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Jason Heppler

Historian. Writer.

📍 tall grass prairies

The GOP Has Tried to Sell Public Lands for Fifty Years

Spend any amount of time among hunting, recreation, or agriculture communities right now and you'll be confronted with countless urgings to contact your Congressperson to protect the federal lands. The public lands, primarily thanks to Utah Senator Mike Lee, are once again at threat of being sold as

Introducing Tack & Ink

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. —Wallace Stegner If there is a singular animating

The Roundup: Public Lands, Farms, and the Far Right

Following up on the previous newsletter, the House Rules Committee removed an amendment in the Republican budget bill aimed at selling public lands. While the bill has moved to the Senate, it’s possible this will be brought up again. In any case, this won't be the last

Fighting for Land

The fight over public lands is back. In a House amendment to the Republican budget package, introduced by Utah Representative Celeste Maloy and Nevada Representative Mark Amodei and which could be voted on as soon overnight tonight, the budget bill may result in the sale of 11,500 acres of

The Rebellion Lives

The Sagebrush Rebellion lives on: The state is asking the justices to declare that the federal government's ownership of millions of acres of public lands in the state's borders is unconstitutional. The United States currently holds title to more than 18.5 million acres of "

The Return of the Prairie Populists

In 1892, the People’s Party gathered in Omaha to declare within their first platform that “we have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering.” Prairie progressives

The Legacies of the Bundyville Stand-off

Leah Sottile, host of the fantastic Bundyville podcast and contributor to High Country News, writes on the continuing legacy of the Bundyville stand-off. When the Bundys declared victory, it was hailed as a win for their vision of the American West. It was a victory for the entire far-right antigovernment

Goals

For reasons not entirely sorted in my own mind, I've decided to start a new writing space on the web. I have my long-standing blog at my website that I've mostly used for digital history writing, which I feel is rather pigeonholed into those topics. But