The Endangered Species Act has recently been caught in the crosshairs of the new Trump administration, with the aim of either eliminating or changing the act. While these actions would be disastrous, I will investigate the political climate in which the act was first passed and discuss why the act was more of a political move to get Nixon re-elected, rather than out of environmental concern. I will review the Earth Day movement of the late 1960s and the early 1970s and discuss how Nixon changed his mind about the environment to get votes from the environmental community. I will examine the most telling case about how the act was ignored in the construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee. The state was pushing forward with a dam that was unneeded, and the snail darter was discovered and listed as an endangered species. However, the construction of the dam continued and largely ignored the Endangered Species Act and destroyed the habitat of the snail darter. Additionally, I will address the attempts of the Republican Party to destroy this act, whenever they had a majority in the House and the Senate, even though Nixon was a Republican that passed this bill. By looking at all of the conditions and reactions to the bill, I have concluded that this was a calculated political move that has forever since “haunted” the Republican Party.