Free Republic

A Republican candidate for governor of Utah has linked diversity, equity, and inclusion to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The bridge collapsed early Tuesday after the cargo ship Dali drifted into a bridge support. Among the reactions that looked past the immediate cause, state Rep. Phil Lyman appeared to indicate that the makeup of the commissioners for the Port of Baltimore was a factor in the incident. Lyman is challenging Gov. Spencer Cox for the Republican nomination... This is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens,”...

**SNIP** Trump’s four years in office greatly empowered anti-government extremists. His Interior Department repeatedly hosted people who want to see federal lands sold off. Fierce critics of endangered species protections and federal land management were tapped for powerful department posts. William Perry Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-environmental views who spent his career lobbying for the sale of federal lands, was put in charge of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Trump issued pardons for people like Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman (R) - who in 2014 led anti-federal land protesters on an illegal ATV ride on public lands that...

Kornze's BLM faced an angry, armed mob as it tried to round up Cliven Bundy's cows in a Nevada desert. Weeks later, a Utah county commissioner brazenly flouted the agency's closure of a sensitive river canyon. Wyoming recently sued BLM over its management of wild horses. ... Kornze's no stranger to land conflicts given his upbringing in Elko County, a stronghold of the 1970s and '80s Sagebrush Rebellion. ... On July 4, 2000, hundreds of protesters drove from Elko to Jarbidge, Nev., where they cleared a 4-ton boulder and rebuilt a road that the Forest Service had closed to protect...

The May 10 All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) ride into restricted Recapture Canyon is still moving forward, threatening a collision between local residents and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The ATV ride is planned by a group of Blanding residents in an attempt to force the BLM to make a decision on who has jurisdiction within the canyon, which is just east of Blanding. Motorized access to the trail has been in dispute since the BLM forced its closure in 2007. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who has planned the ride, does not plan to back down to mounting pressure...

SALT LAKE CITY — Five Utah men have been slapped with federal charges for taking part in an ATV protest ride in southwestern Utah earlier this year that the group said was to call attention to the federal government’s overreaching control of public lands. Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday they have charged the five southern Utah men with misdemeanor conspiracy and illegal use of all-terrain vehicles Wednesday in connection with a ride organized to show displeasure with the federal government. Prosecutors say the May ride through southwestern Utah’s Recapture Canyon was an illegal protest. “We respect the fact that the citizens...