Trump’s Threat to Animals
Photo by Zahrin Lukman
I’ve been unsure how animal activists should orient themselves in the coming American presidential election. Obviously, in the United States’ two-party system we should vote for the Democratic nominee. But should we do more than simply cast a ballot for the candidate, whoever that ends up being?
I typically argue we should prioritize nonhuman interests to the greatest extent possible, as there are so few people who do. For me, that means picketing legislators and writing letters to newspapers in the hope of using the political process to accelerate the development of cultivated meat.
But, as the election approaches, I wonder if the threat Donald Trump poses to animals and our movement is so extreme we should pause our usual work and temporarily focus on helping to defeat him. I put this question and others to a group of animal advocates who were kind enough to share their time with me.
Merritt Clifton is editor of the Animals 24-7 website. Previously, he was news editor for Animals’ Agenda magazine, as well as the editor of the Animal People newspaper. When asked what a second Trump presidency might look like, Clifton referred to his coverage of the Republican’s first term.
“USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act all but ended; enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act was severely handicapped,” the Animals 24-7 editor said. “No significant new pro-animal legislation was passed.”
Delci Winders is associate professor of law and the founding director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Her opinions are her own and she does not speak on behalf of Vermont Law and Graduate School. Winders highlighted some of the same things Clifton did.
“Deregulatory measures implemented during [Trump’s] presidency — including extreme speed slaughter, delegating oversight to slaughterhouse workers, failing to enforce the Animal Welfare Act, and keeping the public in the dark when the government documented animal welfare violations — harmed animals, people, and the planet alike,” she said.
John Sanbonmatsu is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He is editor of the book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, and author of the forthcoming book The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves.
“A second Trump term will greatly accelerate the destruction of animals across the Earth by eliminating environmental laws and regulations, weakening or ignoring animal welfare laws, expanding oil drilling, accelerating greenhouse gases, and defending cattle ranching,” Sanbonmatsu said.
He added Trump would gravely weaken our democracy, encourage lawlessness on the far-right, and create an even more hostile operating environment for activists trying to gain traction with the public on animal issues. While Sanbonmatsu had plenty of criticism of Democrats, he believed the Republican would be far worse.
Christopher Sebastian is a journalist, technical writer, and adjunct lecturer. He teaches in the School of Journalism, Media, and Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague. He writes about food, politics, media, pop culture, and animals. Sebastian had no doubt a second Trump term would be bad for nonhumans.
“Speaking as someone who has worked in environmental consulting for over 5 years, his climate policy alone clearly leads to undesirable outcomes for threatened and endangered species,” Sebastian said. “And with a Supreme Court that is committed to deregulation, I can’t see things improving for farmed animals either.”
Ronnie Lee is best known for launching the Animal Liberation Front and spending about 9 years in prison for ALF activities. In more recent years, though, he’s turned his attention to vegan outreach. I wrote a biography of the man in 2017, called The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front.
Lee also focused on the devastating effects of Republican environmental policy and how that would impact nonhumans. “My main concern is the huge harm that another Trump administration would cause to efforts to combat the climate crisis, which is already claiming the lives of billions of our fellow animals,” he said.
Vasile Stănescu earned his PhD from Stanford University and currently works as an associate professor of Communication at Mercer University. A committed vegan for over 20 years, his work on both animals and the environment can be found at winforanimals.org. Stănescu emphasized the climate stakes as well.
“Trump wants to increase energy exploitation,” Stănescu said. “He is an open climate change denier and has stated he would try and roll back all the progress President Biden has made in confronting climate change. Climate change is not an issue that only affects human animals, other animals would, if anything, be more affected.”
Stănescu noted Trump ruled, at the height of COVID, that meat-packing industries should stay open and be exempt from rules about public health because, in his view, they are essential for national defense. The associate professor believed the conservative would oppose any effort to help animals or reduce meat consumption.
Carol J. Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory, soon to appear in a 35th anniversary edition. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine, among others. She has been an activist in a wide range of causes.
“A Trump second term, God forbid, would have an enormous impact on all animals,” she said. “Those who support him, especially businesses, want a free enterprise unfettered by environmental laws. We can see how the Supreme Court, because of who he appointed, has already started eroding basic environmental protections.”
Adams pointed out animals also need those protections. As others had mentioned previously, she said efforts to reduce climate change would be impeded and animals, as well as humans, suffer from climate change. Adams couldn’t imagine Trump supporting any anti-cruelty laws or protection for endangered species.
“Trump’s right-wing, white-supremacist allies claim meat eating and milk drinking as an essential identity,” she said. “Meanwhile, Trump panders to them. Trump’s pro-authoritarian stance threatens our democracy. How would that play out? Civil liberties will be endangered, and along with that would be free speech about animals.”
Aidan Kankyoku is a researcher focused on developing new strategies for the social movement wing of the farmed animal advocacy space. He co-founded Pax Fauna for that purpose in 2021, which led in 2023 to the launch of Pro-Animal Future. Kankyoku seemed less concerned about Trump’s potential return than others I interviewed.
“I anticipate the same structural limitations that prevented Trump from enacting more dramatic changes (both good and bad) to U.S. policy in his first term will likely dominate in his second term,” he said. “Most advocates should operate on the assumption that consequences specific to Trump will not be permanent, and may be minimal.”
On the other hand, Kankyoku believed harmful long-term trends such as criminalization of protestors, journalists, and whistleblowers have been accelerating rapidly under administrations of both parties, and we should expect these trends to continue — to the animal movement’s detriment — regardless of the outcome in November.
Spencer Roberts is a science writer, ecologist, musician, and engineer. In his journalistic work, he focuses on the climate crisis, marine life and animal agriculture. Readers can find his writing in Wired, The Intercept, Jacobin and elsewhere. Roberts was similar to Kankyoku in his ambivalence about the election stakes.
“On issues affecting animals, Trump and Biden have remarkably similar policies,” Roberts said. “Even largely performative gestures made by past presidents, such as the slowing of slaughterhouse line speeds and designation of marine national monuments, appear of no importance whatsoever to either of the current major party candidates.”
Winders didn’t say how animal activists should divide their time between preventing a second Trump term and preventing animal exploitation. She insisted, however, it was important for activists to be working on all fronts. Winders emphasized the executive branch should guard against, rather than facilitate, harm to animals.
Sanbonmatsu thought there were so few people working to secure the rights of animals it would not make much difference whether activists turned more of their attention to the presidential election. He argued it was more important for activists to keep working on animal issues, but to do so in a more coalitional way.
“Animal liberation is not a single-issue campaign,” Sanbonmatsu said. “It is necessarily a campaign for universal emancipation and justice for all animals, including human ones. So the movement needs to be clear that it is against fascism in all its forms, including its Trumpian form.” He seemed to be calling for a rhetorical shift.
Sebastian wasn’t sure what animal activists could do to prevent a second Trump term. He also questioned how many activists wanted to prevent the outcome. Sebastian believed a significant portion of the professional animal movement was aligned with right-wing extremists and those who weren’t were ill-equipped to address the problem.
“Trump, and by extension Trumpism, is part of a growing trend,” Sebastian said. “And instead of challenging fascist power, many in the animal rights movement are following it in order to remain relevant, maintain or get access to new sources of funding, or because they share fascist beliefs themselves.”
Lee was shocked at the number of animal-protection advocates who supported Trump. He thought it was important other animal activists educate these Republican sympathizers about how much the climate crisis is harming our fellow animals and how a second Trump term would make that crisis so much worse.
“Having said that,” Lee continued, “I think that a [Democratic] administration would only be the lesser of two evils and that our main focus should always be vegan outreach, if we are ever to create an animal liberationist society.”
Stănescu seemed to argue in favor of a temporary focus on election work, but didn’t agree this meant less time, energy and resources for work directly focused on animals. For him, it was one struggle. Preventing Trump from returning to the Oval Office also helped prevent animal exploitation.
“We are passing tipping points in terms of both climate change and species extinction which, as far as anyone knows, can never be undone,” Stănescu said. “We are simply out of time to waste on nonsense. While any democratic nominee is far from perfect, there is no comparison to four more years of Trump.”
Further, regression on human rights makes progress on animal rights more difficult. Stănescu pointed out an activist who can achieve a livable wage has more time to focus on fighting for animals; likewise, an activist who is worried about racism or sexism or transphobia has less time to fight for animals.
Adams struck a similar note: “Women are the vast majority of the animal rights movement; as our status is eroded and forced pregnancies imposed, many women will be facing basic issues of survival, and will have less time to work on behalf of the other animals,” she said. “We must deny Trump a second term.”
Kankyoku didn’t think the animal movement was powerful enough to alter the outcome of the election, even if the entire movement solely focused on that. Instead, he hoped animal advocates would stay focused on accumulating small wins and building a strategy so they might one day be so powerful.
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