an interview with Joe Rogan last October, harking back to his New York days as a real estate developer and complaining that rare flora and fauna on a job site could quickly grind even the biggest construction projects to a halt. The candidate called environmental regulations “a weapon,” and later as president-elect, he vowed to expedite the environmental permit and approval process for any company investing at least $1 billion in the United States. Wrote Trump on Truth Social last December, “GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

Trump has slashed and burned his way through much of the regulatory regime of his predecessor already, rescinding nearly 80 Biden-era climate-related orders during his first day in office alone. Overhauling the ESA would easily eclipse those efforts, changing the regulatory, and perhaps natural, landscape forever.

The proposed reform must still make its way through the federal rule-making process. Legal challenges are almost certain to follow, although a conservative Supreme Court may not be sympathetic.

Sweeping change would follow from redefining a single word: harm.

While the plain text of the Nixon-era law prohibits the harming of endangered species, regulatory agencies have taken an expansive view that also prohibits modifying or degrading habitats where wildlife resides. The subsequent regulation has bedeviled conservatives and industry alike for decades. But now the administration intends to define “harm” as an attempt to “take” an endangered species, that is, “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” the animal itself.

For instance, hunting the northern spotted owl would remain illegal under the new rule; building a home or logging timber in a habitat where that bird is known to roost likely would not.

The example isn’t incidental. The rule change runs to the heart of a longstanding debate over how the act ought to apply to private property. When the owl in question was listed as a threatened species in 1990, the federal government placed millions of acres in the Pacific Northwest off limits. Logging companies filed suit. The high court ruled against them.

And environmentalists rejoiced in the victory. They had likened the alternative – protecting wildlife without regulating private land – to playing the piano “with just the black keys.” But writing for the dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that an expansive definition of harm expanded the regulation’s reach and “imposes unfairness to the point of financial ruin,” not just upon businesses “but upon the simplest farmer who finds his land conscripted to national zoological use.”

Conservatives insist that Scalia could see into the future. In the wake of that landmark case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, the right argues that environmentalists and government agencies didn’t focus on bringing endangered species back from the brink so much as the left used the act to expand their power at the expense of industry. “Left-wing activists love the status quo,” complained one Trump official, “because it stops development, stops growth, and hurts the economy.”

“The groups use endangered species, sometimes ones that aren’t actually endangered at all, as a fig leaf to stop all growth,” the official added. “And they do the same with ludicrous arguments that habitat will be impacted, to halt development and kill the economy.”

The White House doesn’t have to look far for environmental activism allegedly dressed up as conservation. Consider the snail darter.

The little freshwater fish swims in Eastern Tennessee rivers and was listed as endangered in 1973, a designation that halted construction of the Tellico Dam. The only problem? Scientists now say it does not exist. “There is, technically, no snail darter,” Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum and a professor at that university’s fish biology lab, told The New York Times.

Opponents of the dam insisted that the two-inch nonedible fish was a distinct species and successfully used its protected status to stop construction. Decades later, Near and other scientists concluded that the snail darter is no different than another unremarkable and very much not endangered fish, the stargazing darter. It is Exhibit A, the professor told the Times, of “the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication.”

The Tellico Dam began operating in 1979, but not until after a protracted legal fight and a special exemption signed into law that same year by President Jimmy Carter. The fish population, meanwhile, thrives. Other examples abound for the right.

There is the endangered dusky gopher frog. The Obama administration designated 1,500 acres of private land in Louisiana as a “critical habitat” for the shy frog even though the reptile was only known to inhabit wetlands in southern Mississippi.

Then there was the Johnston’s frankenia, a blueish-gray shrub that enjoyed protected status for decades until 2003 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed its population had recovered. Conservatives complain that the government didn’t remove the designation until 2016.

More recently, a rare buckwheat gave the Biden administration fits. Though one of over 300 varieties, Tiehm’s buckwheat grows only near lithium and boron deposits, an inconvenient horticultural headache for industries eager to mine those minerals critical for electric vehicle batteries. The flowering plant earned endangered status in 2022.

Nothing quite draws the ire of Trump like the Delta smelt. He has been at war with little fish for as long as he has been in politics. Though functionally extinct, the president blames the four-inch fish, once common in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, for allowing an environmentalism run wild. He has blamed the water woes of California on misguided efforts to “protect an essentially worthless fish.”

The administration will likely have a free hand as they seek to overhaul the Endangered Species Act. In the 1995 Babbitt decision, the Supreme Court relied on the so-called Chevron deference. When Congress has not addressed a question directly, the high court, per that doctrine, was expected to follow a federal agency’s interpretation of a given statute. In Babbitt, the Supreme Court adopted the expansive regulatory definition of harm set forth by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Fast forward 30 years, and Chevron is no more. The Supreme Court overruled it last summer when Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the doctrine “fundamentally misguided.”

Environmental advocates have been bracing for a deregulatory onslaught since the moment Trump won reelection. According to Noah Greenwald, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, redefining what amounts to a “harm” is the “first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants and animals headed toward extinction.” He called it nothing less than “a death sentence.”

“The Trump administration has been systematically killing protections for our air, water, wildlife and climate like a vicious cancer,” Greenwald said last week. “The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis.”

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year that he believes “we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our environment for generations to come.” Speaking for the administration, he added, however, that “common-sense” environmental regulations were possible “without suffocating the economy.”