Slaughter Our Sequoias

PRESENTED BY THE SUPER AXE-HACKER

At nine minutes to midnight, after a day of dysfunction, the House of Representatives came together in bipartisan comity to slaughter our sequoias.

Before the House could get to the choppity-chop business, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Jim Crow, no relation) sorta¹ got other pieces of Trump’s big brutal agenda through the House in shambolic fashion, reauthorizing spying authority for Trump’s secret police machine in a bipartisan vote at 5:25 PM (42 Democrats in favor, 22 Republicans opposed), then approving a $70-billion-plus blank check for CBP and ICE with only GOP votes at 10:39 PM.²

The House then moved to begin consideration of the Farm Bill (H.R. 7567), whose conservation, pollution, and nutrition assistance provisions were effectively obliterated last year by the One Big Brutal Bill, PRESENTED BY SUPERCUTS!

Agriculture chair GT Thompson (R-Pa.) and ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) put forward a bipartisan package of two dozen floor amendments to the Farm Bill (H.R. 7567), most notably the text of the Orwellian “Save Our Sequoias” Act (H.R. 2709), which was then adopted by voice vote at 11:51:08 PM. The John Muir Project explains how this logging-industry bill is a “massive threat to our iconic, irreplaceable giant sequoia groves”:

The Slaughter Our Sequoias effort is truly bipartisan, with California Democrats leading the charge, including Sen. Alex Padilla, who introduced the Senate version (S. 4103), and Reps. Scott Peters, Jim Costa, Jimmy Panetta, Luis Correa, Josh Harder, Juan Vargas, Ami Bera, and Adam Gray, as well as other Democratic logging lovers: Sanford Bishop (Ga.), Jared Golden (Me.), and Steven Horsford and Susie Lee of Nevada as co-sponsors of the House bill.³

This still has to get through the U.S. Senate, so it’s certainly worth taking action to call your senator to stop the sequoia slaughter.

Admittedly, senators are really into Thneeds, so it’s going to be a hard sell. Maybe they’ll listen if you point out that, they too, are ancient, critically endangered living fossils?

House members stayed up until 2:30 AM going through more Farm Bill amendments, including a hare-brained one from Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-American Petroleum Institute) to let RFK Jr. rewrite food safety rules for childcare providers, and then picked it back up at 9 AM. Yes, members of Congress have a terrible job and work terrible hours!

On the bright side, a bipartisan amendment to strip the Farm Bill of pesticide-manufacturer immunity language passed this morning.

On the darker side, the House then passed the Farm Bill in another bipartisan vote, with 14 Democrats in support this time.⁴  Four million Americans have lost food-stamp benefits because of the One Big Brutal Bill. So as long as you’re not a child or a tree or love children or trees, whoopee I guess. Sorry, barbaloots!

Oh, and this morning Gov. Janet “Dark Satanic AI” Mills (D-Maine) officially ended her run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, after unofficially killing it by vetoing a data-center moratorium in defense of the Sentinel Data Centers project in Jay, Maine on, yes, the site of a shuttered paper mill.

Yesterday’s Hearings on the Hill:

• 9:30 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  The President’s Budget Request for the Department of the Interior for Fiscal Year 2027

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee
  Domestic Copper Mining

• 10 AM: House Appropriations Committee
  Full Committee Markup of Fiscal Year 2027 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Related Agencies Bill

• 10:15 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
     Energy Subcommittee
  AI and the Grid

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee
  Legislation on Midwest Water Systems, Weakening Endangered Species Protections for Water Projects, and the Clear Creek Hatchery

Today’s Hearings on the Hill:

• 8 AM: House Appropriations Committee
     Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee
     Legislative Branch Subcommittee
  Markup of FY27 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Bill and the FY27 Legislative Branch Bill

• 10:30 AM: Senate Appropriations Committee
     Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee
  A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request for the United States Forest Service

P.S.: Contribute to the John Muir Project. They’re one of the few environmental groups left that haven’t sold out to the timber industry.

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1  I say “sorta” because the House has just gone on break for two weeks until May 15th, and the FISA reauthorization the House passed has a crypto provision the Senate is expected to kill so can’t get to the White House before the House comes back, the CBP-ICE blank check bill requires another series of House and Senate votes for final passage, funding for the rest of DHS is still pending, etc. etc.

2  Again, the entire Department of Homeland Security remains unfunded; Russ Vought is illegally and unconstitutionally financing the department through assumed “emergency” powers.

3  California Democrat Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, is one of the strongest defenders of the our forests against this gang of Once-lers.

4  Voting for the Farm Bill were the aforementioned Bishop, Costa, Gray, and Perez, as well as Hill Heat regular villains Henry Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez (Texas), Sharice Davids (Kansas), Don Davis (N.C.), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Kristen McDonald Rivet (Mich.), Josh Riley (N.Y.), Darren Soto (Fla.), and Gabe Vasquez (N.M.). Go Team New Democrats!