Instead of 'de-extincting' dire wolves, scientists should use gene editing to protect living, endangered species
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Have you been hearing about the dire wolf lately? Maybe you saw a massive white wolf on the cover of Time magazine or a photo of "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin holding a puppy named after a character from his books.
The dire wolf, a large, wolflike species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago, has been in the news after biotech company Colossal claimed to have resurrected it using cloning and gene-editing technologies. Colossal calls itself a "de-extinction" company. The very concept of de-extinction is a lightning rod for criticism. There are broad accusations of playing God or messing with nature, as well as more focused objections that contemporary de-extinction tools create poor imitations rather than truly resurrected species.
While the biological and philosophical debates are interesting, the legal ramifications for endangered species conservation are of paramount importance. As a legal scholar with a Ph.D. in wildlife genetics, my work focuses on how we legally define the term "endangered species." The use of biotechnology for conservation, whether for de-extinction or genetic augmentation of existing species, promises solutions to otherwise intractable problems. But it needs to work in harmony with both the letter and purpose of the laws governing biodiversity conservation.
What did Colossal actually do? Scientists extracted and sequenced DNA from Ice Age-era bones to understand the genetic makeup of the dire wolf. They were able to piece together around 90% of a complete dire wolf genome. While the gray wolf and the dire wolf are separated by a few million years of evolution, they share over 99.5% of their genomes.
The scientists scanned the recovered dire wolf sequences for specific genes that they believed were responsible for the physical and ecological differences between dire wolves and other species of canids, including genes related to body size and coat color. CRISPR gene-editing technology allows scientists to make specific changes in the DNA of an organism. The Colossal team used CRISPR to make 20 changes in 14 different genes in a modern gray wolf cell before implanting the embryo into a surrogate mother.
While the technology on display is marvelous, what should we call the resulting animals? Some commentators argue that the animals are just modified gray wolves. They point out that it would take far more than 20 edits to bridge the gap left by millions of years of evolution. For instance, that 0.5% of the genome that doesn't match in the two species represents over 12 million base pair differences.
Related: Colossal's de-extincted 'dire wolf' isn't a dire wolf and it has not been de-extincted, experts say
More philosophically, perhaps, other skeptics argue that a species is more than a collection of genes devoid of environmental, ecological or evolutionary context.
Colossal, on the other hand, maintains that it is in the "functional de-extinction" game. The company acknowledges it isn't making a perfect dire wolf copy. Instead it wants to recreate something that looks and acts like the dire wolf of old. It prefers the "if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck" school of speciation.
Disagreements about taxonomy — the science of naming and categorizing living organisms — are as old as the field itself. Biologists are notorious for failing to adopt a single clear definition of "species," and there are dozens of competing definitions in the biological literature.
Biologists can afford to be flexible and imprecise when the stakes are merely a conversational misunderstanding. Lawyers and policymakers, on the other hand, do not have that luxury.
In the United States, the Endangered Species Act is the main tool for protecting biodiversity.
To be protected by the act, an organism must be a member of an endangered or threatened species. Some of the most contentious ESA issues are definitional, such as whether the listed species is a valid "species" and whether individual organisms, especially hybrids, are members of the listed species.
Colossal's functional species concept is anathema to the Endangered Species Act. It shrinks the value of a species down to the way it looks or the way it functions. When passing the act, however, Congress made clear that species were to be valued for their "aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people." In my view, the myopic focus on function seems to miss the point.
Despite its insistence otherwise, Colossal's definitional sleight of hand has opened the door to arguments that people should reduce conservation funding or protections for currently imperiled species. Why spend the money to protect a critter and its habitat when, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, you can just "pick your favorite species and call up Colossal"?
Biotechnology can provide real conservation benefits for today's endangered species. I suggest gene editing's real value is not in recreating facsimiles of long-extinct species like dire wolves, but instead using it to recover ones in trouble now.
Projects, by both Colossal and other groups, are underway around the world to help endangered species develop disease resistance or evolve to tolerate a warmer world. Other projects use gene editing to reintroduce genetic variation into populations where genetic diversity has been lost.
For example, Colossal has also announced that it has cloned a red wolf. Unlike the dire wolf, the red wolf is not extinct, though it came extremely close. After decades of conservation efforts, there are about a dozen red wolves in the wild in the reintroduced population in eastern North Carolina, as well as a few hundred red wolves in captivity.
The entire population of red wolves, both wild and captive, descends from merely 14 founders of the captive breeding program. This limited heritage means the species has lost a significant amount of the genetic diversity that would help it continue to evolve and adapt.
In order to reintroduce some of that missing genetic diversity, you'd need to find genetic material from red wolves outside the managed population. Right now that would require stored tissue samples from animals that lived before the captive breeding program was established or rediscovering a "lost" population in the wild.
Recently, researchers discovered that coyotes along the Texas Gulf Coast possess a sizable percentage of red wolf-derived DNA in their genomes. Hybridization between coyotes and red wolves is both a threat to red wolves and a natural part of their evolutionary history, complicating management. The red wolf genes found within these coyotes do present a possible source of genetic material that biotechnology could harness to help the captive breeding population if the legal hurdles can be managed.
This coyote population was Colossal's source for its cloned "ghost" red wolf. Even this announcement is marred by definitional confusion. Due to its hybrid nature, the animal Colossal cloned is likely not legally considered a red wolf at all.
RELATED STORIES
—Colossal's de-extinction campaign is built on a semantic house of cards with shoddy foundations — and the consequences are dire
—'Our animals are gray wolves': Colossal didn't de-extinct dire wolves, chief scientist clarifies
—How related are dire wolves and gray wolves? The answer might surprise you.
Under the Endangered Species Act, hybrid organisms are typically not protected. So by cloning one of these animals, Colossal likely sidestepped the need for ESA permits. It will almost certainly run into resistance if it attempts to breed these "ghost wolves" into the current red wolf captive breeding program that has spent decades trying to minimize hybridization. How much to value genetic "purity" versus genetic diversity in managed species still proves an extraordinarily difficult question, even without the legal uncertainty.
Biotechnology could never solve every conservation problem — especially habitat destruction. The ability to make "functional" copies of a species certainly does not lessen the urgency to respond to biodiversity loss, nor does it reduce human beings' moral culpability. But to adequately respond to the ever-worsening biodiversity crisis, conservationists will need all available tools.
This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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'What a waste:' US scientists decry Trump's 47% cuts to NASA science budget
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Since January, when President Donald Trump took office for the second time, the White House has been asking U.S. government organizations to implement some pretty radical changes. Things have been tense, to say the least. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off with little explanation, programs that improve diversity in the workplace have been eliminated, research grants have been cancelled in large sweeps, and international college students find themselves at risk of losing their legal status. One government organization that could be hit the hardest is NASA. The agency has faced a particularly extensive amount of pressure from the Trump administration: surveillance, goal restructuring, website purging and more. Other federal science organizations haven't been spared, either — places like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have been targeted as well. The ground of U.S. science seems to be quaking for political reasons rather than scientific ones, leaving scientists disheartened by their government and anxious about what's next. "I don't think it is an overstatement to say that morale among U.S.-based scientists is at an all-time low," Sarah Horst, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, told "People are afraid for their jobs, their students, the projects they've often spent decades working on, and they are afraid for the future of the United States." And things only got worse on May 30, when the Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA came out. It proposes cutting the agency's science funding by 47%, and the agency's workforce by about one-third — from 17,391 to 11,853. This budget has to be officially passed by Congress to take effect, but if it indeed does, the effects could be brutal. "That would represent the smallest NASA workforce since mid-1960, before the first American had launched into space," Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit exploration and advocacy organization, told "If this budget is made real, I am most concerned about people," John O'Meara, chief scientist at the Keck Observatory, told "Missions deliver data and are essential, but the data is meaningless without the people there to interpret it, test theories and share discoveries with the world." Perhaps the most striking aspect of the White House's 2026 NASA budget proposal is the sheer amount of missions it would cancel altogether: 41 projects, as the Planetary Society said in a statement denouncing the report. "This is the extinction-level event we were warning people about," Dreier said. Some specifics: The sharply reduced budget would cancel the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, which was meant to bring samples of the Red Planet's surface to Earth — samples that NASA's Perseverance rover has been dutifully collecting over the last few years, and which scientists have long stressed must be analyzed in a lab to reach their full potential. MSR has experienced its own share of complications since its genesis, to be fair, including a huge price tag and what some believe is an overcomplicated mechanism of sample retrieval. However, cancelling the project outright instead of coming up with a solution would waste much of Perseverance's work on the Red Planet. The OSIRIS-APEX mission (you may remember it by its previous moniker, OSIRIS-REx) would also be cut off. This mission successfully sent a spacecraft on a multi-billion-mile expedition to an asteroid named Bennu, then had it grab a few pieces of the asteroid before traveling all the way back to Earth and safely dropping the samples to the ground. This same probe is now on round two, headed to examine the infamous asteroid Apophis — but if the FY26 NASA budget is confirmed, it won't complete its trip. "I'm personally mostly concerned for in-flight missions that already have a significant investment in both taxpayer dollars and peoples' lives/careers (including my own)," Kevin McGill, an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the agency's lead center for robotic planetary exploration, told "Luckily, my work on [the Curiosity Mars rover] and Mars2020 [Perseverance] are mostly safe, but a lot of other stuff isn't." The budget also suggests ceasing operations for the Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft, which has been circling our solar system's gas giant since 2016 while regularly delivering rich information about the world and its moons. Juno is responsible for all those swirly blue images of Jupiter the astronomy community holds high; it took five years for this spacecraft to get to where it is, and many more for it to be built in the first place. "The operating missions cancellations alone represent over $12 billion of invested taxpayer value — and once they're gone, they're gone. It would take years and many millions more to replace them," Dreier said. NASA would also need to pull out of its collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Rosalind Franklin rover — for the second time, no less — which is a robotic life-hunting explorer set to launch toward Mars in 2028. NASA had to pull out in 2012 because of budget cuts as well but re-entered the rover program after ESA cut ties with its other partner, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, once Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. "This makes the U.S. an untrustworthy partner and our allies hesitate the next time we ask them for help," Dreier said. Two operational Mars orbiters — Mars Odyssey and MAVEN — would be cancelled as well, as would the New Horizons spacecraft currently studying the outer reaches of the solar system and the DaVinci and VERITAS missions, which would explore Venus. The Lunar Gateway, which NASA envisioned as a sort of International Space Station around the moon, would also be cancelled. "What was surprising was the level of cuts within parts of each of the agencies. An example is astrophysics, where the cut was nearly 2/3 of the astrophysics budget," O'Meara said. According to the Planetary Society's analysis of the budget, that huge astrophysics reduction could mean eight spacecraft dedicated to studying extreme events in the universe (think, the Chandra X-ray Observatory) would be terminated. This analysis also suggests 10 missions constructed to study the region around Earth and the sun would be cancelled, as well as about a dozen Earth-specific missions that help scientists forecast natural disasters such as hurricanes and track global warming. The latter is especially concerning, given the speed with which Earth is heating up due to human activities that lead to greenhouse gas emissions — activities the Trump administration favors, such as burning coal for cheap power. Per the budget proposal, the White House also wants NASA to eliminate its "green aviation" spending, dedicated to making airplanes better for the environment, and instead work on "protecting the development of technologies with air traffic control and defense applications." It is also worth considering that other Trump-mandated moves have heavily impacted climate initiatives as well: more than 800 NOAA workers were laid off, for example, and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which houses climate change records dating back to the 1800s, was closed down — leading members of NASA's largest union to speak out in solidarity with their coworkers. Hundreds of scientists working on the National Climate Assessment, a huge report that details the dangers of climate change for policymakers to lean on, were also dismissed. (That represented all of the authors of this report). "This budget request, and its implications, has been highly disruptive to the entire field," O'Meara said. "We are forced to focus on 'what-if' planning that changes in scope rapidly. That takes the time away from what we do best: doing science and sharing it with the world." Furthermore, the White House's FY26 NASA budget proposal centers around a shift toward human missions to the Red Planet; this was a rare area that saw a budget boost in the President's request. For example, one slide in the budget summary says NASA should invest "more than $1 billion in new technology investments to enable a crewed mission to Mars." Another says the agency should allocate "$200M for Commercial Mars Payload Services (CMPS) to start launching robotic precursor missions to the Martian surface, and $80M to start deploying communications relay capabilities for Mars." "It just bothers me that they are changing almost the entirety of NASA's mission to this pipe dream of a human mission to Mars in any reasonable time frame and cost," McGill said. reached out to NASA for comment on the possible impact of these budget cuts, and was directed to acting administrator Janet Petro's statement in the proposal's Technical Supplement. This statement is supportive of the budget request overall, mentioning items such as a renewed push for human spaceflight to the moon and Mars. "The President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for NASA reflects the Trump-Vance Administration's commitment to strengthening America's leadership in space exploration while exercising fiscal responsibility. With this budget, we aim to shape a Golden Age of innovation and exploration," it reads. This shift toward Mars crewed missions is perhaps predictable, given Trump's affiliation with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. (Former affiliation, maybe, given the heated feud currently unfolding on social media between the two.) Musk was a prominent backer of Trump's campaign and worked very closely with him over the past four months. For example, the SpaceX chief ran the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), which was responsible for the bulk of government funding cuts in the name of saving "wasted taxpayer money." Independently, Musk has earned a reputation as maybe the most outspoken advocate of settling Mars, even going so far as to say he wishes to "die on Mars." SpaceX, as well as its fans, are extremely focused on achieving that goal. "In isolation, a serious humans to Mars campaign should be exciting — Mars exploration is a worthy goal, and The Planetary Society has advocated for that for years," Dreier said. "But the cost here is too high." Another concern Dreier has is that the White House expects to achieve this major goal while simultaneously reducing NASA's workforce at an unprecedented rate. "This isn't just poor policy," he added. "It's fundamentally wasteful and inefficient, exactly what this administration is saying it does not want." And the layoffs could be even more far-reaching than anticipated. McGill says morale at JPL had already been very low after sweeping layoffs took place last year, but also that the energy was further damaged by the agency's recent return-to-office order. For context, nearly 5,500 JPL employees who have been working remotely since the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic were told they must return to in-person work. The deadlines for that return were Aug. 25 for general employees within California and Oct. 27 for teleworkers living outside the state. "Employees who do not return by their required date will be considered to have resigned," JPL officials said in a workforce-wide email that was obtained by "It's clear that it's a silent layoff of the over 1,000 remote employees who they don't want to pay severance to," a NASA employee at JPL not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency previously told McGill says the order "threatens to decimate the workforce and a lot of critical institutional knowledge." "I love JPL and its mission, but it's been a rough time as of late," he said. According to Dreier, there's good news and bad news concerning whether the budget proposal will go through. The good news is that, as he explains, there seems to be bipartisan dislike for the proposal. "We've heard directly from multiple congressional offices — Republican and Democrat — that this budget is 'dead on arrival,'" he said. Of note, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released his legislative directives for Senate Republicans' budget reconciliation bill on Friday (June 6). The senator proposes dedicating $10 billion more to NASA's science programs — and, though most of it is indeed in line with the FY26 budget request's Mars endeavors, some of that funding would be used for other things, like NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket meant for moon exploration and Lunar Gateway. This united aversion to the budget proposal is unsurprising. The bipartisan U.S. Planetary Science Caucus, for instance, previously released a statement in response to early blueprints of the proposal that suggested the huge cuts we're seeing presented now. "We are extremely alarmed by reports of a preliminary White House budget that proposes cutting NASA Science funding by almost half and terminating dozens of programs already well underway, like the Mars Sample Return mission and the Roman Space Telescope," co-chairs Rep. Judy Chu (D-California) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) wrote. Such agreement across the aisle makes sense when we consider how long it takes for space missions to reach fruition. Collaboration isn't just key — it's unavoidable. "Spaceflight, and human spaceflight in particular, requires hand-off from one administration to another," Dreier said. "The timelines are just too long for any one presidential administration." The bad news, however, is the White House may have a workaround. Related Stories: — 'This is an attack on NASA.' Space agency's largest union speaks out as DOGE cuts shutter science institute located above 'Seinfeld' diner in NYC — Saving Gateway, SLS and Orion? Sen. Ted Cruz proposes $10 billion more for NASA's moon and Mars efforts — 'Their loss diminishes us all': Scientists emphasize how Trump's mass NOAA layoffs endanger the world "Even if Congress ultimately rejects this budget, the slow pace of legislation and gridlock we've seen in recent years make it unlikely that appropriations will be in place by October 1st of this year," Dreier said. "If there's another continuing resolution, the White House budget office will throttle spending to match the lowest of all possible budget scenarios: theirs. So, we face the possibility of these cuts going into effect by default. Given the breadth and depth of these cuts, that could be very hard to recover from." "This budget proposal threatens to tear down that carefully constructed coalition in favor of a narrow vision that lacks the political durability necessary for long-term success," he added. "What a waste."
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European Space Agency reveals 3 key space missions threatened by Trump's NASA budget cuts
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that three of the 19 missions it is planning or operating in collaboration with NASA are at risk as a result of President Trump's proposed budget cuts, which could slash finances available to the U.S space agency by 24%. During a press conference held on Thursday (June 12), ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell revealed that the space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA, the Venus orbiter EnVision, and the largest X-ray observatory ever planned, NewAthena, could be threatened if the proposed NASA budget cuts in Trump's FY26 budget go ahead. ESA thinks that at this initial stage, the impact can be mitigated on the other 16 missions in collaboration with NASA, but the remaining three missions may require a rethink if they happen at all. "We're looking at three potential missions that, should the budget proposal come to pass as written, would require recovery actions. That's LISA, EnVision, the NewAthena," Mundell said. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher added: "This is an ongoing negotiation in the United States. It is not for us as ESA to comment on these negotiations or to interfere, but we are impacted in quite a number of domains that are, at least at the moment, proposed for cancellations or reductions. "This will require that some of the activities may be frozen. No decisions or cancellations have yet been made because the decisions on the side of the U.S. are not yet finalized. We need to wait for the final decisions from the U.S." Mundell continued by underlining how deeply ESA values the collaboration between Europe and NASA, but added that Europe does have or could acquire the technical capabilities to reduce to reproduce missing elements. "That's something that we're now working through," she number of missions that could be threatened if ESA is forced to repurpose funds extends beyond the three missions mentioned above. Though the Nov. 16, 2025 launch of the sea-level rise monitoring Sentinel-6B spacecraft will go ahead as planned, its sibling mission, Sentinel-6C, could also be impacted by the proposed budget cuts if they are passed successfully. "It was my proposal when I was director of Earth observation, to rename a satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich [after former director of the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters from 2006 to 2019]," Aschbacher added. "It would be a pity if Sentinel-6C were not funded or supported, as it is a successor of the mission Michael Freilich, which is still in space. We offered our satellite to be named after a NASA Administrator as a very visible sign of the of the deepness of the cooperation between NASA and ESA." Proposed U.S. budget cuts could also impact the planned Mars rover Rosalind Franklin, previously known as the ExoMars rover. That is because the robotic explorer named after the esteemed British chemist was set to feature several components supplied by NASA. ESA may now seek to develop on its own the technologies for the three main elements of the rover set to be provided by NASA: its launcher, radio isotope heater unit, and aerobraking engine. This will take time and may impact the mission's timeline, which would have seen Rosalind Franklin head to Mars in 2028. Related Stories: — Trump administration proposes slashing NASA budget by 24% — Experts alarmed as White House proposes 'largest single-year cut to NASA in American history' — Trump's 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA's Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that's a 'major step back' Of course, nothing is yet set in stone, with the U.S. Congress yet to have the final say on how to allocate federal dollars. A final decision on the FY 2026 Discretionary Budget is expected in Fall 2025. Meanwhile, ESA will meet in late November to finalize its own budget. This means that the space agency may have to move ahead with contingency planning and budgeting before the final outcome of proposed U.S. budget cuts is known. "The timing is expected to be maybe just before decisions are being made, and the fiscal year 26 budget will be known for sure. We need to assess on one side, how much it costs to wait, and how long we can wait," Aschbacher said. "There is a lot of analysis and options that need to be verified and need to be discussed."In brief, the main highlight, or the main point, is that we have agreed to make sure that Europe is increasing its resilience and autonomy to make sure that we have the technologies we need in the near future."
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Trump's 2026 budget cuts would force the world's most powerful solar telescope to close
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. ANCHORAGE, AK — There was a pindrop silence in the room on Tuesday (June 10), as Christoph Keller, director of the National Solar Observatory, spoke on stage here at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting. Standing in front of a giant projected bar graph, he solemnly explained the possible fate of the world's most powerful eye on the sun: the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST). If Congress enacts President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget request — allocating just $13 million or so for DKIST — the telescope won't be able to continue on, Keller said. For context, this year alone, the federally funded National Solar Observatory (NSO) expects to spend about $30 million on the facility. "To put it bluntly," Keller said, "for DKIST, at $13 million, we cannot operate. There's no way for us to operate such a complex facility." The graph behind Keller spoke for itself. On the left, a bar represented the actual money the NSO spent in 2024, one in the middle represented what the NSO plans to spend in 2025, and one on the right depicted Trump's FY26 budget request. Each individual bar was divided into two colors: one representing money required for DKIST (a strong majority of each bar) and one representing money required for all other NSO facilities. "If you actually looked at what this means," Keller said. "Between this year and the request for next year, it's a 54% budget cut." The hit to DKIST would be unfortunate, as scientists made clear during the talk, particularly seeing as the telescope only captured its first image in 2020 after over 25 years of effort. Not only is it the world's most powerful solar telescope, it's also the largest. Built with about 150 tons of steel, it sits atop the 10,000-foot-high (3,048-meter) summit of the volcanic mountain. Haleakalā, which translates to "the house of the sun," on the Hawaiian island of Maui. "It's a really nice site," David Boboltz, associate director for DKIST, said during the meeting. "It's got low light scattering; it's got good seeing." "It is literally the greatest leap in humanity's ability to study the sun from the ground since Galileo's time. It's a big deal," Jeff Kuhn, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa's Institute for Astronomy (IfA) who worked on DKIST, previously said in a statement. Indeed, the details of our sun that DKIST is able to capture are astounding. In the image below, for instance (DKIST's first image of the sun), each cell-like structure is about the size of Texas. This is the highest-resolution image of our star that's ever been captured. What's extra mind-blowing here is how small of a solar region the image actually represents: Another more recent image from DKIST reveals what appear to be magnetic "curtains" on our star's surface, in reference to what are called "photospheric striations" shaped by the sun's magnetic field. In still another, an area above the sun's atmosphere looks like it has the texture of one of those rubber spike balls you can get at Chuck E. Cheese. The list goes on in terms of awesome DKIST data, and that's with only a few years of time online. But DKIST wouldn't be the only at-risk NSO facility, as Keller explained. If Trump's FY26 budget proposal goes through, just $4 million would be available for all other NSO equipment. "We can maybe operate three ground stations," he said, suggesting this would eradicate all of helioseismology. There may only be some room for space weather forecasting initiatives, Keller said. "If something goes wrong; if something really fails, we won't have the money to fix it," he added. "Congress can fix it, and all citizens here, you know what to do."
