While I’m annoyed by my dealings with our government over a district water scheme and the bullshit around Highly Productive Land I’m grateful that this has not resulted in me being visited by armed police.

Yet!

A farming family in South Dakota were not so lucky during the era of Biden, although Trump has now rescued them via his Secretary of Agriculture.

The Maudes are not criminals. They have worked their land since the early 1900’s and something that should have been a minor civil land dispute that was over and done with quickly turned into an overzealous criminal prosecution on a hardworking family that was close to losing their home, children, and livelihood. Not in this America, not under President Trump. 

I’d only heard of this story because Red State covered it in 2024. You can also read the wonderful history of this family farm at their own business website, Maude Hog and Cattle.

What happened was that the Maudes farm bordered a Federal property called the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, run by the US Forest Service (USFS,) and somebody complained about a “No Trespassing” sign on the boundary fence that blocked them accessing the Grasslands area. The Maudes were advised of this and met with the USFS (including one “Special Agent” Lunders) to figure out what to do.

The USFS did a survey that revealed that the boundary fence, which had been there since their great, great, grandfather, Thomas Maude, set it up in 1910, and which had long been accepted as correct by all concerned, was in the wrong place and about 25 acres actually belonged to the government. They’d also had a proper allotment over that piece of land, courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture, since 1960, so they got involved as well. But the Maudes were never notified when the surveyors turned up (headed by Mr Lunders) and have never seen the survey (or the original complaint). But what happened next was worse:

Lunders arrived unannounced at the Maudes’ home on June 24, 2024, armed and in tactical gear, to serve the couple with separate federal indictments. The indictments were for the alleged theft of government property stemming from the placement of a fence built at least 75 years before. The Maudes each faced 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines over the 50 acres in question and were ordered not to speak to one another about the case.

Theft of government property? AYFKM? As well as a lack of good faith, negotiations and simple reasonableness. That last bit about the couple not even being able to talk to each other was because of the separate indictments, which also meant they each had to get a lawyer, doubling the cost of defense against the bottomless pockets of the government. This all happened pretty quickly, as this timeline put together by a State Senator showed in the original Red State article, from March to June, 2024.

And it got worse still, as none other than the Agriculture Secretary commented:

This family, targeted solely over what should have been a civil dispute over grazing rights over 25 acres of government land, was prosecuted, credibly threatened with jail sentences, so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children. 

I don’t think this was because the Biden Administration had a grudge against the Maudes. As far as anybody can tell the same could be said of all the USDA and USFS minions involved with this case.

But in a way that makes it worse; it’s just another example of how the human element was completely removed here and replaced by a monstrous bureaucratic machine that simply cranked up and would have destroyed the Maudes in cold-blooded fashion if not for the election of Trump last year.

Even so – as I’ve thought in the many other examples of bureaucratic overreach that has been stopped by the Trump Administration – if I were Secretary Rollins I’d be firing every bureaucrat that was involved in this travesty, starting with Agent Lunders, because if she doesn’t, this sort of thing will happen again.