Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said the Interior secretary was “confused,” that the agency’s plan was “stupid” and even invoked Elmer Fudd on Tuesday as he broke with the Trump administration over a plan to kill hundreds of thousands of owls to save … another owl.
Kennedy will get a vote Wednesday on his Congressional Review Act resolution to strike down a Biden-era Fish and Wildlife Service plan. It calls for killing about 450,000 nonnative barred owls in the Pacific Northwest, which are pestering and outcompeting the critically endangered native northern spotted owl.
It’s unclear whether his effort will succeed amid opposition from the administration. Kennedy is nonetheless persisting, all the while unleashing his homespun witticisms.
“This to me is just bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid,” Kennedy said in a scathing and stem-winding speech on the Senate floor. “I have rocks in my driveway that are smarter than this.”
