Who else will be helping U.S. President-elect Trump to grab the U.S. by the pussy?

Only one Interior Secretary candidate has any pro-animal history,  & that is not much

See also Candidates for U.S. Attorney General & Director of Homeland Security

         WASHINGTON D.C.––Who else will be helping U.S. President-elect Trump to grab the U.S. by the pussy,  in Trump’s own notorious phrase?

Changing alliances

         In only two days since ANIMALS 24-7 profiled the animal-related history of the then-apparent leading candidates to become U.S. Attorney General,  including New Jersey governor Chris Christie,  former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani,  and Jeff Sessions,  U.S. Senator from Alabama,  Christie and Trump appear to have split to the point that Christie is considered unlikely to get a cabinet post.

Giuliani has emerged as a likely choice to be named Secretary of State despite his lack of any significant previous involvement in international affairs.

Sessions now appears to be the odds-on Trump choice for Attorney General,  if not chosen to become Secretary of Defense.

Newt Gingrich

If Giuliani becomes Secretary of State,  Newt Gingrich,  Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999,  will not be.

Gingrich,  as Speaker,  made a point of tempering his hardline far-right image by emphasizing concern for animals,  especially in defense of the Endangered Species Act and foreign aid programs to aid species conservation,  in opposition to much of the rest of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives that elected him.

Gingrich “developed a deep attachment to animals” during a troubled childhood,  according to a November 1995 profile by Kathryne Q. Seelye of The New York Times.  “His grandmother once gave him a leather jacket that he painted with white stripes so he could look like a zebra,” Seelye continued.

Gingrich & zoos

In adolescence,  Seelye narrated,  Gingrich missed an airline connection because he visited a zoo during a stopover.  His earliest political involvement apparently was lobbying,  at about the same age,  to have a zoo built by the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“In 1990,” Seelye added, “he sent nearly half of his $67,000 in honorariums from speeches to Zoo Atlanta.  Last year (1994) he sent $15,000 to the zoo to buy a pair of rare Komodo dragons.”

After lecturing the House about biodiversity in 1995,  Gingrich in 1996 refused to bring to vote a potentially damaging Endangered Species Act rewrite co-authored by House Resources Committee chair Don Young (R-Alaska),  and killed a series of anti-Endangered Species Act riders attached to other bills.

Called for “kind,  compassionate,  caring,  & humane attitude”

In an open letter to George magazine editor John Kennedy Jr. later in 1996,  Gingrich expressed the hope “that through continued education,  our society will learn to foster a kind,  compassionate,  caring and humane attitude toward the treatment of animals.”

Toward the end of his tenure as House Speaker,  Gingrich urged successfully that chimpanzees used in research should be retired at federal expense.

“If we can find a way to develop a series of sanctuaries to allow chimpanzees who are no longer being used in research to have a decent retirement,  that is exactly the right thing to do,” Gingrich said.

Forrest Lucas

Few other likely Trump candidate prospects have any visible pro-animal history.

Oil baron Forrest Lucas,  74,  founder of the anti-animal advocacy organization Protect the Harvest,  is believed to be the front runner for Interior Secretary.

Pointed out Humane Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian,  days before the November 8,  2016 election,  “In addition to serving as a member of Trump’s agriculture advisory committee,  Lucas,”  as ANIMALS 24-7 detailed in July 2016,  “is the money man behind Protect the Harvest,  a front group devoted to fighting animal welfare organizations at every turn,  on everything.”

Trump’s sons

“Troublingly,  Donald Trump Jr. has [also] been floated as a possible Interior Secretary,”  Markarian mentioned.  “Both sons [Donald Jr. and Eric] at the very least would be Trump’s top advisors and strategists on trophy hunting issues.  The risk of having a globe-trotting trophy hunter at or near the helm at Interior,  or having the ear of the President,  should be a terrifying prospect for any animal advocate.  The [office Interior Secretary] is responsible not only for policies involving hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands,”  via the Bureau of Land Management,  U.S. Forest Service,  National Park Service,  U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,  Bureau of Reclamation,  and Native American tribal treaties,  “but also wildlife law enforcement,  international treaties on trade and conservation,  and import policies for wild animal parts and trophies.”

Eric Trump might also be an Interior Secretary candidate.  Donald Trump,  in a January 2016 interview with Petersen’s Hunting,  suggested that either son in his view would be a good choice “because they are hunters and anglers and members of key conservation and Second Amendment groups.”

Oklahomans

Also among the reported possible Trump administration choices to become Interior Secretary are Oklahoma oilman Harold Hamm,  Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin,   Wyoming member of the House of Representatives Cynthia Lummis, former Arizona governor Jan Brewer,  and former Alaska governor and 2000 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Hamm and Fallin are longtime close associates of U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe,  an outspoken climate change denier who has opposed protection for endangered and threatened species including polar bears,  prairie dogs,  sage grouse,  and wolves.   Whether either Hamm or Fallin has participated in Inhofe’s annual fundraising pigeon and dove shoots is unknown,  since the guest lists are not made public.

Fallin and Lummis have both favored reopening the horse slaughter industry in the U.S.,  Fallin ostensibly to create jobs in Oklahoma.  Lummis was a member of the Bureau of Land Management National Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board that in September 2016 recommended that the 45,000 wild horses now in BLM holding facilities should be killed.

Jan Brewer

Brewer in 2010 unsuccessfully promoted Proposition 109,  which would have added a right to hunt and fish to the Arizona state constitution.

In 2011 Brewer sought to kill a $771,000 three-year study funded by the Department of Homeland Security which deployed 240 wildcams to determine whether border fencing might harm the movements of endangered jaguars,  only one of whom is currently believed to reside in Arizona.  The cameras have collected data on dozens of species which may be relevant to Trump’s pledge to more securely fence the U.S. border with Mexico.

On the positive side,  Brewer later in 2011 signed a bill that holds dog owners liable for damages if their dog attacks someone else’s pet.  Allowing a dog to attack another dog became a Class 1 misdemeanor,  potentially punishable by six months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Exempted farm dogs from anti-cruelty laws

But in 2012 Brewer endorsed into law a bill which exempts dogs used in ranching and herding from the Arizona anti-cruelty laws.

Heavily criticized for that,  Brewer in 2013 signed legislation that increased the penalties against greyhound racing licensees who violate state racing rules,  including humane rules,  and required Tucson Greyhound Park to again begin disclosing greyhound injuries to the public.

Then in 2014 Brewer vetoed a bill,  likely to have been overturned if tested in court,  that would have allowed ranchers to kill endangered Mexican gray wolves on federal lands.

Sarah Palin

Palin,  who said in January 2016 that she might like to become Energy Secretary in order to abolish the Department of Energy,  might be the most ominous possible Trump pick as Interior Secretary.

Palin grew up in a hunting and trapping family.  Her parents,  Chuck and Sally Heath of Anchorage,  Alaska,   “have been part-time U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife specialists for the past 15 years, traveling throughout Alaska trapping or killing animals,”   recounted Associated Press writer Matt Volzin in 2000.

Moose burgers

Among their assignments,  Volz noted,  were killing Arctic foxes for preying on nesting Canada geese in the Pribilof islands,  poisoning rats on Palmyra Atoll,  and killing mice and rats in debris from the World Trade Center during the search for human remains in the Fresh Kills landfill in January 2002.

Palin herself rose to political prominence in Alaska as mayor of Wasilla,  a town of 7,000 known chiefly as the starting point for the annual 1,100-mile Iditarod dog sled race.  Palin promoted the race.

Upon being nominated to run for vice president,  Palin said her favorite food was moose burgers.  Campaign photos distribution after her nomination showed Palin with a moose she had shot,  speaking from a sofa with a grizzly bear pelt (head attached) draped over the back,  and one of her speaking while wearing fur.

Polar bears

Palin lobbied at the National Governors Association conference against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species,  and 2008 sued the U.S. government for listing the polar bear anyway.

Wrote Alaska Conservation Solutions president Deborah Williams,  “Palin’s actions and comments regarding polar bears and the impact of global warming on the Arctic ice cap reveal serious problems with her views on science and proper governmental process. Governor Palin asserted that the state did a ‘comprehensive review  of the science and found no reason to support a listing.’  This statement flatly contradicted the conclusions reached and communicated by the state’s leading marine mammal biologists.”

Palin also opposed protecting the estimated 340 beluga whales remaining in the Cook Inlet,  off Anchorage––less than 20% of the population believed to have inhabited the Cook Inlet in 1959,  when Alaska was admitted to statehood.

Among Palin’s many hostile positions toward wildlife,  her antipathy toward wolves and escalation of wolf-killing in Alaska is best known.  A television commercial aired in 2000 depicted her political opponents as a wolf pack.

Matthew Scully

Paradoxically,  Palin’s speech accepting the 2000 Republican vice presidential nomination was ghosted by former White House speechwriter Matthew Scully,  author of Dominion:  The Power of Man,   The Suffering of Animals,  and The Call to Mercy (2002).

Noted Massimo Calabresi of Time magazine,   “Scully is best known for his vigorous defense of animal rights.  A vegetarian who is regularly critical of the National Rifle Association and much of the hunting community,  he is a passionate advocate for doing away with the more brutal versions of blood sport,  including aerial hunting,  which Palin supports.”

But Scully appeared to have no visible effect on Palin’s view of animals.

Said the late Norm Phelps,  author of The Longest Struggle (2007),  “I think the fact that Matthew Scully wrote her convention speech,  which was a masterpiece of viciousness,  should give us all pause about the notion that conservatives will ever be serious animal advocates.”

See also Candidates for U.S. Attorney General & Director of Homeland Security

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