On October 19th, the Trump Administration finalized a rule allowing hunters to use bait, such as doughnuts and bacon grease, to lure and kill bears on national preserves in Alaska. CRS strongly condemns this new policy as antithetical to the purposes of protecting these areas, calling the rule immoral and an affront to the fair chase principles that guide legitimate hunting. “There appears to be no bottom to how low this administration will stoop to exploit America’s natural treasures. Bear baiting is not hunting. It allows unscrupulous, lazy ass people who are too wimpy to actually hunt, to execute bears in a nationally protected area. It is an anathema to actual hunting,” said CRS President David Jenkins. “This is no doubt another effort by the Trump Administration to cater to super wealthy trophy ‘hunter’ pals who can’t be bothered to actually hunt. Bears are magnificent animals, and baiting them is particularly cruel because their God-given drive to eat is supposed to help them survive through the winter,” Jenkins added. Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) CRS is a national nonprofit grassroots organization founded on the premise that environmental stewardship and natural resource conservation are inherently conservative, and that true conservatives endeavor to be good stewards of the natural systems and resources that sustain life on earth. Learn more about CRS at the organization’s website: https://www.conservativestewards.org...
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just announced that the U.S. Forest Service has filed a proposed rule to “rescind in its entirety” the national 2001 Roadless Area Conversation Rule. CRS President David Jenkins criticized the move, saying: “This is one of the most boneheaded and fiscally irresponsible actions this administration could take. The agency doesn’t have the budget to take care of the 368,000 miles of roads already riddling our national forests. In fact, there is currently a $10.8 billion maintenance backlog.” Jenkins also challenged Rollin’s claim that the Roadless Rule “exacerbates” wildfire risks, adding: “The truth is that roadless forests are our greatest defense against wildfire. Not only are old growth forests naturally resistant to fire, but 90% of all wildfires in the U.S. occur within a half mile of a road. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.“ “We need to call this out for what it is, one giant taxpayer funded subsidy for commercial logging operations that are otherwise uneconomical. This will only worsen our national debt and end up fleecing American taxpayers out the wazoo.” Jenkins said. “It is swamp politics at its very worse.” Speaking about America’s great forests and mountains, Ronald Reagan once said, “This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it.” Reagan understood that the responsible stewardship of our natural wealth and fiscal health were core tenets of conservatism. Secretary Rollins would do well to remember that and abandon her ill-conceived effort to roll back the...
Policy Reversal Could Lead to Taxpayers Being on the Hook for $753 Billion In 2024, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) updated its oil and gas bonding requirements to more closely reflect the actual plugging and clean-up costs for orphaned wells, thus protecting taxpayers from industry bad actors who skip out on their promise to plug and clean-up their wells once done producing. The Trump Administration just announced that it is rolling back those reforms, thus putting the cost of dealing with orphaned wells back on American taxpayers. “Protecting taxpayers is the sole purpose of the 2024 bonding reforms. By rolling them back, this administration is siding with industry cheats and scammers over hard-working American taxpayers,” said David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. Jenkins continued: “One has to ask, why? Why allow the oil and gas industry’s worst actors to syphon out all the profit from a public resource while offloading the cost of doing business onto you and me. It’s a binary choice, and the Trump administration is choosing corporate cheats over honest taxpayers.” “Given the unprecedented drilling mandates enacted by Congress last year, this move presents a fiscal nightmare, leaving taxpayers and the U.S. Treasury holding the bag for up to $753 billion in potential plugging and clean-up costs.” “There is nothing remotely conservative about subsidizing dishonesty and failure within the oil and gas industry, worsening the national debt, and saddling the American taxpayer with up to a trillion dollars in clean-up cost. This is swamp politics at its worst,” Jenkins said. Currently, more than 130,000 abandoned oil and gas wells litter our public lands,...
“President Trump’s just announced plan to give a $700 million taxpayer dollar handout to the coal industry is boneheaded on steroids. It makes the Obama-era Solyndra boondoggle look shrewd by comparison. This is a total misuse of the Defense Production Act , a giant giftwrapped payout to subsidize and prop up a flailing industry that can no longer compete in the free market,” said David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS). “This move, along with the President blocking the retirement of old coal plants that are too costly to operate, is making most Americans poorer. Enriching corporate cronies at taxpayer expense is swamp politics at its worst, and there is nothing even remotely conservative about it,” Jenkins added. About CRS: Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) is a national nonprofit grassroots organization founded on the premise that environmental stewardship and natural resource conservation are inherently conservative, and that true conservatives endeavour to be good stewards of the natural systems and resources that sustain life on earth. Safeguarding our air and water, our public lands, our wetlands, and wildlife is, as Ronald Reagan accurately pointed out, ‘our great moral responsibility.’ We provide a critical counterbalance to those on the political right who have lost sight of their stewardship duty, and to those on the political left whose mistrust of capitalism often results in unworkable policies that polarize more than resolve. Learn more about CRS at our website: https://conservativestewards.org/ ### Here’s a roundup of media coverage generated from this CRS press release: June 8, 2026 — Indiana coal plant with data center ties gets $27M federal subsidy — Indy Star...
