House Republicans vote to remove California fish from endangered species list
House Republicans passed a measure Thursday that would repeal the government's decision to place California's longfin smelt, a finger-sized fish, on the endangered species list.
House members passed the resolution, introduced by California Rep. Doug LaMalfa (D-Richvale), in a 216-195 vote that followed party lines. The resolution now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate.
'We want to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's misguided decision to list the San Francisco Bay Delta population of the longfin smelt as being endangered,' LaMalfa, who represents a rice-growing region in Northern California, said before the vote.
He said the agency's decision last year to declare the fish species endangered was 'unscientific' and said it's making it harder to deliver water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farmers.
The resolution was condemned by Democrats, who said the resolution goes against science and years of study by federal wildlife officials.
'They're turning a small fish into a very large scapegoat, pretending it will somehow provide real support to farmers,' said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael).
'The longfin population has declined over 99% since the 1980s,' Huffman said. 'The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed the law, the data and the science, just as Congress intended.'
Read more: Another California fish is added to the federal endangered species list
The resolution would repeal the Fish and Wildlife Service's 2024 decision under provisions of the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which enables Congress to review and disapprove rules adopted by agencies under certain circumstances.
The measure will next be considered by the Senate, where opponents said they fear it could also be passed. If approved and signed by President Trump, it would be the first action by Congress to use its authority under the 1996 law to strip protections from a species under the Endangered Species Act.
Longfin smelt, which live in bays and estuaries along the Pacific Coast, are the sixth fish species in the San Francisco Bay estuary to be added to the federal endangered species list. The fish once filled the bay, but federal wildlife officials declared the population endangered after determining it had suffered a drastic decline.
The agency's decision followed a lengthy process that began with a 2007 petition submitted by environmental groups and that involved several lawsuits. The fish were listed by California as threatened in 2009.
Environmental groups said the decline of the longfin smelt, along with other fish species including Delta smelt and Chinook salmon, is linked to water management policies that have reduced flows through the estuary and contributed to worsening water quality.
'The resolution would essentially condemn San Francisco Bay's longfin smelt to extinction,' said Jon Rosenfield, science director for the group San Francisco Baykeeper. 'Removing protections for this fish would also be a blow to other imperiled fish populations, fisheries, and clean water in the Delta.'
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
14 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Healey touts state tuition savings, criticizes federal cuts to Pell Grants
Overall, MASSGrant Plus Expansion program saved more than 34,000 Massachusetts students an estimated $110 million in the 2023-2024 academic year, the statement said. More than 7,730 middle income students saved an average of $3,856 each, according to data from the state Department of Higher Education, the statement said. Advertisement In the same statement, Healey urged the US Senate to reject Pell Grant cuts included in the federal budget reconciliation bill recently passed by Republicans in the U.S. House and supported by President Trump. The proposed cuts and eligibility restrictions would results in 42,000 Massachusetts students at public institutions losing $57 million in funding each year, according to Healey's statement said. 'Massachusetts is home to the best schools in the country, but we need to make sure that they are affordable for all of our students,' Healey's statement said. 'That's why I took action to increase financial aid at our public colleges and universities, which has already lowered costs for tens of thousands of students.' The drastic cuts proposed to the Pell Grant program would 'roll back the progress we have made and increase costs,' Healey said. Advertisement 'This is bad for our students and bad for our economy, as it would hold back our next generation of workers from being able to afford to go to school,' she said. Healey announced $62 million in new state funding to expand the MASSGrant program during a ceremony at Salem State University in November 2023. The new funding covered the full costs of tuition and mandatory instructional fees for Pell Grant-eligible students, and as much as half for middle-income students. Middle-income students are those whose families earn between $73,000 and $100,000 annually in adjusted gross income. The program was retroactive to the start of the fall 2023 semester for Massachusetts students at the states public institutions, including its 15 community colleges, nine state universities, and four University of Massachusetts undergraduate campuses. Funding for the expansion of the program also drew on $84 million Healey and the legislature had set earmarked for financial aid expansion in the FY24 budget, Healey's office said at the time. 'The dramatic enrollment increases our community colleges have seen over the last two years make it clear that free community college and expanded financial aid is a game changer for students in Massachusetts,' Luis Pedraja, chair of the Community College Council of Presidents, and president of Quinsigamond Community College said in the statement. 'The proposed Pell eligibility changes would be devastating to our students' ability to afford higher education and the community college presidents in Massachusetts urge the Senate to reject this ill-advised change,' Pedraja said. Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said he feared the impacts proposed cuts could have on students who struggle to afford college. Advertisement 'Low-income students deserve to go to college just as much as their higher income peers, and these changes are going to take us backwards – increasing dropout rates and leaving students saddled with more debt and no degree," Tutwiler said in the statement. Tonya Alanez can be reached at
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
17 News' political analysts break down Trump and Musk feud
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Some Democrats are calling the online feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk a messy breakup…coining it, 'the Real Housewives of Pennsylvania Ave.' 17 News political analysts, Neel Sannappa and Cathy Abernathy, joined 17 News at 5 to discuss the jabber between Musk and Trump. Watch the full interview in the player above for the full 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Is a $5,000 DOGE stimulus check a real thing? What we know
In February, President Donald Trump said he was considering a plan to pay out $5,000 stimulus checks to American taxpayers from the savings identified by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Are they happening? No official plan or schedule for such a payout has been released, and a decision on the checks would have to come from Congress, which has so far been cool to the idea. And there have been questions as to how much DOGE has actually saved. The idea was floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback, who suggested on Musk's social media platform X that Trump and Musk should "should announce a 'DOGE Dividend'" from the money saved from reductions in government waste and workforce since it was American taxpayer money in the first place. He even submitted a proposal for how it would work, with a timeline for after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026. "At $2 trillion in DOGE savings and 78 million tax-paying households, this is a $5,000 refund per household, with the remaining used to pay down the national debt," he said in a separate post. Musk replied, "Will check with the President." "We're considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt," Trump said in a during the Saudi-sponsored FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach the same month. DOGE has dismantled entire federal agencies, wiped out government contracts and led the firings of tens of thousands of federal workers, leaving many agencies struggling to continue operations. DOGE checks? Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said. Fishbeck suggested that the potential refund go only to households that are net-income taxpayers, or households that pay more in taxes than they get back. The Pew Research Center said that most Americans with an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 effectively pay no federal income tax. They would not be eligible. If DOGE achieves Musk's initial goal of stripping $2 trillion from U.S. government spending by 2026, Fishback's plan was for $5,000 per household, or 20% of the savings divided by the number of eligible households. If DOGE doesn't hit the goal, Fishback said the amount should be adjusted accordingly. 'So again, if the savings are only $1 trillion, which I think is awfully low, the check goes from $5,000 to $2,500,' Fishback said during a podcast appearance. 'If the savings are only $500 billion, which, again, is really, really low, then the [checks] are only $1,250.' However, while Musk talked about saving $2 trillion in federal spending during Trump's campaign, he lowered the goal to $1 trillion after Trump assumed office and said in March he was on pace to hit that goal by the end of May. At a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk lowered the projected savings further to $150 billion in fiscal year 2026. Musk left the White House at the end of May when his designation as a "special government employee" ended. DOGE, the advisory group he created, is expected to continue without him. That depends on who you ask. On its website, DOGE claims to have saved an estimated $175 billion as of May 30, "a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletions, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions." The site says that works out to $1,086.96 saved per taxpayer. However, many of DOGE's claims have been exaggerated and several of the initiatives to slash agency workforces have been challenged in court. DOGE has been accused of taking credit for contracts that were canceled before DOGE was created, failing to factor in funds the government is required to pay even if a contract is canceled, and tallying every contract by the most that could possibly be spent on it even when nothing near that amount had been obligated. The website list has been changed as the media pointed out errors, such as a claim that an $8 million savings was actually $8 billion. On May 30, CNN reported that one of its reporters found that less than half the $175 billion figure was backed up with even basic documentation, making verification difficult if not impossible. Some of the changes may also end up costing taxpayers more, such as proposed slashes to the Internal Revenue Service that experts say would mean less tax revenue generated, resulting in a net cost of about $6.8 billion. Over the next 10 years, if IRS staffing stays low, the cumulative cost in uncollected taxes would hit $159 billion, according to the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University. The per-taxpayer claim on the website is also inflated, CNN said, as it's based on '161 million individual federal taxpayers' and doesn't seem to include married people filing jointly. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: DOGE dividends: Will American taxpayers get a $5,000 check?
