Interior: Did Bernhardt once try to blow up Endangered Species Act?
Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in 2012 filed a 14-page lawsuit demanding the Fish and Wildlife Service protect the American eel as a threatened species under the ESA. Bernhardt filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of a California-based organization called the Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy & Reliability, also known as CESAR. CESAR was, in fact, a group spun together by conservatives with roots in Western farming and the Bush administration.