Malheur Occupation

Anti-government activist Ammon Bundy is running to be Idaho’s next governor, according to documents filed Friday with the Secretary of State’s office.

It reverses the decision by former President Donald Trump’s Interior secretary, David Bernhardt. He had granted the permit to Dwight and Steven Hammond on Trump’s final day in office. The permit gave the Hammonds the right to graze livestock on public land for 10 years.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday issued a grazing permit and privilege to two eastern Oregon ranchers whose imprisonment sparked the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

As the violent mob broke into the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, and livestreams showed pro-Trump insurrectionists defacing property and posing in the House Speaker's chair, here in the West, feelings of shock quickly faded to familiarity. "There are years of warning signs," said Eric Ward of the Western States Center, which tracks extremism in Oregon and the West.

The federal government has proposed awarding grazing allotments to an Oregon ranching family whose members were convicted of arson in a court battle that triggered the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge by right-wing extremists. The Dec. 31 action by the Bureau of Land Management in favor of Hammond Ranches angered environmental groups.

The incident follows another on Monday when angry protesters forced their way into the Idaho House gallery that had limited seating because of the coronavirus pandemic, the window of a glass door getting shattered as protesters jostled with police. Protesters were ultimately let in when Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke stepped in, seeking to avoid violence.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has denied the Justice Department's motion for a retrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led an armed standoff against federal agents over cattle grazing near his ranch in 2014.

Ammon Bundy had pledged to hold a nondenominational Easter service in a venue holding up to 1,000 people. In reality on Sunday, a much smaller crowd would turn out at a warehouse he owns in a dusty lot near the Emmett railroad tracks.

A state legislator in North Idaho is using her official government newsletter to urge constituents to defy Gov. Brad Little’s order to stay home in face of the coronavirus pandemic. Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican who represents the Blanchard area, sent the newsletter Thursday morning. It was titled, in part, “the virus that tried to kill the Constitution.”

The Oregon ranchers whose imprisonment helped spur an armed occupation in 2016 don’t have permission to graze on federal land after all. On Friday, a U.S. District Court rejected the Trump administration’s decision to restore grazing rights to Dwight and Steven Hammond, the father and son pair at the center of years of controversy in eastern Oregon.