Some interesting news in the When the Moon Turns to Blood/Bundy adjacent news: at the forthcoming Book of Mormon Evidence conference, Ammon Bundy's #oregonstandoff attorney Morgan Philpot will give a talk called "The End of All Nations" on the main stage.
The conference is really a who's who of hyper-conservative, fringe LDS figures: purveyors of the Heartland theory, Constitutionalists... a milieu I talk about in my book, but that @CristinaMartaR writes about concisely here: juvenileinstructor.org/the-mormonisms…
Rod Meldrum, whose bread and butter is the Heartland Theory, will be there. He also appeared on conference stages with Chad Daybell: now accused of three counts of murder, among other things. Meldrum told me he thought Daybell was "a nice guy" but didn't have anything else to say
Will there be a Skousen on stage? Yes! Joel Skousen will give a "world affairs briefing." His book "Strategic Relocation" is a guide to the safest places to wait out societal collapse - in his opinion. He thinks North(ern) Idaho is a great place to go, but...
This is the world where Daybell found a customer base for his books on near-death experiences and societal collapse. You can read more about that here: bookshop.org/books/when-the…
That first tweet is supposed to read "Bundy adjacent world." I thought this thing was getting an edit button...
Many people have asked if I am a part of the Netflix show “Sins of Our Mother,” about the Vallow/Daybell case. No, I am not. I was very excited to see it though, but now that I have… I was shocked at the number of errors and overlooked issues in the show, including:
- Lori Vallow’s parents somehow lie about the number of children they birthed? Lori’s sister Stacy, mother of Melani Boudreaux (a critical player in the story), is simply deleted from the family tree. Her story is critical to understanding Lori’s nieces’ affection for her aunt.
- Barry Cox, Lori’s father, is included in the show with no discussion of his longstanding anti-government views, tax protests and jail time. Cox asked me to pay him “six figures U.S. Dollars in cash money” for an interview. Did Netflix pay that to an extremist?
I've done a couple of speaking engagements lately where the same question has come up: "does it bother you when people call you a podcaster?" Short answer: yes, yes it does. Why? It overlooks my 20 years as an investigative reporter.
Secondly, it suggests to me that the only notable work I've done are podcasts. For two decades, I've written stories that didn't get turned into podcasts. And the subjects of each and every one of those is so important to me.
Like James Plymell — an unhoused man who died while being tased repeatedly by police in Albany, Oregon. hcn.org/issues/53.3/no…
Surprising absolutely no one in the Inland Northwest, two of the Patriot Front members crammed into the U-Haul this weekend are connected to a church helmed by former Rep Matt Shea. Who is that, you ask? *deep inhale* A thread:
Shea is a former Washington state representative who represented Spokane Valley. In that position, he took the time to travel to both the 2014 and 2016 armed standoffs helmed by the Bundys; invited Oath Keepers head Stewart Rhodes to discuss battle tactics over tacos…
Here’s a story I wrote about him in Rolling Stone four years ago, after local reporters had been covering him for ages. Time flies when you’re having … um: rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
Reports saying that only 1 person involved in the 31-person Patriot Front group detained today is from Idaho. So, not an Idaho group necessarily. As the national media zooooooms 🚁 🚁 on in, some background:
This might not be an Idaho based group, but North Idaho (and the region) remains particularly attractive to people with far right ideas. Historically speaking, CDA is not far from the former compound of the Aryan Nations, which was vehemently opposed by locals.
The ideas of Richard Butler are not gone, however. Hardly. N Idaho has been marketed in recent years as the American Redoubt - essentially a white Christian homeland, and a rebranding of Butler’s idea.
Very glad to see national media is paying attention to the embrace of the far-right in the west. This is not only a politics problem, but a religion problem. I’ve been writing about this almost exclusively since 2015. A long thread:
One thing I’ve come to understand is that people who believe the world can end at any moment, or perhaps embrace that as a part of their religion, are willing to do just about anything to see politics go their way…
Here’s a scan of a story I wrote for Playboy in the spring of 2015. It’s about a guy in Spokane Valley, near Idaho, and his survivalist cache. He thought the world could end any day: