When voters go to the polls this November, they won’t only be making critical decisions about who represents them in the White House, Congress and state and local offices. In a number of states, the people will vote on the humane treatment of animals—deciding whether to adopt policies on factory farming, wildlife trafficking, and other animal protection issues.
The Humane Society Legislative Fund today announces its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President, and the launch of a new ad campaign to inform voters that a Donald Trump presidency would be a threat to animals everywhere. In our view, Trump represents the greatest threat ever to federal policy-making and implementation of animal protection laws, and we are taking the unusual step of wading actively into a presidential campaign.
We already knew that Donald Trump would be bad news for wildlife—he’s got two sons who travel the globe to slay rar
Donald Trump’s sons reportedly took a break from their roles as their father’s surrogates in the hotly contested presidential election last week to pursue their most favored leisure activity: killing wild animals in far off places for their heads and hides, including the rarest species in the world.
The Michigan state legislature’s leading anti-animal politician—a zealous crusader for the trophy hunting and trapping of wolves and a serial exaggerator about wolf encounters in the Upper Peninsula—lost by a substantial margin in a Republican primary for the U.S. House seat in the state’s northernmost congressional district.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both still running on the Democratic side, but the overall field in the 2016 race for the White House has narrowed considerably since HSLF reported in January on the candidates’ animal protection records. Ted Cruz and John Kasich officially suspended their campaigns, with Donald Trump all but locking up the Republican presidential nomination.
When it comes to the children of politicians, the less said the better. They didn’t sign up for this kind of media glare. Who deserves privacy more than kids?
Sean Pavone/Alamy Photo Stock
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last week vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have put a roadblock in place in New Jersey for the next Walter Palmer-wannabee who wanted to slay a lion and bring his head back to the states. New Jersey lawmakers had overwhelmingly passed legislation to block the shipment of big-game trophies of lions, tigers, leopards, Cape buffalo, elephants, rhinoceros, and other endangered animals through New Jersey ports.
saveanimalsfacingextinction.org
One of the core objectives we have at the HSLF is to make it simple and efficient for voters to determine how federal lawmakers have sided on crucial animal protection legislation across a range of issues. With the end of the first term of the 114th Congress approaching, HSLF has posted a preview version of the 2015 Humane Scorecard, so you can see how your U.S. senators and U.S. representatives have performed so far in this Congress on animal protection issues.
