If you don’t like President Trump’s position on a particular issue, just wait a day. It may change.
It’s always suspicious when a federal agency quietly makes a major policy change and does not put out a news release about it. That’s what the Interior Department did last week.
Handing another win to the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew a ban related to importing elephant trophies from Africa. A March 1 memorandum, written in dense legalese, said the government will now allow hunters to receive permits on “a case-by-case basis” to bring tusks and other body parts back to this country.
This is notable because Trump chastised and then overruled his own political appointees at the department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, when they unveiled plans last November to lift restrictions put in place by Barack Obama. The president called the hunting of elephants for sport a “horror show.”
Just last month, Trump told Piers Morgan that what his team did last year was “terrible.”
“I didn’t want elephants killed and stuffed and have the tusks brought back,” he said.
Stories started trickling out this week as reporters discovered the memo that had been entered into the public record.
The NRA has been aggressively challenging the 2014 ban on elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe and Zambia in court, and the D.C. Circuit ruled in December that the Obama administration didn’t follow proper procedures related to soliciting public comments when implementing it.
The Trump administration cites this finding as the justification for its policy change. But The Hill notes that Fish and Wildlife is simultaneously withdrawing other findings related to trophy hunting that stretch back to 1995. So that spin doesn’t necessarily pass the smell test.
