What Might a Second Trump Term Bring for Animals?
By Paul Shapiro
Donald Trump’s broad electoral triumph will alter the path of history in many ways: immigration rules, trade, foreign policy, fossil fuels, abortion, and more. But one area that’s drawn less attention — though not none — is how might a second Trump term affect the lives of animals.
Animal protection played a nearly non-existent role in the 2024 presidential race. Aside from memorable catch phrases like “childless cat ladies” and “they’re eating the pets,” neither candidate talked much about what policies they’d espouse to address animal protection. (Kristi Noem’s dog shooting and the killing of Pnut the squirrel did admittedly briefly enter the election zeitgeist.)
It’s hard to predict how Trump 47 may differ from Trump 45, but we can look back on the first term to see how animals fared.
Trump 45: The Good
The first Trump administration supported some animal protection measures, including:
- Putting the EPA on a course to move away from animal testing.
- Signing the PACT Act, which made certain kinds of animal cruelty a federal crime and built a national anti-cruelty law for the first time.
- Signing an omnibus bill that contained the Horse Racing Integrity Act.
- Signing a farm bill containing a provision to ban dog and cat meat; the Pets and Women Safety (PAWs) Act to prevent victims of domestic violence from losing their pets to abusers, and the Parity in Animal Cruelty Enforcement (PACE) Act that banned cockfighting in the U.S. Territories, including Puerto Rico and Guam.
Trump 45: The Bad
On the other hand, the first Trump administration, mainly in the form of the political team assembled at the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior, was often hostile to animal welfare. For example, it:
- Withdrew rules protecting horses from soring, a move an appeals court rejected.
- Scuttled a rule strengthening farm animal welfare in the organic program.
- Promulgated a rule allowing pig slaughterhouses to increase line speed, which was later rejected by a court.
- Nixed an order from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to phase out the use of lead ammunition on national wildlife refuges (which is known to poison and kill more than 120 wildlife species, including bald and golden eagles).
- Took offline federal animal abuse violations.
- Pursued a methodical expansion of hunting and fishing on public lands, including wildlife refuges.
- Removed protections for gray wolves.
- Weakened the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
- Lifted a ban on importing elephant “trophies” by American safari hunters.
- Unwound a rule to end inhumane means of killing wolves, grizzly bears, and other predators on 74 million acres of national wildlife refuges in Alaska.
- Threw out rules to protect whales.
- Worked to open Alaska’s wildlife refuge to oil drilling.
- Relaxed rules on logging old growth forests, which a court deemed illegal.
Trump 47: All in the Appointees
Trump has at times personally professed support for animal protection, including calling trophy hunting a “horror show.” In 2021 he spoke at a dog rescue fundraiser. As president, he had a signing ceremony for the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act. Clearly, many of the above-mentioned setbacks for animal welfare were driven by agency appointees and perhaps never rose to the level of the president’s attention. Since personnel is policy, who Trump appoints in a second cabinet or as an adviser could have far-reaching effects on a variety of key issues affecting animal welfare. For example:
- Vivek Ramaswamy recently tweeted about how animal cruelty is becoming an increasingly important issue for conservatives.
- Lara Trump is passionate about animal welfare.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has for decades decried the factory farming of animals, including discussing it during his presidential campaign.
- Tulsi Gabbard has been outspoken against factory farming.
Perhaps most pressing is how the incoming administration will address the EATS Act, a bill to nullify critical state animal welfare laws and more. Already many Republican members of Congress have expressed opposition to the bill as a giveway to China and an assault on states’ rights. Will Trump agree with them?
Trump can also take aim at a far-fetched plan to kill 450,000 barred owls in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, reversing a Biden initiative to open 16 National Park Service units to the hunting of range-expanding barred owls native to North America and long protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Making Animals Great Again
Many Republican presidents have taken strides to protect animals. President Grant signed the 28-Hour Law in 1873 to protect farmed animals during transport. President Eisenhower signed the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act into law in 1958, which was expanded twenty years later thanks to Sen. Bob Dole’s advocacy. President Nixon created the EPA in 1970 and signed into law landmark animal protection statutes including the Airborne Hunting Act of 1971, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. George W. Bush signed into law a wide range of national animal welfare policies, including making animal fighting a federal felony in 2007.
It’s not so clear where Trump himself stands on many of the key issues facing animals at the federal level today. It would be surprising for him not to support the FIGHT Act to crack down further on animal fighting and not to advocate for an end to live exports of horses for slaughter. An FDA under his control may be more likely to be more robust in implementing the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 and to drive forward the transition away from animal testing. As well, Project 2025 includes a plan to repeal crop subsidies (relevant to animal ag), which raises questions about how Trump 47 will address this issue. During his first term, payments to farmers ballooned to historic highs, earning rebuke from the conservative Cato Institute.
How Trump’s appointees will view animal welfare is an open question. Perhaps most pressingly, his appointees at Agriculture and Interior will have in their hands immensely important decisions that will affect the lives of animals.
