I grew up on a ranch. My mornings were spent with horses and donkeys and sheep nuzzling my face. My grandfather was a legendary race steward in the Midwest. His job was to look after horses and their safety. As such, I consider it mine as well.
The fight over the Horse Protection Act (HPA) has become a test of how far a small but entrenched faction will go to preserve an illegal and brutal practice: the intentional infliction of pain on horses’ legs and feet—known as soring—to exaggerate their movement in the show ring for trophies and prize money.
Roger Stone and I recently called out the deeply entrenched but narrow forces still fighting to keep this practice alive. Our assessment was blunt, but accurate. What follows is a call to uphold stewardship, integrity, and the belief that law and order must protect the vulnerable, not only the powerful— because that is what keeps markets honest, competition legitimate, and society functioning as it should.
Stewardship is foundational to conservative values. It calls us to protect families, communities, and the institutions entrusted to us. Stewardship is not the automatic defense of anything labeled “tradition,” nor is it the weaponization of terms like “overreach.” It means standing up for integrity when corruption hides and insisting that the law be enforced as Congress intended.
For decades, leaders on the right were the ones driving the effort to end soring, guided by the conviction that no horse should be forced to endure intentional pain for entertainment and that competition should be fair — as should the markets the competition operates within. Republican administrations created the HPA in 1970 and strengthened it in 1976 on this foundation. GOP lawmakers have since repeatedly pushed reforms to restore its original purpose. This commitment is not new. It is the conservative record.
Despite 55 years of statute, the system built to enforce the HPA has never worked as intended. In 2024, USDA issued long-overdue updates to give the law meaning: ending self-policing within this faction of the horse show world, establishing independent inspectors, and prohibiting the devices and substances long linked to soring. These were modest, commonsense steps supported by veterinarians, responsible horse owners, and anyone who believes that honest competition cannot coexist with intentional abuse.
But implementation stalled when entrenched interests in this corner of the industry resisted accountability and mounted a coordinated effort that resulted in the USDA pausing the rule. They then filed lawsuits that struck down the bans on equipment tied to soring and weakened the long-standing scar rule that inspectors rely upon to identify abuse. Yet the most essential reform — ending industry self-policing — survived intact, and USDA retains full authority to move forward.
The truth is that the biggest barrier to enforcement has never been the statute. It has been evasion — deliberate, practiced, and polished. Inspectors, veterinarians, and whistleblowers have documented tactics designed for evasion: chemicals timed to escape detection, shoeing that hurts without leaving marks, masking agents, conditioned responses, falsified entries, and interference with federal personnel. The problem has never been a lack of law. It has been the lengths to which some will go to avoid it.
It is the same pattern recognizable in doping scandals across athletics. Soring persists because some trainers treat law evasion as their competitive strategy.
And as Stone put it, this faction did not merely exploit the rules; they wrote them. They built a system in which pain became the currency of success, and now demand that this manufactured “tradition” be protected. When neutral enforcement threatens the advantage they engineered, they cry foul. But that objection exposes the truth: a competition built on cruelty cannot survive the return of fairness.
The political tactics are just as engineered. This faction has long relied on a small constellation of allies to echo their talking points, stall reform, or advance legislation crafted to preserve the loopholes that keep soring alive. Some have pressed USDA to weaken oversight; others have repackaged the faction’s narrative as “commonsense” or framed its talking points as matters of due process. None of these maneuvers reflect conservative principles. They serve only those who injure horses.
For generations, principled leaders have confronted this cruelty head-on, defining the movement’s position: law, order, and honest competition over corruption disguised as culture. Those values have not changed. Cruelty is unacceptable. The law is not optional. Federal statutes should mean what Congress intended, especially when they protect the voiceless. Leaders grounded in principle strengthened the HPA before, and they can finish the job now.
What is needed is clarity: a firm implementation timeline, independent inspectors trained to a national standard, and the resolve not to let delay tactics drown out congressional purpose. The voices of veterinarians, responsible owners, and ordinary citizens — and the horses whose suffering has been ignored for far too long — must matter more than gamesmanship.
Congress also has a ready solution: the PAST Act. It clarifies federal authority, standardizes inspections, and prohibits the devices that make soring work. In a landscape increasingly shaped by litigation, it is the strongest and most durable path forward. Law-and-order Republicans can reaffirm their leadership by supporting the PAST Act and allowing Congress — not faction-aligned lawyers — to settle this issue.
This moment is not a departure from conservative values. It is a chance to reaffirm them. Fair process matters, but so does the outcome. If we cannot conserve our duty to protect the vulnerable, then what exactly are we conserving?
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