Grain Passage, 9th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): In his nearly unfathomable wisdom, the Stable Genius, too busy to sign the bipartisan housing bill ("a big yawn," he called it) that's been sitting on his desk for a week, today has repealed a crucial part of the Endangered Species Act. The replacement rule will open habitats of endangered wildlife to development, logging, mining and other uses.

For the last 50 years, the Endangered Species Act relied on a broad interpretation of the word “harm.” The broad interpretation ensured that not just plants and animals were protected, but also the habitats that are critical to their survival. The inclusion of habitat in the “harm” definition was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1995 in a case protecting old-growth forest for the endangered spotted owl.

But despite widespread public support of the Act and hundreds of thousands of public comments submitted opposing the change, the Stable Genius decided that the broader interpretation of "harm" was “regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights.” 

Habitat destruction is the single greatest driver of extinction. The Endangered Species Act has helped safeguard more than 1,700 species and their habitats, preventing 99% of those listed from going extinct, including the spotted owl and the bald eagle. Excluding habitat from the definition of "harm" could cause catastrophic damage to species already on the brink to extinction, and the loss of some of the most beautiful and pristine land in the country to exploitation. 

But should we have expected anything else from the Stable Genius? As a popular internet meme correctly points out, he's a convicted felon, an adjudicating rapist, and a pedophile-protecting, porn-star banging insurrectionist running a dumpster fire of an administration. 

Tonight, 600,000 homeless people will be sleeping on the street. Forty percent of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. Insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. Medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. Women are dying in hospital parking lots because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.

The U.S. locks up more of its own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has two million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.

Our life expectancy is going backwards, the only developed nation where that's happening. Our infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Our kids do active shooter drills in school.

The minimum wage hasn't changed in 15 years. Teachers work two jobs to make ends meet and veterans sleep under bridges, all while the government spends one trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack us.

And now, we're going to open up the Okefenokee and the Everglades to strip mining, clear old growth forests and fell sequoias for timber, and open pristine Arctic lands for oil drilling. 

Other than some lobbyists and a handful of greedy industrialists, no one asked for this.