Leah Sottile
@Leah_Sottile
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Books: Blazing Eye Sees All, When The Moon Turns To Blood || Podcasts: Hush, Burn Wild, Two Minutes Past Nine, Bundyville || Subscribe on Substack, pals.
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During times of fear and crisis, New Age leaders offer answers. I got curious about the way New Age-ism was surging during the worst of COVID and... that turned into an entire book. It's called Blazing Eye Sees All. Out next March. Pre-orders live now:
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Surprising absolutely no one in the Inland Northwest, two of the Patriot Front members crammed into the U-Haul this weekend are connected to a church helmed by former Rep Matt Shea. Who is that, you ask? *deep inhale* A thread:
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Bundy Ranch, Sugar Pine Mine both just mentioned in the J6 hearings.
I rest my case that the country should have been paying close attention to the extremism of the west.
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Very glad to see national media is paying attention to the embrace of the far-right in the west. This is not only a politics problem, but a religion problem. I’ve been writing about this almost exclusively since 2015. A long thread:
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Here’s a story I wrote about him in Rolling Stone four years ago, after local reporters had been covering him for ages. Time flies when you’re having … um:
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Shea is a former Washington state representative who represented Spokane Valley. In that position, he took the time to travel to both the 2014 and 2016 armed standoffs helmed by the Bundys; invited Oath Keepers head Stewart Rhodes to discuss battle tactics over tacos…
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There is so much more to say about Shea - Anti vaccine rallies! The state of Liberty! Ukrainian orphans! - but I will stop here because I need more coffee. Follow the great work of local reporters:
@SpokesmanReview
@danielwinlander
@MelissaKXLY4
@vestal13
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Shea also took spiritual guidance from The Byrds , a couple who runs a “covenant community” called Marble, in NE WA. Barry is of the framers of Christian Identity, a racist belief system that had been preached at the Aryan Nations. More on that here:
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A lot has happened since then. For one, the House in Washington issued a report that Shea had participated in domestic terrorism, and he didn’t run for re-election:
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Guess who else was at the CDA Pride rally to protest this Saturday? On Fire Ministries and Shea:
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In 2018, former Shea acolytes leaked a manifesto he wrote - and claimed credit for - called the “Biblical Basis for War,” which called for war if abortion and same sex marriages were not stopped:
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In the second season of Bundyville (the audio version), we reported that Shea was helping train a youth militia at Marble called “Team Rugged.” More on Marble here:
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Shea parlayed his oratory skills and fanaticism into a new gig: the leader of a church called “On Fire Ministries,” and continuing to lead the “Church at Planned Parenthood”:
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Freelance work is real work. Freelance journalism is not subpar journalism. Payments 90 days late is unacceptable. I haven’t even finished my morning coffee and I’m ready to organize.
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Two men who don’t live in the Northwest are arguing over who discovered Christian nationalism in Idaho. The answer is neither of them. This has been reported on for decades by
@SpokesmanReview
, and locally by
@danielwinlander
for years.
I was glad to see
@jackmjenkins
article on N. Idaho and Christian nationalism
@RNS
and today at
@washingtonpost
. I knew it was coming because we spoke on the phone for two hours about his idea for the piece. But as I read it, something didn't sit right.
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It is infuriating and confusing to watch this footage of Jan 6, and to think about how reporters like myself tried to show the threat of the far right. So it is also a sad reminder of just how small our voices are in all the noise.
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A lot of outlets have helicoptered in to write about Greater Idaho’s plan to break Oregon in half. Few, if any, have written how this idea has long been the goal of white nationalists. My latest for
@highcountrynews
.
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Just thinking about alllllll those New York editors who rejected stories I pitched on the Patriot movement five years ago……
Breaking News: Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers militia, was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot, officials said.
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One thing I’ve come to understand is that people who believe the world can end at any moment, or perhaps embrace that as a part of their religion, are willing to do just about anything to see politics go their way…
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I am delighted that national reporters are paying attention to Idaho and Montana! However, it is hard to stomach that people only pay attention if male reporters from NY/DC do the work. I wish I didn’t care!
1. So, I recently took a trip out to North Idaho.
I was tracking down rumors about Christian nationalism(s) rising in the region.
But I wasn't prepared for just how *big* it'd become, how powerful it is in the state, and how it may impact the future GOP.
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I’m going to end here because why would you still be reading. I have a book coming out on this very topic: how the far right exists in plain sight, a societal permissiveness to violence, how religious institutions bolster violent ideas. Out in one month:
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"Arizona family is desperate for their loved ones to return home after they abruptly bought 1000s of dollars of survival gear, boarded a plane for Idaho and cut off all communication because they believe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is imminent."
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When the Moon Turns to Blood is out today! This story started for me in Dec 2019, when I heard an Idaho woman had gone missing, along with her kids and her husband. People said her “cult like” religious beliefs might have something to do with it. So… I started l digging.
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Reports saying that only 1 person involved in the 31-person Patriot Front group detained today is from Idaho. So, not an Idaho group necessarily. As the national media zooooooms 🚁 🚁 on in, some background:
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It was so fun being a journalist from Portland who was trying to get East coast editors to care about political violence in 2016; now the East coast sends its writers to Portland to tell us about political violence.
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I knew I would be giving a speech to the Spokane County Human Rights Task Force last night, but it was a total shock to be awarded their Human Rights Journalism Award, named for my dear late friend Bill Morlin, presented by his wife.
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You would not believe how many outlets rejected my ideas on the Bundy family. Ultimately, I did a whole podcast on this, and wrote two dozen stories about them and their religious ideology. Here’s one:
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They’ll do anything to keep you quiet. Butte never forgets that, and we’d all do well to remember.
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Some news: I wrote a book. It is called When the Moon Turns to Blood and I’m thrilled
@twelvebooks
is publishing it. It’s a harrowing true story about murder, conspiracy culture and fringe religious belief. Preorder now:
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For awhile, I wrote about faith-healers in Idaho. It’s one of the only states where it’s legal to pray over your ailing child, and if they die - say of a bad cold or strep - you won’t be prosecuted for manslaughter. In 2015 this seemed like an oddity:
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Listening to the Ryan Zinke/Monica Tranel debate (with John Lamb, yes of Bundy fame!), it's shocking to me than Montanans who value open access to public land would even consider Zinke, who tried to gut national monuments within 64 days of getting into office.
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Extremism might not seem so shocking if people had been paying closer attention to the West. An op-ed by me for
@washingtonpost
.
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Bundyville. Again, treated as an oddity of the west when I pitched this; now Ammon Bundy is running for governor and has shepherded in the multi state People’s Rights movement. Season 1:
Season 2:
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If I sound annoyed it’s because I am. National media should do better. Here’s a story about my mentor Bill Morlin, who wrote about extremist for decades and died trying to get national media to pay attention:
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Many people have asked if I am a part of the Netflix show “Sins of Our Mother,” about the Vallow/Daybell case. No, I am not. I was very excited to see it though, but now that I have… I was shocked at the number of errors and overlooked issues in the show, including:
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I should say that when these things were referenced, I threw my hands up in the air and almost knocked over the table in this coffee shop.
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By 2018, Idaho faith healers were joining forces with anti-vaxxers. People who didn’t agree all of a sudden were on the same side. This would become a very important alliance by the time Covid and vaccines came around:
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In the year 2001 I was one of a coalition of editors of street newspapers who protested in San Francisco over mainstream media’s coverage of poverty and unhoused communities. In 22 years, absolutely nothing has changed.
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I have been doing this work almost exclusively for seven years now. I am 100 percent independent. You can support my work directly by purchasing a book or subscribing to my newsletter:
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If anyone could prove how perfectly fine voters were with far right ideologies and an apocalyptic worldview it was the continual re-election of Rep Matt Shea in suburban Washington. Here’s one story I wrote about him in 2018:
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There was much I had to leave on the cutting room floor of the Greater Idaho story I published yesterday, including one harrowing and damning detail about getting media coverage of a white Christian state in the PNW, which was discussed at the 1986 Aryan World Congress 1/x
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The embrace of the far right was on full display in 2016 during the 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The Bundy family had been treated like an oddity of the rural west in 2014 when they had a standoff with the feds over unpaid grazing fees.
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An Idaho jury decided Ammon Bundy needs to pay millions of dollars in a defamation suit.
(Meanwhile in Nevada, his dad’s cattle are still grazing for free on public land)
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Here’s a scan of a story I wrote for Playboy in the spring of 2015. It’s about a guy in Spokane Valley, near Idaho, and his survivalist cache. He thought the world could end any day:
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They drank Flavor Aid, not Kool Aid, at Jonestown and I will forever be annoyed by this expression. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk about facts.
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Hi my name is Leah, I’m a freelancer with a pitch for a story I think would really serve the readership of the New York Times.
Portland: shitty.
That’s the pitch.
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I am pretty bowled over by the media interest in this tweet thread. I did this reporting FOUR years ago, when Shea was a sitting elected official. Today several national reporters called and wanted my opinion of what East coast media gets wrong…
*gestures broadly at everything*
Surprising absolutely no one in the Inland Northwest, two of the Patriot Front members crammed into the U-Haul this weekend are connected to a church helmed by former Rep Matt Shea. Who is that, you ask? *deep inhale* A thread:
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"These were standoffs with firearms pointed across lines at law enforcement agencies... we've gotten exceedingly lucky there was not more bloodshed. Because that potential has been there from the start." — Jason Van Tatenhove
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Reporting on extremism, in my experience, has very little to do with winning awards and getting drinks at the bar. It means taking huge risks and doing a ton of work, and compromising your own safety. There is no glory in it. Just fear and more stories and more work.
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Each weekend when I wake up and find a new story written about my home, written by someone on the east coast who says it needs saving, I wonder if any of these stories would be written had “Portlandia” never existed?
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Some news: For nearly 2 years,
@GeorgiaJCatt
and I have been digging into the story of the Earth Liberation Front - called the
#1
domestic terror threat in America. That’s the subject of our new podcast, Burn Wild. Trailer up now, episodes up next week
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What does it look like when the far right comes to your county? Ask Yamhill County, Oregon, where even a walking trail can become a flashpoint to divide the community:
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Just a reminder to east coast editors: there are freelance journalists who live in the western states you are sending your NY reporters out to cover. Just think how you’ll save on airfare by calling us?
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This story from 2020 looks at the way far right ideologies had transformed into an extremely online, extremely young and extremely nihilistic movement of young people. Many, many parallels to the Buffalo shooter. This story is centered in the west:
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A man at Front Street Market in Butte was concerned I didn’t have anything “special” in my basket, so he snipped open a package of cookies and gave me one and I almost cried at this kindness.
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Jason Van Tatenhove told the world that to understand Jan 6, look to the public lands standoffs of the west. Me, for
@Slate
:
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It’s sobering to me as a journalist to see how not-seriously the
#LoriVallowTrial
is being taken by print media outlets. If you are dismissing this case as a true crime murder case, you are missing the point.
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A new day, a new story by an East coast outlet about why the Bundy family matters.
This is your annual reminder to listen to Bundyville: a project plagiarized more times I can count and that actually holds the family to account.
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Hello Seattle, I have questions about what we are ending here.
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Some standout bits from The Oregonian profile of Christine Drazan. You should read it. If elected she:
- will suspend the state’s clean fuels program, which has been reducing Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions
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We have all been reporting on extremism in this part of the country for years because we live here. Flyby reporters curiosity about “rumors” of Christian nationalism in Idaho are not new and they’re not rumors. We have been talking about them for years.
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Here is a story I wrote after living in Montana and seeing the state’s Gadsden flag license plates (also a plate in several non western states).
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Also in 2020, extreme religious leaders in Idaho and Montana were viewing COVID restrictions as a gift - proof of the apocalyptic worldview they had long preached:
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Eight years later:
✅ cattle still out there illegally grazing
✅ two Bundy sons have run/ are running for Governor
✅ Ammon Bundy started the People’s Rights movement
✅ journalists who’ve covered this movement have aged by 1000 years
8 years ago today, hundreds of Cliven Bundy supporters, including armed militia, confronted federal agents attempting to roundup cattle for illegally grazing:
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(Slowly looks over top of my book at everyone who said Vallow/Daybell were a one-time thing)
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High above Butte, Montana is a 90-foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary dedicated to women and mothers. In my latest for
@highcountrynews
, I dive deep into what life for women and mothers is like there.
#longreads
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I'm so tired of my work being plagiarized by men with gigantic Twitter followings who then pass themselves off as experts on the far-right. (Being an expert is a title I do not claim.) It's been happening for years, and my only recourse is to post to this stupid website about it.
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Spokane mayor Nadine Woodward offers a masterclass on how to dig yourself into a deeper hole.
Nearly 24 hours after she hugged him on stage at a far right religious rally, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward says she regrets her appearance there with Matt Shea.
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Confirmation that the accused Club Q shooter is a member of the LDS Church. As I discuss in my [not very true crime-true crime] book, the Church has both fanned the flames of anti-LGBTQ extremism and tried to extinguish them. It cannot do both.
JUST IN: Heard back from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints HQ in Salt Lake. They confirmed the suspected gunman in Saturday's shooting was on the membership rolls of LDS. 1/
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I’ve been freelancing for 10 years, hustling around the west on my own dime to cover stories that feel important to this region. And sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just… get a check every two weeks to make journalism? Like, what would that even be like?
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In 2018, a story I wrote on FEMA conspiracy theories for Playboy started with a quote from a prepper I interviewed years before. “America is under a judgement from God,” she said.
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Last week a source gave me a jar of salsa she'd just canned from her garden, and I went through an entire mental exercise over if taking it compromised my ethics.
Meanwhile, Ben Smith writes this bullshit:
Semafor editor Ben Smith, regularly contrarian on media ethics, wonders why it's a big deal for journalists to sleep with subjects of our reporting (but still wants his reporters to tell him when they are involved romantically with people they cover)
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Another day, another East Coast outlet has flown in a reporter to tell you why Greater Idaho is about rural discontent. But a cursory look at the movement's website will tell you everything it stands for. None of these issues have anything to do with rurality.
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Bill Morlin had just printed out a copy of my book to give me his feedback when, two days later, he died. Sometimes I felt like he was the only person who understood me.
I dedicate that book to his memory, and this is everything I learned from him.
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I hope Toobin's book advances the conversation on extremism; I bet it doesn't. But he will get lots of attention because of his name, and his pedigree, and who he knows.
Meanwhile, those of us without the right zip code or education will keep doing the work.
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There is an entire ecosystem and economy centered on end times paranoia and extreme religious belief that created the environment for Lori and Chad to meet. That’s not my opinion; that is a fact.
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Why is it that New York reporters are sent to helicopter in all over America, but couldn’t get to the George Santos story in their own backyard?
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Recently, I was doing some historical research for a story - because nothing happening is ever really new - and was reminded of who, nearly 100 years ago, was watching polling places for signs of attempts "to steal the election" : the Ku Klux Klan.
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To truly call them public records, they should be freeeeeeee.
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The Bundy standoff in 2014 foreshadowed the doctrine of white oppression that would, a decade later, come to take over American politics. My latest for
@highcountrynews
:
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This might not be an Idaho based group, but North Idaho (and the region) remains particularly attractive to people with far right ideas. Historically speaking, CDA is not far from the former compound of the Aryan Nations, which was vehemently opposed by locals.
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Smart journalism schools would make
@DavidNeiwert
’s new book a required text. Come to
@Powells
Monday to hear me ask him a million questions about it.
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The stories about Matt Shea were reported on for years by local media before
@jason_a_w
, Daniel, Chad Sokol and myself (among others) all wrote about the Biblical Basis for War document.
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I can’t think of a bigger compliment than someone bringing my book to a reading that is marked up, tape-flagged and well-read.
What an event tonight, Boise. Thank you.
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By 2020, Ammon Bundy was looking for a new fight in Idaho. And for a minute it looked like he might rally behind one very religious family in rural Idaho who had lost their home:
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What a fantastic evening tonight
@Powells
to kickoff When the Moon Turns to Blood. It was wonderful to be joined by a packed house of engaged community members. It felt like our conversation was getting us somewhere in this fearful time.
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I did it. I wrote a book. Out tomorrow.
(Collapses)
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Breaking news, Ammon Bundy seems to be processing and gaining a grasp of consequences.
I'm in Gem County covering Ammon Bundy's hearing regarding fraudulent transfers. Bundy did not show up.
He posted this letter to St. Luke's attorney this morning:
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I appreciate that NBC news took a rare critical look at the Greater Idaho notion, and asked me to talk about the ways it is anti democratic.
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You can definitely send your big name east coast writers to write about the west. But you don’t have to!
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I appreciate
@bellingcat
reaching out to me for this story. Looks to be they've traced Ammon Bundy to Cedar City - where his older brother Ryan Bundy used to live.
@ryanjhaas
and I visited the small city during our Bundyville reporting. He should be very easy to find now.
A video titled ‘Want to know where Ammon Bundy is?’ provided just enough clues for Michael Lee (a member of our Discord community) to locate the anti-government US militant, who has been in hiding since a warrant was issued for his arrest.
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No, High Country News is not a weed magazine. It is, however, a 50+ year old publication that lets weirdo writers like me explore religion, gender identity and labor in the west in thousands of words.
A Virgin Mary statue watches over Butte, Montana. The story of why it’s there, and what it means to people, is complicated.
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A very cool full circle moment: my book being on the cover of
@TheInlander
, where I learned how to be a reporter and held almost every editorial job.
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Extremism reporting requires risk, compromising safety, studying topics that are sometimes boring or difficult, attending events, drawing connections, etc. The people who do that work often don't get credit for it — reporters, analysts, experts, concerned citizens.
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- Barry Cox, Lori’s father, is included in the show with no discussion of his longstanding anti-government views, tax protests and jail time. Cox asked me to pay him “six figures U.S. Dollars in cash money” for an interview. Did Netflix pay that to an extremist?
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I started my career in journalism writing about music. Then, at some point, I started writing about extremism. Right now, those things are combining in the persona and testimony of Jason Tatenhove in the J6 hearings, and this is all making a lot of sense to me.
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It has been a decade today since the Bunkerville standoff; it has been six years since we released the first season of Bundyville. Still isn't too late to listen:
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When the Moon Turns to Blood is out now in paperback, and includes an entirely new chapter at the end: “The Bottom of the Abyss.”
Thank you to everyone who has supported this project, and helped keep the memory of the victims in this case alive.
When the Moon Turns to Blood is out today! This story started for me in Dec 2019, when I heard an Idaho woman had gone missing, along with her kids and her husband. People said her “cult like” religious beliefs might have something to do with it. So… I started l digging.
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