Trump-Emboldened Extremists Could Spell Trouble For Biden Interior Dept.

"Experts worry it’s only a matter of time before Biden’s environmental agenda collides with anti-government militias."

"In October 2019, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) led a House subcommittee hearing on the effects of anti-government extremism on federal land management officials. The Government Accountability Office had recently documented more than 350 incidents of threats and assaults targeting land management employees between 2013 and 2017.

As the watchdog group noted, even that data did not capture the full picture, in part because not all incidents are reported. Some officials told investigators they “consider receiving threats a normal part of their job.”

Haaland, then in her first congressional term, stressed that these “extremist ideologies did not develop in a vacuum.” She read aloud a quote from former Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) on the 2014 armed standoff between federal agents and militias at Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ranch, in which Heller praised the militiamen as “patriots.” And she noted that Nevada state Rep. Michele Fiore had supported the armed militants who took control of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. Fiore, a Republican, dismissed the Bureau of Land Management at the time as “a bureaucratic agency of basically terrorism.”"

Chris D’Angelo reports for HuffPost March 7, 2021.

Source: HuffPost, 03/08/2021