While everything else is going to hell, the Trump administration has now finalized a rule allowing hunters in Alaska to murder baby animals for fun as part of the Republican plan to undo absolutely anything the nation's first Black president had anything to do with.
The 2015 ban on killing hibernating bears by luring them outside their dens, and chase out wolf mothers and pups inside their dens by crawling inside with flashlights, will be lifted in 30 days. The Washington Post reports the new rules will also allow "shooting swimming caribou from a boat and targeting animals from airplanes and snowmobiles." Well, sure. If people can't fire high-powered rifles from airplanes to kill whatever they see scurrying around down there, what's the point of living?
Alaska conservatives have been pushing for the rules to be lifted from the day they were imposed, and Trump's Interior Department made it clear from the outset that they intended to lift this and every other Obama-era regulation. The premise is that the rules are unfair to hunters, especially ones whose notion of "sport" involves killing things that are sleeping and, when possible, not moving their ass off whatever padded seat it is currently resting on. We won't pretend to understand; if you want to ask someone about it, go ask someone like Sarah Palin. She'll come up with something.
Mostly, though, it seems like just another instance of the Republican Party demanding that every inch of Obama-era decision-making be erased from the books, from regulations on cancer-causing pollutants to labor rules, police reforms and, of course, pandemic preparedness teams. While little Uday and Qusay Trump assuredly pressured their dear father with pleas like, "We want to be able to shoot animals from airplanes," most of the decisions are distinctly not coming from Donald Trump, but from the party toadies he installed in every government department. It is them, not Trump, erasing the rules. Trump only involves himself with things Fox News goes on about.