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Trump Finalizes Industry Requested Rollbacks To Migratory Bird Treaty Act
Gutting rule another parting gift to Big Oil.
WASHINGTON
Today, the Trump administration published its final rule to gut protections for migratory birds. The move finalizes major rollbacks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918 before the Biden administration comes into office. In response, Western Values Project Director Jayson O'Neill issued the following statement:
"Trump has, without a doubt, solidified his legacy as the worst environmental, public lands, and wildlife president in history. The rollback of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is completely barbaric and shows Trump cares more about Big Oil and monied special interests than protecting our wildlife and outdoor heritage.
This is yet another parting gift to Big Oil by corrupt former oil lobbyist Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on his way out the door. Putting another favor for Big Oil before the immediate needs of struggling small businesses and workers during a pandemic illustrates everything that is wrong with the Trump administration and its priorities."
The effort to gut the act has been fueled by Big Oil special interests tied to former oil lobbyist-turned Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt and Trump's political appointees. In four short years, this administration has weakened or rolled back more than 125 environmental protections, with dozens more still in progress.
Previous research from Western Values Project (WVP) found that at least seventeen of Secretary Bernhardt's former clients received handouts during his tenure, but few have received more than Big Oil. The rollbacks to the MBTA exclude the "incidental" killing of birds from the "take" definition of the act, which shield Big Oil and energy corporations from liability and potential penalties. The final environmental impact statement even acknowledges that the preferred rule would "likely result in increased bird mortality."
Public records previously obtained by WVP uncovered a request by industry front-group Western Energy Alliance submitted to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "suggesting statutory changes to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)" months before the initial solicitor's opinion was issued in December of 2017.
The Trump administration continues to push through harmful environmental rollbacks for special interests during the lame duck with little accountability or concern, creating layers upon layers of regulatory uncertainty for state and local governments, businesses, and public land users. Read WVP's full research here.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
LATEST NEWS
US Progressives Say Stop Supporting 'Rogue Genocidal Regime' After Israel's Unprovoked Attack on Iran
"Trump must act immediately to suspend all military support to Israel and stop allowing U.S. arms to fuel war crimes, mass civilian death, and regional collapse," said one critic.
Jun 13, 2025
Progressive U.S. lawmakers and human rights defenders demanded an end to unconditional American armed and diplomatic support for Israel after it launched a series of attacks on Iran early Friday, reportedly killing senior military officials and civilians including nuclear scientists, women, and children in a dramatic escalation that Iranian leaders vowed to avenge.
Israeli forces carried out at least five waves of airstrikes targeting not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its military leadership and capabilities, Al Jazeerareported. In addition to airstrikes, Israeli and international media reported that operatives from Mossad, Israel's foreign spy agency, also conducted assassination and sabotage attacks in Iran.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander-in-Chief Major Gen. Hossein Salami and Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major Gen. Mohammad Bagheri were assassinated, as were numerous Iranian nuclear scientists.
IDF attacks targeted cities including the capital Tehran, Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, Tabriz, and Kermanshah. Iranian television reports showed bombed-out apartment towers and said that an unknown number of civilians including women and children were killed in the strikes.
The attack on Natanz—home to Iran's primary nuclear enrichment facility—sparked fears of radiological contamination.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack—dubbed Operation Rising Lion—a "preemptive strike," a dubious form of warfare previously waged by forces including imperial Japan during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the George W. Bush administration in Iraq.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the attacks were meant to "neutralize an immediate and existential threat to our people," an apparent reference to Iran's nuclear program. Successive U.S. administrations including President Donald Trump's have concluded for decades that Iran is not trying to develop nuclear weapons.
During his first term, Trump unilaterally abrogated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.
Last year, Israel and Iran carried out limited tit-for-tat attacks following the former's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Lebanon-based resistance group Hezbollah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
This time, Iranian leaders vowed "severe punishment," with fears that the U.S. could be targeted due to its staunch support for Israel as it wages what the international community increasingly views as a genocidal war on Gaza. While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that his country was not involved in the attacks, Israeli officials insisted there was close coordination with the Trump administration.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Friday that "in the early hours of today, the Zionist regime extended its filthy and bloodstained hand to commit a crime in our beloved country, exposing its vile nature more than ever by targeting residential areas."
"With this crime, the Zionist regime has prepared a bitter and painful fate for itself—and it will undoubtedly face it," Khamenei added.
As the world braced for Iran's response to the attacks, U.S. progressives called for a diplomatic solution and an end to American support for Israel.
"The Israeli government bombing Iran is a dangerous escalation that could lead to regional war," Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said on social media.
Tlaib asserted that Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and is facing a domestic criminal corruption trial, "will do anything to maintain his grip on power."
"We cannot let him drag our country into a war with Iran," she added. "Our government must stop funding and supporting this rogue genocidal regime."
Referring to negotiations on a new Iran nuclear deal, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said: "Just as talks with Iran were set to resume, Netanyahu launches a strike and declares a state of emergency. He is provoking a war Americans don't want."
"We should not allow ourselves to be dragged into yet another conflict, against our will, by a foreign leader pursuing his own agenda of death and destruction," Omar added.
The U.S.-based peace group CodePink—some of whose members held an emergency protest outside the White House in Washington, D.C.—said that it "strongly condemn[s] Israel's unprovoked and reckless attack on Iran, which risks igniting a catastrophic regional war."
"This dangerous escalation threatens millions of lives across the entire Middle East," the group added. "The U.S. must not continue to support and enable this illegal act of aggression."
CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said: "It's horrific that Israel is bombing yet another country. And Trump calls himself a peace president? He knew this was coming and stood by. This is entirely out of step with the will of the American people."
"The whole world is desperate for peace in the Middle East, and instead, Israel decides to move the region closer to World War III," Benjamin added.
Noting that nuclear talks with Iran were set to resume this weekend, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said that "this is an attack on peace and diplomacy."
"Israeli political officials have demonstrated that U.S. diplomacy and a peaceful resolution with Iran is what they consider to be the true threats," NIAC asserted.
"This much is clear: This is a war of choice, and an illegal and unprovoked attack," NIAC added. "Trump must weigh in to stop this conflict before it spirals out of control, and to preserve the chance of maintaining diplomatic offramps."
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Israel-Palestine director at the advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), contended that "Israel deciding to launch a war against Iran at the very same time it faces unprecedented international isolation and pressure over its genocide in Gaza is a nightmarish outcome of impunity."
DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said that "Israel has committed an unlawful, unprovoked attack on Iran to undermine the growing global efforts to sanction it for its illegal occupation and to disrupt Trump's efforts to independently pursue America’s interests via diplomacy."
Nihad Awad, national executive director at the Council on American Islamic Relations, issued the following statement:
We condemn Israel's offensive strike on Iran and the broader pattern of aggression it represents. Netanyahu is using American weapons and taxpayer dollars to launch illegal and destabilizing wars across the region. President Trump must act immediately to suspend all military support to Israel and stop allowing U.S. arms to fuel war crimes, mass civilian death, and regional collapse. Secretary Rubio's statement confirms what we already knew—Israel is acting recklessly, and the U.S. is letting it happen.
CodePink noted that "in the past month and a half alone, Israel has bombed Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran."
"There is no other choice," the group added, "ARMS EMBARGO NOW!"
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'Horrifying Moment in Our Nation's History': Fellow Senators Denounce 'Assault' on Padilla
"Senator Padilla is a respected leader of great dignity and he has every right to ask a question of Secretary Noem without being slammed down and handcuffed," said one Democratic senator.
Jun 12, 2025
Fellow U.S. senators reacted with fury and condemnation to footage of Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla being handcuffed on the ground after being forcibly removed from a news conference that was held by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles on Thursday.
In a video of the episode, Padilla can be heard saying "I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary," as federal agents push him out of the room. Outside the room, agents forced Padilla to the ground and then handcuffed him.
"I'm on my way to the Senate floor to talk about the assault on my colleague, Senator Alex Padilla," wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) X on Thursday. "This is a horrifying moment in our nation's history."
"What's next, brown shirts?" wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), who was likely referring to the "brownshirts," a name for the paramilitary group that aided the rise of Adolf Hitler. Whitehouse added: "What do Republican colleagues have to say? At long last, colleagues, have you no sense of decency?"
"This is insane. A United States Senator was just violently thrown to the ground and handcuffed while trying to question the administration. We need a countrywide response to this all out authoritarianism. This cannot stand," Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote on X.
"Sickening," said Sen. Mazi Hirono (D-Hawaii). "This is what authoritarians do. None of us is safe from this regime.
Speaking to press later on Thursday, Padilla said he was not arrested or detained. Padilla said he was waiting to be briefed by federal officials when he learned that Noem was giving a press conference in the same building.
"Over the course of recent weeks, I [and] several of my colleagues have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions, and we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries. And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information," he said.
"I will say this," Padilla added. "If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country."
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement along with a video of the episode accusing Padilla of "disrespectful political theatre."
Outside watchdogs like the Not Above the Law Coalition, which consists of over 150 organizers, think tanks, and nonprofit advocacy groups, also condemned the incident and called on every U.S. lawmaker, regardless of party affiliation, to do the same.
"The images of federal agents tackling and handcuffing Senator Alex Padilla should send chills down every American’s spine," the coalition said in a statement. "It is shocking enough to see someone manhandled for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. That it happened to a sitting U.S. Senator attending a public DHS press briefing in his home state is outrageous and un-American."
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Rights Group Warns of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's Complicity in Israeli 'War Crimes'
The Center for Constitutional Rights accused GHF of "directly contributing to or otherwise furthering Israel's commission of forcible transfer and other atrocity crimes."
Jun 12, 2025
As Israeli occupation forces continued to massacre desperate aid-seekers in Gaza this week, human rights defenders accused the U.S.-backed organization Israel is allowing to distribute limited aid in the embattled strip of being a "death trap" and giving cover to Israel's program of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.
Local and international media reported Thursday that at least 13 Palestinians were killed and upward of 200 others were wounded when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid near the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza.
Medical sources also said Israeli shelling killed 12 Palestinians and injured dozens more gathered at an aid distribution center near the southern city of Rafah, while IDF troops shot dead five other people waiting for aid northwest of Gaza City.
Thursday's massacres followed similar IDF attacks on civilians seeking aid that have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians since the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began allowing a trickle of humanitarian relief to enter Gaza amid a "complete siege" that has fueled mass starvation among the strip's more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
Many hundreds of Palestinians, mostly children and elders, have recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care in Gaza.
This, as Israeli forces continued Operation Gideon's Chariots, which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Israeli resettlement as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
As the death toll among Palestinian aid-seekers mounts, critics have taken aim at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the Delaware-based nonprofit tasked with distributing aid in the coastal enclave. Opponents have called GHF a "death trap" and a "ruse to weaponize aid."
This week, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) notified GHF "of its potential legal liability for complicity in Israel's war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians."
CCR—which unsuccessfully sued U.S. President Joe Biden and two of his top officials for alleged genocide complicity in Gaza—said in a letter to GHF executive chairman Johnnie Moore that "there is a reasonable basis to believe that your operations, planned and undertaken in close coordination with Israel, are directly contributing to or otherwise furthering Israel's commission of forcible transfer and other atrocity crimes in the occupied Gaza Strip."
"This militarized system of food distribution funneled through three distribution hubs in Rafah and one near Deir el-Balah requires malnourished Palestinians to travel great distances and often relocate within Gaza to access food aid under a regime overseen by Israeli forces and U.S. private military contractors," the letter continues.
"In the 10 days since GHF began its stop-and-go operations, reports range from at least 95 to as many as 130 Palestinians having
been killed and hundreds wounded while seeking food at GHF sites," CCR added. "We urge you to immediately cease and desist such operations and actions in Gaza. Failing to do so could result in the initiation of civil litigation or criminal prosecution in domestic courts in different countries, including under the principle of universal jurisdiction, or could subject you to the jurisdiction of international bodies."
Those bodies include the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—and the International Criminal Court, also based in the Dutch city, which last year issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and forced starvation.
On Thursday, Zeteopublished an interview with an anonymous former private U.S. security contractor who was hired to facilitate GHF aid distribution who said: "I thought I was signing up for an aid mission. But what I've witnessed in Gaza is horrific."
"You have guys with hardly any knowledge of the culture, no deployment experience, and are not necessarily qualified to be using the weapons they had in charge of security at aid sites in a place where we know millions are desperate for aid," he continued. "What could go wrong?"
According to the former contractor:
One episode sticks with me. We were monitoring an empty site all day; sometime after dark, dozens of flatbed trucks finally brought aid. The Israeli military soon radioed in that 200 to 300 civilians a couple of kilometers (less than two miles) north were approaching. We then observed an Israeli drone go out there.
Shortly thereafter, that area started getting lit up with artillery. The generous interpretation? Maybe the Israelis were firing between our position and the people in order to keep them from moving forward. I don't think that's the case. After all, tanks fire all day long near these aid sites. Snipers fire from what used to be a hospital. Bombs and bullets fly all day long in one direction—toward Palestinians. It's very clear that the Israeli military will take any opportunity available to fire.
Last month, Jake Wood, a former U.S. marine and co-founder of the disaster relief group Team Rubicon, resigned as executive director of GHF. Wood cited "the lack of independence from Israel and the likelihood that the plan would result in forced displacement," according to CCR.
Earlier this month, Christoph Schweizer, CEO of Boston Consulting Group—which played a key role in creating GHF—apologized for and ended BCG's participation in the endeavor.
"I deeply regret that in this situation, we fell short—of our own standards and of the trust that you, our clients and our broader communities place in BCG," he wrote. "I am sorry for how deeply disappointing this has been."
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