Trump picks with best pro-animal records are in poor position to help; those with worst records will have most influence
WASHINGTON D.C.––Animal advocates, depending on priority issues, on February 12 and 13, 2025 responded with both guarded hope and anxious nausea to the latest Donald Trump appointments to senior administration posts.
Among the flurry of appointments of relevance to animal concerns were the February 13, 2025 confirmation of Robert J. Kennedy Jr. to head the federal Department of Health & Human Services; the February 12, 2025 confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence; the February 12, 2025 nomination of Brian Nesvik to direct the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; the February 13, 2025 confirmation of Kash Patel to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the February 13, 2025 appointment of Usha Vance to the board of trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.
Anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. will oversee NIH, CDC, & FDA
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, will potentially have the most influence on animal issues. Under his jurisdiction will be the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the U.S. and the world, including animal experiments; the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, which has the leading role in responding to zoonotic disease outbreaks, meaning diseases transmitted to humans by animals, for instance the avian influenza H5N1; and the Food & Drug Administration, whose rules and regulations impose the most requirements for animal testing of new products and therapeutic procedures.
Kennedy, however, is no anti-vivisectionist. Kennedy, though a leading anti-vaxxer, and by implication therefore skeptical of the use of animal testing to demonstrate safety, has no actual record in categorial opposition to animal use in biomedical research.
Kennedy has also been highly critical of fast food, but is not a vegan, nor even a vegetarian, and appears actually to be a heavy meat-eater.
RFK Jr. sued pig farmers, but long ago
Further, Kennedy has been a sport hunter and falconer for most of his life. His apparent dalliance with animal advocacy during the first decade of the present century coincided with his former occupation of prosecuting factory pig farmers over pollution issues, as an environmental lawyer representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper, and Waterkeeper Alliance.
Kennedy left those organizations to pursue his anti-vaccination campaigns in 2017. His most recent public statements against factory pig farming were apparently made on June 20, 2009 during a visit to Poland.
Inasmuch as eight of the 42 states that Donald Trump won in the November 2024 U.S. national election are among the 10 leading states in pig production, it is unlikely that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will resume speaking out against factory pig farming.
(See RFK Jr., named to head Health & Human Services, offers little for animals.)
Tulsi Gabbard: pro-animal but no relevant role
Tulsi Gabbard, 43, as director of national intelligence, is expected to have little or nothing directly to do with animal issues.
However, Gabbard is a lifelong vegetarian, including throughout more than 20 years of U.S. Army service, during which she was twice deployed to the Middle East.
Gabbard, offered the Humane Society Legislative Fund in 2019, was “a consistent supporter of animal protection legislation” as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives,” representing Hawaii from 2013 to 2021.
“Voted to crack down on animal fighting in the U.S. territories”
Gabbard, the Humane Society Legislative Fund detailed, cosponsored “legislation to end the domestic shark fin trade, create a felony penalty for malicious animal cruelty, and crack down on puppy mills,” and “voted for the PAST Act, which would end horse soring abuses.
“Previously,” the Humane Society Legislative Fund said, Gabbard, born in American Samoa, “voted to crack down on animal fighting in the U.S. territories, and against stripping Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves in the Lower 48 states,” a position that put her in direct opposition to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service director nominee Brian Nesvik,
Gabbard also told Jasmin Singer of VegNews, in an interview published on February 19, 2020, “Factory farms have to be a thing of the past. Supporting more ethical and organic farming has to be the place that we go when it comes to farming,” Gabbard insisted, also arguing for “Ending animal testing,” and “To ban puppy mills.”
Brian Nesvik
The nomination of Nesvik, 44, to head the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service appears to have been praised by only one major organization focused on wildlife and habitat, the pro-hunting National Wildlife Federation, which originated as the umbrella for 48 state hunting clubs in 1936, and has never strayed far from representing hunter interests.
Nesvik, director of the Wyoming’s Game & Fish Department from 2019 until his retirement in 2024, “has a great deal of experience managing wildlife and people as well as enforcing the law as a wildlife manager, game warden, and leader of the wildlife agency and national guard in Wyoming,” National Wildlife Federation spokesperson Mary Jo Brooks offered in a prepared media statement.
Elaborated Mike Leahy, National Wildlife Federation senior director of wildlife, hunting, and fishing policy, Nesvik “has been a particularly strong proponent for conserving big game migration corridors and expanding hunting and fishing in Wyoming.”
Elk, grizzlies, & wolves
Responded the Sierra Club, also in a prepared statement, “Nesvik’s tenure in Wyoming was marked by controversy. He was tasked with implementing a new agency plan for managing elk feed grounds in the state, a unique practice among Rocky Mountain states, to which many attribute the spread of disease among the state’s elk population,” particularly including brucellosis, also “including hoof rot, which several years ago led to the death of half of the elk calves on one feed ground.”
Further, the Sierra Club reminded, Nesvik “has testified before Congress calling for the removal of Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears.
“Under Nesvik’s leadership,” the Sierra Club statement continued, “Wyoming has implemented killing wolves by any means in an effort to drive numbers to bare minimums, and [Nesvik] has made clear he wants to do the same thing to grizzly bears, which would undo decades of work to recover the species.
“The nomination of Nesvik appears to advance the Trump administration’s long-standing anti-wildlife sentiments,” the Sierra Club statement concluded.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Declaring war on imperiled wildlife”
“Trump is declaring war on wolves, grizzly bears, and imperiled wildlife across America by picking Nesvik to run the Fish & Wildlife Service,” charged Center for Biological Diversity deputy director of government affairs Stephanie Kurose.
“In Wyoming,” Kurose recalled, “Nesvik led one of the most anti-conservation wildlife agencies in the country, and it is glaringly obvious that he wants to destroy the Endangered Species Act. You only put a guy like this in charge of protecting endangered animals if you want them wiped out.”
For example, Kuroise continued, “In 2020 Nesvik joined the Wyoming Stock Growers Association in stating that the Endangered Species Act ‘must be pruned.’
Wants to weaken protection for threatened species
“During the Obama administration, Nesvik supported former Wyoming governor Matt Mead’s efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act,” including calling “for weaker protection of all species listed as ‘threatened,’ ignoring threats to endangered species from climate change, and increasing ‘regulatory flexibility’ for extractive industries to harm endangered species.
“More recently,” Kurose mentioned, “Nesvik vocally opposed efforts to protect and conserve sage grouse populations from threats to their habitat from the oil and gas industry, as well as grazing, after the first Trump administration weakened protections for the bird.”
“Spectator rather than a leader”
Added Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “Brian Nesvik seemed like a spectator rather than a leader in the wake of Cody Robert’s maiming and crushing an adolescent female with a snowmobile. A leader of a state wildlife agency should have demanded not only the prosecution of the perpetrator, but more importantly, a new policy to forbid this sadism.
“His reluctant participation in the post-killing debate,” Pacelle charged, “tells all of us that we can expect he will not be a contributor to wildlife protection in America during his tenure.
“If you cannot stand forthrightly against this kind of cruelty to wildlife,” Pacelle finished, then you will be silent or complicit with just about any other form of abuse.”
(See Snowmobile wolf lynching puts Wyoming, Idaho, & Montana on trial and Managing wolf hatred, by Robert Schmidt.)
ANIMALS 24-7 in a search of news media going back to 2005 found not a single instance of Nesvik favoring any species of wildlife over the demands of sport hunters.
In it for Kash
Kash Patel, 44, as FBI director, will have involvement in animal issues in two major areas: in enforcing the rarely used Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, and in providing backup to other agencies, chiefly the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Customs & Border Protection Service, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, in enforcing laws prohibiting wildlife trafficking, cockfighting, and dogfighting.
Patel appears to have had no relevant experience in any of those areas.
Animal advocates have hoped, since Kash Patel is reportedly a devout Hindu, that he might also be vegetarian, but Distractify writer Jennifer Farrington dashed that hope on December 1, 2024.
“One memory that stands out for Patel,” Farrington reported, “is how he and his father would ‘sneak out’ to grab a bite of butter chicken, as his mom followed a strict vegetarian diet and didn’t allow meat in the house.
“While he joked that his mom likely knew exactly where they were going,” Farrington said, “it became a weekly ritual for him and his dad.”
Usha Vance: veg & proud of it, but no direct clout
Unlike Patel, Usha Chilukuri Vance, 39, is a vegetarian and proud of it, having praised her husband, U.S. vice president J.D. Vance, on day three of the 2024 Republican National Convention for having adapted to her vegetarian diet in home meals and having learned to cook Indian food for her mother.
But as only one of many trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Usha Vance will likely have no direct influence over any animal issue, except perhaps by way of setting an influential personal example.
J.D. Vance, however, remains conspicuously a meat-eater in public appearances, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Daniel Miller, who examined his eating habits in an August 13, 2024 feature article.
Roger L. Stevens
The appointment of Usha Vance to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts came under immediate criticism as an example of political patronage.
The Kennedy Center itself, however, exists as an example of political patronage.
Originally named the National Cultural Center, renamed in 1971, it was headed from 1961 to 1988 by Roger L. Stevens, appointed by then-president John F. Kennedy partly in recognition of Stevens’ career as a successful theatrical producer, and partly in appreciation of Stevens’ work as former finance chair for the Democratic Party.
Stevens’ wife, Christine Stevens, in 1952 founded the Animal Welfare Institute, the second U.S. national humane organization, following the formation of the American Humane Association in 1877.
The American SPCA [ASPCA] was founded in 1866, but did not significantly expand activities beyond New York City until more than 120 years later.
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