Trump’s 2019 promise to gut the Endangered Species Act is a hideous measure of how low his regard for posterity has sunk. The insistence that the protections in the act are somehow stopping the American economy from growing will have ramifications that stretch far beyond his lifetime—extinction is forever. Gutting protections for wildlife, and removing wilderness and parks designations that comprise vital ecosystems for these species, is a deliberate, ugly element of the Trump state.
