Politics
This Tiny Fish’s Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction
For such a tiny fish, the snail darter has haunted Tennessee. It was the endangered species that swam its way to the Supreme Court in a vitriolic battle during the 1970s that temporarily blocked the construction of a dam.
On Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.
“There is, technically, no snail darter,” said Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum.
Dr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues report in the journal Current Biology that the snail darter, Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered.
Dr. Near contends that early researchers “squinted their eyes a bit” when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville.
“I feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,” Dr. Near said.
The T.V.A. began building the Tellico Dam in 1967. Environmentalists, lawyers, farmers and the Cherokee, whose archaeological sites faced flooding, were eager to halt the project. In August 1973, they stumbled upon a solution.
David Etnier, a dam opponent and a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, went snorkeling with students in the Little Tennessee River at Coytee Spring, not far from Tellico. There, they found a fish on the river bottom that Dr. Etnier said he had never seen before, and he named it the snail darter.
The fish became a “David” to pit against “Goliath” — because if it were to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the dam’s construction would be blocked.
“Here’s a little fish that might save your farm,” Dr. Etnier told a local farmer, according to the book “The Snail Darter and the Dam,” by Zygmunt Plater, an emeritus law professor at Boston College.
Elected officials were eager to finish the dam, and grew increasingly frustrated.
“This two-inch fish, which surely kept the lowest profile of all God’s creatures until a few years ago, has been the bane of my existence and the nemesis of what I fondly hoped would be my golden years,” Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., of Tennessee said about the snail darter in 1979.
That year, Representative John Duncan Sr., a Tennessee Republican, also described the snail darter as a “worthless, unsightly, minute, inedible minnow.”
After the Supreme Court upheld the protection of the snail darter, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. The dam began operating in 1979.
Jeffrey Simmons, an author of the study who formerly worked as a biologist at the T.V.A., discovered what appeared to be snail darters in 2015 on the border of Alabama and Mississippi, far from the Tellico Dam.
“Holy crap, do you know what this is?” Mr. Simmons said to a colleague in the creek that day.
Mr. Simmons knew it shouldn’t be there if it were truly a snail darter.
Ava Ghezelayagh, now at the University of Chicago, and colleagues conducted analysis of the fish’s DNA and compared snail darter physical traits with other fish. That led to confirmation that it was a match with the stargazing darter.
Dr. Plater, who also argued successfully for the fish in the Supreme Court case, took issue with the Yale study. He said the approach favored by Dr. Near and colleagues makes them genetic “lumpers” instead of “splitters,” meaning they reduce species instead of making more. He believes the findings also lean too heavily on genetics.
“Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Dr. Plater said of Dr. Near.
Dr. Near said being described as a “lumper” was a pejorative in his world, and he added that most of the research he and colleagues had performed had resulted in speciation splits, including a 2022 study.
“The work strengthens the Endangered Species Act, because it shows how science can be revised with additional information and newer perspectives,” he said. “The methods we use in this study are leading to the discovery of scores of new species, many of which are more endangered.”
Decades after the Tellico Dam battle, the fish formerly known as the snail darter is thriving. It left the endangered species list in 2020.
“This is still a success story,” Mr. Simmons said. “Its listing under the Endangered Species Act worked, regardless of what you call this fish.”
While Mr. Duncan died in 1988, his son, former Representative John J. Duncan Jr., known as Jimmy, said his father would have felt vindicated.
“He felt the project should have never been stopped by that little snail darter,” he said.
WASHINGTON — A framework agreement to end the U.S. war with Iran is all but settled, pending sign-off from the presidents of the two warring sides, President Trump said Friday, projecting optimism that a deal could finally be at hand.
Yet doubt cast a shadow over the diplomatic process entering the weekend as Trump faced a politically fraught decision to enter an agreement that would invariably require significant concessions to Tehran.
The negotiations have faced severe headwinds in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of violating a fragile ceasefire that has largely stopped the fighting since April.
On his Truth Social site, Trump said he had summoned his top aides to the White House Situation Room to decide on the deal.
The agreement would see an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports and the removal of Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway through which 20% of the world’s energy supply passes each day. The strait, Trump wrote, will reopen with “no tolls” for “unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions.”
And “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb,” Trump wrote, noting that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons, “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”
“No money will be exchanged, until further notice,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said the deal would require Iran to disavow the continuation of its domestic nuclear program — a diplomatic feat never before achieved throughout a quarter-century of international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear work.
It is unclear whether Tehran would go that far. And Iran’s negotiators expressed defiance on Friday, stating that there was “no trust in guarantees or words” from the American side.
“No step will be taken before the other side acts first,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament. “We do not gain concessions through dialogue, but through missiles.”
It remains unclear when the Trump administration would ease sanctions on Iran, how extensive that relief would be, or what form it would take — questions that fueled Republican criticism of the Obama-era nuclear deal more than a decade ago.
The working diplomatic document would formally extend the existing ceasefire for 60 days, allowing for a more detailed negotiation to take place over Iran’s nuclear program. But the truce as it currently stands is on perilous ground. Iran launched a ballistic missile on Thursday at Kuwait, a close U.S. ally, after American forces took “defensive” actions against Iranian missile launchers and mine-laying boats it had launched in the strait.
The war has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has seen oil prices soar since the U.S. military, in partnership with Israel, launched its first strikes against Iran in February.
Bessent said he is hopeful that oil prices would drop quickly once an agreement is signed. But industry analysts say the effects of the war on the oil market could last for months, if not years, with the stability of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz now in question for commercial shippers.
While oil has dropped to under $100 a barrel, markets appeared skittish on Friday over the prospects for a deal, with mixed messages appearing to emerge out of the region.
It is also unclear whether a U.S. agreement with Iran would in any way bind Israel’s hands in its military operations, either in Iran or in Lebanon, where an Iranian proxy militia, Hezbollah, has vowed to keep up the fight.
Israel has ramped up strikes against Hezbollah targets in recent days, jeopardizing a delicate ceasefire negotiated with the Lebanese government, a deal encouraged by the Trump administration in order to grease the wheels for its talks with Tehran.
Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the prospects of an agreement in recent days, expressing cautious optimism in limited exchanges with reporters.
“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president’s going to sign,” Vice President JD Vance, who has led the U.S. diplomatic team, told reporters, noting that “the nuclear stuff” is still subject to negotiation. “We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points.”
“I do think that we’ve made a lot of progress here,” Vance added. “Hopefully we’ll continue to make progress, and the president will be in a position where he can endorse the agreement. But obviously, that’s still TBD.”
new video loaded: Trump Administration Shows Off $250 Bill Featuring Trump
transcript
transcript
Trump Administration Shows Off $250 Bill Featuring Trump
During a press conference at the White House on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent displayed a mocked-up $250 bill bearing President Trump’s likeness.
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At present, no living person can be on U.S. currency and the currency must say, “In God we trust.” So right now, there is proposed legislation that — in front of the House, in front of the Senate — to change the first requirement so that a living person, Donald J. Trump, could be on the $250 bill. I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the president of the United States, the person who was president of United States, on the 250th anniversary bill. Thank you all.
By Jamie Leventhal
May 28, 2026
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
FIRST ON FOX: The U.S. Air and Marine Operations (AMO) deployed a Black Hawk helicopter to intercept a boat suspected of smuggling drugs off the coast of Puerto Rico earlier this month.
On May 14, AMO detected a 25-foot blue vessel carrying three people and visible packages. After surveilling its activity, the San Juan Marine Unit deployed a pair of law-enforcement boats, flanked by the Black Hawk, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The agency seized three Dominican Republic nationals along with five bales containing 391 pounds of cocaine.
The helicopter-assisted takedown is just the most recent display of American military might that has been targeting narcotrafficking operations south of the U.S. border.
BORDER CRISIS SHIFTS TO CARIBBEAN: HOMELAND SECURITY FIGHTS SILENT WAR IN PUERTO RICO
U.S. agents approach a boat suspected of carrying narcotics off the coast of Puerto Rico (Customs and Border Protection)
“Our Air and Marine Operations teams demonstrated exceptional skill and coordination in this interdiction. The decisive use of air disabling fire by our Black Hawk crew was instrumental in stopping the vessel and preventing dangerous narcotics from reaching our communities,” Caribbean Air and Marine Branch Director Christopher Hunter said.
“This operation highlights our commitment to working with partners across all levels to disrupt smuggling networks and protect the security of the United States and its territories,” he added.
Early on in his second administration, President Donald Trump made it clear he would use all available designations to label drug smuggling as a threat to the homeland.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump declared a state of emergency brought on by the influx of narcotics.
“They present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with those threats,” the White House said in its executive order.
SPEC OPS CHIEF ORDERED DEADLY CARIBBEAN STRIKE ‘IN SELF-DEFENSE’ WITH HEGSETH’S SIGN-OFF, WHITE HOUSE SAYS
President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion on public safety at a Tennessee Air National Guard Base in Memphis, Tenn., on Monday, March 23, 2026, with Gov. Bill Lee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Gady Serralta, director of the U.S. Marshals Service. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
In turn, the Department of War caught the attention of the country when it began carrying out strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, in a manner it said was consistent with the administration’s posture.
After nearly 20 strikes in waters around the Caribbean, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the efforts had successfully choked off some trafficking operations.
“WINNING: Some top cartel drug-traffickers in the U.S. Southern Command have decided to cease all narcotics operations INDEFINITELY due to recent (highly effective) kinetic strikes in the Caribbean,” Hegseth said in a post to social media.
In the Black Hawk confrontation, U.S. agents opted to approach the vessel instead of striking it from afar.
Infrared video footage shared with Fox News Digital showed the three men on the boat desperately throwing the contents of the boat overboard as the Black Hawk and other U.S. boats encircled the craft.
TRUMP’S WAR ON CARTELS ENTERS NEW PHASE AS EXPERTS PREDICT WHAT’S NEXT
A pair of U.S. vessels approach a boat suspected of carrying narcotics off the coast of Puerto Rico. (Customs and Border Protection)
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The three suspects put their hands above their heads as agents approached their vessel and were pulled onto U.S. boats. A search of the boat revealed empty plastic containers and other unidentified packages.
The contraband thrown into the water was recovered, according to CBP.
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