There were so many details in the womens reports to law enforcement that were hard for me to read. That they were just little girls when it happened. That a man many knew as the fun uncle had touched them sexually under their skirts and tops. And that it happened in church or while swimming at the lake or during games of hide-and-seek. They were as young as 5 years old, according to the police reports. Some could even remember what they were wearing when it happened: a fluffy multicolored skirt; a pair of jeans with purple flowers on them.But by the time my co-reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune, Andy Mannix, and I got those accounts spanning from the early 1990s to the 2010s the girls abuser, Clint Massie, had already pleaded guilty to four counts of felony sexual conduct with victims under 13. In March of this year, he began a 7 1/2 year prison sentence. Arguably, the case was over.But we kept hearing from the victims and alleged victims, former church members, investigators and prosecutors that the outcome had fallen far short of true accountability. Massie, they told us, was a symptom of a much larger problem within the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, which he and his victims attended. They told us the leaders of this little-known faith tradition pressured victims to forgive Massie, then to forget about the abuse and never speak of it again. In some cases, these forgiveness sessions took place between the children and Massie; one girl described the terror she felt being hugged by Massie as her father and a preacher looked on.These sessions allowed Massie to evade arrest and prosecution for years. Even after the victims came forward to law enforcement as adults, attempts to silence them continued, according to the prosecutor who charged the case.This was like a fucking machine, said assistant St. Louis County attorney Mike Ryan, that was basically trying to roll over these girls.That sentiment hit me especially hard the day I received a roughly 40-minute video of an interview between sheriffs detectives in St. Louis County, where Duluth is located, and two OALC preachers. My attention was on Daryl Bruckelmyer, a preacher and leader of the church in Duluth; several of Massies victims claimed that either they or their parents had disclosed the abuse to Bruckelmyer, but that he did little beyond a forgiveness session.We had hoped to sit down with Bruckelmyer and ask him about his involvement with the Massie case, but also about his church, its beliefs and its customs. But he declined to comment or to answer a detailed list of questions. A spokesperson for the Woodland Park OALC in Duluth also said in a statement that the church has fully complied with the law in the referenced case, and its a matter of legal record. He declined to comment further. Massie also did not respond to requests for comment.So the video was the first and only time I heard Bruckelmyer explain himself in his own words. Heres what stood out to me as I watched the recording and what helped me understand the mechanisms that allowed repeated sexual abuse to continue as an open secret.Massies Preacher Knew of the AbuseI had wondered if Bruckelmyer might deny ever hearing about Massies abuse. But he did not.How many female victims do you think have come forward and said something to you? Sgt. Adam Kleffman, the lead investigator, asked.Theres only been a few, Bruckelmyer responded. One, two, three.Its not every day you see a recording of someone admitting that they knew about the abuse of children yet did little about it.Bruckelmyer implied that he misunderstood mandated reporter laws in Minnesota (though another detective explained the law to him just three years earlier) and that he had warned Massie to stay away from children. He insisted that they made no attempt to hide Massie and encouraged victims to go to law enforcement.But the words he chose stood out to me as well: We dont protect either one.Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and crisis manager for the church, said its preachers are unpaid and therefore might not be legally required to report sexual abuse of children. Asked if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters under Minnesota law, Lowe would only say that the language of the statute is unclear.Sgt. Adam Kleffman, right, of the St. Louis County Sheriffs Office was the investigator on the Clint Massie case. Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star TribuneChurch Policies Did Not Align With Minnesota LawAt one point, Bruckelmyer pulled out two sheets of paper and passed them across the table to the investigators. It was a list of tools to help prevent violence, harassment and sexual abuse from occurring, issued by the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church of America.We have guidelines in the church that we are told and instructed as a protection for both, Bruckelmyer explained.Many of the guidelines made sense: education, counseling for victims and so forth. But when I obtained a copy of the document, I zeroed in on the part of the policy that seemed to describe a forgiveness session: When harm has taken place: Individual conversations with the victim If possible, individual conversations with the abuser. Later, but only if appropriate, a conversation with both parties together.The document did not mention mandatory reporting laws and instead seemed to give preachers wide latitude on whether to involve law enforcement.As soon as I watched that document slide across the table, it was clear to me that this issue went beyond Minnesota. The OALC has 33 locations spread across the U.S. and Canada. In our months of reporting, we spoke to over a dozen alleged victims, some of whom named other church members as possible perpetrators in Delaware, Michigan, Wyoming, Washington state and South Dakota.We plan to continue this reporting.An Intentional Isolation From the Modern WorldAt one point in the video, Kleffman asked Bruckelmyer if he was aware of how sexual abuse scandals have played out in other churches specifically, he said, that once one victim comes forward, its common for more victims to speak out as well. He cited a recent, local example: the conviction of a youth pastor from Vineyard Church in Duluth for felony sexual conduct with underage parishioners.But Bruckelmyer said he was unfamiliar with the case.I was struck by the lack of understanding that some church leaders and members demonstrated when it came to the impact of sexual assault on children, as well as an ignorance of other, similar sexual abuse scandals. But it seemed to go hand in hand with the ways that OALC members cut themselves off from certain aspects of modern life.Former members told us that dancing, music, movies and television are all considered sinful. One former church member told my reporting partner that, as a child, she overheard a Taylor Swift song and was desperate to find another church member to confess to or risk going to hell.We attended a Sunday service in Duluth, at the invitation of a spokesperson for the church, and were provided with literature that described some of the OALCs history and philosophy.We Christians want to follow Jesus example and live a life that is simple and modest, whether it be our dress, our home or our way of life, the booklet reads. We do not believe it is right, nor do we have a need, to engage in worldly pleasures, alcohol and other drugs. The friendship we have in the church is so much more.Bruckelmyer was on the dais with the other preachers but would not come speak with us. So I tried to take in what I could: the hymns sung without accompaniment, the scarves on womens heads and the toys in childrens hands.During the three-hour service, I sat in a pew, fascinated by this small glimpse into a faith tradition and a lifestyle that I previously knew nothing about. Watching these families, particularly the young mothers with daughters in their arms, I couldnt help thinking again about what wed read in those police reports in particular, the allegations that this sexual abuse has affected multiple generations of families. What these women and girls went through, not just the abuse but the silence that followed, shocks the conscience. We wrote this story to break that silence. Maybe it could prevent this from happening again.The post What a Recorded Interview Between Police and Preachers Reveals About How a Minnesota Church Handled Sexual Abuse appeared first on ProPublica.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been one of the most vociferous defenders of President Donald Trumps expansive use of executive authority, withholding billions of dollars in federal funding to states and dismissing protests of the White Houses boundary-pushing behavior as the gripings of disenfranchised Democrats.But court documents reviewed by ProPublica show that a decade ago, as a House member, Duffy took a drastically different position on presidential power, articulating a full-throated defense of Congress role as a check on the president one that resembled the very arguments made by speakers at recent anti-Trump No Kings rallies around the country.In an assertive, thoroughly researched 2015 legal brief, Duffy, then a Republican representative from Wisconsin, detailed the history of Americas creation in reaction to the absolute power of the English crown, invoking the Magna Carta and the Founding Fathers as he made the case for the separation of powers.Just as Congress may not bestow upon the President Congresss own exclusive power to make, or to repeal, federal law, Duffy argued, citing a 1998 court decision, it may not bestow upon the Executive its own exclusive power of the purse.The brief went on to cite James Madisons account of the Constitutional Convention, where there was unanimous agreement that Congress, not the President, should control the purse.At the time, Duffy filed the friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets funded. Duffy, who chaired the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, maintained that the agencys unique funding system its dollars come directly from the Federal Reserve System rather than by a congressional appropriation improperly bypassed lawmakers authority.The 39-page brief was filed under Duffys name along with a nonprofit group aligned with the Republican legal activist Leonard Leo and submitted by a preeminent conservative lawyer. Today, it stands in stark contrast to Duffys own actions as transportation secretary in the first year of Trumps second stint in the White House. Indeed, his attempts to restrict congressionally appropriated transportation funding across all 50 states this year have been condemned by a congressional watchdog and federal judges, resulting in stinging public rebukes from the other branches of government that echo his own 2015 position.Peter Levine, a civics expert at Tufts University, said that while it could be that Duffys views on presidential power have evolved over time, his apparent flip-flopping on something as fundamental as the meaning of the Constitution raises the prospect that Duffy may just be playing a game for power.The Constitution is a promise to continue to apply the same rules and norms over time to everybody, he added. When political actors completely ignore that, and just go after their own thing, I dont think the Constitution can actually function.In response to questions, a Department of Transportation spokesperson asked for a copy of Duffys brief. But after ProPublica provided it, the spokesperson stopped responding. A message sent to a number listed for Duffy hasnt been returned.The expansion of executive power has been a hallmark of Trumps second administration. The president issued a whopping 214 executive orders between Jan. 20 and Nov. 20, according to the The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In both number and ambition, the orders and resulting actions are exceeded on these dimensions in the last century only by Franklin D. Roosevelt, one Harvard Law School professor recently noted.Duffy has cited some of those directives as he has withheld congressionally approved transportation funds. And administration officials have defended doing so, claiming that a post-Watergate law asserting Congress power over spending improperly restrains the presidents authority.But a congressional watchdog and the courts have taken issue with that expansive interpretation of federal authority.For Duffy, the first instance came in May, when the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, concluded that the DOT had violated the law when it halted payments in February from a $5 billion fund for electric car charging stations that Congress approved under former President Joe Bidens bipartisan infrastructure law.The Constitution specifically vests Congress with the power of the purse, the congressional watchdog wrote, arguing that the payments should resume. The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.A White House spokesperson called the GAOs opinion incorrect when it was issued and argued that the DOT was appropriately using its authority.In June, a federal judge in Washington ordered transportation officials to lift the pause after a handful of states sued Duffy and the DOT, writing that when the executive branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, its up to the court to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power.The government has moved to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that it had revamped the grant application process for the charging station money and also that the states constitutional concerns were unfounded, since another part of the Constitution vests the President with broad, discretionary authority to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. The suit is ongoing.Separately, a federal judge last month sided with states that had challenged an attempt by Duffy to condition billions of dollars more in federal funds for highway maintenance and other core transportation functions in exchange for helping the administration detain immigrants.Should Congress have wished, it could have attempted to entice State cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement through lawful means, and it could have sought to empower federal agencies to assist it in doing so, John McConnell Jr., the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, wrote in a Nov. 4 decision blocking Duffys actions.But it didnt, he said, and instead administration officials had transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions.The Constitution demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior, he wrote.The lawsuits are among hundreds of legal actions this year challenging the constitutionality of the White Houses various actions, including its attempts to halt the disbursement of hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending that Congress had previously approved.As for the legal challenge Duffy supported in 2015, it was ultimately unsuccessful and the Supreme Court last year affirmed the constitutionality of the CFPBs funding mechanism.Yet the ruling has not insulated the bureau from the Trump administration, and officials have advanced novel legal theories to achieve what Duffy sought a decade ago. The administration now argues that since the Fed operates at a loss, it has no profits to transfer to the CFPB.As a result, the bureau is being starved. According to a recent court filing by government lawyers, it will run out of operating funds by early next year.The post Trumps Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Once Defended Congress Power of the Purse. Now He Defies It. appeared first on ProPublica.

One of Chicagos newest police sergeants had been deemed unfit to serve after an investigation uncovered evidence that he created a fake Facebook account and spread a nude photo of a woman he was sexually involved with, then lied to investigators about it.Another new sergeant had been found to have engaged in conduct that seriously undermines public faith, credibility, and trust in the Department after he was accused of sexual assault and domestic violence.The conclusions were made by independent investigators from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. COPA recommended firing both. The first officer ultimately negotiated a one-year suspension and was assigned to supervise officers downtown and in the West Loop. The second officers case is still pending; he was assigned to supervise officers patrolling neighborhoods on the citys South Side.The officers promotions this spring were not due to an oversight. Department officials knew about their disciplinary records, but those records could not be considered as the department evaluated their fitness for promotion.The main qualifying factor was their test scores from a two-part exam.That Chicago police officers can rise in the ranks in spite of significant problems in their records reflects a decadeslong failing that the Chicago Police Department has been repeatedly called on to fix, an investigation by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica found.Chicagos system of promotions remains out of step with other big cities. Police departments in New York City and Los Angeles consider disciplinary records before promoting officers, seeing their past actions as a critical factor in determining if theyre fit to supervise others. A survey conducted for the CPD of more than a dozen major departments found that only one did not consider discipline in promotions.In New Orleans, the police department created a promotions policy that considers an officers disciplinary history after it fell under a federal consent decree stemming from decades of corruption and misconduct. The department took nearly four years to create and launch its new policy.Chicago is nearly seven years into a state consent decree that is intended in part to address issues with the departments promotions system. Between November 2023 and this April, the city has paid a consulting firm at least $430,000 to study personnel policies, including making recommendations on how to incorporate disciplinary histories into the process.The problem, however, remains unaddressed by the department.That means officers like Sgt. Ernesto Guzman-Sanchez, accused of distributing a nude photo of a woman he knew, and Sgt. Christopher Lockhart, whom oversight investigators found responsible for acts of domestic violence and sexual assault, can continue to move up the ranks despite their disciplinary records.In 2020, COPA ruled that Guzman-Sanchez went to great lengths to conceal his actions regarding the photo. The officer challenged the proposed firing, and during a Chicago Police Board hearing, his brother claimed responsibility. Department officials said the evidence was inconclusive and negotiated a suspension. Guzman-Sanchez, who has denied the allegations, declined to comment.Sgt. Christopher Lockhart was promoted this year despite the Civilian Office of Police Accountabilitys findings last year that his conduct seriously undermines public faith, credibility, and trust in the Department. Obtained by Invisible Institute. Highlighted by ProPublica. Redactions original.COPA recommended in January 2024 that Lockhart be fired following its investigation into allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. Investigators found evidence of violent incidents, including one in which Lockhart allegedly grabbed his then-girlfriend by the neck and slammed her to the floor, COPA records show.Lockhart denied the allegations and blamed one incident in which his accuser was bruised on rough consensual sex. The case is still ongoing. Lockhart did not respond to inquiries for this story.The Chicago Police Department declined to comment for this story. But during an August hearing, CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said discipline should be considered during the promotions process.In a statement, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he plans to work with Snelling and prioritize reforming policies.We must take a close look at the current promotion policies and make the necessary reforms so that we are promoting the best of our officers to set a strong example, the mayor said.Joe Ferguson, who was the citys inspector general for 12 years, questioned whether there was the political will to enact reform.To me, the question really is, why isnt this elevated as a priority? said Ferguson, who now heads the Civic Federation, a civic accountability and research organization.Ferguson, who described sergeants as crucial to modeling good behavior for younger officers, said the competing interests of the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing rank-and-file officers, may be partly to blame for a lack of progress. The union doesnt want discipline to derail an officers career and for years has made that a central point in its labor negotiations with the city. The union did not respond to questions from the Invisible Institute and ProPublica.CPD has struggled to identify troubled officers. In May, the two news organizations identified 14 officers who faced multiple sexual misconduct allegations in the last decade.Elizabeth Payne, the legal director at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, said she would like to see the department adopt stricter criteria for promoting officers. Elevating officers like Guzman-Sanchez and Lockhart to supervisory roles, she said, sends the wrong message to the public and to other officers.When you make a decision to promote somebody who has disciplinary history like this, you are consciously deciding to signal something about your priorities, Payne said. Thats really unfortunate.Chicago police officers can receive promotions based on their test scores from a two-day exam even if they have problematic records. Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublicaIgnoring Promotion ReformIllinois Assistant Attorney General Abigail Durkin didnt mince words during a hearing in August before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer. Durkins office brought the lawsuit that prompted Chicagos police consent decree, and she expressed concern that the department had again failed to make changes to its promotions process.As I explained to this court almost exactly one year ago today, the vast majority of candidates promoted, CPD does not consider their prior discipline in deciding whether to promote them, she told Pallmeyer.She added: But now where are we? We stressed that action needed to be taken and discipline must be considered prior to an individuals promotion. This court agreed.In 2019, the consent decree prompted by the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald and its aftermath required wide-ranging reforms that included new use-of-force policies, more robust police oversight and changes to training. The decree also required the department to develop a policy to review and consider an officers disciplinary history as part of promotions.About 70% of promotions are achieved from what is known as a rank-order system, where top candidates are chosen solely by how they score on an exam, according to a report by the consulting firm the city hired.The other way to get a promotion is merit-based, which relies on supervisor recommendations and a review by a Merit Board made up of top department officials. The system was created in the 1990s following two decades of litigation to force the department to increase representation of women and officers of color in management.Under merit-based promotions, candidates disciplinary histories can become a factor, but only complaints that are labeled sustained or lead to suspensions can be considered, according to a 2020 report from DCI Consulting Group.Over the years, officers with a range of disciplinary findings have been able to rise in the ranks. Among them was an officer whom internal investigators recommended be fired after a 2007 off-duty incident in which he was found to have driven his motorcycle while drunk and crashed into another vehicle, killing his passenger, according to media reports.The officer, according to Police Board data, was given a lengthy suspension but ultimately not fired. He was promoted to sergeant in 2017, according to Chicago police data. Its unclear whether the promotion was rank-order or merit-based.In 2020, the city hired DCI, a Washington, D.C., firm that helps organizations with human resources and personnel matters, to examine the departments promotion policies. In its first report that year, DCI said updating the promotions policy to consider discipline was a high priority. Three years later, DCI made the same recommendations and noted the lack of progress.CPDs non-consideration of discipline is not aligned with most other departments; only one other jurisdiction reported not considering discipline prior to promotions, the 2023 DCI report said.Ongoing tension between the city and the police union over how to handle discipline is never far from the discussion about promotions even though promotions are not part of the union contract and instead are governed by the departments general orders, policies that everyone must follow.DCI said in one report that officers did not want discipline to be reviewed as part of promotions because of issues with the discipline process. Officers and the union have long argued that the disciplinary process is unfair and arbitrary.Snelling did not respond to requests for comment. But he acknowledged at the August hearing that reforming the promotion policy to include discipline has been slow and said the department needed time to ensure the changes stand up to legal scrutiny.We want to make sure that if these things go to litigation, that we are airtight on what were doing to make sure that we have our policies in place, Snelling said.Alexandra Block of the ACLU of Illinois, which is part of a coalition of 14 community and civil rights groups that forced the consent decree, said she would like to see changes in the promotions policies. But the coalition has been focused on issues primarily concerned with how people are experiencing policing on the streets of Chicago, she said.Block said reviewing an officers disciplinary record before promotion has lost priority to other pressing reforms and added that there is not the political will to accomplish it.Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, center, has acknowledged that the department has been slow to reform its promotion policy. Jamie Kelter DavisFlawed System, Flawed ResultsIn the Spring of 2023, Sgt. Isagany Peralta was promoted to oversee officers in Chicagos 3rd Police District, which covers large sections of the Woodlawn, South Shore and Greater Grand Crossing neighborhoods on the citys South Side.Six and a half years earlier, internal investigators found that Peralta had sexually harassed a female colleague over six months. Shortly after they started working in the same tactical unit, Peralta told her he would bend her over the desk and sexually assault her, investigative reports show. Three officers told investigators they heard the explicit comment. Peralta also was accused of harassing the colleague over her sexual orientation.Investigators described his conduct as the very definition of sexual harassment and unbecoming of a police officer, according to investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica. He was suspended for 20 days. Peralta challenged the suspension, but an independent arbitrator upheld it, stating that Peralta was clearly guilty. It is unclear whether Peralta was promoted through the rank-order or merit-based system in 2023. Either way, his punishment wouldnt have been considered, according to the departments policy.Under the merit-based process, discipline history matters only when an officer has three or more sustained suspensions in the last five years or was suspended more than seven days in the year prior to the promotion, according to DCIs 2020 report. Peraltas suspension for sexual harassment wouldnt have been enough on its own to count against him.The female colleague also reported that their supervisor, Sgt. Robert Belczak, was made aware of Peraltas troubling behavior but did not intervene, according to investigative files.Belczak told investigators he spoke with Peralta about his behavior. Still, investigators ruled that Belczak failed to take supervisory action to stop Peralta. Belczak received a 25-day suspension. He resigned in 2015 before completing the suspension.Records from the Chicago Police Departments Bureau of Internal Affairs about a sexual harassment investigation lodged against Isagany Peralta. He received a 20-day suspension. Then in 2023, he was promoted to sergeant. Obtained by Invisible Institute. Highlights added by ProPublica. Additional redactions by ProPublica.Peralta and Belczak did not respond to requests for comment.Belczak is one of at least three CPD supervisors punished for failing to report sexual misconduct. Among them was an officer promoted to sergeant while under investigation for declining to cooperate with a Chicago Public Schools inquiry into a fellow officer who was arrested on charges of having a sexual relationship with a high school student. Both officers worked at the students school. At the end of the investigation, the sergeant was suspended for 10 days.These sorts of cases highlight the crucial role supervisors play in shaping department culture and maintaining discipline.Theres probably nothing that impacts the handling of sexual misconduct complaints more than culture, said Christy Lopez, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who previously worked with the U.S. Department of Justice leading investigations into police departments, including Chicago beginning in 2015.Justin Frake, an assistant professor at the University of Michigans Ross School of Business who has studied CPD misconduct, said young officers learn how to police from their supervisors. I think we model our superiors, Frake said.Even as the CPD continues to fall short of consent-decree expectations and reforming its promotions system to include discipline, Snelling has acknowledged the need for change and the reason why its necessary.I do believe that disciplinary history should be taken into consideration when were making promotions, because these are people who are going to be leading other people, Snelling said at the August hearing over the consent decree. And just scoring well on a test is I dont believe that its enough to just lead other officers.The post Chicago Promoted Two Police Officers After Investigators Found They Engaged in Sexual Misconduct appeared first on ProPublica.

Jimmie Chris Duncan walked out of the Ouachita Parish Correctional Center and into the arms of his parents last week after spending the last 27 years on death row.Seven months ago, a Louisiana district court judge vacated his murder conviction for killing his former girlfriends toddler, citing doubts about the evidence used to convict him. The judge granted bail after multiple legal delays, including an unsuccessful request by prosecutors to the Louisiana Supreme Court to stop his release. Now free, Duncan spent Thanksgiving with his family then celebrated his 57th birthday the next day.We thank God for Jimmie coming home, Duncans stepmom, Sharon Duncan, said in an emailed statement on behalf of the family.But Duncans journey to freedom is far from over. Prosecutors have asked the state Supreme Court to reinstate his death sentence. Duncans attorneys declined to make him immediately available for an interview.The April decision by Judge Alvin Sharp to set aside Duncans conviction and death sentence came after a Verite News and ProPublica investigation examined the reliability of the key forensic evidence used to convict him. At the time, Duncan faced the possibility of being put to death as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause.Sharp, of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish, found that Duncans conviction was based in part on bite mark evidence now considered by experts to be junk science. That original analysis came from forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose longtime partnership as state experts has been questioned following concerns about the validity of their techniques. West, who did not respond to previous requests for comment, admitted in a 2011 deposition in another case that he no longer believed in bite mark analysis. Hayne died in 2020.Over the past 27 years, nine prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pairs work.Robert S. Tew, district attorney for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, insisted in his appeal that the evidence prosecutors presented is sound, that Duncan raped and murdered 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux, and that he should be executed without delay. Tews office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Duncans release.Police arrested Duncan on Dec. 18, 1993. He was babysitting Haley that day in the home he shared with the girls mother in West Monroe. Duncan told law enforcement he had put the toddler in the bath before going downstairs to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed upstairs to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later.Duncan was initially arrested for negligent homicide, until Hayne and West conducted Haleys medical exam and claimed they discovered evidence she had been sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. Hayne said he found bite marks on the girls body, which West then examined, claiming to find that they were a match for Duncans teeth.Based in part on those findings, prosecutors upped the charge against Duncan to first-degree murder. After about two weeks of testimony in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death. He would spend the next quarter-century in a cell on death row at Angola Prison.During that time, however, his attorneys with the Innocence Project in New York, the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner firm in Atlanta, and the Mwalimu Center for Justice in New Orleans uncovered a trove of evidence that eventually led to his conviction being vacated in April.The most damning of that new evidence calls into question whether the bite marks Hayne said he found on Haleys body were manufactured. In a video of Wests 1993 examination of Haley, which was not shown to jurors at the trial, the dentist can be seen taking a mold of Duncans teeth and grinding it into the girls body. (West has previously said he was simply using what he called a direct comparison technique in which he presses a mold of a persons teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks.)In his ruling vacating Duncans conviction, Sharp said the work Hayne and West did on Duncans case was no longer valid and not scientifically defensible.Additional evidence that undermined Duncans conviction included testimony from an expert witness who said that the childs death was the result not of a homicide but of an accidental drowning. And investigators working for Duncans legal team spoke to a jailhouse informant who recanted his earlier trial testimony that Duncan confessed to the crime.Haleys mother, Allison Layton Statham, has come to support Duncans release, telling Mississippi Today in a July interview that she believes Duncan was falsely accused of a crime he didnt commit.As the higher court weighs the states appeal, Sharp, who had already ruled that Duncan was factually innocent of the crime, granted him bail on Nov. 21, setting it at $150,000. In his decision, Sharp said that the presumption is not great that Duncan is guilty and proof against him is not evident. The state fought the release but lost in court, setting the stage for Duncan to be freed the day before Thanksgiving.When Chris got out and I went to hug him, I was very emotional, said attorney Ann Ferebee, a member of Duncans legal team for the last decade who greeted him shortly after his release. I was kind of choked up, and he asked me, Are you doing OK?Really good to see you, is what I told him.Following his release, Duncan went to live with a family member in central Louisiana. Christian Bromley, another attorney of Duncans, said he expects oral arguments in the states appeal to take place before the state Supreme Court in early 2026. Should prosecutors lose that round, they could take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, retry Duncan on the same charges or retry him a new set of charges, Bromley said.Or they could drop the charges altogether. But that seems unlikely, he said.Read MoreHe Was Convicted Based on Allegedly Fabricated Bite Mark Analysis. Louisiana Wants to Execute Him Anyway.We met Chris almost 10 years ago and have believed in his innocence, just like he has, that entire time, Bromley said. I think it is something that we always hoped for but knew that it was potentially an insurmountable feat to get there.Until this year, Louisiana had not carried out an execution since 2010 as it has been unable to procure the necessary drugs. But following Landrys election, the state approved the use of nitrogen gas, a controversial method allowed in only three other states.That led to the March 18 execution of Jesse Hoffman Jr. Saving Duncan from a similar fate has been the most rewarding experience of my career, said Ferebee, though she acknowledged that prosecutors are still pushing for the execution of Duncan. We are celebrating this victory, but we know that theres still more to come.The post A Death Row Inmate Was Released on Bail After His Conviction Was Overturned. Louisiana Still Wants to Execute Him. appeared first on ProPublica.

Three weeks after flash floods in Texas Hill Country killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers chastised Kerr County leaders for rejecting money a year earlier to create a warning system that could have alerted residents to rapidly rising water.Several lashed out as a Kerr official representing the local river authority tried to explain why it declined money from a $1.4 billion state fund to help guard against destructive flooding.One state senator on the special legislative committee tasked with investigating the deadly floods called the decision pathetic. Another said it was disturbing. State Rep. Drew Darby, a Republican from San Angelo, said the river authority simply lacked the will to pay for the project.But Kerr leaders were not the only ones who rejected the states offer, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. In the five years since the funds launch, at least 90 local governments turned down tens of millions of dollars in state grants and loans.Leaders from about 30 local governments that the news organizations spoke with said the state grants paid for so little of the total project costs that they simply could not move forward, even with the programs offer to cover the rest through interest-free loans. Many hoped the state program would provide grants that paid the bulk of the costs, such as the ones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically supply at least 75%. They believed that they could raise the rest.Instead, many were offered far less. In some cases, the state offered grants that paid for less than 10% of the funding needed.In Kerrs case, the state awarded a $50,000 grant for a $1 million flood warning system, or roughly 5%. It said the river authority could borrow the rest and repay it over the next three decades, but local officials were not sure they would be able to pay back the $950,000 and failure to do so could carry state sanctions.City officials in Robinson, located between Dallas and Austin, sought about $2.4 million in funding to buy and tear down homes directly in the floodway. The state offered $236,000 and required that the city conduct an engineering study that would have eaten up more than half of those grant funds, the city manager told the news organizations.The state also proposed giving the East Texas city of Kilgore a fraction of what Public Works Director Clay Evers had anticipated for a drainage study aimed at minimizing flooding. The city needed the money, Evers said, but the states offer required a far larger match than the council members had planned to set aside based on the federal grant system as a guide. The state also required the city to go through a second application process to secure the grant, which Evers said would further strain resources.So, Evers dropped out.Four years after he turned down the state funding, Evers watched in shock as lawmakers lambasted Kerr leaders. It could have just as easily been him trying to defend a choice he never wanted to make in the first place.I dont have this unlimited pot of money, Evers said. That is an incredibly difficult decision, and when the impossible, improbable, traumatic happens, how do you defend the decision you just made?Several Texas leaders who created and oversaw the fund defended the program as a significant investment and said that local communities must also be willing to invest in flood warning and mitigation projects.Local officials, particularly those in smaller, rural communities, said a limited tax base, along with continued state restrictions on their ability to raise new taxes, have made it difficult to fund necessary projects.After learning of the newsrooms findings, two lawmakers and a former state employee who helped launch the fund expressed concerns over the high number of communities that turned down the money. Though state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso, and Darby said that the state cant pay for the entirety of every project, they acknowledged lawmakers created a flawed system.I absolutely know that what were doing now is not adequate for the people that we represent, Moody said. Its OK for us to admit that the system isnt good enough. We shouldnt be afraid of saying that. The question then is, what are we going to do about it?Moody and Darby said the state program merits a thorough review by lawmakers during the next legislative session in 2027.It is a frustrating prospect that we have this program thats designed to be important to help peoples lives, and the Legislature determined it to be a priority, and we put money in, and to find it still in the bank accounts, and not being deployed, Darby said. We need to fix it.During a 2016 flood in Kilgore, Turkey Creek, which runs through the town, inundated nearby neighborhoods. Residents were rescued from their homes by emergency management officials. Michael Cavazos for ProPublica and The Texas TribuneToo Little for SomeLawmakers in 2019 approved the Flood Infrastructure Fund, making Texas one of the few states in the country with a dedicated program to invest in helping cities and counties pay for flood prevention projects, experts said.The investment was a response to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey two years earlier. Applicants seeking to qualify for grants must meet criteria that includes securing supplemental federal funding, showing that they have a median household income below the statewide average or meeting a narrow definition of a rural community that is more restrictive than the ones used by other Texas programs.Lawmakers tasked the Texas Water Development Board with creating a ranking system for proposed projects and determining how much each community would receive. The board awarded $670 million to 140 projects, with the largest grants going to applicants that had the lowest median household income.That meant communities like Kerr, which have higher median income, received far less money than other areas with needs deemed less pressing.A spokesperson for the water board defended its grant distribution, saying the aim was to fund as many projects as possible across the state. While the agency had received some feedback from communities that felt the offer was too low to be a feasible avenue for them, spokesperson Kaci Woodrome said it was challenging to attribute their choice to turn down the money to a single root cause.Tom Entsminger, a longtime water board employee who helped launch the fund, said he and his colleagues were charged with figuring out how to divvy up the money before they knew how many local agencies would apply, what projects they would propose or how much they would cost. He said there wasnt a specific logic behind the exact grant amounts that anybody would have defended.We had to just get through that funding cycle before we knew that it was too little for some folks, he said.The state began a second round of funding last year, but its leaders made few changes to the rubric used to distribute it. So far, they have seen similar results.Entsminger, who left the state agency in 2021 for a consultant job, considers the program an overall success. Still, he said the fact that local governments, many of which were rural or had fewer than 20,000 residents, declined the state funding shows the boards grant process likely needs to be reviewed. About $100 million went unused for years, the newsrooms found.Among local governments that rejected the money was the Trinity Bay Conservation District, which provides water services to 6,000 customers in two rural counties in Southeast Texas. It would have received 9% of the nearly $12 million needed to fund projects that would widen a local bayou and reduce flooding in the area. The 300-resident town of Rose Hill Acres, also in Southeast Texas near Beaumont, was offered a 14% grant for its $12 million flood mitigation efforts.Another such community was Kilgore, which has fewer than 14,000 residents.The city needed $575,000 to assess and create an updated map of its drainage system. Without it, Evers had to rely on maps left by previous city officials in a green spiral notebook dated 1965 that kept him guessing which outdated pipes he needed to replace before they failed.Dozens of pipes had collapsed since 2018, when his office began tracking the destruction that creates sinkholes in residents yards, church property and, in the worst-case scenarios, the middle of busy roads. The chaos forced Evers to triage emergency funds to fix the most dangerous basketball-sized holes across the city, only for another to pop up in a citywide game of Whac-a-Mole.Its only accelerating. Every year that passes, the infrastructure thats still in the ground gets a year older, Evers said. Im trying to get ahead of it.The announcement of the state water development board program gave him hope that he could secure enough money for needed projects. But that feeling quickly deflated when the board published its master list ranking all the projects and outlined how much funding each would get.Kilgore was offered a grant covering 13% of the drainage studys cost. To stay in the running for the grant, the program required applicants to submit a separate lengthy application, which Evers said would have required him to hire a pricey consultant. The board had ranked Kilgore so low among hundreds of projects that Evers felt the citys chances of getting the money were slim.Evers faced a choice that many other applicants recounted to the newsrooms: spend more resources for a chance at some state money or cut their losses now.We are disappointed in our ranking, Evers wrote in an email to the water development board in which he declined to move forward with the application. Our small town needs apparently pale in comparison to the other 200 projects ahead of us.Evers points to a map showing the areas that were inundated during a 2016 flood. Michael Cavazos for ProPublica and The Texas TribuneA map in Kilgores 1965 comprehensive plan depicts the citys storm water drainage system. Michael Cavazos for ProPublica and The Texas TribuneStill WaitingAfter stepping away from the state program, Evers searched for other funding sources as the need for a drainage study became more pressing. Pipes kept breaking, flooding streets and homes, and forcing the city to tap into dwindling emergency funds.Finally, Evers landed a $300,000 federal grant this year. It didnt cover the full cost of the project, but Evers said he would start by examining the most flood-prone neighborhoods and then try to scale up.It wont be 100%, but itll be enough to where I can at least have some semblance of a plan to begin, he said. I got lucky.But Kerr has not been as lucky.Tara Bushnoe, general manager of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which applied for and then declined funding from the state program, said in an email that the agency approved incrementally using money from its budget for a flood warning system, but having a complete system with all planned sirens to alert residents could take years.Immediately after the deadly floods, state leaders promised to help, saying they would allocate additional funding specifically for such warning systems.Were not going to be able to stop everybody from dying, said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican. But we could have gotten a lot of people out of the way if they had heard those sirens and went to higher ground, and thats the best thing you can do, is try to save lives as a legislator.This summer, lawmakers passed Bettencourts legislation that would provide $50 million for flood sirens in some Texas counties.But Kerr County, whose devastation after the floods spurred the state to infuse dollars in the first place, wont automatically get help to pay for its warning system.State lawmakers put money into a new fund with a new selection process that will be open to a few dozen flood-prone counties.Kerr leaders will again have to apply.The post Texas Lawmakers Criticized Kerr Leaders for Rejecting State Flood Money. Other Communities Did the Same. appeared first on ProPublica.

In late 2019, a pair of Montana ranchers got in trouble with the Forest Service, which oversees the federal lands where they had a permit to graze their cattle. Agency staff had found their cattle wandering in unauthorized locations four times during September of that year. The agency also found some of their fences in disrepair and their salt licks which provide cattle with essential minerals too close to creeks and springs, drawing the animals into those habitats.After repeated calls, texts and letters, the Forest Service sent the ranchers a notice of noncompliance, according to documents obtained via public records requests. The agency asserted that the ranchers had engaged in a willful and intentional violation of their permit and warned that future violations could lead to its revocation.The ranchers were hardly the largest or most politically influential among those who graze livestock on public lands. But they soon had help from well-placed people as they pushed back, hoping to get the warning rescinded based on their belief that they had been treated unfairly.The Forest Service needs to work with us and understand that grazing on the Forest is not black and white, the ranchers wrote to the agency. The agencys acting district ranger, for his part, said his staff had gone above and beyond to help the ranchers comply with the rules.With assistance from a former Forest Service employee, the ranchers contacted their congressional representatives in early 2020. Staffers for then-Rep. Greg Gianforte and Sen. Steve Daines, both Republicans, leapt into action, kicking off more than a year of back-and-forth between the senators office and Forest Service officials.When they hear something they dont like, they run to the forest supervisor and the senators office to get what they want, a Forest Service official wrote in a 2021 email to colleagues.Public lands ranching is one of the largest land uses in many Western states like Montana, where there are more cattle than people. Politicians have shown themselves remarkably responsive to requests for help from grazing permittees, even those of modest means.Ranchers who have been cited for violations or who resist regulations have called on pro-grazing lawyers, trade group lobbyists and sympathetic politicians, from county commissioners to state legislators and U.S. senators like Daines. These allies some of whom now hold positions in the Trump administration have pushed for looser environmental rules and, in some cases, fewer consequences for rule breakers.Multiple current or former Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service employees told ProPublica and High Country News that ranchers powerful allies can pose a serious obstacle to enforcement of grazing regulations. When pushback comes, regulators sometimes cave.If we do anything anti-grazing, theres at least a decent chance of politicians being involved, said one BLM employee who requested anonymity due to a fear of retaliation from the administration. We want to avoid that, so we dont do anything that would bring that about.In this 2021 email, a Forest Service official writes to colleagues about how ranchers were turning to a sympathetic senator to get around staffers attempts to enforce regulations. Obtained, redacted and highlighted by ProPublica and High Country NewsMary Jo Rugwell, a former director of the BLMs Wyoming state office, said that a majority of ranchers in the public lands grazing system do things the way they should be done. But some are truly problematic they break the rules and go above and around you to try to get what they want or think they deserve. Ranching interests can be very closely tied to folks that are in power, she added.Since 2020, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have written to the BLM and Forest Service about grazing issues more than 20 times, according to logs of agency communications obtained by ProPublica and High Country News via public records requests. In addition to Daines and Gianforte, these members include Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; former Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-N.M.; former Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and others. Their communications addressed such issues as Request for Flexibility with Grazing Permits and Public Lands Rule Impact on Ranchers and Rural Communities.Rick Danvir, who was a longtime wildlife manager on a large ranch in Utah, said pressure on the BLM comes not just from ranchers and their allies, but also from litigious environmental organizations opposed to public lands grazing. Everyone is always kicking them, he said of the agency. I didnt feel like the BLM was out to pick on people, he added. But the agency, wary of being taken to court, often ends up in a defensive crouch.In the Montana dispute, Daines office, from March 2020 through February 2021, sent a stream of emails to Forest Service officials about the issue, including demands for detailed information about the agencys interactions with the ranchers. In April 2021, a Daines staffer showed up unannounced at a meeting between the ranchers and the Forest Service, only to be turned away because the Forest Service did not have the appropriate official present to deal with a legislative staffer. But interventions by Daines office apparently made an impact.Its not unusual for people regulated by the government to reach out to their elected representatives, and constituent services are a big part of every senators and House members official duties. But local Forest Service officials involved in the dispute noted that the pressure from outside political forces was leading them to give the ranchers special treatment.If this issue was solely between the [ranger district] and the permittee, we should administer the permit and end the discussion there, wrote one Forest Service official in 2020. Unfortunately, we have regional, state and national oversight from others that deters us from administering the permit like we would for others. It is very unfair to the top notch operators that call/coordinate/manage consistently. But, what the [ranchers] perceive as picking on them, for political reasons, has become a mandate that we make accommodations outside the terms of a mediated permit. So be it.Another agency official wrote, It leaves a sour taste to think I am expected to hold all other permittees to the terms of their permits/forest plan/forest handbook yet be told to continually let it go with another.In this 2020 email, a Forest Service employee complains that being forced to apply rules inconsistently after a politician intervened in a grazing dispute leaves a sour taste. Obtained, redacted and highlighted by ProPublica and High Country NewsBy June 2020, the acting district ranger expressed willingness to cut [the ranchers] some slack if it would improve relations. In December 2020, the agency found the ranchers were once again violating the terms of their permit, citing evidence of overgrazing that could lead to declining vegetation and soil health, but decided not to issue another formal notice of noncompliance. By late 2022, the agency noted the Montana ranchers had been in violation of their permit for four consecutive years and warranted yet another notice of noncompliance. Agency staff, however, were wary of the conflict that would likely ensue.Although the Forest Service found that the ranchers grazing land showed widespread signs of overuse, the agency declined to officially recommend another citation in its year-end report for 2022, according to agency records.As one agency official wrote during the yearslong squabble, the drama continues.A spokesperson for Daines, in a statement, said that the senator advocates tirelessly on behalf of his constituents to federal agencies and was glad to be able to advocate for the ranchers in this case. The Forest Service, the ranchers and Gianfortes office did not respond to requests for comment.Friends in High PlacesThe second Trump administration is shaping up to be another powerful ally for ranchers who have argued against what they see as government overreach.The administration appointed Karen Budd-Falen, a self-described cowboy lawyer, to a high-level post at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Budd-Falen comes from a prominent ranching family and owns a stake in a Wyoming cattle ranch, according to her most recent financial disclosure released by the Interior Department. She also has a long history of suing the federal government over the enforcement of grazing regulations. In one of her best-known cases, she used the anti-corruption RICO law often used to target organized crime to sue individual BLM staffers over their enforcement of grazing regulations. (The case made it to the Supreme Court, where Budd-Falen lost in 2007.) She also represented an organization of New Mexico farmers and stockmen in a legal filing supporting Utahs failed 2024 lawsuit to take control of millions of acres of federal land within its borders.President Donald Trump nominated Michael Boren, a tech entrepreneur and rancher, as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a post overseeing the Forest Service. Boren has a contentious history with the Forest Service, which manages a national recreation area that surrounds his 480-acre ranch in Idaho. Among other issues, a company he controlled received a cease-and-desist letter from the agency in 2024 for allegedly clearing national forest land and building a private cabin on it. He was confirmed to his USDA position in October.The new administration has also wasted no time in dismantling Biden-era reforms designed to strengthen environmental protections for public rangelands.In September, the Trump administration proposed rescinding the Public Lands Rule. The rule, finalized in May 2024, sought to place the protection and restoration of wildlife habitat and clean water on equal footing with uses such as oil drilling, mining and grazing on federal land. It would have allowed individuals, organizations, tribes and state agencies to lease BLM land for conservation purposes and sought to strengthen the BLM process for analyzing the impact of grazing and other economic activities on the environment.Under the Biden administration, the BLM also issued a memo prioritizing environmental review for grazing lands that were environmentally degraded or in sensitive wildlife habitat. The Trump administration effectively nullified that memo this year.The Interior Department and BLM said in a statement that any policy decisions are made in accordance with federal law and are designed to balance economic opportunity with conservation responsibilities across the nations public lands.A BLM grazing allotment in Colorado shows both signs of a healthy environment marked by native Indian ricegrass, first image, and areas degraded by cattle, second image.The administration is also undertaking a broad effort to reopen vacant federal grazing lands to ranchers as part of its drive to position grazing as a central element of federal land management. The administration says there are 24 million acres of vacant grazing land nationwide. Many of these vacant grazing allotments are temporarily without livestock because they needed time to recover from wildfire, did not have enough water or forage to support cattle, or were awaiting removal of invasive species.Still, in May, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz gave staff about two weeks to compile lists of unused grazing allotments that could be quickly refilled with livestock, according to internal communications obtained by ProPublica and High Country News via public records requests. Such policies cater to grazing permittee advocates like the Public Lands Council, which in a 2024 policy paper called on federal agencies to swiftly fill vacant allotments. The council did not respond to requests for comment.Vacant grazing allotments have always been open and available to permitted grazing, a USDA spokesperson told ProPublica and High Country News.The Trump administration has sometimes run afoul of ranchers. In October, ranching groups blasted the administration for increasing beef imports from Argentina amid rising prices for consumers.Long before Trump first took office, presidential administrations that tried to raise grazing fees or strengthen regulations faced fierce pushback from ranching interests.In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration backed off a proposal to raise fees amid widespread rancor from public lands ranchers and their Republican allies in Congress. Many in the industry saw then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitts proposed reforms as an existential threat. The government is trying to take our livelihood, our rights and our dignity, said one rancher at a hearing on Babbitts failed push to raise fees. We cant live with it.Ranching industry groups do not spend anywhere near as much money lobbying Congress as do well-funded industries like pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and defense contracting. But they get their perspective heard in the Capitol.J.R. Simplot Co. the largest holder of BLM grazing permits, according to a ProPublica and High Country News analysis spent about $610,000 lobbying Congress from 2020 through 2025. Earlier this year, the company hired the Bernhardt Group to lobby on its behalf in Washington, D.C. David Bernhardt, who launched the firm this year, served as Secretary of the Interior during the first Trump administration and sits on the board of Trumps media company.Those with fewer resources may turn to trade groups such as the National Cattlemens Beef Association, which has affiliates in 40 states. In recent years, the association and its allies have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over Biden-era water regulations and the Interior Department over endangered species protections for the lesser prairie-chicken. A federal judge in August vacated protections for the imperiled species after a request from the Trump administration. The administration has also moved to roll back the water regulations at the center of the associations EPA lawsuit.The association, which represents public lands ranchers as well as the beef industry as a whole, spent nearly $2 million lobbying in Washington, D.C., over the past five years and contributed more than $2 million to federal candidates and political action committees in the last two election cycles. During the 2024 election cycle, more than 90% of its political contributions went to Republicans.The association vociferously opposed the Public Lands Rule and, alongside other groups, filed a lawsuit to halt its implementation before the Trump administration moved to rescind it. Rancher Mark Eisele, then-president of the association, called the rule a stepping stone to removing livestock grazing from our nations public lands. The association did not respond to requests for comment.Groups like the cattlemens association and Public Lands Council were influential in getting the Public Lands Rule rescinded, said Nada Culver, a deputy director of the BLM during the Biden administration.The political influence of ranchers, she said, goes beyond their relatively modest lobbying and campaign donations. It is tied to their cultural power, she said. They are icons of the American West.From Bunkerville to the Halls of GovernmentState and local officials, from legislators to county commissioners to sheriffs, also sometimes come to the aid of ranchers who run into trouble with the Forest Service or BLM.In June 2019, in the midst of a long-running dispute between a group of ranchers and employees of Utahs Fishlake National Forest, a forest supervisor told a rancher that he would receive a citation if he failed to sign his permit, place ear tags on his cattle to identify them and otherwise abide by the rules. The rancher became really angry, said there were two ways this could go, and he wasnt going to court because the courts are all stacked in our favor, the Forest Service employee wrote in an email recounting the conversation.He then said if anyone in his family got hurt by this, remember I have a family and they can get hurt too, the supervisor noted in his email. I asked him if he was threatening my family, and he said his family has worked hard for what they have and werent going to have it taken away, or something to that effect. The rancher declined to comment for this story.The ranchers in the dispute, which lasted years, had support from a local sheriff. At one point, the sheriff expressed his willingness to jail Forest Service personnel, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Minutes from a January 2016 meeting of the Piute County Commission note that the sheriff said that he will not allow this to be a Bundy situation, referring to the infamous 2014 standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and the BLM in Bunkerville, Nevada. If that entails jailing the forest service he will do it!!! The sheriff told The Salt Lake Tribune that his comments were taken out of context.In a few cases, ranchers who violate grazing regulations have even taken up arms without losing support from elected officials.Heavy grazing has left this BLM parcel near the Colorado-Utah border largely denuded of grass and with native greasewood shrubs stunted.This was the case during the Bundy familys Bunkerville standoff. After two decades of chronic trespassing, the Bundys owed about $1 million in grazing fines and unpaid fees. Bundy maintained, without evidence, that the U.S. government had no say over grazing on public lands in Nevada. When federal agents arrived with a court order to round up the familys trespassing cattle, Bundy and a group of supporters engaged in an armed standoff. The agents eventually retreated. Ill be damned if Im going to honor a federal court that has no jurisdiction or authority or arresting power over we the people, Bundy told The New York Times in 2014.Throughout the dispute, the family was supported by political figures from across the region. The commissioners of Nye County, Nevada, for instance, passed a resolution denouncing armed federal bureaucrats operating outside their lawful delegated authority, and at least one commissioner traveled to Bunkerville to support the Bundys. Michele Fiore, a member of the Nevada Legislature at the time, voiced her support for the family, and several members of the Arizona Legislature traveled to Nevada after the standoff to support the Bundys.The Bundys ties to powerful officials have only grown. Celeste Maloy, Bundys niece, was elected to represent Utahs 2nd Congressional District in 2023. (Bundy married Maloys aunt.) During her short time in the House of Representatives, Maloy has pushed for the sale of some federal lands and sponsored legislation to make it easier for ranchers to access vacant grazing allotments during droughts and extreme weather. During the 2024 election cycle, Maloy received $20,000 in campaign contributions from the National Cattlemens Beef Association.Maloys office did not respond to requests for comment.Everything Stacked against YouWayne Werkmeister, a longtime BLM employee who spent most of his career overseeing federal grazing lands before retiring in 2022, said he knows how difficult it can be to enforce public lands protections.When you have everything stacked against you, when youve got political pressure on you, when youve got management who doesnt want to hear it, when youve got a rancher whos trying to prove himself, its nearly impossible, he said in an interview with ProPublica and High Country News.By 2017, after intensive on-the-ground research, Werkmeister and his colleagues had determined that two ranchers near Grand Junction, Colorado, were damaging habitat across the more than 90,000-acre allotment where they grazed roughly 500 cattle. Werkmeister began pushing to reduce the number of cattle on the land.Wayne Werkmeister, a former BLM employee, spent years fighting to reduce the number of cattle grazing on the West Salt Common allotment.In response, the ranchers hired former BLM employees to argue their case, accusing the agency of agenda driven bullying. They copied then-U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, on correspondence with the BLM. Werkmeister said he had to justify the agencys actions to the senators aides.In October 2018, Werkmeisters office received a two-page letter from the Budd-Falen Law Offices the firm co-founded by Budd-Falen, now a high-ranking official in the Interior Department which represented the two Colorado ranchers. The actions of the BLM in reducing livestock grazing on the West Salt Common Allotment could potentially and unnecessarily force them out of business, the letter read. The firm also sent the letter to local county commissioners.Werkmeister said his bosses quickly ordered him back into the field to gather more data, even though, as BLM records show, he and his colleagues had already spent years documenting the condition of the allotment, its precipitation patterns and its use by the ranchers. The ranchers continued to dispute the agencys findings.Ultimately, Werkmeister said he was never able to reduce grazing enough to give the allotment time to recover. As recently as 2024, agency records show, the BLM reapproved grazing there.The ranchers, their attorney and Gardner did not respond to requests for comment.Werkmeister counts his inability to turn around the parcels ecological fortunes as among his biggest failures. During a recent visit, he pointed out the denuded ground and nubs of native bunchgrasses amid a sea of invasive cheatgrass.Overgrazed to the point of gone, he said.A cattle trail cuts through an overgrazed field in the West Salt Common allotment near Grand Junction, Colorado.The post Powerful Friends: Sympathetic Officials and Cultural Power Help Ranchers Dodge Oversight appeared first on ProPublica.

Two months into President Donald Trumps second term, his administration gave states an ultimatum: Cooperate with his teams immigration crackdown or lose your federal homeland security funding.Oregon and 19 other states including Illinois, New York and California fought back and won. A federal judge ruled in September that the Department of Homeland Security couldnt attach such strings to its grants, which states rely on for counterterrorism and emergency planning. For Oregon, nearly $18 million was at stake. The money in the past has paid for everything from bomb detectors to a security analysts salary.But after winning in court, Oregon officials logged in to a federal grant website to formally accept the money, only to find the button to do so was disabled. They thought it might be a system glitch until they talked to counterparts in other states. The button did not come back online.Homeland Security officials signaled to the states that despite losing in court, they were likely to appeal. If states wanted the money now, they would have to sign a declaration promising to cooperate with immigration enforcement if they lost in the future. States argued this would violate the judges order, and they won in court again.Finally in October, the department officially removed the immigration wording to which states had objected and that the judge had said wasnt legal.But the administration continued to dangle the money out of reach. This time, the department rolled out a whole new set of criteria that made it harder for all states sanctuary or not, blue or red to obtain any federal terror or emergency management funding at all. They required states to estimate their populations net of people who had been deported and they dramatically tightened the deadline for spending the money.Trump and his appointees have faced intense scrutiny since September, when he cited violent radical left terrorism as the reason for ordering National Guard troops to Portland. The city disputes the characterization and has been fighting the deployment in court.Meanwhile, a quieter battle has been playing out over money to fight the extremist threats that emergency management officials say actually exist in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.Oregon auditors reported that data from a security think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts the state at No. 6 nationally for violent extremist attacks from 2011 to 2020. In more recent years, the FBI announced a set of attacks on electrical substations in Oregon and Washington they suspected to be the work of neo-Nazis, as well as a series of Portland area ballot-box fires that the agency linked to an extremist of unspecified ideology.Insurrection, conflict, violence, bombings, all those kinds of things the dollars that we use absolutely are invested to help prevent, and help us prepare to respond to, those types of incidents, said Mark Ferdig, who runs the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization in the Portland area, which is funded almost entirely by grants from the Department of Homeland Security.But in social media posts and in press briefings, the White House indicated that Trump doesnt trust Portland to use federal funding in ways that match the presidents priorities.He is genuinely serious about wanting to restore order in Americas cities, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an October briefing, but its become apparent that the local and elected officials in Oregon do not feel the same.The Department of Homeland Security declined an interview request for this story. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, an arm of the department that distributes grant funding, responded to written questions from an unnamed press office email.Cities and states who break the law and prevent us from arresting criminal illegal aliens should not receive federal funding. The President has been clear on that, the email said.It said that for too long, FEMAs programs have strayed from their core mission turning taxpayer money into a slush fund for woke projects based on outdated and flawed methodologies.The agency denied holding back homeland security grants, pointing to the money it made available in September if states agreed to help with immigration enforcement.Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security and past president of the National Emergency Management Association, said states should not be compelled to align themselves with any federal administrations politics when money for disaster victims and counterterrorism is on the line.There should not be any political ideology involved in the grants, Budd said.Eroding CapabilitiesThe administrations latest iteration of changes to homeland security grants has added obstacles that, this time around, threaten to make every state a casualty.For example, states must officially certify their current population count net of people deported. States suing the government said in a court filing that the most likely source for a deportee count would be the Department of Homeland Security itself and that when North Carolina officials asked, they got no response. The states said the federal agency gave Michigan only an approximate number of recently removed individuals and that FEMA provided no indication of whether such estimates would be good enough. (Asked about providing states with deportee counts, a FEMA spokesperson said the agency could not comment on pending litigation.)Theres also a much shorter window for all states to spend the money the department gives out: within the next 10 months, rather than three years. Emergency managers say the requirement is challenging because it takes time for local governments to propose specific spending to state officials, for the state to distribute the money, and for the locals to hire people or put out bids for construction.Budd called the new deadline pretty devastating for all states, including Wyoming. She said states have received no explanation for the changing grant requirements.Do you have your crystal ball? I dont have mine, Budd said. Thats one of the most frustrating things is the lack of communication.Asked about the reason for the latest changes, FEMA said they were intended to prevent fraud and abuse and werent related to the courts rejection of earlier requirements forcing states to aid in immigration enforcement.These changes are neither arbitrary nor capricious, the agencys email stated. They are part of a methodical, reasonable effort to ensure that federal dollars are used effectively and in line with the Administrations priorities and todays homeland security threats.While all states are affected now, sanctuary jurisdictions like Oregon remain the main force battling the administration in court. (Oregons sanctuary law, originated in the 1980s and enhanced in 2021, bars law enforcement officers from participating in immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant.)Oregon estimates that without the federal money, two-thirds of its counties wont be able to perform basic emergency management functions to prepare for and respond to disasters.In Portland, the states largest city and the one with the highest terrorism risk, an average of $5 million a year in homeland security grants over the past two decades has paid for law enforcement training, rescue vehicles, bomb squad gear, mobile X-ray scanners and barriers that prevent cars from plowing into crowds.The grant programs were established by Congress in the wake of 9/11 and initially focused on international terrorism, but local governments have since used them to boost their states overall disaster preparedness and combat the growing threat of domestic extremism.Firefighters bought a drone with homeland security money and used it to investigate the arson of a 120-year-old church building in Portland. They flew the drone through wreckage investigators couldnt set foot in because the building was likely to collapse. Investigators used it again when a 110-year-old brick apartment complex burned down.During last years election, an arsonist set off incendiary devices on two ballot drop boxes in Portland and Vancouver, Washington, destroying hundreds of ballots. However, both ballot boxes were equipped with fire suppression devices that the homeland security grants had paid for. They prevented many more ballots from burning, local law enforcement said.One of the ballot drop boxes damaged by an arsonist in last years elections in Portland Jenny Kane/APHomeland security money also pays for an intelligence analyst who briefs law enforcement on emerging terrorism risks and assesses the vulnerabilities of public infrastructure like water treatment plants. The analyst prepares threat assessments for major public events like professional sports games or the downtown waterfront Rose Festival, determining whether the airspace overhead should be temporarily restricted and identifying places where someone could leave a suspicious backpack.Those major investments that we make in planning projects and equipment and supplies and training, I think that that will essentially go away, said Ferdig, who runs the Portland areas disaster preparedness organization. Well see more significant and rapid erosion of our capability if we are training less. And if theres less equipment over time, its just going to dissipate. And that is worrisome.Ferdig and other Portland emergency managers started getting nervous about federal funding in early March, when they noticed that FEMA had temporarily turned off several of the computer systems used to pay grants to state and local governments. There was no warning.Ferdig knew Trump had openly talked about abolishing FEMA and had ordered his cabinet to review the agency. The technical difficulty felt ominous to Ferdig.Weeks later, the administration made its first attempt to withhold emergency funds from sanctuary states, prompting the lawsuit from Oregon and 19 other states.The Ideology of ExtremistsThe administrations aggressive stance on local counterterror funding is not just about pressuring states on immigration policy, according to Mary McCord, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security under President Barack Obama. It may also be driven by the types of political extremism the money is being used to combat.When Oregon auditors reviewed the states efforts to combat extremism in 2022, they noted that incidents of extremist violence in the state between 2011 and 2020 were split nearly equally across political orientations.That doesnt fit the Trump administrations narrative, said McCord, who is now director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.In public statements and a September presidential memo on Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, Trump has painted political violence as coming solely from left-wing groups. His administration has designated antifa, a term for loosely affiliated participants in Americas anti-fascist movement, as a terrorist organization.State and local counterterror funding is being withheld because it was perceived by this administration to be all directed against the right, McCord said. It is a multifaceted strategy of trying to say, There is no violence on the right. The violence is all coming from the left.Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs for the Western States Center, said Trumps actions on disaster response and counterterrorism are disturbing when coupled with his recent deployment of the National Guard to Portland to deal with immigration protesters. Schubiners Portland-based nonprofit, which tracks extremism in the Northwest, has previously labeled the Trump administration a threat to democracy.The administration is undermining the power of states and localities by holding back funding that allows them to serve their residents, Schubiner said, while at the same time relying on federal troops or attempting to try to increase control over communities, quash dissent and consolidate his power.The White House has made clear that it does, in fact, intend to take more control over Portlands domestic security efforts, saying the local response has been too ideologically biased.On Oct 3., the day before a judge blocked Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland, Leavitt, his press secretary, railed against the city and its police force for arresting a conservative journalist while doing nothing about radical left-wing lunatics she said were acting as a violent mob. (The Portland Police Bureau is among the local agencies that have benefited from homeland security grants in the past.)Leavitts comments were a response to ongoing nightly protests at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. ProPublica previously reported that, while incidents of varying intensity have occurred between officers and protesters, there has been no evidence to support the administrations claim of a coordinated assault on the facility.Read MoreRiots Raging: The Misleading Story Fox News Told About Portland Before Trump Sent TroopsLeavitt said the federal presence in Portland would surge to protect the ICE facility. At the same time, she broached the subject of cuts to various forms of federal aid to the city.We think its despicable that these local elected officials who swear an oath to protect their people are preventing law enforcement from doing their jobs on the ground, Leavitt said.The press secretary said White House officials, at Trumps direction, were already looking into ways to reduce the citys funding. She did not specify the type of funding or how the White House effort fit with the Department of Homeland Securitys ongoing battle with states over grant money.We will not fund states that allow anarchy, Leavitt said.The post Oregon Struggles to Land Federal Counterterrorism Money as Trump Orders Troops to Stop Terrorists Hindering ICE appeared first on ProPublica.

Stan Kroenke doesnt need federal help to make a business flourish. He is worth an estimated $20 billion, a fortune that has allowed him to become one of Americas largest property owners and afforded him stakes in storied sports franchises, including the Denver Nuggets and Englands Arsenal soccer club.Yet Kroenke, whose wife is an heiress to the Walmart fortune, benefits from one of the federal governments bedrock subsidy programs, one that props up ranching in the West.As owner of the Winecup Gamble Ranch, which sprawls across grasslands, streams and a mountain range east of Elko, Nevada, Kroenke is entitled to graze his cattle on public lands for less than 15% of the fees he would pay on private land. The public lands grazing program, formalized in the 1930s to contain the rampant overgrazing that contributed to the Dust Bowl, has grown to serve operations including billionaire hobby ranchers, mining companies, utilities and large corporate outfits, providing benefits unimagined by its founding law.President Donald Trumps administration plans to make the program even more generous pushing to open even more of the 240 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing land to livestock while reducing oversight of the environmental damage. This, members of the administration contend, will further its goal of using public lands to fuel the economy and eliminate the national debt.Thats the balance sheet of America, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said of federal lands at his confirmation hearing in January, and, if we were a company, they would look at us and say, Wow, you are really restricting your balance sheet.ProPublica and High Country News set out to investigate the transformation of the grazing system, established to prevent abuse of public lands, into a massive subsidy program. In the late 1970s, Congress raised the fees to graze on public lands to reflect open market prices at the time. But the fees have barely budged in decades. The government still charges ranchers $1.35 per animal unit month, a 93% discount, on average, on the price of grazing on private lands. (An animal unit month represents the typical amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month.)Our analysis found that in 2024 alone, the federal government poured at least $2.5 billion into subsidy programs that public lands ranchers can access, not including the steep discount on forage. Subsidies benefiting public lands ranchers include disaster assistance after droughts and floods, cheap crop insurance, funding for fences and watering holes, and compensation for animals lost to predators.Benefits flow largely to a select few like Kroenke. Roughly two-thirds of all the livestock grazing on BLM acreage is controlled by just 10% of ranchers, our analysis showed. On Forest Service land, the top 10% of permittees control more than 50% of grazing. This concentration of control has been the status quo for decades. In 1999, the San Jose Mercury News undertook a similar study and found that the largest ranchers controlled the same proportion of grazing within BLM jurisdiction as they do today.Meanwhile, as we previously reported, the agencies oversight of livestocks environmental impact has declined dramatically in recent years. Lawmakers have allowed an increasing number of grazing permits to be automatically renewed, even when environmental reviews have not been completed or the land has been flagged as being in poor condition.The Trump administrations push to further underwrite the livestock industry supports ranchers like Kroenke, whose Winecup Gamble is advertised as covering nearly 1 million acres. More than half of that is federal public land that can support roughly 9,000 head of cattle, according to an advertisement in brokerage listings. Last year, Kroenke paid the government about $50,000 in grazing fees to use the BLM land around the ranch an 87% discount on the market rate, according to a ProPublica and High Country News analysis of government data. Previous owners enjoyed similar economic benefits. Before Kroenke, the ranch belonged to Paul Fireman, the longtime CEO of Reebok, who used losses from companies affiliated with the ranch as a $22 million tax writeoff between 2003 and 2018, internal IRS data shows. And before Fireman, it was owned by others, including Hollywood superstar Jimmy Stewart of Its a Wonderful Life fame.The land where Kroenke runs his cattle has been degraded by overgrazing, according to the BLM.Kroenkes representatives did not return messages seeking comment. Fireman declined to comment.On the Winecup Gamble Ranch near the Nevada-Utah border, billionaire owner Stan Kroenke has access to steeply discounted forage on more than half a million acres of Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments. Aerial support provided by LightHawkThe Trump administrations retooling of this system is being worked out behind closed doors. In May, the BLM sent a draft of proposed revisions to federal grazing regulations what would be the first updates to them since the 1990s to the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to communications reviewed by ProPublica and High Country News.In October, the administration released a 13-page plan to fortify the American Beef Industry. In addition to instructing the BLM and Forest Service to amend grazing regulations, including those that govern how ranchers obtain permits to graze their herds and how environmental damage from their animals is assessed, the plan called for taxpayers to further underwrite ranching by increasing existing subsidies for drought and wildfire relief, for livestock killed by predators and for government-backed insurance.The Forest Service did not respond to requests for comment. The White House referred questions to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which said in a statement, Livestock grazing is not only a federally and statutorily recognized appropriate land use, but a proven land management tool, one that reduces invasive species and wildfire risk, enhances ecosystem health, and supports rural stewardship.In a statement, a BLM spokesperson said that the agencys mandate includes sustaining a healthy and economically viable grazing program that benefits rural communities, supports Americas ranching heritage, and promotes responsible stewardship of public lands. The grazing program plays an important role in local economies and land management, providing tools to reduce wildfire risk, manage invasive species, and maintain open landscapes.Ranchers say that taxpayers benefit from helping them continue their work, since public lands grazing can prevent private land from being sold and paved over. Bill Fales and his family run a ranch in western Colorado that has been in his wifes family for more than a century, and their cattle graze in the nearby White River National Forest. The wildlife here is dependent on these ranches staying as open ranch land, he said. As development elsewhere carves up habitat, Fales said, the public and private lands his cattle graze are increasingly shared by elk, bears, mountain lions and other species.Ranchers and their advocates also point to the livestock industrys production of meat, leather and wool. And as a pillar of rural economies, ranching preserves a uniquely American way of life.The major trade groups representing public lands ranchers did not respond to requests for comment.While the country loses money on public lands ranching, both ranchers and critics of the system agree on one thing: Without subsidies, many smaller operators would go out of business.The Industry That Conquered the WestSettlers covered much of the West with cattle beginning in the mid-1800s, spurred by laws and incentives meant to realize the countrys manifest destiny. As the nation expanded, settlers, with the backing of the federal government and the military, seized the Indigenous land that would later be called the public domain.Unchecked grazing followed.On the Western slope of Colorado and in nearby States I saw waste, competition, overuse, and abuse of valuable ranges and watersheds eating into the very heart of Western economy, observed Rep. Edward Taylor, a Colorado Democrat, as Congress was considering how to properly manage grazing in the 1930s. The livestock industry, through circumstances beyond its control, was headed for self-strangulation.So, in 1934, as Depression-era dust storms darkened the skies over the Great Plains, worsened by overgrazing that denuded grasslands, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for the lawmaker. It divided much of the public domain into parcels, called allotments, and established a permit system to lease them a decade at a time.Congress modernized laws governing public lands in 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which required federal agencies to balance competing uses, such as grazing, mining, timber, oil drilling and recreation. Two years later, Congress passed a law that brought grazing fees in line with the value of forage on the open market at the time.Today, ranching interest groups justify their subsidies by arguing that their livestock feed the country. According to Agriculture Department research, ranching on federal lands accounts for $3.3 billion in economic output annually and supports nearly 50,000 jobs.But grazing on public lands sustains just 2% of the nations beef cattle while accounting for a vanishingly small proportion of the countrys agriculture industry.The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service Oversee Millions of Acres of Grazing Allotments Across the WestSource: Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management Lucas Waldron/ProPublicaProPublica and High Country News analysis found that the government support disproportionately benefits the largest ranchers, who account for a majority of the public-land grazing.The J.R. Simplot Co. is the largest rancher on BLM land. Founded as a family business in Idaho nearly a century ago, it made a fortune in part by selling potatoes to McDonalds. The business has since ballooned into a multinational agricultural conglomerate. J.R. Simplot benefits significantly from subsidized forage, paying $2.4 million below market rate to graze nearly 150,000 animal unit months on federal lands last year, according to an analysis of BLM and Forest Service data.The company did not respond to a request for comment.Industrywide, the $21 million collected from ranchers by the BLM and Forest Service was about $284 million below market rate for forage last year.Cattle owned by the ranching company BTAZ Nevada graze in sagebrush habitat on the Forest Services Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in central Nevada.Fales, the Colorado rancher, relies on access to cheaper forage on federal land. To him, it makes sense that grazing there is less expensive. Private leases are almost always more productive land, he said. And unlike private leases, public leases typically require ranchers to pay for the maintenance of infrastructure like fences and water tanks beyond what land management agencies fund.The full cost to taxpayers, including grazings impact on the land, is unknown.Even before Trump began to aggressively downsize the federal workforce, it was impossible for agencies limited staff to monitor the public lands for environmental damage from excessive grazing. The number of BLM rangeland managers fell by 39% from 2019 through 2024, according to the most recent Office of Personnel Management data. By June 2025, after the Trump administration spurred a mass exodus from the federal workforce, the number had shrunk by another 9%, according to internal BLM employment data.Now, each rangeland manager is responsible for an average of 716 square miles, making it impossible for them to inspect their entire territory every year, BLM employees said.Just Good BusinessFor many of the countrys largest ranchers, the benefits of running cattle on public lands extend beyond profits from selling beef.In June, Air Force Two landed in Butte, Montana, where Vice President JD Vance transferred to a motorcade of black SUVs that shuttled him south to a sprawling cattle operation near Yellowstone National Park. Vance had traveled to this remote ranch to meet with its owner Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire founder of Fox News.In 2021, Murdoch purchased the Beaverhead Ranch for $200 million from a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the conglomerate controlled by conservative billionaire Charles Koch. Peggy Rockefeller Dulany, an heir to the Rockefeller fortune, owns a massive ranch nearby. Dulanys ranch did not respond to a request for comment.This is a profound responsibility, Murdoch told The Wall Street Journal through a spokesperson when he bought the ranch. We feel privileged to assume ownership of this beautiful land and look forward to continually enhancing both the commercial cattle business and the conservation assets across the ranch.Ultrawealthy families like the Murdochs, Kochs and Rockefellers own cattle ranches for a variety of reasons. Some want a taste of cowboy-themed luxury or the status gained from controlling vast and beautiful landscapes.For some, its also good business. Even hobby ranches qualify for big property tax breaks in certain jurisdictions. Business expenses related to ranching can be deducted from federal taxes. And federal agencies assign grazing permits to the owners of nearby private ranches, called base properties, inflating the value of those properties and making them stable long-term investments. Real estate agents touted Murdochs ranch as encompassing 340,000 acres, but two-thirds of that land is public and leased from the Forest Service and BLM.As with Kroenkes operation, taxpayers help underwrite grazing at Murdochs ranch.Beaverhead paid less than $25,000, 95% below market rate, to graze on federal lands last year, according to an analysis of agency data.At least one of Beaverheads BLM allotments in the picturesque Centennial Valley a several-thousand-acre parcel known as Long Creek AMP is failing environmental standards as a result of grazing. Matador Ranch and Cattle, which was formed from the aggregation of Beaverhead and a smaller ranch purchased by Murdoch in 2021, declined to comment for this story.Public lands grazing can also help advance unrelated businesses.Nevada Gold Mines controls millions of acres of federal grazing permits around its main money-making operations, including the massive Goldstrike Mine north of Carlin, Nevada. Aerial support provided by LightHawkCattle congregate at a watering hole near northern Nevadas Cortez Mountains, cutting paths into a checkerboard of public BLM lands and private Nevada Gold Mines property. Aerial support provided by LightHawkChris Jasmine, Nevada Gold Mines manager of biodiversity and rangelands, oversees a livestock operation that grazes around 5,000 head of cattle on public and private lands.The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves the Las Vegas Valley, is continually searching for new sources of water. Beginning in the 2000s, the utility purchased land hundreds of miles from Las Vegas in order to acquire its groundwater rights. Those properties were associated with public lands grazing permits, which the utility inherited. Bronson Mack, the water authoritys spokesperson, said in a statement that it continues the grazing operation as part of its maintenance and management of property assets, ranch assets, and environmental resources in the area.Mining companies are among the biggest public lands ranchers, in part because grazing permits afford them greater control over areas near their mines. Copper-mining companies like Freeport-McMoRan, Hudbay Minerals and Rio Tinto all run large cattle operations in Arizona, for example.A Hudbay representative sent a statement that said, Ranching and mining have coexisted in Arizona for generations, and we operate both with the same commitment to land stewardship and care for our neighboring communities. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.Nevada Gold Mines, which owns 11 ranches surrounding its northern Nevada operations, is the behemoth of the group. A joint venture between the worlds two largest gold mining companies, the company holds millions of acres of grazing permits.We own them for access, explained Chris Jasmine, the companys manager of biodiversity and rangelands. Access to mineral rights, water rights and mitigation credits.Many of Nevada Gold Mines grazing permits surround its open pits, including the largest gold mining complex in the world. Access to that land makes it easier for the company to participate in programs that give it credits in exchange for environmental restoration projects. Then, the company can either sell these credits to other companies or use them to offset its environmental impacts and expand its mines.Jeff Burgess, who tracks public lands grazing subsidies via a website he calls the Arizona Grazing Clearinghouse, said such massive government assistance provides little benefit to taxpayers.When does the spigot stop? When do we stop throwing away money? asked Burgess, who wants to see subsidies shrink. Its a tyranny of the minority.A Modern Grazing EmpireIn central Nevadas Reese River Valley, a redbrick farmhouse that once served as the headquarters of the Hess Ranch has been reduced to crumbling chimneys and shattered windows. Despite its dilapidated appearance, this ranch is one of the private base properties that has allowed a little-known company called BTAZ Nevada to assemble a livestock empire that stretches across roughly 4,000 square miles of public lands, according to a Western Watersheds Project analysis of BLM and Forest Service data.This empire illustrates the livestock industrys consolidation, the subsidies that prop it up and the environmental harm that often follows.Based in Fremont, Nebraska, BTAZ belongs to the Barta family, which owns Sav-Rx, an online provider of prescription medication. The contact phone number BTAZ provided to the BLM is a Sav-Rx customer service line. The family patriarch, Jim Barta, was convicted in 2013 on felony charges for conspiracy to commit bribery. (The conviction was overturned after a judge ruled that Barta had been subjected to entrapment. Barta has since died.)The Bartas operation, now among the largest beneficiaries of the public lands grazing system, includes permits in Nevada, Oregon and Nebraska. Last year, BTAZ paid the government $86,000, $679,000 less than the market rate, according to agency data.In the Toiyabe Range of Nevada, where BTAZs BLM and Forest Service grazing allotments border each other, cow feces covered the ground surrounding a stock tank fed by mountain streams. A dead raven floated on the waters surface. The BLM listed allotments in this area as failing land health standards due to grazing in 2020 and again in 2024.Paul Ruprecht, Nevada director of the environmental group Western Watersheds Project, examines a water trough that straddles a boundary between BLM and Forest Service lands in central Nevadas Reese River Valley and is used by a BTAZ herd.Cow bones litter the ground on a BTAZ grazing allotment, near a degraded creek, the type of ecosystem that once supported the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout.The Hess Ranch sits abandoned in the Reese River Valley. It is one of several properties that allow BTAZ access to hundreds of thousands of acres of federal grazing permits across central Nevada.Higher in the mountains, the evidence of BTAZs grazing was even clearer: swaths of ground chewed and trampled bare, discarded plastic piping, cow feces and bones in an unfenced creek. Streams like these were once suitable habitat for native Lahontan cutthroat trout. But activities such as grazing and development have degraded so much habitat that the threatened species now occupies only 12% of its historical range, according to a 2023 survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.This is completely unnecessary, Paul Ruprecht, Nevada director of the Western Watersheds Project, said as he surveyed the damage. Its not supporting the local economy, at least in any major way; its not providing significant amounts of food for anyone; its being heavily subsidized at every turn by taxpayers; its not adding anything to the scenery or the wildlife.BTAZ did not respond to requests for comment.Youre Going to Lose Your Small RancherSmaller ranchers have access to most of the same subsidies as the wealthiest ranchers, but the money isnt enough to protect them from harsh economic headwinds.Roughly 18,000 permittees graze livestock on BLM or Forest Service land. The bottom half accounts for less than 4% of the animal unit months on BLM land and less than 10% on Forest Service land, an analysis of the agencies data found.The smaller operations lack the economies of scale available to larger corporations, making it difficult for them to survive on agricultures thin profit margins. Theyre also more vulnerable to shifting conditions on the ground. Climate change has strained their water supplies. And more than 70,000 wild horses and burros now compete with livestock for forage.Consolidation in the meatpacking industry is further squeezing ranchers. The four largest operations have taken over more than 80% of the market, giving them leverage to lower the prices paid to ranchers.Burgess, who tracks public lands grazing subsidies in Arizona, argues the federal government should stop supporting ranchers who would otherwise go out of business. They refuse to face the reality that a lot of people arent going to be able to raise cattle profitably, so theyre just throwing money at it, he said, calling the system a vestige of the past.That could have ripple effects, shuttering businesses in rural towns. It could also force small ranchers to sell their private land perhaps to developers who would build on the open spaces, perhaps to wealthy owners like Kroenke or BTAZ.Mike and Danna Camblin run a small cattle operation near the Yampa River in northwest Colorado. Years of drought have forced them to downsize their herd, while each year they must tie up much of their money in their operation until they can sell their animals. Even with beef prices breaking records, they couldnt turn a profit without subsidized drought insurance and other government support including the ability to graze cheaply on federal land.Mike Camblin, first image, and his wife, Danna, ranchers in northwest Colorado, use virtual fencing technology, second image, to help rotate their cattle without the need for physical fences that disrupt wildlife movement.Most of these BLM leases have been in the family for years and years, and, if you take care of it, the BLM will allow you to continue to stay, he said. If they lose their federal grazing permits or otherwise cant make the economics work, the Camblins might have to sell their private land. Mike has mixed feelings about the influence of government assistance on his industry, saying it tethers us to those subsidies.Thats where they screwed up, they started subsidizing a lot of these guys clear back in the Dust Bowl, Mike said of the biggest ranches. Some larger operators who dont need government assistance take advantage of the system, he said, speaking favorably of an income-based metric that limits richer producers access to certain agricultural subsidies.Smaller ranchers precarious financial situation can lead to environmental harm, as they may run too many livestock for too long on federal land where grazing is cheaper.The Camblins make environmental stewardship part of their operation monitoring soil and plant health and rotating their several hundred head of cattle among pastures to let the ground rest but that adds costs.A cow turd will tell you more than anything else, Mike remarked as he eyed a fresh one left by his cattle. If its flat, that means the cow is getting enough protein from the grass, he said. If it degrades rapidly, that means insects are attracted to the plentiful organic matter. I spend more time looking down than at the cattle.Technology helps them rotate their herds. Dannas smartphone displayed a satellite view of the area. The interface showed purple cow icons confined within red polygons virtual fences that shock the cattle via collars should they stray. Unlike physical fences, virtual fences dont get in the way of migrating wildlife, and the Camblins can redraw them in an instant to shift their cattle to less-grazed areas.Leasing the collars for the system cost nearly $18,000 last year, Mike said.Silvia Secchi, a University of Iowa economist who studies agriculture, said federal grazing subsidies need to be reimagined so they benefit the American public instead of enriching the wealthiest ranchers. She suggested potential solutions like subsidizing co-ops that allow smaller ranchers to access economies of scale, capping the size of ranching operations that pay below market rate for forage and ending disaster payments for climate change-fueled droughts that are here to stay.We have baseline subsidies that are going up and up and up because we are not telling farmers to change the way you do things to adapt, Secchi said.Secchi and the Camblins agree that ending all public support would have repercussions for rural communities and landscapes. Mike acknowledged it could put his and Dannas operation at risk.Youre going to lose your small rancher, he said.Danna Camblin, on horseback, moves her familys herd of cattle to a new pasture to give the land time to recover.MethodologyTo pull back the curtain on the federal public lands grazing system, ProPublica and High Country News pored over government documents and data gleaned from more than 100 public records requests filed with the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and state agencies across the West. We interviewed ranchers, conservationists, researchers and federal rangeland managers. We also toured grazing allotments in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada.To identify the largest public lands ranchers and the share of public lands ranching controlled by the top 10% of permittees we relied on BLM and Forest Service datasets, which included roughly 50,000 bills the agencies had sent to operators. We sued the BLM to obtain its data. Our analysis covered the most recent grazing fee year effectively a fiscal year for cows which ran from March 2024 through February 2025. To gauge the size of ranching operations, we used the number of animal unit months a measure of livestock foraging billed to each permittee. We researched connections among the largest operators, grouping related entities. For example, we counted subsidiaries as part of their parent companies.To calculate how much ranchers save using federal allotments instead of grazing their herds on private property, we multiplied the annual open market grazing price in that state by the number of animal unit months for which the permittee was billed, before subtracting what the federal government had billed the permittee for those animal unit months. We ascertained each states average free market rate by using U.S. Department of Agriculture research for grazing fee year 2024, which the BLM publishes annually.Our list of the largest ranchers on Forest Service land by acreage was compiled by the agency and provided to us in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. We contacted all of the ranchers named as the largest permittees to ask for comment on the accuracy of our findings, and several confirmed that the agency had provided the correct acreage.Mark Martinez of S. Martinez Livestock, which holds large permits on Forest Service lands, noted that livestock dont graze the entire permitted acreage every year. This is because some of the land is in poor condition due to wildfire and some is avoided for environmental reasons, while animals also graze each pasture for only part of the year.We consulted with various researchers as we compiled a list of subsidies the Agriculture Department pays to public lands ranchers. Our estimates were based on data from the Agriculture Departments Farm Service Agency and Risk Management Agency and included figures from the following: Livestock Forage Program; the Federal Crop Insurance Programs Pasture, Rangeland, Forage category; Livestock Indemnity Program; Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-Raised Fish; the temporary Emergency Livestock Relief Program; Livestock Risk Protection policies specific to beef cattle; and the Grassland Conservation Reserve Program.The post Wealthy Ranchers Profit From Public Lands. Taxpayers Pick Up the Tab. appeared first on ProPublica.

Time is winding down for Howard Miller, the storied furniture company and clockmaker in western Michigan that said this summer it will close after 99 years. It identified the Trump administrations tariffs as a main culprit.Howard Millers closure will cost about 195 people their jobs, most in Michigan. Our hopes for a market recovery early in the year were quickly dashed as tariffs rattled the supply chain, sparked recession fears and pushed mortgage rates higher, the companys president and CEO said in a July press release.In November, the company hosted a factory closeout sale. Locals shuffled through makeshift aisles bounded by curio cabinets, wardrobes and home bars styled with faux cocktails for an imaginary party.And there were, of course, the signature grandfather clocks that made Howard Miller famous, both traditional designs of fluted hardwood and contemporary deconstructions with visible gears. Some sported a red, white and blue Made in Michigan sticker on their glassy faces.For nearly a century, Howard Miller was an American success story. But it struggled when President Donald Trump unleashed aggressive and fast-changing tariffs this year on both specific countries and business sectors. Some countries responded with retaliatory tariffs. Along the way, there were pauses, escalations and reports of progress toward some 14 trade agreements, falling short of the administrations prediction of 90 deals in 90 days.Companies like Howard Miller a domestic manufacturer that imports certain goods and products were caught in the middle. Tariffs led to rising costs on essential components that were unavailable domestically, according to the company.Pete Hoekstra saw it coming. Now the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Hoekstra was a nine-term congressman until 2011, representing the Michigan community where Howard Miller is based. He also was a vice president at the modern furnishings company now known as MillerKnoll that was co-founded by Howard Millers father, Herman.In Congress, Hoekstra said tariffs were bad for business and consumers.The market should dictate the price of steel, not the government, Hoekstra testified before the House Ways and Means Committee in 2003 on President George W. Bushs temporary steel tariffs.Tariffs drive up costs for furniture-makers and other manufacturers in his district, Hoekstra said at the time, leading to dramatically higher prices, longer lead times for production and lost jobs. Once lost, the jobs will not come back, he testified.Today, though, as ambassador, Hoekstra has been a top defender of the presidents approach a shift thats mirrored in the changing attitudes of other Michigan Republican leaders on trade.Hoekstras social media posts as ambassador applaud Trumps efforts to achieve balanced and reciprocal trade relationships. And in October, after Ontarios government commissioned an ad that aired during the World Series using former President Ronald Reagans words to champion free trade, Hoekstra reportedly chastised the provinces trade representative in an expletive-laced tirade.Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press/APA spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa declined requests for an interview with Hoekstra and to comment for this story.A White House spokesperson said in an email to ProPublica that the Trump administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will ultimately be paid by the foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy.Canada is Michigans largest international trading partner. In fact, the state sells more goods to Canada than to Michigans next four largest foreign markets combined, according to the Canadian consulate general in Detroit.But Hoekstra seems to have followed Trumps lead in engaging with Canada. When Trump repeatedly called for it to become the 51st state, Hoekstra said the countrys prime minister might see it as a term of endearment.Meanwhile, other Michigan enterprises are making hard choices. The Michigan Retailers Association, a trade group, found that two-thirds of retailers surveyed in May said they had to raise prices because of tariffs. Agriculture, the states second-largest industry, is also taking a hit. Michigans agriculture department reported in late August that tariffs, including retaliatory tariffs, led to big drops in exports. Wheat exports fell by 89% compared to last year, fresh cherries by 62% and fresh apples by 58%.And MillerKnoll, Hoekstras former employer, said in a business filing that its first quarter gross margin a measure of profitability decreased compared to the same quarter of the prior year, which it attributed primarily to net tariff-related costs. MillerKnoll issued a tariff surcharge and increased prices to mitigate costs based on the current tariff environment, a company executive said on an earnings call.At Howard Miller, while demand isnt what it once was for its clocks, the company had diversified its product line, which helped, said James OKeefe, vice president of sales and marketing. But a subdued housing market limited sales to the people most likely to buy new furnishings, he said, and tariffs dialed up the cost of certain imported products.It seemed like the family-owned company was put in a difficult position, said Nelson Vandermeer, a product development engineer. If the federal government had said, Oh, its a 10% tariff, constant, this is what it is, they mightve been able to play the game, adjust margins, set pricing, he said. They mightve worked things out. It mightve been OK.But no. Its just chaos.Vandermeer, whos been with the company for more than 30 years, is grieving as Howard Miller enters its final days. I loved my job, he said. I love the people I work with. When you love something, its tormenting to lose it.People look through rows of clocks at a factory sale at Howard Miller. Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublicaIntertwined EconomiesThe tall teal pillars of the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, mark one of the busiest land borders in North America, symbolizing a profitable and once-dependable partnership. To expand capacity for the two-way flow of trade and traffic, a new span is slated to open next year: the Gordie Howe International Bridge, named for the Canadian hockey legend who spent 25 years with the Detroit Red Wings.Michigan exports $23.3 billion in goods to Canada annually, according to the Canadian consulate in Detroit. That includes cars and trucks, vehicle parts and furniture, agricultural goods and more. Canada is also the largest source of imports into Michigan.The standing trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico was negotiated in Trumps first term. The president later described it as the best agreement weve ever made.Trump pursued some tariffs in his first term, but in his second, he played hardball, championing them as a way to grow American manufacturing while bringing a windfall of tariff revenue into the U.S.Gordon Giffin, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Canada under former President Bill Clinton, said Trump has fallen in love with tariffs. And if theres already a trade agreement in place, Trump will argue that whatever president that put the agreement in place was an idiot.In the case of Canada and Mexico, Giffin said: The agreement thats in place is the one he put in place. And somebody needs to remind him of that.When Hoekstra landed at the Ottawa embassy in April, tensions were already high. In order to justify new tariffs on Canada, Trump had declared a national emergency over fentanyl trafficking, though the northern border is not a major source of the drug. Trumps authority to use such emergency declarations to impose tariffs is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.The president also questioned Canadas sovereignty. To be honest with you, Canada only works as a state, he said in March. We dont need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states.Canada responded with elbows up, a reference to a defensive posture hockey players take to ward off opponents. Certain stores emptied their shelves of American alcohol. Hockey fans booed during the American anthem. The national and some provincial governments issued retaliatory trade actions. (Many have since been lifted.) Canadian travel to the U.S. cratered. Data from Canadas statistics office shows 10 consecutive months of reduced travel to its southern neighbor.Colin Bird, the consul general of Canada in Detroit, told ProPublica that hes hearing from companies on both sides of the border that are in wait-and-see mode or are pulling back on investment, certainly from Canadian companies investing into Michigan that are being heavily impacted by tariffs.As soon as were back onto a steady state relationship, theres a huge reservoir of goodwill for the United States in Canada, but its having a really significant short-term impact, Bird said.Hoekstra, a former ambassador to the Netherlands and head of the Michigan Republican Party, made some friendly overtures. In a May video, he discussed his family connection to Canada, as someone born in the Netherlands to parents liberated by Canadian troops during World War II.As a Michigander, Hoekstra said, you know, a border state, we recognize the close relationship that we have to bring safety, security and prosperity to both of our nations.But Hoekstra was also critical of anti-American attitudes in Canada and the delay in hammering out a new trade agreement.Negotiations stalled after Ontarios ad that featured Reagan saying in 1987 that, in the long term, tariffs hurt every American worker and consumer.An outburst by Hoekstra targeting Ontarios trade representative at a state of the relationship event hosted by the Canadian American Business Council appears to have been provoked by the ad, according to the CBC, Canadas public broadcaster. At a press conference, Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged Hoekstra to apologize.The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said the ad campaign used selective audio and video to misrepresent the former presidents address. But while some remarks aired in a different order than in the original speech, the meaning didnt change. Reagan often championed free trade, including the 1988 U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.Trump called the ad FAKE and threatened to raise Canadas tariff rate from 35% to 45%.Canada burnt the bridges with America, Hoekstra said on a CTV newscast. Donald Trump did not slam the door. Canada slammed that door shut all by itself.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney apologized to Trump. While Ford defended the ad What do they expect me to do? Sit back and roll over like every other person in the world? he said at the presser Ontario pulled it from the air.But trade talks have yet to resume. And Hoekstra has signaled that there is still an abundance of ill will.Targeting the president of the United States and his policies 10 days before an election, and a couple weeks before a Supreme Court case is heard before the Supreme Court Im sorry, that does not happen in the United States of America, Hoekstra said of the ad campaign at a recent appearance in Canada.He added: I would suggest that you seriously consider whether that is the best way to try to achieve your objectives.Landmark clocks stand in downtown Zeeland, part of a congressional district that borders Lake Michigan. They were donated to the community in 1980 by Howard Miller. Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublicaA New Political RealityHoekstra isnt the only politician who has adjusted his approach to trade. U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, representing the district thats losing Howard Miller, issued a newsletter in 2018 that pushed back on the first Trump administrations tariff efforts, particularly tariffs on steel from Canada.Any perceived short-term gain from these overly broad tariffs may be quickly blunted by hardworking men and women losing their jobs in West Michigan and communities where manufacturing plays a significant role in the local economy, he wrote.This year, Huizenga supported Trumps tariffs. Is there going to be some adjustments to that? Absolutely, he told reporters in March. Is it going to be easy? Not necessarily. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely it is.In response to ProPublica, a spokesperson for Huizenga said in an email that economic realities before and after the COVID-19 pandemic are dramatically different. The pandemic exposed the dire need to reshore American manufacturing, the spokesperson wrote.President Trump and Congressman Huizenga are fighting to reshore American jobs, restore affordability, and rebuild Michigans economy.Some companies and labor organizations have applauded the tariffs or found ways to live with them.An executive with MillerKnoll said on an earnings call that the company raised prices and that it believes this will offset the impact of tariffs in the second half of the fiscal year. Whirlpool, the appliance manufacturer, recently announced a $300 million investment in U.S. laundry operations. While the company said its navigating the near-term unfavorable effects of tariffs, it also said that it expects to benefit in the end as it competes against companies that depend more on imports.The United Auto Workers credited auto tariffs, along with union pressure, for Netherlands-based automaker Stellantis October announcement of a massive investment at plants in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. Brands made by Stellantis, one of the worlds largest carmakers, include Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep.Wall Street and supposed industry experts said this was impossible, UAW president Shawn Fain said in a press release. But the race to the bottom created by free trade is finally coming to an end.This move by Stellantis involves shifting production away from Ontario.Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated Stellantis for betting on Michigan once again. Her statement didnt mention Trumps trade policies.Whitmer isnt categorically against tariffs, but shes said that Trumps approach hasnt properly calibrated the costs and consequences. After asking state agencies about the effect of tariffs, she announced that they led to higher grocery prices and housing costs. At a business forum in Canada, Whitmer said: Swinging the tariff hammer hurts us both, damaging supply chains, slowing production lines, and cutting jobs on both sides of the border.Over in western Michigan, Vandermeer, the Howard Miller veteran, is among those who are looking for work. I got 10 more years, he said, before hes ready to retire. I can work, if I find something.Browsers at the Howard Miller factory sale in November came with a lot of questions, said OKeefe, the vice president of sales and marketing, as he surveyed the improvised sales floor stacked with clocks. Many locals had just learned of the closure of the company, which held a special place in community life. At the public library thats named for Howard Miller, two majestic grandfather clocks stand watch.It is sad, OKeefe said. Especially when you walk through the quiet factory floor. They used to be running three shifts.OKeefe said he doesnt have his next job lined up yet. But for now, he said, hes got work to do. Theres the last of the inventory to sell.A Made in Michigan sticker on a clock at the Howard Miller plant Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublicaThe post In Congress, He Said Tariffs Were Bad for Business. As Trumps Ambassador to Canada, Hes Reversed Course. appeared first on ProPublica.

Once every 10 years, ranchers must renew the permits that allow their cattle, sheep and other livestock to graze on the Wests public domain. These renewals are the governments best opportunity to address how those livestock are harming the environment.The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, the federal agencies that manage the majority of public lands, are required by law to review each permit before deciding whether to place additional conditions on it or in rare cases to deny its renewal.But in 2014, Congress mandated that the agencies automatically renew permits for another decade if they are unable to complete the reviews. This exemption has dramatically reduced scrutiny of grazings impact on public lands.In 2013, the BLM approved grazing on 47% of its land open to livestock without an environmental review, a ProPublica and High Country News analysis of agency data showed. (The status of about another 10% of BLM land was unclear that year.) A decade later, the BLM authorized grazing on roughly 75% of its acreage without review, the analysis found.A similar study by conservation group Western Watersheds Project found a steep decline in environmental reviews on grazing land managed by the Forest Service.This diminishing oversight has coincided with a sharp drop in the number of federal staff who complete the reviews. These staffers also conduct land health assessments of large parcels to help inform whether permits in the area need changes to protect natural resources.The BLMs rangeland management staff shrank 39% between 2020 and 2024, according to Office of Personnel Management data. President Donald Trumps administration is further hamstringing the BLM about 1 in 10 rangeland staff members left the agency between last Novembers election and June, according to agency records.When agency staff arent monitoring the land, cattle can graze where theyre not supposed to, or in greater numbers or for longer periods than permitted. Such overgrazing can spread invasive plants by dispersing seeds and disturbing the soil, pushing out native species and worsening wildfire risk. When herds strip vegetation near creeks and streams, silt flows into the waterways, wiping out fish nurseries. And, without adequate staff to amend permits, agencies lose the chance to reduce the number of animals on an allotment and the climate-warming methane they emit.Once a permit is renewed, with or without a review, it becomes more difficult to rectify such harms for another decade.Ten current and former BLM rangeland management employees said in interviews that they felt pressure to go easy on ranchers. This included downplaying environmental harm in permit reviews and land health assessments, according to BLM staffers who worked in rangeland management. Several spoke on condition of anonymity because they still work for the government.Sometimes the truth was spoken, but, more often than not, it was not the truth, one BLM employee said of agency oversight.In a statement, an agency spokesperson said, The BLM is committed to transparency, sound science, and public participation as it administers grazing permits and considers updates to grazing regulations.In a shift, the Trump administration placed the approval process for all the BLMs contracts and agreements of value in the hands of political appointees rather than career civil servants. In recent months, officials cut funding for an app that assists ranchers in collecting soil and vegetation data for use in permitting, for contractors who manage the data that informs grazing permits, for New Mexico farmers growing seeds used in restoration projects and for soil research in the Southwest, according to BLM records obtained by ProPublica and High Country News.Does not believe this action is needed to meet the administration priorities, the cancellations read.The Forest Service did not respond to requests for comment. The White House referred questions to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which said in a statement, Ranching is often a multi-generation practice that serves to keep working landscapes intact, while also preserving open space, and benefiting recreation, wildlife, and watersheds.Cattle graze in April in a creek flowing through Las Cienegas National Conservation Area that is supposed to be off limits to livestock because it is critical habitat for five threatened or endangered species.A fence to prevent cattle from roaming into a protected waterway lies trampled on the ground in April. The Bureau of Land Management lists the parcel as meeting land health standards.To gauge the effects of this shrinking oversight, ProPublica and High Country News toured parcels of federal grazing land, called allotments, in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada, finding evidence of either unpermitted grazing or habitat degraded by livestock in each state. In Arizona alone, reporters witnessed such issues in two national conservation areas, a national monument and a national forest.On an allotment within Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, an expanse of desert grasslands and forested streams southeast of Tucson, the BLM lets up to 1,500 head of cattle graze across roughly 35,000 acres. These permits were recently reauthorized until 2035 using the exemption that allows environmental reviews to be skipped.During a visit in late April, a grove of hearty cottonwoods stood against the afternoon sun, casting cool shadows over a narrow creek. This stretch of green sustains birds, frogs, snakes and ocelots. Its also designated under federal law as critical habitat for five threatened or endangered species. Cattle are not allowed in the creekbed, but a thin barbed-wire fence meant to stop the animals lay crumpled in the dirt.A native leopard frog broke the hot afternoon stillness as it leapt from the creeks bank. Its launching pad was the hardened mud imprint of a cow hoof, and it landed with a plop in water fouled by cow feces and the partially submerged bones of a cow corpse. A half-dozen cattle crashed through the creek and up the steep embankment, tearing up plants that protected the soil from erosion and sending silt billowing into the water.Looks like a sewer, Chris Bugbee, a wildlife ecologist with the environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity, remarked as he took in the destruction. This one hurts. There is no excuse.A 2024 BLM land health assessment listed the grazing allotment as ALL STANDARDS MET. In April, a camouflaged trail camera bearing the agencys insignia was pointed toward the creek. (ProPublica and High Country News submitted a public records request for images on the cameras memory card in May, but the BLM has yet to fulfill the request.)No ranchers paid to graze their livestock in this allotment last year, according to BLM data, so it is unclear who owned the cattle. The Arizona Cattle Growers Association, which represents ranchers in the state, did not respond to requests for comment.Chris Bugbee, a wildlife ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which opposes the current level of grazing on public lands, surveys a stand of cottonwood trees where the understory has been heavily eaten by cattle. Bugbee and his colleagues have identified hundreds of miles of protected creeks and streams, key ecosystems for native species, that have been damaged by overgrazing, including this one in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area.Over the past eight years, Bugbee and his team have annually surveyed grazing impacts on the banks of streams and rivers in the Southwest that are designated as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act. Half of the 2,400 miles of streams they inspected showed significant damage from livestock grazing, according to their March report.The industry maintains that the presence of livestock benefits many ecosystems, pointing to studies that have found, for example, that grazing can increase soils ability to hold carbon dioxide that would otherwise contribute to climate change. Other research suggests that, when managed properly, grazing can improve the health of habitat enough to support a more diverse mix of species.Grazing also reduces vegetation that could fuel wildfires. Frank Shirts Jr., owner of the largest sheep operation on Forest Service land, said that sheep eat invasive weeds and brush, creating firebreaks. These animals are fantastic, he said.Retta Bruegger, a range ecologist at Colorado State University, said that some ecosystems, especially those that receive more precipitation, can withstand more intense grazing without permanently damaging the land. In regions where plants evolved over many years alongside large grazers like cattle, livestock can provide a very important ecosystem function.We should be asking, Are there individual producers who need to be doing a better job? instead of asking, Should there be grazing or no grazing? said Bruegger, who supports balancing the industrys needs with the lands.But answering those questions, she said, would require adequate staff to monitor the land.A barbed-wire fence on a federal grazing allotment in Arizonas Sky Islands region separates recently grazed land, right of the fence, from land that has had time to recover, left of the fence.Rubber StampingAfter a century of intense grazing wore down public lands, a court ruled in 1974 that grazing permits were subject to environmental reviews, and Congress passed a law two years later mandating them every decade.For years, a backlog of permit reviews grew, as federal land management agencies lacked the staff to inspect all their territory 240 million acres across BLM and Forest Service jurisdictions. Around 2000, Congress began giving temporary approval for regulators to skip reviews. Western Republicans, with the livestock industryssupport, pushed to enshrine the concept in law. The idea ultimately received bipartisan approval in December 2014, after being slipped into a must-pass defense spending bill.Some conservationists now call it simply the loophole.The BLM Skipped Environmental Reviews of 75% of its Grazing AcreageSource: ProPublica and High Country News analysis of BLM data. Data was initially compiled by the Western Watersheds Project from records obtained in September 2023. Lucas Waldron/ProPublicaMany in the livestock industry lambaste the lack of reviews. When permits are automatically renewed, the law does not allow the terms to change, so ranchers are prevented from updating their grazing practices.It just locks people into grazing the same place, the same time, year after year, said Chris Jasmine, manager of biodiversity and rangelands for Nevada Gold Mines, which owns 11 ranches in northern Nevada.To help inform permit renewals, teams of BLM experts rangeland specialists, hydrologists, botanists, soil scientists and wildlife biologists assess the health of grazing allotments.When the process is working as intended, these assessments are considered in permit reviews. But the current lack of staff has left large swaths of land without scrutiny.All told, the BLM oversees 155 million acres of public lands available for grazing. But the agency has no record of completing land health assessments for more than 35 million acres, nearly a quarter of its total.Where the BLM has conducted such assessments, it found grazing had degraded at least 38 million acres, an area about half the size of New Mexico. And close to two-thirds of the land it listed as being in good shape had not been checked in more than a decade, the analysis found.The situation, though, is even worse than those numbers indicate, as the agency has often skipped permit reviews on land in poor condition. Even if the BLM had previously found the environment to be in bad shape, Congress 2014 law still dictated automatic renewal. Of the acreage the agency had previously found to be degraded due to livestock, 82% was reauthorized for grazing without a review, according to ProPublica and High Country News analysis.Several BLM employees said agency higher-ups instruct staff to study land thats in better condition while avoiding allotments that are in worse shape or more controversial. Environmental groups such as the Western Watersheds Project as well as local stockmens associations are quick to litigate changes to permits. Automatic renewals avoid these drawn-out public fights. We were just using a bureaucratic loophole, one staffer said. We were allowing ongoing degradation of habitat.Most BLM Grazing Land Either Failed Land Health Assessments or Had Never Been StudiedNote: Livestock was the cause of land degradation for a majority of allotments with failing land health. Source: ProPublica and High Country News analysis of BLM data through 2023. Data was initially compiled by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Lucas Waldron/ProPublicaThis cant be the future of public lands, Bugbee, with the Center for Biological Diversity, said of parcels degraded by cattle, likening the land to a mowed lawn.Agency staff pointed to myriad reasons why the environment is suffering.For example, after a wildfire, the BLM aims to keep livestock off the land for two years to allow the ecosystem to recover. But ranchers often negotiate an earlier return to the public pastures where their livestock graze, said Steve Ellis, who spent his career with the BLM and Forest Service, rising to high-level positions in both.There was always pressure to get back on, Ellis said. Thats not a new thing. Its just part of working for the bureau.The governments support for ranchers can add to the damage. Land management agencies sometimes seed invasive grasses, which can benefit livestock, although those plants can drive out species that are native to the local ecosystem. And state and federal agencies kill predators such as wolves and cougars also integral to a healthy balance of species to protect ranchers economic interests.Some staff members also question the agencys oversight.BLM employees said that in some permit reviews and land health assessments, rank-and-file staff noted the presence of threatened and endangered species, which would have triggered tighter environmental controls, only for agency managers to delete that information from their reports.One current BLM staffer called the reviews rubber stamping and said higher-ranking staff who controlled the text of reports wouldnt let me stick anything into the official documentation that acknowledged things were in poor shape.Another complicating factor, according to BLM staff, is that ranchers are often invited to participate in fieldwork to gauge whether they are overgrazing. The results, employees said, were watered-down reviews and assessments.The industry, though, is critical of the assessment process for other reasons. Erin Spaur, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemens Association, said its an inflexible one-size-fits-all approach that doesnt sufficiently account for differences in ecosystems.There are huge cultural problems within the agency, said Dennis Willis, who spent more than three decades with the BLM, including managing rangeland, adding that theres a real fear of dealing with grazing problems.Cattle forage on a Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment in southern Arizona that is also key habitat for native species.Flexibility and CollaborationSome ranchers acknowledge the environmental impacts of their industry. But they say that more flexibility not stricter oversight would make them better stewards of the land.Jasmine, with Nevada Gold Mines, contends that ranching can be done without denuding the West. A sixth-generation Nevadan, he oversees the mining companys ranching operations, which run about 5,000 head of cattle.On a sunny July day near Carlin, Nevada, Jasmine walked through chest-high vegetation to show off the recovery of Maggie Creek, a tributary to the Humboldt River that flows through a checkerboard of public and private lands. Photographs from the 1980s show barren ground around the shallow creek. When ranchers changed how they rotated their herds in the 1990s to give the streambed more rest, the land bounced back, Jasmine said, as a chorus of chirping birds punctuated his story. He credited a BLM biologist with initiating many of the projects that helped revive Maggie Creek.Its a renewable resource. That grass that theyre eating right now will come back next year and the year after that if managed properly, he said. Its about not eating the same plants in the same place year after year after year.Jasmine touted the companys goal of protecting locally important species, its sage grouse restoration projects and its partnership with the BLM, which targeted grazing to remove unwanted vegetation and create a firebreak.But Nevada Gold Mines a joint venture between two companies with a combined value of around $150 billion operates in a different economic reality than most ranchers and can afford to keep cattle off the land long enough for it to recover.Smaller ranchers face slim profit margins, making it attractive to heavily graze federal lands, where the cost is much lower than on state or private land.For years, some politicians and environmental groups have proposed protecting degraded or sensitive habitats by paying ranchers to retire their permits, making the areas off limits to grazing and preserving the land as wildlife habitat. Ranchers have occasionally taken these offers. But the industry as a whole is hesitant to surrender grazing permits.In October, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, introduced a bill to further voluntary retirement, calling it a pragmatic solution that supports local economies, protects biodiversity, and saves taxpayer dollars by reducing the cost of administering grazing programs.Louis Wertz, a spokesperson for the Western Landowners Alliance, said that the conservation-minded ranchers who make up his group want to both stay in business and live in a place that is vibrant, full of life, provides clean water, has clean air. But when it comes to food production, he added, the expectations we have of both being environmentally harmless and healthy and cheap are untenable. Over the last 150 years in the United States, we have chosen cheapness at the expense of environmental quality.Like Jasmine, Wertz said that understaffing at the BLM and Forest Service deprives ranchers of an opportunity to change how they manage their herds, even when they want to.It is important that there be accountability for producers on the landscape, Wertz said, but there should also be flexibility so producers can be economically successful and so they can do what is right for the landscape.Chris Jasmine, Nevada Gold Mines manager of biodiversity and rangelands, looks out over a herd of cattle grazing on one of the companys pastures near Carlin, Nevada.MethodologyProPublica and High Country News relied on a variety of sources to calculate the Bureau of Land Managements escalating use of legal exemptions to bypass environmental reviews of grazing permits, as well as related land health assessments.We used geospatial data compiled by the conservation group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to tell us the land health status of BLM allotments. The organization obtained the data, which was last updated in December 2023, from the BLM via a public records request. To determine whether an allotment had been reauthorized for grazing via an environmental review or an exemption, we turned to data compiled by the environmental group Western Watersheds Project in its Renew or Review initiative. The organization pulled this data from the BLMs Rangeland Administration System in September 2023. We then joined the datasets, limiting the analysis to allotments that appeared in both sources.To calculate the percent of acreage authorized by the BLM via the exemption in 2013, we used a list of BLM permits provided by the Western Watersheds Project, excluding the less than 1% where the grazing allotments boundaries had changed in the decade following 2013. In both the 2013 and 2023 data, less than 1% of allotments also contained conflicting designations as to how they had been approved for grazing. In these cases, we did not count the allotments acreage toward either approval method, which potentially resulted in a slight undercount of total acreage approved by the exemption.Western Watersheds Project data analysts described to us their methodology in studying the Forest Services use of the exemption in reauthorizing grazing. The groups conclusions relied entirely on the Forest Services GIS grazing allotment data.To better understand the regulatory environment that led to the outcomes these data findings revealed, we interviewed 10 current and former BLM employees, from upper management to staffers on the interdisciplinary teams that conduct land health assessments and permit reviews.And to see the environmental impacts of grazing firsthand, we toured various BLM and Forest Service grazing allotments. Our reporters spent several days driving and hiking across allotments in central and southern Arizona, including those within Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area, Agua Fria National Monument and Coronado National Forest.The post A Loophole Allows Ranchers to Renew Grazing Permits With Little Scrutiny of the Environmental Impact appeared first on ProPublica.