Death threat: Mexican cartel forced witness to cancel congressional testimony

 

A Mexican drug cartel used death threats to force a tribal leader to back out of testifying to Congress this week, according to another tribal leader who did show up to tell lawmakers just how much power the drug lords have accumulated.

Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, said he didn’t want to name the fellow leader who backed out, but he said the threat seemed real and credible.

“One thing that we really seem to overlook all the time is the threats, the death threats we get from cartel leaders,” he told the House Natural Resources Committee. “We had the tribal leader from Montana, that declined to testify here today because he received death threats that he was going to testify.”

The committee held a hearing Wednesday to examine cartel operations on reservations.

The revelation that cartel threats had interfered with lawmakers’ business shocked the members.

“The cartels have threatened them with death?” asked Rep. Bruce Westerman, chairman of the committee. “That’s horrible to think that an American citizen has been threatened by a foreign cartel if they come to Congress and testify about what they’re doing.”

The committee said it had contacted other potential witnesses who declined to testify for safety reasons...more

Mexican Wolf Numbers Growing in U.S. for 8th Consecutive Year, Soon to Be Howling at a Reserve Near You

 

The wild population of Mexican wolves saw another year of growth in 2023, according to the results of the annual survey published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The 2023 population census revealed a minimum of 257 Mexican wolves distributed across Arizona and New Mexico. This increase marks the eighth consecutive year of population growth, the longest continuous streak since recovery efforts began.

The 2023 population minimum count represents a six percent increase from the minimum of 242 wolves counted in 2022.

“In the aggregate, the 2023 data points out that Mexican wolf recovery has come a long way since the first release,” said Jim deVos, Arizona Game and Fish Department Mexican Wolf Coordinator.

“Each year, the free-roaming Mexican wolf population numbers increase and the areas they occupy expand. Genetic management using pups from captivity is also showing results. In total, 99 pups carefully selected for their genetic value have been placed in 40 wild dens since 2016, and some of these fosters have produced litters of their own. While recovery is in the future, examining the last decade of data certainly provides optimism that recovery will be achieved,” added deVos...more

Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion

 

“Why don’t you give me your gun and I’ll unload it?”

Standing in the middle of his own farm property, Tom Manuel’s body bristled at a question laced with direction from an armed game warden who possessed no search warrant or probable cause.

“No sir. I’m not giving you my gun,” Manuel answered. “This is my land. This is my rifle. I have every right to it.”

Welcome to a fundamental property rights battle taking place across the United States. Government officials, at both the state and federal levels, claim power over entrance, exit, searches, and surveillance on private land—all without warrant, cause, reasonable suspicion, or Fourth Amendment restrictions. 

Stemming from the Open Fields doctrine, a century-old Supreme Court ruling, government officials including wildlife agents, environmental inspectors, immigration officials, and other agency reps, have unbounded access to private land with no restrictions on time, frequency, duration, or scope.

Represented by Institute for Justice, Manuel has filed a lawsuit to end warrantless intrusions in Louisiana, the fourth state after Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to see recent challenges to the Open Fields doctrine. “Think about where we are,” he says. “With absolutely no warrant or reason, the government can enter your property and stop you, spy on you, search you, and stay as long as they like—and we’re supposed to accept that as constitutional. Something has gone way, way off in this country.”...more

The article gives this background on the "open fields doctrine."

Per the Fourth Amendment, passed as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, Americans rely on a guarantee of security in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” However, the federal government contends Fourth Amendment protections do not extend to land.

“What happened to our state constitutions and the Constitution?” Manuel asks. “I’m supposed to pretend the law allows government officials to enter private land, stay as long as they want, use drones, use night vision, use cameras, and whatever other activity they choose, all without any approval from a judge or a warrant or cause? Who in the heck believes that’s justified by Open Fields?

In 1924, SCOTUS birthed the Open Fields framework in a Prohibition-era case involving illegal liquor, Hester v. United States, and declared: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.”

Doubling down in 1984, SCOTUS added weight to the Open Fields doctrine in a marijuana case, Oliver v. United States.

For a more extensive discussion of the doctrine go to this page of the Legal Information Institute's website.  

For a critique of the current doctrine, go to this page of the Institute for Justice's website.

BREAKING: Another wolf kill reported by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, this time in Jackson County

As calving season reaches its mid-point, Colorado Parks and Wildlife reported on Monday that another calf was killed by a wolf, this time in Jackson County,

Wolf tracks were found in the area, along with a dead calf with a partially consumed hindquarter. 

The state agency said there were four Wolves in the area, including from the 10 released in Grand County in December.

There are also at least two wolves that migrated into Jackson County from Wyoming several years ago. The original wolf pack has killed 16 livestock, sheep and working dogs in Jackson County...more

As Colorado wildlife agency claims it is not to blame for wolf kills, ranchers threaten future partnerships

 

Even as officials of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife insist the recent killing of a calf by wolf is not their fault, the relationship with ranchers has soured to the point private landowners have begun considering to restrict state access to their properties, potentially jeopardizing programs that rely on the latter's help.

Notably, private landowners play a significant role in the state's conservation work. Indeed, the state's private land program says without that support, "modern-day Colorado's remarkable wildlife abundance — and equally rich hunting and fishing opportunities — simply would not exist."

That support is now in jeopardy...more

Federal firefighters make less than fast-food workers. Congress is stalling on a solution

 

For $13 an hour, you can work in fast food. Or, you could engage in close-quarter combat with the country’s most catastrophic wildfires.

This was the starting salary for federal wildland firefighters until two years ago, when the Biden administration allocated $600m from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to increase entry pay to $15 p/h. The funding was intended to be a “bridge” while lawmakers worked on long-term reform, President Biden said at the time.

Yet a permanent fix remains elusive with Congress more bitterly divided than ever, and the House limping along in even basic tasks like funding the government.

...Some 19,000 firefighters work for the US government, protecting more than a million square miles of land. Unlike municipal or state employees, they deploy to fires anywhere in the country with specialized crews like those who parachute into remote fires (the smokejumpers); tackle fires’ most challenging areas (hotshots), and rappel down into blazes from hovering helicopters (helitack).

But for years many federal firefighters were classed as “forestry technicians,” and often lacked sufficient health care or housing on the job...more

I was a wildfire fighter for six years. The reason they’re quitting is simple.

 

...In wildfires, safety depends on your co-workers. There’s luck and there’s the strength to resist stupidity, but often you rely on the experience level of the person beside you.

The U.S. Forest Service is losing experience. Federal firefighters are quitting. Leadership is leaving. Recruitment is abysmal. The reason is simple: The government hasn’t significantly raised pay in decades.

Thirty years ago, a fire job could afford you a modest home. The value proposition was fair — work a year’s worth of hours in one summer and come away with a year’s pay.

But wages have barely gone up since then. An ordinary wildland firefighter will have a pay grade from GS-3 to GS-6. In 2024, the base rate for a GS-3 was $12.93 an hour. In 2014, it was $10.57. To keep up with inflation, this summer a GS-3 firefighter starts at $12.93. No step increases — you get laid off every fall. No matter how many years you work, each one counts as your first...more

Maps show where trillions of cicadas will emerge in the U.S. this spring

 

Trillions of periodical cicadas will emerge from the ground this spring, bringing with them their loud buzzing and molted exoskeletons. Here's where you will be able to see cicadas in the U.S.

When are the cicadas coming in 2024?

There are two groups of periodical cicadas – those that emerge every 13 years and those that emerge every 17 years. For most of their lives, cicadas live underground and then emerge once the soil reaches 64 degrees. They are expected to arrive in mid-May.

This year, both the 13-year and the 17-year cicadas will emerge, arriving in numbers that have not been seen in generations.

They mate, molt and then die, leaving behind their offspring to burry themselves into the soil and lay dormant until their brood's next cycle...more

Pitchers are buckling and breaking across baseball. What is to blame?

 

The 2023 American League Cy Young Award winner, Gerrit Cole, is on the injured list with elbow trouble. The 2022 AL Cy Young winner, Justin Verlander, is out with shoulder inflammation. The 2021 AL Cy Young winner, Robbie Ray, will miss the first half of the season as he makes his way back from Tommy John surgery. The 2020 AL Cy Young winner, Shane Bieber, just learned he will miss a year or more because his elbow needs surgery, too.

That list barely hints at the scale of what has become a full-fledged pitcher injury epidemic, one forcing Major League Baseball to confront the realities of a new era in which velocity, spin rate and swing-and-misses are chased with unprecedented myopia and rewarded with unprecedented payouts.

The full list of injured pitchers reads like a Cy Young ballot for an entire generation, packed with once-promising stars who never fully returned to form and established names who will have to bounce back to remain in pitching’s upper echelon.

...The reality of elite pitching in 2024 is that, even for the healthiest of aces, injury seems like only a matter of time...more

EPA Phase Out of Gas-Powered Cars Has Ominous Historic Echoes

 

The Biden administration last week rolled out new emissions regulations that the New York Times said will “transform the American automobile market.”

In what the paper called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that a majority of new passenger vehicles sold in America be hybrids or EVs by 2032.

The Biden administration and defenders of the policy argue that the EPA’s regulation is “not a ban” on gas-powered cars, since carmakers are not prohibited from producing gas-powered vehicles. Instead, automakers are required to meet a government-mandated “average emissions limit” across their entire vehicle line, to force them to produce more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars.

It’s a clever ruse in that it allows the Biden administration to use regulatory power to force automobile manufactures off of gas-powered vehicles while denying that they are banning them...more