Bundyville revealed
In 2014, Cliven Bundy led a high-profile government standoff at his ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada. He had been using public land to graze his cattle for decades but refused to pay the federal fees, eventually coming to owe the Bureau of Land Management over $1 million in fees. Two years later, in 2016, Cliven’s son Ammon Bundy kicked off a 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, where one of the leaders, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed by police. Finicum is widely considered a martyr in the anti-government Patriot movement.
On both occasions, anti-government militias surfaced to support the Bundys, and after cases against the Bundys resulted in mistrials, the government eventually backed down. Many anti-government groups were emboldened by the success and became more willing to use violence to get what they want.
On this week’s episode, we team up with the podcast series “Bundyville,” produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and Longreads, to trace the spread of right-wing violence from a little-known bombing in Nevada to a plot to blow up a government building.
Tiffany Cluff was at home with her daughters July 13, 2016, when a man knocked on her door and told her that he was going to bomb her family’s house. She got her kids and ran. The first bomb blew up the house. The second was in a car parked next to the house.
Tiffany knew the bomber. It was Glenn Jones, a co-worker and friend of her husband, Josh Cluff. Jones, who was killed in the attack, was the only person harmed. Everyone in the quiet town of Panaca, Nevada, where the attack happened, was left wondering why Jones had targeted the Cluffs’ house.
When police raided Jones’ home, it appeared as though he was planning to bomb a Bureau of Land Management building in response to Finicum’s death, but had attacked the Cluffs’ home instead. Jones’ plot was a continuation of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which was a continuation of the standoff at the Bundy ranch.
Since the standoff at the Bundy ranch, reports of extreme violence by anti-government and white supremacist groups have been rising.
For Bill Keebler, the 2014 standoff was a rallying cry. After joining the standoff, Keebler decided to start his own militia. It was small, at most 12 people, and focused primarily on defense.
Within a few months, Keebler received a call from Finicum, whom he had met at Bunkerville and was planning his own Bundy-style standoff with the government. Keebler and his militia went to help out. One militia member, Brad Miller, proposed setting off a bomb on the road of Finicum’s ranch, but at the time, Keebler was against the idea.
Miller was one of three undercover FBI agents in the militia, along with three confidential informants who also were part of the group at various times. In the spring of 2016, Keebler told the militia that they were going to target a BLM building in Arizona. The FBI made him a fake bomb and arrested him the morning after he pushed the button. It’s one of a minority of cases we found in which a right-wing extremist plot has been foiled by the FBI.
A Reveal collaboration with Type Investigations in 2017 found that only 12 percent of right-wing extremist incidents were part of sting operations, while nearly half of domestic incidents motivated by Islamist extremism were.
Listen to the story here.
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Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
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Congressman calls for action to combat exploitation in senior residential care industry
In a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor, Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., called for regulations of the senior residential care industry, asking the agency to provide a full accounting of its efforts to combat the “troubling trend of wage and hour violations.”
This marks the federal government’s first step in tackling the industry’s abuse of mostly poor, immigrant caregivers, many of whom earned as little as $2 an hour to work around the clock with no days off, while some operators make millions.
Scott’s action was prompted by our recent two-part investigation, which found at least 1,400 cases in the last decade in which care-home operators broke minimum wage, overtime or record-keeping laws.
Our investigation already has received responses at the state level, as the California Fair Employment and Housing Department is launching a new education and outreach campaign aimed at thwarting employment discrimination in the industry.
Read the story here.
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Can algorithms be racist? Trump’s housing department says no
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is circulating new rules that would make it nearly impossible for banks – or landlords or homeowners insurance companies – to be sued when their algorithms result in people of color being disproportionately denied housing.
Last year, we used a statistical analysis in our series on modern redlining and found that, in 61 cities, people of color were far more likely to be turned down for a home loan than their white counterparts – even when they made the same amount of money, tried to take out the same size loan and buy in the same neighborhood.
The rules introduce loopholes that would make it easier for businesses to dispute discrimination claims. Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said she is concerned that if these rules are put in place, similar methods of discrimination might be applied to other departments as well.
“Once they strike it down in housing, they’re going to try and strike it down in education and they’ll try and strike it down in transportation and health care and so forth and so on, and we just cannot let that happen.”
Read the story here.
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Documents show: Forwarding this email to a friend will help you evade unwelcome interlopers.
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