“Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young," the singer said.
Legendary singer Joni Mitchell has announced she is yanking all of her music from Spotify to support Neil Young in his action against right-wing extremist Joe Rogan’s lies on the platform about COVID-19.
“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” Mitchell said in a statement on her website Friday. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue,” she added.
He accused Spotify of allowing people like Rogan to spread “false information about vaccines” and potentially cause death “to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” noted a Spotify statement Wednesday.
Earlier this month, 270 doctors and scientists, in an open letter to Spotify, blasted Rogan’s dangerous lies about the pandemic touted on his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which is carried by Spotify. Mitchell linked to a copy of the scientists’ letter on her website.
Rogan, for example, last year falsely suggested that young, healthy people didn’t need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus (then called himself a “fucking moron” for saying so). He also falsely claimed that President Joe Biden faked getting a COVID booster.
A push among music fans has been growing to dump use of the music site since Young’s statement on hashtags “Delete Spotify,” “Cancel Spotify,” and “Bye Spotify.” A number of websites offered step-by-step instructions for users to remove the app from their devices.
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He conveniently failed to mention Frank famously died in a concentration camp at the age of 15.
A general rule that reasonable people are aware of in the year 2022 is that when complaining about something that is not actual genocide, you should avoid equating it with the Holocaust. Is the thing that you want to suggest is just like the Holocaust the systematic murder of millions of people from a specific religious or ethnic group? Is it a policy of mass extermination through concentration camps, mass shootings, and gas chambers? Great news, you can compare it to the Holocaust. But what if it’s really not like any of that? Let’s say it’s merely a conversation about taxing the rich. Or a whiny complaint about people allegedly being mean to the 1 percent. Or any minor inconvenience that the majority of the population handles without throwing a massive hissy fit. If that’s the case, we’re sorry to report that you’re going to have to come up with a Holocaust-free analogy.
Unfortunately, the people who are somehow unaware of this rule, or know about it and don’t care, appear to be the loudest. Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also known as the living embodiment of the lesser-known phrase “The apple fell extremely far from the tree.” Junior spoke at a rally against vaccine mandates over the weekend, and boy, did he take the whole “this is just like the Holocaust” line and run with it. Whereas other idiotic commentators have been content to claim that vaccine mandates are on par with Nazi-era identification policies, Junior took things several revolting steps further, and suggested Anne Frank had it better off than people being asked to get a life-saving inoculation.
“Even in Hitler Germany [sic], you [could] cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” he told the crowd assembled at the Lincoln Memorial. “I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible.”
There is truly so much to unpack here, the least of all being that Frank and her family hid in the Netherlands, not Germany. Beyond that though, Junior’s assertion that Jewish people living in Europe circa the Holocaust had it better than anti-vaxxers residing in the U.S. is one of the most insane things we’ve heard in some time. “Even in Hitler Germany”? Does he hear the words coming out of this mouth? No one should ever say “Even in Hitler Germany” unless the next thing they say is “actually, wait, almost nothing is as bad as Hitler Germany. How embarrassing that I was about to suggest otherwise.” We also love that Junior is willing to concede that people lost their lives during the Holocaust (“many died, true”), but wants to stress that at least some people made it (“it was possible”). In his mind, such odds are apparently better than living under a regime that is not actually doing anything other than trying to get more people vaccinated for their own safety and for the good of society. Finally, we’re pretty sure that if an anti-vaxxer wants to hide in an attic somewhere, no one is going to go looking for them, let alone drag them out and send them to a concentration camp. In fact, many people refusing to get vaccinated are living perfectly happy lives at the moment and are not in fear of anything, let alone being murdered. Speaking of which, does Junior know what happened to Anne Frank at the end of her time in the attic? Because he strangely glossed over that.
In response to RFK’s comments, the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured … murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany - including children like Anne Frank - in a debate about vaccines … limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral … intellectual decay.”
Unfortunately, Junior seemingly had an extremely receptive audience for his historically inaccurate bullshit, since, according to CNN, he wasn‘t the only one at the rally likening the vaccine push to genocide:
Sunday’s event, billed as a protest against vaccine mandates, featured speakers repeatedly spreading misinformation about vaccines and showcased several bigoted comparisons to the Holocaust. At least one man was seen displaying a yellow Star of David, which Jews were required by law to wear as an identifier in Nazi Germany.
While language referencing totalitarianism was common throughout the speeches, references to the Holocaust were found largely on signs, one of which read, “Make the Nuremberg Code great again!” and another read, “Bring back the Nuremberg Trials.” The Nuremberg Code delineated “permissible medical experiments” on human subjects and stated that such experiments must be for the good of society and satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts. The code was established during the prosecution of German doctors who subjected Jews to torturous medical experiments.
Another sign with clear anti-Semitic sentiments read, “Corrupt, N.I.H., Big Pharma Mafia, Big C.D.C. Cartel; Big Fraud Media: Your circumcision is dividing America! You all have foreskin-blood stained money in your thug hands!!”
Also over the weekend, conservative commentator Bari Weiss went on Bill Maher’s show to declare that she’s simply “done with COVID,” a statement that may have been less inflammatory than RFK’s comments but was equally absurd given that COVID is not actually done with us. Calling it “ridiculous” that the vaccines haven’t caused a return to completely normal, pre-pandemic life, Weiss claimed that ongoing public health restrictions, like vaccine mandates and mask policies, will be “remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.” A moral crime! She then claimed that many of her “liberal and progressive” friends agree with her but are too afraid to say so out of worry they will be “smeared” as anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters, or science-deniers.
In response to Weiss’s temper tantrum, CNN medical analyst Jonathan Reinertweeted: “I’m glad she’s done with it but 3600 Americans died yesterday and over 860k have died in the last 2 years. Yes you were told that vaccines would bring us out of this but 25% of this country refuse to vax. Grow up.” Later, in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, Reiner put Weiss’s selfishness into perspective, noting, “my colleagues in hospitals all around the country went in to care for people dying from this virus. And continue to do that every single day…and for the first year of this pandemic, they did that without any protection of a vaccine. That’s the sacrifice they made.”
Then, in an actually apt pandemic analogy, he likened the U.S. to a sinking boat, and the measures to protect people as an effort to bail out the water. “And now we have people like Bari Weiss basically saying, ‘I’m done. I’m not bailing the water out anymore.’ And when somebody who is relatively young and relatively healthy says that, what they’re saying is: ‘I’ll be okay if I get this virus. Screw you. Doesn’t matter to me what happens to you.’ That’s the message I get from her.”
'One of the key interactions Joel Greenberg claims to have had with Matt Gaetz is a phone call informing Gaetz that they'd been sleeping with a minor.' (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty)
One of the key interactions Joel Greenberg claims to have had with Matt Gaetz is a phone call informing Gaetz that they’d been sleeping with a minor. Someone witnessed the call.
On Sept. 4, 2017, according to his confession letter, Joel Greenberg called his friend Rep. Matt Gaetz with some bad news.
A teenager both men had paid to have sex with was underage, Greenberg claimed. Now, two sources tell The Daily Beast, a cooperating witness can confirm details of that call for one damning reason: He was in Greenberg’s office when the call took place.
The witness, “Big Joe” Ellicott—Greenberg’s longtime best friend and an employee at the Seminole County tax office—recently pleaded guilty to fraud and drug charges as part of a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors.
Although Ellicott has so far avoided any charges regarding sex trafficking of a minor, which Greenberg pleaded guilty to last May, he was present for the call that Greenberg made to Gaetz on Sept. 4, according to two people briefed on the matter. The call, they said, was short—and Gaetz was the one who ended it.
While the sources did not know whether Ellicott had discussed the call with investigators, his account would likely be of critical interest, since it would match a key claim Greenberg made separately in a confession letter. That letter is now in the hands of federal agents, The Daily Beast previously revealed.
In the letter, which Greenberg wrote after his indictment in late 2020 as part of an effort to land a presidential pardon, the Orlando-area tax official claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg first learned she was underage after receiving an “anonymous tip” on Sept. 4, 2017, he wrote. He then confirmed her age by improperly querying the teen’s personal information in the Florida state drivers’ license database, which he had access to as a local tax collector.
“Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote in a handwritten draft of the letter, adding that Gaetz was “equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”
“There was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday,” he added.
A month after The Daily Beast’s report, the same date appeared in another crucial document: Greenberg’s sworn plea agreement with the federal government. The agreement also provided what could prove to be a damning additional detail; it included not just the date, but a timestamp down to the minute of when Greenberg accessed the DMV database to look up the girl’s age—1:29 pm.
Ellicott would be able to tie the two pieces of information together.
If investigators have Greenberg’s phone records—or Gaetz’s—the metadata could confirm whether Greenberg made the alleged call “immediately” after accessing the database. But those records wouldn’t reveal what was said. Ellicott could provide that information, and confirm that Greenberg had indeed warned Gaetz, who had been first elected to Congress less than a year prior. (Federal agents seized the panhandle Republican’s phone sometime around December 2020.)
Reached on Wednesday, Ellicott’s attorneys declined to comment. Gaetz’s office did not answer questions about the congressman’s recollection of the phone call, instead repeating a statement it has issued before: “After nearly a year of false rumors, not a shred of evidence has implicated Congressman Gaetz in wrongdoing. We remain focused on our work representing Floridians.”
Ellicott had hung out in Greenberg’s friend group for years. Unlike Greenberg, however, the former sports radio shock jock turned pawn shop proprietor was never close with Gaetz, though they attended some of the same parties around the time period in question, according to numerous people familiar with them.
But Ellicott’s corroboration, if true, would contradict Gaetz’s repeated assertions that he never had sex with an underage girl as an adult. As he told The Daily Beast last March, ‘“The last time I had a sexual relationship with a seventeen year old, I was seventeen.” Instead, it would suggest that Gaetz has been aware of this fact for nearly the entirety of his time in the House of Representatives.
The claim would also cast doubt on Gaetz’s protestations that he was blindsided when The New York Times first reported the accusations in March 2021, which he initially chalked up to merely an attempt to extort him and his wealthy father. He has since confirmed the investigation.
While Greenberg claims he warned Gaetz to “steer clear” of the teen, The Daily Beast reported that eight months after the alleged warning, the congressman Venmo’d Greenberg $900 in two back-to-back payments, writing in one memo field “Hit up ___,” using a nickname for the girl.
By that time, the girl was five months past her 18th birthday. Gaetz had turned 36 earlier that week—twice her age.
Spotify has removed famed singer-songwriter Neil Young's recordings from its streaming platform.
On Monday, Young had briefly posted an open letter on his own website, asking his management and record label to remove his music from the streaming giant, as a protest against the platform's distribution of podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan has been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines on his podcast, which is now distributed exclusively on Spotify.
Late Wednesday, the musician posted two lengthy statements on his website, one addressing the catalyst of his request and the other thanking his industry partners.
In the first, he wrote in part: "I first learned of this problem by reading that 200-plus doctors had joined forces, taking on the dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in Spotify programming. Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information of Spotify are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out."
As of last week, more than 1,000 doctors, scientists and health professionals had signed that open letter to Spotify.
According to Rolling Stone, Young's original request on Monday, which was addressed to his manager and an executive at Warner Music Group, read in part: "I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them ... They can have Rogan or Young. Not both." The letter was quickly removed from Young's website.
Spotify's scrubbing of Young from its service was first reported on Wednesday afternoon by The Wall Street Journal. His removal from the streaming platform makes him one of the most popular musical artists not to appear on Spotify, where his songs have garnered hundreds of millions of streams.
In a statement sent to NPR Wednesday afternoon, a Spotify spokesperson wrote: "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon."
Earlier this month, Young sold 50% of his songwriting copyrights to the U.K. investment company Hipgnosis Songs, which was founded by music industry veteran Merck Mercuriadis. Most of the recordings in Young's discography are distributed by Warner Music Group, though a handful are distributed by Universal Music Group.
In his second open letter posted late Wednesday, Young thanked those partners and acknowledged the financial hit they are taking, and said that 60% of the streaming income on his material came via Spotify. "Losing 60% of worldwide streaming income by leaving Spotify is a very big deal," Young wrote, "a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and our beliefs. Misinformation about COVID is over the line."
He continued: "I sincerely hope that other artists can make a move, but I can't really expect that to happen. I did this because I had no choice in my heart. It is who I am. I am not censoring anyone. I am speaking my own truth."
Covers of Neil Young songs by other artists remain available on Spotify.
As of Wednesday evening, no other prominent musicians had followed in Young's footsteps. Many musical artists are unhappy with Spotify for a variety of reasons — not least of which is that Spotify pays what many musicians believe is an infamously stingy royalty rate.
Still, it is the most popular audio streaming service in the world. According to the company, it has 381 million users in more than 184 countries and markets. Musicians want to meet their fans where they are, and not every artist or creator is willing to go to the lengths that Young has, in terms of putting their money where there mouths are.
Moreover, Joe Rogan's podcast is extremely valuable to Spotify: it has been the most popular one globally offered on the service for the last two years, and the exclusive distribution deal he signed with Spotify in 2020 is worth a reported $100 million.
Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, has said that his company isn't dictating what creators can say on its platform. In an interview with Axios last year, he said that Spotify doesn't bear editorial responsibility for Joe Rogan. In fact, Ek compared Rogan to "really well-paid rappers" on Spotify, adding: "We don't dictate what they're putting in their songs, either."
Mayor Sam Liccardo said a new fee for gun owners would support “evidence-based initiatives to reduce gun violence and gun harm.”
San Jose, California, is set to become the first U.S. city to enforce an ordinance requiring most gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance.
In a statement Tuesday night, Mayor Sam Liccardo said the City Council had voted in favor of both measures, which are aimed at reducing the risk of gun harm and relieving taxpayers of the financial cost of gun violence.
The council overwhelmingly approved the measures despite opposition from gun owners, who promised to sue, saying the measures would violate their Second Amendment rights. The ordinance still needs approval at a final reading next month before it can take effect in the Silicon Valley city in August.
The funds generated from the fees will be funneled into "evidence-based initiatives to reduce gun violence and gun harm," Liccardo said. The fee is expected to be around $25, Bay City News reported.
Meanwhile, having liability insurance is meant to encourage gun owners in San Jose to take safety measures, including having gun safes, installing trigger locks and taking gun safety classes.
Gun owners who do not acquire insurance, however, will not lose their guns or face criminal charges under the new rules.
"Thank you to my council colleagues who continue to show their commitment to reducing gun violence and its devastation in our community," Liccardo said.
The new measures, he said, will help build a "constitutionally compliant path to mitigate the unnecessary suffering from gun harm in our community."
He said he hoped other cities would “replicate these initiatives across the nation.”
As Liccardo celebrated Tuesday's vote, not all were happy with the outcome.
Sam Paredes, the executive director of Gun Owners of California, said before the vote that the group would sue if the proposal went into effect. He condemned it as “totally unconstitutional in any configuration," The Associated Press reported.
Liccardo said lawyers had already volunteered to defend the city pro bono if legal action is taken.
Opinion: Voto Latino is pledging to spend six figures to oust Sen. Kyrsten Sinema when she's up for re-election in 2024. Here's why the effort might work.
Voto Latino has had enough of Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and is pledging to spend “six figures” to get rid of her when she’s up for re-election in 2024.
The national grassroots political group is just the latest to pile up against Sinema, who has been formally censured by the Arizona Democratic Party’s executive committee over her support of the filibuster.
“The people of Arizona deserve a Senator willing to fight for democracy and protect the sanctity of every Americans’ vote,’’ Voto Latino’s Maria Teresa Kumar said, who announced the ¡Adios Sinema! campaign this week.
Sinema needs Democratic support to win
Voto Latino, just like the influential EMILY’s List and others who recently came out against Sinema, isn’t bluffing.
It has set up the adiossinema.org website to raise money and remind Arizonans that the first-term senator has blocked everything from voting rights to increasing the minimum hourly wage to $15 to pandemic relief for undocumented immigrants.
Sinema, who’s basking in Republican approval after she opposed changing the U.S. Senate filibuster rule, has clearly bet her future on her formidable ability to attract big donors in Arizona and elsewhere.
But she’ll need Democratic voters to get out of the primary – if she wants to stay in the U.S. Senate where its current 50-50 split gives her outsized power to shape or kill President Biden’s agenda.
She didn’t have a serious competitive primary in 2018 and went on to defeat Republican Martha McSally by 55,900 votes in the general election. That was possible thanks to a broad coalition of Arizonans, including independents, moderate Republicans and Latinos, who sweated out knocking on doors on her behalf.
She is no 'maverick' like John McCain
That won’t be the case anymore. Plus, according to Kumar, there will be another 160,000 Latinos of voting age by 2024 – adding to the already 1.1 million eligible to vote.
Others constantly remind me of Sinema’s bottomless war chest. They argue that her latest stunt actually makes her an unbeatable “maverick” just like the late Republican Sen. John McCain who was also censured by his party.
But Sinema is no John McCain and she won’t be a torchbearer of the McCain legacy – as much as she and her remaining supporters may want you to believe.
For starters, Arizona’s political landscape is dramatically different than when McCain was censured.
McCain, a Vietnam veteran prisoner of war and one-time presidential nominee, was no stranger to stiff opposition from conservatives who viewed him as too liberal. But in 2010, for example, he defeated conservative primary opponent J.D. Hayworth.
In 2014, the state’s GOP censured McCain for his “liberal record,” which hurt him but not enough to keep him from later winning the primary against Kelli Ward and the general election.
Ward, head of the Arizona Republican Party, is one of the leaders of the “Big Lie” of a stolen presidential election.
Politics have changed. Latinos could oust her
Those Republicans – the Trump loyalists and conspiracy theorists – are now the mainstream populists that hold the key to any and all statewide primaries. Neither McCain nor any other candidate would survive a GOP primary under today’s political reality without going all-in on Trump.
By contrast, the Arizona Democratic Party that censured Sinema over the weekend also reflects the broad sentiment among primary voters.
Yes, Sinema has the money to spread her message should she choose to seek re-election. But a 55,900-vote advantage isn’t unsurmountable.
That means Latino voters alone can stop her in her tracks.
Yes, there are more than two years until anyone can cast a vote against her, and that is an eternity in politics. But no money or time can stop a movement when so many have been so deeply hurt and feel betrayed.
Xiomara Castro, a left-wing leader, is due to be sworn in on Thursday to become the country’s first female president.
On the eve of Xiomara Castro’s inauguration as Honduras’ new president, concern was on the rise among her supporters that a worsening legislative crisis could derail her campaign promises and their hope for a better future.
President-elect Castro, the country’s first female leader, is scheduled to be sworn in at midday on Thursday, ending a dozen years of governments that oversaw worsening poverty and increasing outward migration, while being accused of corruption and ties to drug traffickers.
Pressure has been growing to find a way out of a political impasse that resulted in two rival congressional leadership teams.
Seventy-two-year-old Jose Ricardo Garay travelled to the capital from his home in northwestern Honduras to witness his first inauguration, saying he was eager to see the exit of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
“That man bothers me,” he said as he ate a tortilla filled with beans in front of the Congress on Wednesday. Garay was also unsettled by the divided Congress — the two leadership teams held simultaneous but separate sessions Tuesday — and echoed Castro that the split “was a betrayal”.
The rising concerns come after several newly elected lawmakers from Castro’s left-wing Libre party defected on Friday and elected their own congressional leader, Jorge Calix. They rejected Castro’s choice, Luis Redondo, a selection rooted in the political alliance that helped her win the election in November.
Castro called the move a “betrayal”, and said that her party had expelled the 18 lawmakers who defected. The dispute triggered chaotic scenes in Congress, prompting the United States embassy in Honduras to call for calm and dialogue.
The Latin America Working Group (LAWG), a US-based, non-profit group, said Castro is likely to face “forces of corruption” and organised crime that have infiltrated government structures as well as parts of the private sector.
“The U.S. government should work with the incoming President to fulfill her promises to end corruption and to improve the lives of Honduran citizens,” Lisa Haugaard, LAWG’s co-director, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The Biden Administration must work closely with diverse sectors of civil society in Honduras to address the root causes of forced migration, improve the lives of the most vulnerable, and to expand the space available to Honduran citizens to exercise their rights,” she said.
US Vice President Kamala Harris is set to attend Castro’s inauguration, in a show of US support, and as an effort to find a partner in her task of finding the “root causes” of migration to the US.
Helen Euceda, a 39-year-old doctor on her way to work, said it is critical that the new government focus its attention immediately on “the health and education of the people”.
“With (Castro) in government, it is an opportunity for women, who are capable of taking on problems,” Euceda said. “It won’t be short-term, but there is an opportunity to show the ability and gender inclusion.”
Meanwhile, critics say that neither of the leadership teams was chosen or installed legally and Tiziano Breda, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said that a quick political solution was urgently needed.
“Politically, you run the risk of provoking a legislative paralysis, where the initiatives approved by Calix are vetoed by the president or not even considered, while Redondo’s team doesn’t have the necessary votes in Congress or lacks legality,” he said.
Breda feared the crisis could extend to a third branch of the Honduran government if the dispute lands before the Supreme Court, which is viewed as friendly to the outgoing National Party of Hernandez and therefore distrusted by Hondurans who backed Castro.
The risk is that the continued uncertainty could deter badly needed international investments in Honduras, Breda said.
“At a social level, the resentment and exhaustion that drove the majority of Hondurans to vote for a change in November would be fed if they see the political class continues to be tangling up power struggles and individual interests instead of taking on the country’s urgent issues,” Breda said. “This could translate to more social turbulence and growing migration.”
That international support will be critical to Castro’s ability to begin reforming a country suffering from soaring unemployment and high rates of violence, two of the many factors that have driven Hondurans to flee the country in recent years.
According to data collected by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 319,000 Hondurans were apprehended along the US-Mexico border during the fiscal year 2021 — more than any other nationality.
A livestock helicopter pilot rounds up wild horses from the Fox & Lake Herd Management Area on July 13, 2008, in Washoe County, Nev., near the town on Empire, Nevada. (photo: Brad Horn/AP)
The U.S. government plans to capture more wild horses on federal lands this year than ever before, drawing sharp criticism from mustang advocates who hoped the Biden administration would curtail widespread gathers of thousands of horses annually across the American West.
Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning, known as an ally of conservationists on several public land fronts when she was appointed in the fall, says the agency plans to permanently remove at least 19,000 horses and burros this year.
That's 70% more than the previous high a year ago.
Critics say it’s a continuation of a decades-old policy that kowtows to ranchers who don’t want horses competing with their cattle and sheep for limited forage on agency rangeland in 10 states.
“It didn’t take long for Tracy Stone-Manning to sell out America’s wild horses,” Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral said.
In Nevada, home to about half the 86,000 horses roaming federal lands, three groups have filed a lawsuit challenging what they say is the illegal, inhumane roundup of more than 2,000 horses that's already underway near the Utah line.
Of the hundreds gathered so far, 11 have died, according to the agency's website.
At least one death was a colt that continued to be pursued by a low-flying helicopter driving the herd toward a holding pen even though it had a “clearly broken” leg, according to the lawsuit. It says the colt suffered for at least 29 minutes before it was euthanized.
“It is more than disappointing that BLM will continue the charade that they care about wild horses,” said Laura Leigh, president of the Reno-based Wild Horse Education, one of the plaintiffs.
Bureau spokesman Jason Lutterman declined to comment in an email to The Associated Press.
Stone-Manning said in announcing the 2022 roundup plans earlier this month the animals' population has declined since 2020 but is still triple what the government claims the land can sustain ecologically — something horse advocates dispute. The agency permanently removed 13,666 animals from the range in 2021.
The lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Reno says the agency is exaggerating drought conditions and exploiting legal loopholes with 10-year plans that combine multiple horse management areas without the necessary site-specific assessments.
Meanwhile, it says taxpayers continue to finance subsidies for the livestock industry through below-market grazing fees for millions of cattle and sheep causing more ecological harm than horses.
“Using drought as a fig leaf for its illegal actions, the bureau ... is depopulating the West of its wild horses and burros herd by herd and burning through taxpayer dollars with their endless roundups and holding facilities,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, lead co-plaintiff with the New York-based CANA Foundation.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association says the horse activists are threatening the future of rangeland ecosystems and the well-being of the horses themselves.
“Groups who file lawsuits like this continue to prove that they’d rather draft emotional press releases than contribute to meaningful solutions," said Kaitlynn Glover, the association's director of natural resources.
Roundups are an important part of the process of bringing the horse herds into balance with the range, she said.
The agency’s 2022 strategy includes treating at least 2,300 animals with fertility control and releasing them back to public lands — an approach supported by some but not all horse advocates — to stem the growth of herds that otherwise double about every five years. That's nearly double the previous high of 1,160 in 2021, the bureau said.
The agency acknowledges that, due partly to a sharp decline in demand for captured horses offered for public adoption over the past 10 years, it has been left in “the unsustainable position of gathering excess horses while its holding costs spiral upward.”
The lawsuit says the environmental assessment the bureau approved in May for the Nevada roundup described plans for a series of “phased gathers to remove excess animals” over a 10-year period, not “at once.”
