President Trump: The American West Needs Your Attention

As Trump takes office again, a look ahead at our generation's fight for the unwon American West.

Donald Trump’s second inaugural speech was pure Americana mythos.

The 45th and now 47th president of the United States looked into the crowd, his political rivals arrayed in discomfort behind him, and announced: “The Golden Age of America begins right now!”

There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls. Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on earth. No one comes close.

Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.

Donald Trump, second inaugural speech

I am compelled to repeat what I have been observing, filming, and writing through this project over the last few years. Mr. Trump: The West is in not won, it is in danger.

In a new generation’s fight for the American West, we face a new and formidable enemy. Here’s just an overview:

• The Department of the Interior has locked millions of acres of American western land out of citizen access.

• The Bureau of Land Management, run by an implicated eco-terrorist, pushed for a new official land use that would allow groups to apply for permits in competition with productive uses in order to abandon and isolate land in the name of “conservation.”

• The National Parks Service, behind the backs of the public and against the instructions of Congress, appears to be working with environmental groups to systematically remove American ranchers and farmers from federal lands.

• The Forest Service has neglected our forests, leaving millions of dead trees across the West, failing to prevent disastrous wildfires through proper management or to use fallen timber after a fire, leaving it instead dead across the forest floor, resulting in the closure of small domestic sawmills in favor of timber imports.

• In the name of green energy, ranchers and farmers are losing property rights to companies raking in enormous amounts of money to construct boondoggle carbon pipelines, wind turbines, and solar panels.

• Native American reservations are suffering from similar land grabs and the vicious, unmitigated presence of cartels and organized criminal groups on tribal lands enabled by our open Southern border.

• Climate policy at every level of government and media malign beef production and meat consumption in their dogged “war on beef” despite evidence that grazing restores soil, sequesters carbon, prevents wildfire, and facilitates a host of ecosystem services, while all U.S. beef cattle produce less than 2% of the nation’s total emissions.

• An estimated 6000 illegal black market cannabis operations exist on American public land, threatening citizen safety while destroying our watersheds, killing our wildlife, and endangering our access.

• Water rights are being stripped from farmers and ranchers across the nation and in particular California, where mismanaged water infrastructure threatens the largest ag economy in the nation. Governor Gavin Newsom is tearing down historic dams in agricultural communities while sending precious water to the ocean to protect the interests of fish over farms.

• In lockstep with animal rights dogma, states like Colorado are protecting and in some cases introducing apex predators in rural and ranching communities, and refusing to properly compensate producers for slaughtered livestock.

• Deep-pocketed environmental extremists, working under the protection of 501(c)3 status, terrorize family farmers and attempt to force deceptive farm bans on local ballots.

• Animal rights activists are attempting to redefine horseback riding as a potentially harmful activity through the revised Horse Protection Act (HPA), which would require USDA inspectors at equestrian events to monitor all proceedings, potentially opening a loophole for banning these events by bureaucratic dicktat.

• In the last 40 years we have lost 5 in 10 American beef ranchers, 9 in 10 American pork farmers, and over 50% of our meatpackers. The USDA has lowered standards for meat production in other countries in compliance with globalist demands while undercutting American producers.

• The Big Four meatpackers, in violation of antitrust laws, have consolidated 85% of the industry and locked ranchers out of profit opportunities. Extreme regulations and red tape prohibit competition.

• Despite public support, Congress has refused to pass mandatory country of origin labeling (MCOOL) for meat products, barring citizens from having even the option of supporting domestic producers.

• Several localities are attempting full-scale bans on rodeo events.

• The death tax is ending generational ranching, forcing land into development, and threatening our stewardship tradition and the future of small independent farming and ranching.

• Individual persecutions of ranching families show an anti-producer mentality has infested all levels of state and federal government agencies.

If American freedom and government was born in 1776, the American spirit was forged in the West.

Those thirteen colonies on the edge did not send armies to conquer the continent, but citizens. Men, women, and children in covered wagons, trucking their books and china over prairies and mountains. We do not owe to expansionary armies our legacy in the “must be seen to be believed, and believed to be seen” landscapes of the American West. We owe this heritage to the courage of ordinary citizens.

From New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Chicago to Miami, from Houston to right here in Washington, D.C., our country was forged and built by the generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom. They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward, and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride. Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced. After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore America'a promise, and we will rebuild the nation that we love.

Donald Trump, second inaugural speech

We have a chance to fight for a new era of opportunity and independence in our unwon frontier. Covering the issues facing our community, culture, and independence in rural and working American and particularly the West today is an honor, and I’m very grateful for the support this project has received. In a recent conversation about this project, a former member of the Trump team told me there are journalists and writers seeking to call attention to the issues of the Midwest, but almost no one is doing this work for the American West. I heard this repeated over and over again at our short doc premiere on Capitol Hill a few months ago.

We have much more to share with you and to announce in the immediate days and weeks ahead. If you are not yet a subscriber, please consider becoming part of this grassroots “cowboy journalism” effort. The real work begins.