The country music star posted a video to his X account speaking out against PG&E’s application to remove the dams.

“This actually stunned me, and that's hard to do.”

He says removing Scott and Cape Horn Dams would devastate the region.

“It would cut off the water supply to 750,000 Californians. 390 family farms downstream from the dam where they use this water for irrigation, over 300,000 acres of farmland that use that water. And then you look at the fire service out there putting out the California fires in that area. That's where they get their water from.”

PG&E’s dam removal application is currently pending before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Rich calls on FERC commissioners to do the right thing. The Supreme Court decided in Trump v. Slaughter that the president has the right to fire leaders and employees of independent federal agencies. Rich points out that this includes FERC commissioners.

Rich was appointed to represent rural landowners, farmers, and ranchers in the Trump administration. He says in that capacity, he will make sure the president is aware of the situation playing out in Northern California.

“I'm going to make sure he sees this report, make sure he's up to speed on what's going on at Potter Valley Dam because there is no way in Hell he's going to be okay with decommissioning a dam that causes that much carnage in the state of California.”

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Kevin Muno just made it two.

He is a first generation producer, a former college baseball player with no agricultural background, and he built the only certified raw milk dairy in Southern California from scratch. This conversation covers how he did it, what the regulatory path actually looked like, and why he thinks the future of dairy is bioregional rather than national.

We also get into where the food influencer conversation has gone wrong, the grain vs. grass-finished debate, and who should be leading the MAHA discussion.

Show Notes

Find Kevin:
Perennial Pastures Ranch: perennialpasturesranch.com
Instagram: @perennialpasturesranch
X: @regenranching

Mentioned in this episode:
The Paleo Diet by Dr. Loren Cordain
Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard
Allan Savory and holistic management
Johan Zietsman, ultra high density grazing
Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI)
Dr. Weston A. Price
Happy Hens Egg Farm, Ramona, CA
Regenified

Sponsored by RanchVision, the software ranchers use to boost profits and make better decisions: ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Retired Lt. John Nores spent 28 years as a California game warden, and most of that career fighting a hidden war most Americans don’t know is happening. In 2005, he was ambushed by cartel gunmen in the mountains above Silicon Valley, within eyesight of the eBay campus. His partner took an AK-47 round through both legs and nearly bled out waiting three hours for rescue. Out of that day came the Marijuana Enforcement Team or MET, the elite tactical unit Nores co-founded and led for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

He talks about what it’s like to walk into a cartel grow on public land, the banned nerve agent poisons killing wildlife and watersheds, poisoned cannabis reaching legal dispensary shelves and unwitting consumers, the billion gallons of water stolen every year, trafficked workers imprisoned at grow sites, the Chinese crime groups partnering with Mexican cartels, the war’s shifting front to the Northern border and tribal lands, and the full story of what happened on August 5, 2005.

John Nores is the author of Hidden War and War in the Woods, a recipient of the Governor’s Medal of Valor, star of three seasons of Nat Geo’s Wild Justice, and co-host of the Thin Green Line podcast. He founded El Oasis, a nonprofit sheltering orphaned children in Baja, Mexico. Now retired, he lives in Montana with his family.

Show Notes

Read John Nores’ books:

• Hidden War, 2nd Edition (foreword by Jack Carr):

• War in the Woods

Follow John:

• Instagram: @johnnores

• Website

Mentioned in this episode:

• John’s congressional testimony, “Securing Our Border: Saving Our National Parks,” House Committee on Natural Resources

• His second testimony, “Cartel Impacts to Tribal Lands throughout America”

• NARCOFORNIA, Daily Caller documentary featuring John Nores

• Nat Geo’s Wild Justice, three seasons featuring John Nores and the MET

• Hippies & Cowboys: The Murder of Mendocino County Rancher Dick Drewry, my written investigation into an unsolved killing on Bell Springs Road

• High Country Murder, the documentary short streaming free at Real Clear Politics, directed by Keely Covello & Michaela Gillies

Show credits:

• Produced and edited by Josh Woolwine

• Intro by Josh Woolwine

For almost 20 years, students attending the Texas FFA Convention in Fort Worth have stopped by the Fellowship of Christian Farmers International (FCFI) booth. Volunteers pass out beaded bracelets depicting the Christian gospel—the “Wordless Message”—and talk with students about faith, mission trips, and service opportunities. Every year, retired ag teacher and FFA advisor Art Free looked forward to seeing the kids. Some would stop by the booth to show him they were still wearing their bracelet.

But this year, when FCFI applied for its usual booth, something had changed. There was a new policy, and they were no longer welcome.

Free was blindsided.

“I almost cried when they told me,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

FCFI is one of at least two Christian groups barred from exhibiting at the 98th Annual Texas FFA Convention due to a new policy that prohibits groups promoting “specific political or social ideologies.”

This mirrors policy at the National FFA Convention and, according to FCFI, several other state chapters. Texas is only the latest to adopt the policy.

Christian groups banned from holding booths

In an email sent April 6, FCFI was told exhibit management had “determined that your presence at our events is affected by this new change.”

The American Federation of Cowboy Churches was also denied a booth. The email, reviewed by UNWON, cited the same reasoning: The new policy prohibited its inclusion. It would have been the group’s first year at the convention.

A nonprofit founded in 1985, FCFI exists to serve farmers and ranchers through evangelism, outreach, and disaster relief. The group is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Free says when he called to check on FCFI’s application status, Texas FFA referred him to the Agriculture Teachers Association of Texas (ATAT), which manages the convention. An ATAT special projects coordinator sent the April 6 email, and a follow-up email affirming the decision was signed by both Texas FFA and ATAT.

It is unclear whether ATAT made the call to exclude the Christian booths, or Texas FFA, or both.

ATAT did not respond to a request for comment. Texas FFA Association’s Executive Director Jackson defended the policy in emails to Free but did not respond to UNWON’s questions.

“Respectfully, disagreeing with Texas FFA’s exhibitor policy does not make this a matter of religious discrimination, nor does it mean that Texas FFA has denied Christianity,” wrote Jackson in email correspondence with Free reviewed by UNWON. “Texas FFA has not denied Jesus, Christianity, or any other faith.”

Texas FFA has not explained what prompted the new policy or how “specific political or social ideologies” are defined. Nor has the organization said whether non-Christian religious organizations have applied for booths. There is no publicly-available record of a vote or action by the Texas FFA Board of Directors approving this policy change.

“The very best of America”

Free is 66 years old. He was an FFA member in high school and attended the Texas FFA Convention in 1978. He went on to teach ag for 20 years and serve as an FFA advisor.

“I tell everybody, if you want to see what is absolutely right with the United States, go to the Texas FFA Convention,” Free says. He spoke by phone from his farm after stepping away from hauling hay with his grandkids. “To me, Texas FFA is the very best of America.”

He wants to make it clear that his criticism has nothing to do with the organization or the students. He is concerned about the leadership’s decision.

“We’re not running down Texas FFA,” he says. “My grandkids are just a couple years away from being in Texas FFA. I want it to be the same great organization that it always was.”

After learning FCFI was denied a booth, he twice asked to attend the Texas FFA quarterly board meeting at Tarleton State University and speak during its public comment segment. Both of his emails were ignored. He hopes the issue is merely procedural: he emailed as soon as he learned of the board meeting, 10 days beforehand, but knows the board requests all submissions 12 days prior.

Unable to get a response through the board, Free decided to take his message directly to the students.

Texas FFA explains its reasoning

Free made a video explaining the exclusion. FCFI published it online. Then Free sent it to all the students serving as Texas FFA state officers.

“I know you are very busy preparing for your final convention but please take a moment to absorb this message,” he wrote.

Right away, he heard from Jackson.

“The officers are extremely busy preparing for their work during the 98th Annual Texas FFA Convention, and I think you will likely understand my disappointment that this burden was placed on them,” she wrote in an email.

Free told her that while he would respect her decision, FCFI wasn’t going to abandon the students.

“We have no intent of doing anything that will negatively affect Texas FFA,” he wrote. “We will be in Ft Worth on the street not for a protest or to cause any problems for FFA. We will simply be sharing the Gospel of Jesus and presenting opportunities that our organization offers, as we do at many locations around the world. If we are asked why we are not inside we will explain the situation from our perspective.”

Jackson replied. She said the organization was attempting to take a non-discriminatory stance.

“I would encourage you to place yourself in our position and consider the implications of allowing one religious organization to exhibit while attempting to deny that same opportunity to others,” she wrote. “Our responsibility is not to determine which religious organizations should or should not be represented at convention, but rather to ensure that the event remains focused on agriculture and leadership.”

Jackson did not respond to an email asking if groups representing other religions applied for booths at the Texas FFA Convention.

“I see where she is coming from,” Free says. “I have no idea if other religious groups want to be there. But if so, how do I put this? I would let Jesus stand against anybody. If there’s another group that comes in and wants to pay the money to have a booth, let them.”

Friends of the Rising Sun

What happened in Texas is not an isolated event, according to Friends of the Rising Sun, a group of former FFA leaders, members, teachers, and advocates who say they are concerned about the direction of the organization.

The group takes its name from one of the five symbols in the FFA emblem. Its members say FFA helped shape their lives and careers, and that they are speaking out because they want to preserve what they believe to be the soul and purpose of the organization.

Friends of the Rising Sun has argued that National FFA has shifted its focus away from training agriculturalists to social issues. They say leadership is discouraging public expressions of Christian faith.

“Sadly, this exclusion follows a similar decision by the National FFA,” says a past national officer candidate. He asked to remain anonymous. “It’s deeply troubling to hear reports of groups being excluded because of their Christian beliefs, and student references to faith being discouraged.”

He is a member of Friends of the Rising Sun. The organization has a growing reach—its Facebook group has more than 1,000 members.

A broader fight over FFA

Free says FCFI has been barred from exhibiting at the National FFA Convention, as well as conventions in several other states, including Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa.

To the former national officer candidate, this tracks.

“It begins to trickle down,” he says. “What happens at the national level will get to the state level and chapter level eventually.”

In 2020, he alleges, a national officer coordinator instructed national FFA officers to stop praying publicly or including Scripture in speeches connected to FFA. Vendors at the National FFA Convention, held near the organization’s headquarters in Indianapolis, have been asked to take down merchandise that references Jesus—even the famous Paul Harvey “So God Made a Farmer” speech is verboten, he claims.

“Parents don’t want to believe this could happen to FFA, but I tell them, just look at the Boy Scouts,” he says. “FFA has gotten away from its foundation as an organization. A darkness has come over Indianapolis.”

Congress investigates National FFA’s link to Chinese-owned company and DEI push

National FFA is currently in the middle of a congressional investigation.

House Ways and Means is examining the nonprofit’s partnership with Syngenta, an agriculture company held by Chinese state-owned Sinochem, and that company’s role in pushing FFA to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming.

In response to a detailed list of questions from UNWON about the organization’s exhibitor policy, whether faith-based groups have been denied booths at the National FFA Convention, and guidance given to national officers regarding prayer and Scripture, National FFA provided the following statement:

Preaching Jesus “on the sidewalk”

In addition to evangelism and outreach, FCFI coordinates mission trips and disaster relief, particularly in rural areas.

“We try to help the people who fall through the cracks,” Free says. “FEMA doesn’t reach everybody.”

They helped out during wildfires in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle last year. They partnered with Farm Rescue and hauled several hundred round bales to Eastern Kansas. They brought in hay and supplies after Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas. They often coordinate with local FFA chapters to deliver support and aid to farmers after natural disasters.

To Free, the most important part of having a booth is connecting with the kids.

“We have a lot of kids that come by year-to-year,” he says. “Our presence affirms their faith. I ask if I can pray for them, and often they ask if they can pray for me.”

The thought of letting these kids down was unacceptable. A self-described “hardheaded Texan,” Free consulted with the city of Fort Worth after his email back-and-forth with Jackson. City code doesn’t allow unpermitted outdoor booths or tables, but nothing stopped him from standing on the sidewalk.

Art, his wife Susan, and fellow FCFI volunteer Jeff Goss came up with a plan. They’d stand outside the parking structure and hand out packets to attendees making their way into the convention center: an FCFI Operator Manual, a gospel tract, a Wordless Message bracelet, a “little Jesus” figure—“The kids like them,” says Free—and a flier explaining what happened and why FCFI would not be found at their usual booth.

When Free informed Jackson of their plan, she told him she was “disappointed.”

“While you certainly have the right to share your perspective in a public setting, I am disappointed by your stated intent to explain this matter to our members and guests during our convention,” she wrote. “Doing so has the potential to create confusion, distract from the event’s purpose, and undermine confidence in the leadership and mission of Texas FFA.”

But Free wanted students to know that FCFI hadn’t chosen not to attend.

“I wanted Texas FFA to know that we did not abandon them, we were disinvited.”

Susan and her grandkids packed 1000 ziplock baggies. They were there the day the convention floor opened—Wednesday, July 8. Susan, Art, and Jeff stood on the sidewalk in the Texas heat and hoped they’d be able to pass out some packets.

They ran out of all 1,000 packets by 10 a.m.

The group bought more sandwich baggies at Walmart, overnighted supplies from Amazon, and packaged more handouts in the hotel room.

By the end of the convention, they’d given away 3,000 packets to FFA students. In a typical year, they give out about 800 to 1,000 bracelets total at the FCFI booth, Free says.

“What Satan meant as a stumbling block for FCFI was turned into a mighty blessing by God,” he says.

By the second and third day, attendees were stopping the FCFI volunteers to talk. They’d had a chance to read the flier the day before.

“They started asking us, ‘What is going on here?’” says Free. “And we’d tell them.”

In one of her emails, Jackson asked Free to “focus on sharing your message in a positive and respectful manner rather than creating conflict, confusion, or doubt about the leadership or decisions of our organization.”

But Free says the kids have a right to know.

“It’s their organization.”

UPDATE 8/6/26: This story was updated with National FFA’s statement.

Keely Covello has covered this story since January of 2025. More than 18 months, close to 20 articles, interviews with the ranchers, ecologists, attorneys, and neighbors watching a 150-year-old community dissolve in real time.

With the ending now days away, this episode of The Read is the whole story, start to finish, in one place for the first time. If you have followed along, this is the story assembled into a single arc. If you are new to it, this is everything you need to know about what happened here, and why it should matter to you no matter where you live in the United States.

Subscribe now

The episode runs through the parts of this story that never made the national coverage:

The whistleblower. A former Park Service superintendent documented the government’s playbook in 2006, such as using water-quality complaints as a weapon to get ranchers off the Channel Islands. Then he stood in front of the Point Reyes families in 2014 and told them they were next.

The scientist. A grazing ecologist turned rancher who gathered 10 years of data showing how the ranchers and their cattle benefited Point Reyes and tried in vain to get someone at the Park Service to care.

The Blackhawk. The 1997 raid on the last holdout ranch on Santa Cruz Island. Officers in ski masks pulled a 15 year-old girl out of bed, as the government mobilized to seize the last piece of private land in Channel Islands National Park.

The lawfare. The ranchers won their environmental review, earned a recommendation for renewed 20-year leases, and then watched the same green groups sue again because they did not like the outcome.

The conspiracy. Internal emails revealed Park Service officials, who portrayed themselves themselves as neutral, celebrated the ranchers’ removal. Did they conspire with the NGOs all along to get the ranchers out?

The money. The $10 million state grant The Nature Conservancy secured before the deal was finalized, that the ranchers were never told existed. The $40 million in donor dinners hosted in Marin County mansions to discuss “the future of Point Reyes” over wine and appetizers. Congressman Jared Huffman who brought the NGO into the talks and then hosted the town hall for a post-mortem after the papers were already signed.

The last rancher standing. David Evans, the one rancher free to speak because he never signed an NDA, who gave UNWON his first interview.

This is not only a California story. The same agency, running the same playbook, has now moved ranchers off many places across the United States. Open questions remain, and UNWON is not done following this story.

Listen to the full episode above. All of the reporting behind it, close to 20 pieces, is here on UNWON.

The Read is UNWON’s narrated journalism, reported and hosted by Keely Brazil Covello. This episode is a retrospective drawn from 18 months of coverage.

Subscribe now

Show Notes

• The Point Reyes Act of 1962 and the 1978 amendment, codified at 16 U.S.C. § 459c-5, which gave the ranching families first right of refusal on their leases

• Chris Bray’s FOIA reporting on the National Park Service emails

• Sonoma Mountain Institute grassland monitoring data referenced by Nate Chisholm

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Subscribe now

READ MORE:

All but two of the bought-out ranching families have left Point Reyes.

“It’s devastating,” says Albert Straus, founder of Straus Family Creamery in Marin County. Two of the departing dairies were his suppliers. More than his business, he mourns his community.

“We’ve lost over 200 people between the farm families a…

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Josepha Littlewolf Thunderheart Basurto, age 31, was found shot to death in a pickup truck near the Round Valley Indian Reservation northwest of Covelo, California. Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall believes her murder is connected to “transnational drug organizations and illegal ma…

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Steve Hilton is running to restore California’s unique spirit. The Republican nominee for governor says his campaign isn’t partisan; he believes government should get the basics right—roads, schools, public safety, water—then leave people alone.

He calls it the rebel spirit: the soul of a state built by people who did things their own way, now smothered by a bureaucracy that tells Californians what to drive, how to build, makes their lives unbearably expensive, and destroys the infrastructure that built the state.

Hilton was born in London to parents who escaped communist Hungary, ran domestic policy from 10 Downing Street, then chose California, and American citizenship. He’s campaigned across the state, and wrote the book on its decline (Califailure).

In this conversation, Steve Hilton goes deep on the issues impacting rural California:

Water. Trump’s “giant spigot” is real; he’s seen it. Hilton discusses how bureaucrats decide what flows through the Delta pumps, and why he says he can raise deliveries almost immediately, no new construction required. Plus his on-record commitment to protecting the Potter Valley dams and supporting a buyer.

Power. Behested payments, “legalized corruption,” breaking up PG&E, $3 gas, and why working people are subsidizing Teslas they’ll never drive.

Land. Wolves attacking cattle while ranchers face arrest; why predator decisions should be returned to counties. Cartels in the forests and a governor who has never once met with the state’s sheriffs. Bringing back the timber industry; six billion board feet a year, now down to about a billion and a half, while lumber is trucked in from Canada and overgrown forests burn.

Winning. He talks about what happened to Spencer Pratt in L.A., the ground game Charlie Kirk helped him plan, and the math: (6 million votes takes the state, and Trump got 6.1 million here in 2024).

Hilton makes his pitch to the ranchers and hippies, farmers and libertarians, loggers and back-to-the-landers of California’s forgotten half, united mostly by being governed by people who have never set foot in their counties. Whatever your politics, if you live on this side of California, this conversation is about your water, your power bill, your forests, your future.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Referenced in this episode:

• Steve Hilton for Governor: stevehiltonforgovernor.com

• Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State by Steve Hilton

• Golden Together — Achieving Water Abundance, the water blueprint co-authored with Edward Ring, and the Modern Forest Management paper: goldentogether.com

• High Country Murder — Keely’s documentary on the unsolved killing of Mendocino County rancher Dick Drewry in the Emerald Triangle: americaunwon.com/p/film

• UNWON’s Potter Valley coverage: Rollins and Burgum convene meeting between PG&E and potential dam buyers · Secretary Rollins fires back at Huffman · Who would want the Potter Valley dams? Meet Darcy Burke of Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District

• UNWON: UC Davis study finds beef is the main food source for California wolves

• Victor Davis Hanson — Is California Reaching Critical Mass?

On Friday, the Trump administration announced the single most significant Endangered Species Act (ESA) reform in decades: the federal government will no longer interpret habitat modification as “harm” to endangered species.

It marks a seismic change in the way the ESA is enforced that could reshape everything from ranching and logging to commercial fishing, homebuilding, water management, and energy development. Supporters say the move will end decades of overreach and a habitat mitigation micro-economy built around regulatory compliance.

The Trump administration says this restores the original meaning of the ESA, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference—the legal precedent that once allowed unelected officials to develop rules based on their interpretations of laws passed by Congress.

The heart of the dispute

The debate centers around the meaning of the word “harm” in the text of the ESA. The ESA, passed in 1973, outlaws “take” of endangered plants and animals. It defines “take” as to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”

In 1981, government agencies expanded on the word “harm” to include any meaningful impact to a listed species’ habitat. This allowed the government enormous power over any industry and land uses they deemed impactful to those habitats.

Trump’s Commerce and Interior Departments now say this interpretation is too broad—“harm” only means affirmative acts that do direct damage to a listed plant or animal.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the old interpretation was weaponized against industries and private property rights.

“For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,” said Burgum in a news release. “This action restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed.”

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) first proposed getting rid of the old definition in April 2025, opening a public comment period that drew thousands of responses from environmental organizations, industry groups, states, and private citizens. On Friday, the agencies finalized that rule, largely as proposed, clearing the way for it to take effect after publication in the Federal Register unless blocked by a court. Rather than write a narrower definition of “harm,” the agencies are deleting the 1981 regulatory definition altogether—letting the original statute stand alone.

Analysts estimate annual savings up to $521 million

This reform is in keeping with Trump’s larger vision for deregulation and cutting red tape.

Officials say the move will not just unshackle industry and restore private property rights, it will cut costs. An entire cottage industry has grown around the 1981 definition of harm: a roughly $10 billion habitat-restoration economy supporting more than 53,000 jobs.

Until now, private landowners, developers, timber operators, and other producers needed an incidental take permit (ITP) before initiating activities that could impact a protected species. To obtain such a permit, they had to submit a formal plan for mitigating habitat impact, called a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

By ending the era of broad habitat protection under the ESA, officials estimate annual savings of between $361.3 million and $521 million.

Environmental groups like Earthjustice are already vowing to sue.

“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” said Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles. “Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump administration’s rule—no scientific support, no legal support, no public support. We will see the Trump administration in court.”

But property rights and industry advocates see this as freeing citizens from subjective enforcement and overregulation.

During the comment period, as the Trump administration considered this regulation change, a coalition of more than 40 agriculture and property groups including the California Farm Bureau, Family Farm Alliance, National Milk Producers Federation, and Western Growers Association, filed a formal letter urging officials to drop the old definition.

They argued federal agencies had used it to impose regulatory burdens based on “subjective preferences for the ecosystem rather than known consequences to individual members of a species.”

“To be clear, we live and work in the West, and we embrace our natural heritage. However, species recovery and economic prosperity do not have to be mutually exclusive,” the coalition wrote.

They argue the change will make ESA enforcement more predictable and effective by tying liability to direct injury of protected species instead of subjective judgments about potential habitat impacts.

Impacts to ranching, logging, and energy production

Supporters of the new rule point to decades of high-profile disputes they say illustrate how the broad interpretation of “harm” reached far beyond direct injury to protected animals, influencing many aspects of American life.

Ordinary ranching operations such as grazing, water development, fencing, and brush clearing that modified habitat could count as a prohibited “take” and a violation of federal law. Many ranchers have been forced to obtain ITPs just to continue managing their herds, building expensive HCPs that often involved paying for mitigation or altering long-established grazing practices.

Restrictions around habitat for the lesser-prairie chicken restricted ranching operations and energy projects across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado for years.

The dunes sagebrush lizard, listed in 2024, blocked energy projects in the Permian Basin.

The spotted owl listing devastated logging across the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, reducing timber employment in those regions by between 16,000 and 32,000 jobs according to one 2021 estimate.

Developers have also argued that habitat-based permitting requirements delayed residential construction and infrastructure projects in areas where listed species were present, even when no individual animal was harmed.

Officials cite end of Chevron deference

The 2024 Supreme Court case Loper Bright v. Raimondo brought about the end of so-called “Chevron deference”—a 1984 precedent that allowed government agencies to use best judgement in interpreting ambiguous laws. Post-Loper Bright, courts are no longer required to defer to agency interpretations.

Without Chevron, the Trump administration says the wide-reaching application of “harm” in the ESA is no longer acceptable.

In 1995, the Supreme Court upheld the broad definition of “harm” in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, finding it permissible under Chevron, though not compelled. A legal question remains: Does this decision hold in a post-Chevron landscape?

That question is likely to become central as environmental organizations challenge the Trump administration in federal court.

The new rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register Tuesday, July 14, and is subject to a standard 60-day delay.

Ranchers in California’s rural north say wolves pose an existential threat to their cattle. New research from U.C. Davis backs them up: Cattle made up the majority of wolves’ diets in Northern California in 2022 and 2023.

For those two summ…

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The first episode of The Read, the new UNWON segment where I narrate my investigative reporting straight from the page, no cuts.

We open with “Pay to Play,” an investigation into REAL AZ Economic Development Group: a Navajo County, Arizona nonprofit run by sitting county officials, out of county offices, that took in more than a million dollars from the same wind and solar developers those officials were voting on.

It started with a multigenerational rancher named Casey Murph and a European solar company that turned up at his family’s grazing allotment. The question we set out to answer is the one that runs through the whole report: did that company just happen to find Casey Murph, or was he handed to them?

The Source Material:

This was my first work trip since having my baby in December, and I’m taking you along for this fitting kickoff to America’s 250th birthday week. It’s only right that the nation started its semiquincentennial celebration by honoring the men and women who feed it.

Rose Garden Dinner Honoring Farmers & Ranchers

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The flesh-eating parasite the U.S. wiped out 60 years ago is back across the border, and suddenly everyone has a PhD in parasitology.

This episode of Ranch Beat covers the facts: what New World Screwworm actually is, how it clawed its way back up through Central America and Mexico, steps the USDA is taking to address it, and why some of the loudest voices online are doing real damage with bad information.

Dr. Brazil, a large animal veterinarian of almost 40 years, walks ranchers through exactly what to watch for, how to treat it, and what really happens when APHIS shows up at the gate.

And they end where these stories always should: not with the grandstanders, but with the rancher who caught that very first case by paying close enough attention to a newborn calf. The quiet, daily care that the people who actually do this work never stop giving.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Today, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins directed the Forest Service to change how it interacts with ranchers. She made it clear: Grazing on public land is a priority for the Trump Administration.

Read more

Weeks after fifth-generation Arizona rancher Casey Murph raised the alarm about a foreign solar company trying to access his family’s grazing allotment, he met with representatives from the Arizona State Land Department.

He had first heard from Orsted, the European company interested i…

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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has responded to a congressional investigation launched by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) into the USDA’s efforts to stop proposed dam removals in Northern California.

Last month, Rollins announced that a buyer

Read more

Nicolette Hahn Niman has one of the more unusual biographies in American public life: environmental lawyer, former vegetarian, cattle rancher, Nobel Week speaker, author of Defending Beef, Point Reyes Seashore resident, and now, a congressional candidate challenging seven-term incumbent Jared Huffman in California’s newly redrawn District 2.

She’s also one of two ranching families still standing at Point Reyes after 11 ranching families were forced out in a secretive Biden-era deal brokered by the Nature Conservancy and wrapped in non-disclosure agreements—a deal Huffman reportedly helped engineer and was bound by NDA himself. The Nimans did not participate in the negotiations. Then they sued to protect ranching on the peninsula.

What made her run wasn’t just Point Reyes. It was a pattern: the oyster farm that came first, the ranchers who came second, now the local fishermen targeted. It was watching Jared Huffman, who came out of the NRDC, operate for 13 years with what she calls an “absolutist environmentalism” that treats every fisherman, rancher, logger, and farmer in the district as a problem to be managed rather than a constituent to be served. And it was Proposition 50: a Newsom-backed gerrymander that added Shasta, Modoc, and Siskiyou Counties to Huffman’s district, making it, as Nicolette puts it, ground zero for America’s rural-urban divide.

Keely has been covering two of the biggest stories in Nicolette’s world: the Point Reyes forced departure and the Potter Valley Project, both of which fall inside Huffman’s district, both of which she weighs in on. They talk about the closed-door NDA process that resulted in the displacement of 200 people and 30 schoolchildren. They talk about what she’s heard on the campaign trail from Shasta to Siskiyou. They talk about the Klamath parallel, Secretary Rollins, and why she’d like to see the Potter Valley Dams stay. And they cover about what it would mean to have someone in Congress who literally wrote the book on defending the beef industry.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Gavin Newsom has never once met with California’s 58 sheriffs.

Not a sit-down. Not a representative sent on his behalf. Not a returned phone call. Every governor before him had a standing relationship with the men and women running law enforcement in the state. Newsom ended it the day he took office; rural California has been paying the price ever since.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is running for Governor of California. He’s not a politician, he describes his campaign as a citizen’s rebellion. But he has been elected to run the fourth largest sheriff’s office in the country for over seven years. He’s spent the last year driving the length of California talking to talking to the people who grow its food, fight its fires, and manage its land. He’s met with farmers, ranchers, loggers, and water district managers. He knows where the Scott Dam is. He knows what the Potter Valley Project means to 750,000 people. He’s tracked Chinese and Mexican cartels through California’s forests. He’s watched Gavin Newsom refuse to return a single call from California’s sheriffs.

In this conversation, he goes deep on the issues that actually affect working Californians, the ones Sacramento pretends don’t exist:

Water. Why the last major reservoir built in California was 1979 (we’ve doubled in population since then), why the state keeps routing water to the ocean instead of storing it, and what the Scott Dam removal would actually mean for the North State.

Fire. Why the Palisades Fire wiped out 20 years of California’s carbon reduction in a single event, why prescribed burns take two to three years to permit, and why bringing back the logging industry is essential.

Illegal cannabis and cartels. How legalization created a more dangerous black market, what Chinese, Russian, and Mexican criminal organizations are doing in California’s forests, and why Sacramento takes credit for enforcement it didn’t do.

Agriculture. Why California has lost nearly a quarter of its farms since 1982 and up to 900,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland may be taken out of production due to water policy, why small farmers are being regulated into selling to big ag, and what it would take to reverse this dismaying trend.

Law enforcement and Newsom. The standing relationship between governors and sheriffs that Newsom destroyed, and why Jerry Brown warned them on his way out: “You have no idea what’s coming.”

Predator policy. Wolves, mountain lions, grizzly reintroduction proposals, whether he’d delist the gray wolf, and what Fish & Game has gotten completely wrong

CCW and Second Amendment. Why access to concealed carry permits varies wildly by county and what that means for rural Californians who are 45 minutes from the nearest deputy.

Energy. CPUC corruption, why he says utility rates would be cut in half the day he takes office, and the case for nuclear.

Bianco grew up in a small coal mining and farming town in Utah, came to California at 21 because it was the most perfect place he’d ever seen, and has watched it be systematically dismantled in the time he’s been here. He’s not running because he woke up one day and wanted to be governor. He’s running because he looked at the field, looked at the state, and decided someone had to.

This conversation is for the farmers in the Central Valley watching their fields go dry. For the ranchers in Modoc choosing between their cattle and the law. For the loggers in Humboldt who watched their industry get regulated into extinction. For everyone who’s looked at a ballot and wondered if it’s even worth filling out anymore.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

UPDATE (1:00 PM Tuesday): Shifting winds are threatening the historic ranch buildings on the north part of the island. Tankers appear focused on protecting Park Service headquarters, campgrounds, and possibly the historic buildings. The ranch house is thought to b…

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