As y'all know, I'm strongly against Trump. That said, Eric recently shared this article from The Hill, which is usually considered to be a reliable, establishment source.
I don't believe that the ESA should cover endangered species at all, and when it comes to non-American species what gets covered or doesn't get covered tends to be political anyways. But the primary effect of listing a non-native species under the act is that it makes it harder to keep alive large captive populations, since it bans the interstate transport of species for the purpose of keeping them as pets, while having no effect on their wild populations. A certain type of person is happy about this, because they believe that "wild animals belong in the wild" or "you shouldn't have a rare species as a pet," but these arguments are always based on pure sentiment, and I find them infuriating. So even if Trump had meddled, I'd see it as a good thing.
But the thing is, that article is glaringly wrong in the cause of the parrot's removal, apparently attributing to executive meddling the normal process by which the FWS goes through to list and delist species. It takes considerably longer than four months to modify the list of species covered under the Endangered Species Act, so unless you have evidence that Trump is meddling in the ESA far beyond his authority or apparent interests (and that's an extraordinary claim requiring if not extraordinary proof, at least some evidence), it looks like the author is trying to play on people's sympathy for parrots to score anti-Trump points.
I know one member has already expressed concern about people's dislike for Trump clouding our judgment and driving us off the deep end over perfectly reasonable things. So far, the things he's done that this member thinks are reasonable are things I think are both unreasonable and unprecedented, but this article to me is fairly clear proof of this member's concerns made flesh. I've never thought much of the expertise of journalists, because I've seen how much they get wrong on stuff I know about, but if anti-Trump hysteria can drive a mainstream, respected news source can publish clickbaity, paranoid articles about the routine workings of the bureaucracy, it makes me really, really worried.
So I think it would be great if we try to pay attention to things which "respectable" mainstream media sources publish about Trump, and if they seem to be unfounded that we call them out here and possibly discuss them.