Republican ranchers are pushing back on Trump Organization well drilling in southern NM

Under provisions of the 1906 Antiquities Act President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful initiative includes protecting some 245,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert and Florida Mountains in Luna County, New Mexico. Most of the proposed Mimbres Peaks National Monument is on US Bureau of Land Management ground and could provide nearly $12 million in new economic activity, support over eighty new jobs and generate thousands of dollars in new state, county, and local revenues. 

But of course Republicans like Yvette Herrell and the Earth hating American Farm Bureau Federation are leading opposition to the plan. AFBF is notorious for conflicts of interest and denying the human effects on a warming climate while lobbying extensively for crop insurance in the federal farm bill and against Waters of the United States or WOTUS rules. 

However, public land designations face heavy scrutiny under the current administration, which has prioritized rolling back federal protections and downsizing monuments. While supported by a collaborative local coalition of business owners, conservationists, and a Luna County Commissioner, the proposal faces opposition from neighboring conservative county boards (such as Roosevelt and Lea counties) that view the Antiquities Act as an overreach.

The Roosevelt Act of 1907 provided for reservation of a 60-mile-wide tract along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent smuggling and enforce immigration laws. It came at the tail end of the 1906 Antiquities Act. Unhappy with one aspect of the Trump administration’s implementation of that law, a group of concerned ranchers and farmers met Thursday to voice their opposition to what they called “illegal drilling” along the border. “They’re drilling on my land right now,” said Bill Johnson, a multi-generational farmer and rancher along the border who said water is key to his family’s livelihood — and has been for more than a century of farming and ranching in Luna County. “If my well dries up, my land will be worth nothing, and my cattle and crops won’t have water.” 

New Mexico law requires a drilling permit for such projects. The Office of the State Engineer became aware of the drilling, and attempted to stop the company which began work near Hachita and is now drilling in Luna County. Catron County rancher Tom Paterson, the president of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, urged citizens to reach out to state and federal lawmakers to voice their concerns about the well drilling along the border. [Border ranchers raise concerns about federal well drilling]

Trump's reckless behavior is exactly what Democrats hope will keep Republicans away from the polls in November.

Erase Denny Sanford, too

New Mexico is erasing Cesar Chavez' name because of his predatory past so South Dakota should do the right thing, too.

Cities, states grappling with cannabis dispensary oversaturation

Deeply blue cities Santa Fe, New Mexico and Missoula, Montana are about the same population. 

New Mexico's capital city ranks exceptionally high for cannabis retail density, with roughly 43 to 45 active licensed dispensaries serving a population of about 89,000 residents. This translates to an estimated 48 to 50 dispensaries per 100,000 residents, or roughly 1 shop for every 2,000 people. A year ago the NM cannabis excise tax reached 13% and will increase 1% each year until July 2030 when it will hit 18% as set in state statute. On Tuesday an interested party paid $65 in Santa Fe for an ounce of flower containing almost 31% THC as competition weeds out the weak. 

Missoula also maintains one of the highest concentrations of cannabis dispensaries per capita in the United States, peaking at a reported 30.7 dispensaries per 50,000 residents. State statistics confirm there are 54 active dispensaries operating within Missoula city limits so in February the city council mandated that any new dispensary be at least 1,000 feet away from another dispensary keeping additional location restrictions in place but assured existing dispensaries are grandfathered in under the new rules. Just recently, Missoula enacted a prohibition on new cannabis licenses to address a range of concerns while public health officials suggest the city should have no more than twelve dispensaries based on current population.

They've taken over former sandwich shops, coffee shops and other small retail outlets in nearly all corners of Missoula. [Missoula Current]

Signed into law by Governor Tina Kotek in March, 2024 after lawmakers passed House Bill 4121 Oregon established a strict, permanent population-based cap on new cannabis licenses or a maximum of one license per 7,500 residents.

Washington State has a 37% excise tax on cannabis sales so it is struggling to compete with a burgeoning black market.

Guest post: keep US85 historic

Editor's note: After Missoula I returned to Deadwood in 1981 and was hired as a foodservice delivery truck driver by Paul Miller, a mad genius, who ran the transportation for Twin City Fruit. Paul's dad Dave told stories about beating checks back to Deadwood driving rickety old trucks on gravel roads and US85 since the 1940s from Deadwood to Denver's Denargo Market peddling produce from Scottsbluff, Nebraska back to the Gulch. They owned the Scottsbluff market back-hauling beet sugar and Rockyford melons from the area. 

Paul's brother David, Jr., now a local historian, ran the staff and warehouse until selling his share to Paul while their father, Dave, Sr. ran purchasing. David, Jr. also owned Pop's Grabit N Growl on Deadwood's Main Street until gambling came to the Gulch. Paul bought the Fish and Hunter warehouse then built a freezer that featured an impressive 40-foot roof-mounted ammonia refrigeration system to sustain the large-scale walk-ins that sustained Paul's $22 million market share. The property footprint sat directly along the US 85/Highway 14A and Whitewood Creek boundary, which serves as the primary gateway into Deadwood. 

Let me just say that you haven't lived until you've driven a refrigerated truck from Deadwood to Newcastle, Wyoming and back again twice a week for a year and a half on US85 sometimes over ice and snow covered roads.

Denver-based competitor Nobel also distributed in the Black Hills market then it was absorbed by Houston-based Sysco but was the division that ultimately bought Paul's client list. Following corporate transitions later in its history, local lore and historical employee forums note that operations abruptly ceased, with remaining inventory packed up overnight. Paul died in 2014 but not before giving the Fish and Hunter property back to the City.

Today, I can see US85 from my house in New Mexico, drive it nearly every day and my dreams still feature deadlines to meet.

From my inbox.

Hello Larry, 

My name is Mike Miller. I worked with you at TCF in Deadwood. I left in 1987 to work for American Airlines in Tulsa, retired in 2021, and moved to Olympia, WA. I’m sending you this in case you would be able to help my Dad out. He’s 85 and still fighting for the Black Hills at every opportunity. What we are trying to do is get as many people as we can to submit comments to Mark Malone of the SDDOT. Their plan is to widen and straighten highway 85 from Cheyenne Crossing to the Wyoming border. We know what that means. We recently got an extension on the comment period to September 4th. If you, or anyone you know could send a message to Mark, it would help a lot. A comment from you would carry a lot of weight. 

Thank you Larry. 

Sincerely, Mike Miller

New Mexico seeing growth; South Dakota not so much

While South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa saw significant decline in the first quarter New Mexico's output increased 3.1%

Read it all here.

Passenger rail a priority for some Montana legislators

Imagine a time when portions or all passenger rail in the United States are elevated for wildlife egress and a corridor between Mexico City and the Amtrak station in Shelby, Montana is a route to the Yukon River in Alaska intersecting with a bridge over or a tunnel under the Bering Strait connecting South and North America to Russia and the rest of Eurasia.

Cheyenne, Wyoming is on board with Colorado for expanded Front Range passenger rail that would connect El Paso to Shelby. I-25, especially from Pueblo, Colorado to Fort Collins through Colorado Springs and the Denver metro, sucks at biblical proportions as does flying into Denver International Airport so growth on the Front Range is driving planners to pick up the pace on passenger rail. Littleton, Louisville and Pueblo are among several Colorado cities pushing for increased passenger rail service.

And, although Amtrak rejected Delaware-based AmeriStarRail plans to utilize existing infrastructure from Amtrak and Norfolk Southern to complete the Transcontinental Chief the company is currently petitioning Congress, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation to pressure Amtrak back to the negotiating table. They are now targeting a revised 2028 launch timeline to coincide with the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

Calling the potential for passenger rail service "a huge asset" Broadwater, Butte-Silver Bow, Dawson, Gallatin, Granite, Jefferson, Missoula, Park, Powell, Prairie, Sanders and Wibaux counties became founding Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority member counties. Now with twenty counties and several tribal nations on board BSPRA hopes to restore passenger rail across southern Montana from North Dakota to Idaho and include some 47 stops in seven states.

Some legislators, including Billings Democratic Rep. Denise Baum and Missoula Democratic Sen. Andrea Olsen, have pushed for increased access to passenger rail alongside some of their Republican counterparts, including Glasgow Sen. Gregg Hunter. Many transit agencies around the state are interested in this conversation too, as adding train lines could be an opportunity for bus services to expand offerings. One question in the survey asked what type of public transportation would be used if it was offered. Trains were the most popular answer, followed by buses. [Survey shows Montanans interested in more public transit]

IYKYK

Lifted from Faceberg and signed @blackmailillustrations image can seen at 1309 Arenal SW in Albuquerque.

Sunday morning rez erection

After my gruesome execution and resurrection I return to heaven and continue to create new souls in a state of Original Sin which requires baptism to get into heaven. And to round things off there's also three of me.

NM Earth haters now supporting government buyouts of private land

Over a half million wildfires are started by arsonists every year in the US and if you live in the wildland-urban interface government can't always protect you from your own stupidity. 

Southern and southeastern New Mexico is home to many descendants of the Confederacy who back a convicted Republican felon as unitary executive and are quick to point fingers at the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for wildfires. So, Earth haters funded by the Koch and DeVos cabals through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund and scattered in the American West derailed President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful Initiative. Herr Trump's Interior secretaries blame wildfires in the West on “radical environmentalists” despite most acres burn on private ranch land in Republican counties. 

Today, the Seven Cabins Fire in the Capitan Mountain Wilderness has burned some 32,000 acres and is still growing but the fire itself isn't the only hazard because flooding can compound the threats to recovery.

With help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lincoln County is offering to purchase at-risk properties at pre-damage rates and demolish or relocate the houses, permanently converting the land into open space to act as a buffer against future floods. With $235 million in funding secured, officials hope to buy some 400 properties from willing sellers — a proposal that could dramatically reshape the 8,000-person town. Ruidoso is a conservative place, not one where you’d expect leaders to welcome what some Facebook commenters have deemed a government “land grab.” Now, Ruidoso’s mayor estimates that recovery could cost a billion dollars. Even with tens of millions promised in federal aid, it didn’t seem responsible, fiscally or otherwise, to keep rebuilding in areas that would flood again and again. [Lincoln County, New Mexico, wants to turn flood-prone properties into public land]

Cannabis sales elevate ABQ families

Want to reduce prison overcrowding? Legalize cannabis. 

2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang wanted to implement a universal basic income of $12,000 a year and guaranteed income demonstration projects are underway in several states including in Colorado and New Mexico where cannabis is legal. 

New Mexico is second in worker equity, fourth in language diversity, the sixth most diverse state overall and second best in progress toward racial equality but my home state of South Dakota is nearly dead last. 

Cannabis taxes have raised the standard of living in bluer states and after a 2023 study, a yearlong pilot project providing an income of $750 per month from the City of Albuquerque has elevated 59 families to become more food secure and improve their credit scores.

The households participating saw a 26% increase in savings, according to a survey of recipients, while 45% of families reported feeling secure enough in their financial future to be able to enjoy life more. While many other cities have similar programs supported by grant money, Albuquerque’s is fully funded through tax revenue on cannabis sales. “Rather than working multiple jobs at a time, they’re there to be with their families, to learn from one another, and to have that time at the dinner table,” said Dillon Shije, the deputy director for the Office of Equity and Inclusion. [ KOB teevee]

In a related story Yang's New Mexico Forward Party earned enough status for potential candidates to appear on November's ballot.

Four Corners governors move geothermal energy forward

At least as early as 2011 the Four Corners region was seen as a geothermal powerhouse where Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories assembled plans for energy development. 

Today, the governors from Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona have moved to improve and streamline the production of underground renewable energy and on 16 June the US Bureau of Land Management will begin a geothermal lease sale on 68 parcels across 197,852 acres in Doña Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, Luna and Sierra counties in New Mexico.

In 2021 BLM sold a geothermal lease in Hidalgo County, New Mexico despite a 2016 blowout near a $43 million geothermal electricity plant erected by Cyrq Energy in 2013 when Republican Susana Martinez was governor. Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals, Inc. bought Cyrq in 2024 and has four working geothermal projects including Lightning Dock Geothermal Power Plant near Animas. It's a 15.3 MW binary geothermal plant with two production wells and 7 injection wells that sells power to Public Service of New Mexico (PNM) with firm baseload power. In December, 2024 BLM sold geothermal leases on seven parcels totaling 4,468 acres in Doña Ana County.

After years of underperforming and struggling to meet its original targets, Zanskar used artificial intelligence and advanced subsurface modeling to drill a highly successful new well. Commissioned in mid-2025, this well produces 340°F water—roughly 80 degrees hotter than previous wells—effectively doubling the plant's average output to 10.8 net megawatts per hour.

Using an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) at its Project Red site in northern Nevada Google-financed Fervo Energy completed a full-scale, 30-day well test able to generate 3.5 megawatts or enough electricity to power over 2,600 homes full time. Fervo employs a hydro-shearing process and believes it can deliver about 400 megawatts by 2028 or enough electricity to power 300,000 homes at once from half a dozen other sites across the western US. In 2024 BLM approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah which has the potential to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) or enough energy to supply over 2 million homes.

Colorado could tap orphaned oil and gas wells to supply hot water for electricity generation especially now that the state is falling behind on its own self-imposed emissions-reducing mandates.

Learn more at KUER public radio.

Hardly new, environmental racism part of lithium, rare earth mining

In 1951 after uranium was discovered in South Dakota's southern Black Hills more than 150 mines were ripped into the Earth where the Oglala Lakota once made their winter camp. Since then, radioactive tailings from those scars have been detected in Angostura Reservoir after a dam on the Cheyenne River broke in 1962. Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

In 2017 Rare Element Resources said its mine in the Wyoming Black Hills just upstream of the South Dakota border on ancestral Apsáalooke and Lakota lands at the headwaters of the Redwater River, a tributary of the Belle Fourche/Cheyenne, announced financial backing from General Atomics and applied for enough water for the mineral separation process despite widespread contamination in Crook County wells. 

In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation. 

In South Dakota, British Columbia-based United Lithium staked some 500 claims on treaty lands, some on Bureau of Land Management ground near Pringle, where lithium bearing pegmatites are already being quarried for potassium feldspars and micas. Canada-based Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation wants to drill through the water-bearing Inyan Kara Group on School and Public Lands property in Fall River County. The project is less than a mile from Craven Canyon where pictographs and rock art of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, Ponca, eastern Dakota, and other Native American cultures are protected on the Black Hills National Forest.

Exploiting the General Mining Law of 1872 Australia-based South32 Ltd. is ripping into Sobaipuri O’odham and Hohokam ancestral lands at Harshaw, Arizona with plans to extract zinc, manganese and nickel. In 2023 Trump appointees rejected a lawsuit that would have blocked mineral exploration in Arizona's Patagonia Mountains despite the resultant acid mine drainage that puts wildlife at risk where half of all migratory birds in North America move through the nearby avian sanctuaries at Sonoita Creek State Natural Area and Patagonia Lake. 

Australian miners like Jervois Global want to gouge ore containing cobalt from the homelands of the Nimíipuu or Nez Perce at a Superfund site near the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho.

Trina Lone Hill wasn’t surprised that mining companies had found lithium in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold and uranium had drawn drillers to the Lakota Sioux tribe’s hallowed ground in these western highlands years ago. Now, with this new mineral powering the global green-energy transition, the tribe’s historic preservation officer had one thought: “Here we go again.” 

Indigenous communities are hard hit: Roughly one in 10 proposed mines sits within 10 miles of a tribal reservation, even though reservations comprise 2 percent of U.S. land overall. “All those minerals … are right in our sacred sites,” Lone Hill said. The pattern of sidelining tribal voices and dispossession, she added, “has always been oppressive.” In Nevada, ground zero for America’s lithium rush, Western Shoshone members, much like their Sioux counterparts, have maintained that they never ceded their ancestral land. [How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past]

Learn more from the South Dakota Democratic Party.

Guest post: free-roaming horses are unsustainable

Editor’s note: in 2018 my trail camera caught a cougar drinking at the trough under the windmill so when The Horse Shelter just east of Cerrillos reported two foals were killed a few years ago nobody was very surprised. An Appaloosa mare that foaled in 2023 showed up without it several weeks later so the logical conclusion was that a cougar took it. She just delivered again and the local herd has doubled in size hooking up with another probably from the Kewa Pueblo.

DEAR WILD HORSE ADVOCATES: You can't have it both ways

One of the biggest contradictions in modern wild horse debates is hearing people insist that every family band must remain completely intact while also arguing that inbreeding is a major concern. Those positions are not fully compatible under basic population genetics.

Family bands are social structures, not genetic management units. Long-term genetic health depends on effective population size (Ne), breeding diversity, dispersal, and gene flow (Waples et al., 2013; Hoban et al., 2021). When populations become smaller, geographically restricted, or behaviourally closed, relatedness and homozygosity increase over time because the same lineages repeatedly breed within a limited population pool (Thompson et al., 2024).

Importantly, wild horses do not naturally remain in their natal bands forever. As horses reach sexual maturity, young stallions typically disperse from their birth bands, and some mares disperse as well (Linklater, 2013; Nuñez et al., 2016). This natal dispersal is a normal behavioural mechanism that promotes gene flow and reduces close inbreeding in free-ranging horse populations (Linklater, 2013). Preventing movement between groups or restricting populations into isolated management areas interferes with those natural dynamics.

In free-ranging horse populations, most foals do not remain permanently in their natal band once they reach sexual maturity. Both colts and fillies naturally disperse, although males usually leave earlier and more consistently than females. Dispersal is a well-documented behavioural mechanism that reduces inbreeding risk in equids (Feh, 1999; Berger, 1986).

There is no single universal percentage because dispersal rates vary by habitat, density, stallion turnover, and herd structure, but studies consistently show that the majority of offspring eventually leave their natal group. Feh (1999), studying semi-feral horses, reported that dominant stallions expelled approximately 82–84% of daughters, greatly reducing opportunities for sire-daughter breeding.

Actual sire-daughter breeding rates in naturally functioning herds are relatively low, but a consequence of restricting dispersal of family bands. Berger (1986) found that only about 3.9% of matings involved fathers and their genetic daughters in a free-ranging horse population. Feh (1999) later found somewhat higher rates (~10–11%) under certain conditions, particularly when normal dispersal patterns were disrupted or when horses had prior captive management histories.

These findings demonstrate that horse societies are dynamic, not static “family units,” and that natural dispersal behaviours play a major role in limiting close inbreeding. Corona, from Sand Wash Basin, has been observed exhibiting reproductive behaviour with his presumed daughters on numerous occasions, with observations suggesting the pairings may have produced a foal.

At the same time, many advocates oppose nearly all removals, the introduction of horses from outside, and the disruption of existing bands. But if populations remain closed with limited dispersal and limited external gene flow, close relatives will inevitably breed over time, particularly in smaller herds or fragmented habitats (Hoban et al., 2021; Thompson et al., 2024).

Modern conservation genetics, therefore, focuses on maintaining an adequate effective population size and preserving gene flow, not simply preserving every social grouping indefinitely (Frankham et al., 2017; Hoban et al., 2021). Social stability matters, but it cannot replace population genetics.

You cannot simultaneously argue that:

1. No horses should ever be removed,

2. Family bands must remain permanently intact,

3. Outside gene flow should be restricted or prevented,

4. There will be no increase in inbreeding risk.

Those arguments fundamentally conflict with established conservation genetics principles.

----------------------------------------

References:

Berger, J. (1986). Wild horses of the Great Basin: Social competition and population size. University of Chicago Press.

Feh, C. (1999). Alliances and reproductive success in Camargue stallions. Animal Behaviour, 57(3), 705–713.

Feh, C., & Munkhtuya, B. (2008). Male infanticide and paternity analyses in a socially natural herd of Przewalski’s horses: Sexual selection? Behavioural Processes, 78(3), 335–339.

Frankham R, Ballou JD, Ralls K, et al. Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Hoban S, Bruford MW, Funk WC, et al. Global commitments to conserving and monitoring genetic diversity are now necessary and feasible. BioScience. 2021;71(9):964-976.

Linklater WL. Adaptive explanation in socio-ecology: lessons from the Equidae. Biological Reviews. 2013;88(1):182-198.

Nuñez CMI, Adelman JS, Mason C, Rubenstein DI. Immunocontraception decreases group fidelity in a feral horse population during the non-breeding season. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 2016;183:13-17.

Rubenstein, D. I. (1986). Ecology and sociality in horses and zebras. In D. I. Rubenstein & R. W. Wrangham (Eds.), Ecological aspects of social evolution (pp. 282–302). Princeton University Press.

Thompson MA, McCann BE, Rhen T, Simmons R. Population genomics provide insight into ancestral relationships and diversity of the feral horses of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Ecology and Evolution. 2024;14:e11197.

Waples RS, Luikart G, Faulkner JR, Tallmon DA. Simple life-history traits explain key effective population size ratios across diverse taxa. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 2013;280:20131339.

Cresciente (dun) & Poseidon (black/dark bay)

Sand Wash Basin, Colorado, 2017 

Equus ferus- Wild Horse Photography®

Amalgamating Science & Art

Karen McLain Studio

Former SD School of Mines scientist one of several missing in New Mexico

Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is part of a network created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chemical Sciences Laboratory to monitor anthropogenic aerosols in the Earth's gases of life even as emissions released by oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin threaten Texas and the other horrible red states on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA wants to be able to detect whether Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), sometimes called solar geoengineering or albedo modification, is happening. Sandia is also home to the Plasma Research Facility and is operated by a subsidiary of Honeywell International under contract with the US Department of Energy. 

In 2016 DOE and Republican former US Representative from New Mexico's First District then President Heather Wilson of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, later Air Force Secretary in the first Trump term, a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste floated the idea of a deep borehole in Spink or Haakon Counties where contaminated materials could be dumped. 

In South Dakota’s Black Hills, DOE, New Mexico's Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, South Dakota School of Mines and others are collaborating on the potential for generating electricity using Enhanced Geothermal Systems. While Wilson was president of SDSMT, Denny Sanford donated millions to the university including $2 million to help build a new student wellness and recreation center. Wilson's LinkedIn profile highlights her oversight of the underground lab made possible by a $70 million gift from the now-disgraced Sanford.

Just recently, current University of Texas at El Paso President Heather Wilson was among 24 members of the National Science Board terminated by the Trump Organization on April 24, 2026. The mass firing was delivered via email, ousting members of the body that oversees the $9 billion National Science Foundation just weeks before her term expired on May 10.

The FBI is now investigating the deaths and disappearances of thirteen scientists, researchers, and workers connected to America's nuclear weapons and aerospace programs, reacting to pressure from a public increasingly alarmed by what appears to be a troubling pattern. Nearly half of the thirteen people have direct ties to Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, large weapons science labs in New Mexico. 

Ingrid Lane vanished on State Route 144, a narrow dirt road that runs through the Jemez Mountains. Her black 2019 Subaru Impreza hatchback was found on 144 about 11 miles north of NM-126, near San Antonio Mountain and the Valles Caldera National Preserve, at 9,100 feet elevation and out of cellular range. Lane's educational background reflects someone operating at the highest levels of scientific research. She attended Johns Hopkins University, studied at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and completed biomedical engineering coursework at the University of New Mexico. [Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez for THE PUGILIST]

Cesar Chavez's name is being stricken from public facilities in New Mexico after revelations of sexual misconduct yet Denny Sanford's name is still smeared all over South Dakota.

BHE, NWE merger rankles MFU

Democrat Brian Schweitzer was governor when this interested party was living in Montana but after leaving office he chose not to run for the US Senate allowing raving lunatic Steve Daines to sashay into the seat. In 2021 Schweitzer raked Montana Earth haters after they gave special treatment to NorthWestern Energy calling it "a fine mix of Socialism and Crony Capitalism to match Russian President Vladimir Putin." 

Also in 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. In 2025, drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier was lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that protects utilities from liability for wildfires they start. 

In January the three Earth haters on the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel approved a rate increase for NWE. And since utilities are not your friends the absence of transparency in the proposed merger of Black Hills Corporation and NorthWestern Energy is worrying the Montana Farmers Union. 

Walter Schweitzer is a third-generation farmer and rancher elected President of the MFU in 2019 and previously worked on his brother Brian's campaigns.

Based on the questions MFU leaders have asked and the [Montana Public Service] Commission docket so far, the proposed acquisition is not designed to help the Montana family farmer. It is designed to build a corporate balance sheet large enough to serve the bottomless appetite of multinational data centers. NWE denies wanting the acquisition for data centers, yet outreach to investors focuses on this acquisition as a necessary step to serve data centers. As in the past, ratepayers are being deceived. We cannot allow a distant holding company to treat Montana’s water and power as commodities to be extracted for Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It is time to put Montana farmers first. [Schweitzer: Northern Ag Network]

In a related story, Blackstone Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring TXNM Energy the parent company of PNM, New Mexico’s largest electric utility for $11.5 billion in a deal announced in May 2025 and is currently undergoing regulatory review while facing significant opposition.

Earth haters are at war with themselves: part n

Ultra-factionalism among Earth haters isn't just happening in my home state of South Dakota. Earth haters Ray Curtis, Aaron Flint, Christi Jacobsen and Al Olszewski are beating the shit out of one another in the race for western Montana's US House seat.

The winner of the Republican primary in the 1st District will move on to the general election. They’ll face the winner of the four-man race for the Democratic nomination, along with Libertarian candidate Nick Sheedy, of Columbia Falls. [KTVH teevee]

Lauren Boebert moved from Colorado's 3rd District to the 4th after being caught groping her date in a Denver theatre. She's one of Colorado's Earth haters who asked a federal judge to block unaffiliated voters from participating in that party’s primaries this year.

The Colorado Democratic Party has welcomed unaffiliated voters’ participation in their primaries and there’s been no concerted opt-out effort among its leaders. [Colorado Sun]

South Dakota will suffer brain drain for years to come and New Mexico has its own set of challenges but living where Earth haters are virtually meaningless and Democrats rule is well worth it.

The Republican Party of New Mexico is in open civil war. The crisis erupted into public view in mid-March when RPNM Chairwoman Amy Barela filed for re-election to her Otero County Commission seat. The GOP cannot afford a civil war — and yet, that is precisely what it has entered. [2nd Life Media Alamogordo Town News]

Earth haters want a police state, Libertarians want anarchy and Democrats just want a good ol’ fashioned representative democracy with all the warts of a constitutional republic so the faster all the deplorables taser themselves in the testicles until their myocardia infarct the better.

Local author linking the Epstein connections

Fascinating attention to detail!

Landback gains momentum

Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.

"Landback isn’t a slogan; it's the solution to some of the biggest challenges we face as a society, from climate to racial justice to food sovereignty. Landback means reclaiming our power collectively to build the future that our great-grandchildren can thrive in."

There are Indigenous Nations who can afford to buy much of the land in the public domain if it indeed goes up for sale and after a 23-year effort and $56 million about 47,000 acres in the Klamath Basin have been returned to the Yurok Tribe after studies showed how conservation goals are more effectively met when Indigenous peoples manage their own territories. There is at least a $billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so some day tribes will buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in occupied South Dakota and Wyoming. 

Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership including in New Mexico.

While the program operated nationwide across more than 50 tribal locations, specific outcomes for 

Kewa Pueblo

 (Santo Domingo) in New Mexico include: 

• Land Consolidation: The program aimed to address "checkerboarding" and fractionated land ownership—where a single tract might have hundreds of individual owners—by purchasing interests from willing sellers at fair market value and transferring them to tribal governments.
• National Context: Across New Mexico and other states, the program paid out approximately $1.69 billion to over 123,000 individuals over its 10-year lifespan.
• Related Land Efforts: In addition to the Buy-Back Program, other recent land transfers in New Mexico include bipartisan legislation to transfer land from a former boarding school to the state's 19 Pueblos (including Kewa) for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

Local author opening Epstein files

Here is more from Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.

I’m working on a big piece about the Albuquerque contractor that built the main house at Zorro Ranch. You know, the house that seems to have been designed to intentionally mimic George Washington’s Mt. Vernon plantation house, down to and including a parallel to Mt. Vernon’s slave quarters, with the Epstein outbuilding having a prison-like sally port and being the only structure on the 7,600-acre property with bars on the windows. That one. Yeah. We know now who the general contractor was. And they continued to be the GC after Epstein’s conviction. Buried in the DOJ files are communications between Epstein’s people and this contractor, in which the contractor reassures Epstein that minimal documentation is being recorded for new upgrades to the property, including sub-basement floors. Unsurprisingly, this same contractor held multiple contracts with Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Kirtland Air Force Base. They were also sending heavy packages to Les Wexner’s company in Ohio, via private plane, on behalf, it seems, of Zorro Ranch. Including diskettes. One 12-pound package was labeled, simply, PRINCESS.

Trump Organization strips protections from Pecos watershed

The Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are hardly the only public lands plundered by foreign companies under cover of the General Mining Law of 1872 enacted to settle Civil War debt and rob Indigenous peoples of their homes and human rights. 

Until it closed in 1939 the Tererro Mine in the headwaters of the Pecos River took gold, lead and other metals then left piles of toxic waste rock in their place. After major flooding in 1991 when sulfuric acid, aluminum and zinc swept into the river miner Freeport-McMoRan was held responsible for the deaths of some 100,000 Rio Grande cutthroat trout and for the subsequent decades of acid mine drainage. 

Despite opposition from Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Senator Martin Heinrich during the first Trump term in 2019 an American subsidiary of Australian company New World Cobalt, was granted twenty federal permits to drill test holes into the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on the Santa Fe National Forest in the Jones Hill area north of Pecos, New Mexico.

Federal officials announced the Upper Pecos Watershed, thousands of acres of forest service and public lands, will reopen next month for potential mining and geothermal extraction projects. “The Trump administration is putting foreign mining corporations and oil and gas interests ahead of New Mexico families, our water, our public lands, and our sacred tribal sites,” said U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernández during a press conference. [Feds quash lawmakers’ effort to prevent new mining operations in Upper Pecos Watershed]