7/10/24

Violent Black Hills county is even scaring Republican Wyoming legislator

Ogden Driskill is an Earth hating Wyoming legislator running cattle near Devils Tower National Monument in the Belle Fourche River watershed. 

In 2023 Driskill was co-sponsor of a resolution that called on the federal government to amend the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and allow horses wrangled from public lands to be diverted to meat processing domestically for shipment abroad. But even Driskill isn't white enough for some Trumpers and faced a solid write-in campaign from a former chair of the Crook County Republican Party. 
All but one of the legislators who represent Weston County in the Wyoming Senate and House of Representatives were present to provide updates on legislative matters and answer questions from attendees at a town hall held in Newcastle on June 26 at the Weston County Event Center at the fairgrounds. “I will have nothing to do with the Weston County Republican Party and the far right that non-stop attack me,” he told the News Letter Journal, claiming the party chose not to support him after he won the Republican primary in 2022. [Town hall truant]
James Wesley Rawles coined the phrase American Redoubt in 2011. From his SurvivalBlog (dot) com he supposes Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington are survivalist havens for the christian nationalist movement. As recently as 2017 he used a post office box in Newcastle, Wyoming as his mailing address and credits the late Susan Callaway as his Black Hills connection. 

Republican welfare ranchers ginned up by the likes of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Wyoming's US Representative Harriet Hageman, disgraced former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, American Stewards of Liberty rabble-rouser Margaret Byfield and others are plotting violence against public land managers in the West.
Fifteen Wyoming clergy members and faith leaders recently denounced a “rising tide of extremist rhetoric poisoning our debates and discussions in the Equality State.” They raised their concerns in a letter sent last week to Gov. Mark Gordon, Senate President Ogden Driskill, House Speaker Albert Sommers and University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel, asking them to take a stand. The religious leaders named Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Turning Point USA and its founder Charlie Kirk as contributing to the rhetoric and “openness to political violence.” [Wyoming clergy speak out against political extremism]
Tension is high in the Mountain West so local Bureau of Land Management offices and employees are on alert for militant zealots bent on violent disruptions or worse as the agency assesses resource management plans.

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