This was a social media post presented by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican U.S. House member, who bucked the GOP leadership on Earth Day to protect Endangered Species.
Fifty-six years ago 20 million people across the nation celebrated the first Earth Day in massive demonstrations of support for a clean and healthy environment — one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history which is now celebrated by 193 nations worldwide.
There’s no mystery about why so many citizens felt the need to do so. Simply put, our largely unregulated industrial activity had poisoned land, air and water — including the polluted Cuyahoga and Rouge Rivers catching on fire. When rivers are burning, there’s no escaping the fact that society has a significant pollution problem.
To its credit, Congress responded to the very serious problems by passing a number of visionary and foundational environmental laws including establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (1970), the Clean Water Act (’72), the Endangered Species Act (’73), and significantly strengthening the Clean Air Act(’70, ’77).
All these laws have worked fairly well for 50 years or more, although as with any laws regulating polluting industries and practices, the commercial interests have continuously picked away at them with endless amendments to weaken their authority and enforcement.
That brings us to the latest attempt to basically gut the Endangered Species Act at the direction of a seriously deranged administration that somehow believes climate change is a hoax and what is widely regarded as the “sixth great extinction event” doesn’t matter.
But of course extinction of species does matter since none of us can foretell the part any specie may play in the planet’s web of life. Extinction is forever, despite the contentions of this destructive administration’s political appointees and the individuals, corporations and industries they so slavishly serve. It’s the height of human hubris to believe we should get to determine when our fellow travelers on this beautiful blue orb should wink out of existence due to our unbounded avarice and concurrent pollution of the global life support system.
But that’s not what many Republicans in Congress think. In a fashion typical of the mean-spirited Trumpian efforts to “own the libs,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson decided to try to push through significant amendments to the Endangered Species Act — on Earth Day.
The amendments would, among many other things, cut protections for species that are recovering, in effect saying because the law was working as intended, it should be weakened. But they didn’t stop there. Tossing the continued existence of species on the scale with extraction and pollution, the amendments required economic and national security analyses before listing a species for protection while limiting considerations of climate change impacts and efforts to protect endangered species.
The amendments also capped legal fees for those who prevail in federal court when challenging agencies that break the Endangered Species law – putting their thumb on the scale for polluting industries and activities.
But then, an Earth Day miracle happened — and a handful of Republicans refused to go along with a procedural vote on the draconian changes. Florida Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, posted: “Don’t tread on my turtles. Protected means protected.” House leadership was shaken as it became clear they didn’t have the votes to proceed.
Luna was right — and is right. Protected means protected, especially as the impacts from climate change exacerbate the struggle for existence by all species on land, air, and water.
History will look back in horror at what this benighted president, administration, and spineless Congressional Republican majorities have wrought. Surely they will try again. But on Earth Day 2026, they lost — and the growing list of endangered species, as well as the vast majority of citizens who support the Endangered Species Act, won.
