Glenn Beck: FEMA camps debunked

GLENN: Oh, yeah. Here's our here's, you know, the usual update for you. Third most listened to show in all of America. I'm, you know, basically a rodeo clown and I'm glad you're here. Welcome to it. It's the Glenn Beck program. That would make me Glenn. Jim Meigs is the editor in chief of Popular Mechanics. Popular Mechanics is obviously a very well respected magazine, and I first stumped across Popular Mechanics' debunking ability on the 9/11 conspiracy, and they did such an amazing job with that, I mean, they nailed that closed. Any of these 9/11 Truthers who I've been telling you for years are dangerous wait a minute, there's evidence now about the guy in Pittsburgh possibly being associated with just rumors being associated with 9/11 Truthers? Huh, that's weird.

Anyway, so Jim Meigs and Popular Mechanics did that. I think I snapped about, when was it, Stu, three months ago? About two months ago I snapped on the air and I said, can we stop with the FEMA camp thing. Well, my crew went to work on it and they said, Glenn, we can disprove this, this and this because those things exist, you know, here, here and here. And I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? You are telling me we can't prove it but we can't disprove it?

When I got to work the following day and we were supposed to have it on the TV show, I realized that we didn't have any film, we didn't have any pictures. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, it can't be just one man's opinion. I want pictures. I want proof. If they exist, I want pictures. If they don't exist, I want to know what those pictures that you see on the Internet actually are. That's when we called Jim Meigs, Popular Mechanics. He is with us now. Hi, Jim.

MEIGS: Hi, Jim, how are you today?

GLENN: I am really looking forward my staff has seen all of the pictures and the video that you have taken. You guys actually went out to one of these FEMA camps, right?

MEIGS: That's right, one of the most popular videos online showed the facility. And when you see the footage, I think you'll find it really eye opening how big the gap is in reality between what the claims are that are made online and what the much more mundane reality is in the real world.

GLENN: Okay. Let's I don't even know where to I don't even know where to start here. I know there's a lot you have stuff that we can't, obviously because we're radio we can't show you now, but all of these are going to be we're going to cover all of these pictures and the video tonight, right?

MEIGS: Yes.

GLENN: Okay.

MEIGS: And what we try to do is the same thing we did with the 9/11 conspiracy theories. We can't tell you every we're not trying to tell you everything that FEMA's doing. Instead what we're doing is we're taking the claims that the conspiracy theories themselves make and we're just saying you claim that this barbed wire fence hides a big FEMA prison camp? Well, let's look and see what this picture really is. Let's send a crew. Let's just really establish what the facts are. And so we take the examples that are most popular on the Internet and just look and see if they're true or false.

GLENN: Okay.

MEIGS: And we go into it with an open mind, but we often find that the reality that's being presented by these groups is so far from the truth.

GLENN: Jim, what I found just on my own initial, I finally said, you know what, it's worth looking into was that there are things that, you know, in executive orders and FEMA laws, et cetera, et cetera that if you push it to the crazy extent, if you push it to, well, yes, the whole world is breaking down and we've gone into martial law that they do have the ability to do some of these things. True or false?

MEIGS: Well, it depends what the things are that you're talking about. The

GLENN: Well, not gassing Americans.

MEIGS: Well, one thing you see picked up a lot on these sites is a lot of old executive orders going back to the Kennedy administration and those have been revised and tightened up over the years but specifically none of these executive orders can overturn the Constitution, and in fact under the Reagan in the Reagan years a lot of the executive orders were unified and specifically with a specific statement that nothing therein is intended to violate the Constitution.

GLENN: Okay.

MEIGS: So, you know, it's important to remember that even a president can't do that. I do think people worry sometimes about the abuse of federal power and power accumulating in various situations. I think that it's important for people to be vigilant about that, which is precisely why things that are dishonor are terrible exaggerations don't really help that cause. They make people who are worried about abuses of executive power just look silly and, in fact, these are important issues that we should always be vigilant about.

GLENN: And this is why I've been saying on the air that we cannot we've got to be very careful. Somebody sent me some stuff from Nancy Pelosi that Nancy Pelosi apparently said, you know, all these really we've got to seize property and everything else. And I said and I called this person back and I said, where did you get this? And they said, well, you know, it comes from a good source, it's from a friend of mine; he said he checks it out. And I said, I don't believe any of these. If they are, I'm leading television with these on Monday, but I can't believe. Send them to the brain room. None of them are true. None of them are true. So we have to be able to be reasonable and actually talk about facts. So I'm going to play a little bit, and you'll see all of this on television, but this is from one of the most watched YouTube things on the FEMA camps. It is a gated building. It runs about 30 seconds and I want to I'll play a little bit. You'll see this on television, but here's a little bit of what you see on YouTube.

VOICE: This small building is the only way into a particular fenced area. Inside this building we see more of the motion activated detectors, electronic turnstiles and prison bars. All of the renovations to this property have involved putting in new fencing, electronic turnstiles, concrete flooring in unused warehouse buildings and putting in large gas furnaces on buildings that were never heated anytime in the past 20 years.

GLENN: Putting in large gas furnaces. Holy cow, Jim. So this place exists.

MEIGS: Yes.

GLENN: You found it.

MEIGS: Yes, we did.

GLENN: You saw the footage, you went back and went into those same buildings that they went into and what did you find?

MEIGS: Well, we didn't find Auschwitz which is the implication of that video. And I think it is what we found is that it's a train repair facility just as the sign on the gate says. But, you know, if you look at the world from a certain perspective, any chain link expense is going to look suspicious to you and

GLENN: Well, my neighbors didn't like one.

MEIGS: But sometimes if you just knock on the door and ask to be let inside, they are happy to let you in and show you around. That's exactly what we did. It's an ordinary Amtrak facility. What's particularly interesting, that video is almost 15 years old and

GLENN: This has actually come out during the Clinton administration, right?

MEIGS: That's exactly right. And what we see often is that nothing really goes away on the Internet and something can be debunked, disproven or just be totally out of date and yet someone will pull it up, they will reedit it, they will put it into new context and someone will come along and see it. And these things often look very credible. They look like they are produced by news organizations or, you know, if you go to these websites, they have lots of facts and figures and maps and things that look very legitimate and so it takes a little bit of effort sometimes to dig down and say, okay, what is the source of that and in some cases you need to go pick up the phone and go visit a facility and see for yourself and see that the reality's really not as scary as it it's being portrayed.

GLENN: They had scary gates, we'll show you the deal. They had prison bars and these turnstiles that were leading right into what they claimed were gas chambers.

MEIGS: Yes, actually those turnstiles aren't there anymore but that was a, it was a work facility and that was there. They had some kind of magnetic pass cars or something like that to let people around.

GLENN: When you say work facility, that was for the Americans that were taken when they were to work?

MEIGS: That was for the people who were repairing the trains and if you think about it

GLENN: Why would they need prison bars and turnstiles like that?

MEIGS: Well, the turnstiles to me look a lot like the turnstiles they have to get into the New York subway.

GLENN: Trains. Interesting that that happens to be a common theme here, also used by Hitler, trains.

MEIGS: If you want to look at the world that way, you know, everything leads back to Hitler. But if you also think about it

GLENN: My vegetable garden doesn't.

MEIGS: But if you also think about it, a train facility actually is a fairly highly ought to be a fairly highly secure environment. There's a lot of expensive equipment in there and, you know, we know today that terrorists have targeted public transportation around the world. So the notion that they were controlling access to the workers coming in and out isn't really so strange.

GLENN: Tell me. There's two other camps that you've covered. One is a camp that we have photographic evidence of.

MEIGS: Yes.

GLENN: In Wyoming.

MEIGS: Yes.

GLENN: Tell me about that.

MEIGS: The yeah, this comes up on a number of websites and there's some satellite imagery showing of various buildings and identifying them as a prison camp somewhere in Wyoming and

GLENN: May I, may I just ask, Jim, is it true that this is a prison camp, it is a concentration camp where most likely horrors are going on?

MEIGS: That is absolutely true. And as you often see in conspiracy theories, there is a grain of truth to this. But they left out one detail. The prison camp is not in Wyoming. It's in North Korea.

STU: (Laughing).

MEIGS: And the pictures were

GLENN: Okay, all right. Stop Meigs, stop with your spin. Is it true that there are horrors going on in this camp most likely? It is run by "The government" and it is a concentration camp.

MEIGS: It's all true.

GLENN: It's all true. It's all true. Okay, North Korea, Wyoming, they got one thing wrong. But the rest is true!

MEIGS: And Glenn, I guarantee you the segment of dialogue between you and me right there will be clipped and excerpted and the rest of our conversation will be cut out and that will be on a website by tomorrow.

GLENN: Exactly right. That's exactly right.

MEIGS: Because we've seen this happen again and again where people will make a statement, it gets edited down so that it seems to mean the exact opposite of what the people were trying to say. And that's recirculated endlessly on these conspiracy websites.

GLENN: I mean, do you think it's responsible for the editor in chief of Popular Mechanics to be calling for an arms insurrection like you just did?

MEIGS: Right, and when did you stop beating your wife.

GLENN: Okay.

MEIGS: This is a particularly interesting one. Actually there's some evidence that these pictures might have originally appeared online as part of a hoax, but again nothing ever disappears on the Internet and so what happens is they get picked up, they get reprinted, they get passed from hand to hand. So somebody just digging into this you know, a lot of people are interested in this for perfectly valid reasons. There's nothing wrong with being concerned about the direction of the political situation. There's nothing wrong with being suspicious about FEMA or any other branch of the government. That could be healthy.

GLENN: Yes.

MEIGS: But when people dig in and look at this information without subjecting it to any kind of scrutiny and without being

GLENN: But, you know, Jim, nobody has, nobody has the time. I mean, I look at stuff and you have to use common sense and say, okay, well, this doesn't sound right. But most people don't can't call the editor in chief of Popular Mechanics and say, hey, can you find and track down these prison camps.

MEIGS: That's true to some extent. But you know what? There have been cases where ordinary citizens have looked at these lists and they said, hey, that one, that's near my house. And one case up in Maine, a guy drove over to one of these sites that was near his house and sure enough, it was an old Air Force base that had been decommissioned and now it's run by the fish and game department and you can get in there and go hiking, you know, fishing. I mean, it's

GLENN: So hang on just a second. You are saying that you are saying that live, organic life is caught with hooks on these campsites?

MEIGS: It's I know the outrages never cease.

GLENN: It never, it never does. And next I'm going to hear that you say this same life is, you know, hit sometimes in the head and killed with a hammer.

Okay. So Jim, who is the woman that made the tape and we heard her voice a minute ago where she said spooky stuff and it scared me.

MEIGS: Yes.

GLENN: Who is she?

MEIGS: I believe her name is Linda Thompson. I've got to double check that last name. I've got it in my notes here.

GLENN: Okay.

MEIGS: Linda Thompson. She was one of the leaders of the militia movement. You remember the militia movement, you know, the black helicopters and the idea that, you know, our

GLENN: This is right after Timothy McVeigh if I'm not mistaken.

MEIGS: It led up to Timothy McVeigh. He was certainly a part of that and it continued into the Nineties and among other things that she promoted was the idea that her followers needed to go to Washington and start shooting senators. And a lot of people in the militia movement even kind of renounced her as being too extreme. But again no one

GLENN: Hold just a second. Wait, wait. Wait, wait. I just want that to sink in. So the lady making the tapes on the FEMA camps.

MEIGS: Right.

GLENN: Is a woman that was kicked out of the militia movement that said go kill senators because she was too extreme?

MEIGS: I don't know if anybody can really be kicked out of a loose movement like that but, yes, there was some

GLENN: Right, yes, okay. We want to get our facts right that she wasn't excommunicated. They just kind of went, yeah, don't really talk to her; shun her a little bit because she's crazy.

MEIGS: Right. But what's interesting is here's this video she made ages ago, and a lot of this is actually kind of repurposed. A lot of this fear about prison camps originally started when the UN was going to come and do this. Well now after Katrina we've got a new villain. You know, FEMA is the all purpose villain and certainly FEMA has plenty to answer for, but the but you'll see the same things reemerge with kind of in new bottles. And so here you see this fear that there's going to be some kind of takeover of our government. A lot of it honestly goes back to the movie Red Dawn. Do you remember Red Dawn?

GLENN: Yes, I do.

MEIGS: And it's a very enjoyable movie but it's a movie. And I think sometimes you see it's maybe shaped people's world views a little more than any movie should.

GLENN: Isn't there, isn't there one of these FEMA camp things that actually has footage from that movie?

MEIGS: There may be. I haven't seen that clip yet but, you know, people will take this stuff, they will reedit it. So people might be looking at listening to Linda Thompson's voiceover from this footage that she made and think it's a newscast or they don't exactly know where it comes from. And again it can sound credible if all you do is just look at a video on YouTube.

GLENN: Okay. From Popular Mechanics, Jim Meigs. And he is going to be with me tonight and you are going to see the A/B comparison. You are going to see what they say and then you will see Popular Mechanics cameras going out to verify, either say yes it is or no, it's not. So much more tonight on the Fox News Channel at 5:00 Eastern time. Jim, thanks a lot.

MEIGS: Thanks, Glenn.

EXCLUSIVE: Tech Ethicist reveals 5 ways to control AI NOW

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By now, many of us are familiar with AI and its potential benefits and threats. However, unless you're a tech tycoon, it can feel like you have little influence over the future of artificial intelligence.

For years, Glenn has warned about the dangers of rapidly developing AI technologies that have taken the world by storm.

He acknowledges their significant benefits but emphasizes the need to establish proper boundaries and ethics now, while we still have control. But since most people aren’t Silicon Valley tech leaders making the decisions, how can they help keep AI in check?

Recently, Glenn interviewed Tristan Harris, a tech ethicist deeply concerned about the potential harm of unchecked AI, to discuss its societal implications. Harris highlighted a concerning new piece of legislation proposed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. This legislation proposes a state-level moratorium on AI regulation, meaning only the federal government could regulate AI. Harris noted that there’s currently no Federal plan for regulating AI. Until the federal government establishes a plan, tech companies would have nearly free rein with their AI. And we all know how slowly the federal government moves.

This is where you come in. Tristan Harris shared with Glenn the top five actions you should urge your representatives to take regarding AI, including opposing the moratorium until a concrete plan is in place. Now is your chance to influence the future of AI. Contact your senator and congressman today and share these five crucial steps they must take to keep AI in check:

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

Create legislation that will prevent AI from being designed to maximize addiction, sexualization, flattery, and attachment disorders, and to protect young people’s mental health and ability to form real-life friendships.

Establish basic liability laws

Companies need to be held accountable when their products cause real-world harm.

Pass increased whistleblower protections

Protect concerned technologists working inside the AI labs from facing untenable pressures and threats that prevent them from warning the public when the AI rollout is unsafe or crosses dangerous red lines.

Prevent AI from having legal rights

Enact laws so AIs don’t have protected speech or have their own bank accounts, making sure our legal system works for human interests over AI interests.

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

Call your congressman or Senator Cruz’s office, and demand they oppose the state moratorium on AI without a plan for how we will set guardrails for this technology.

Glenn: Only Trump dared to deliver on decades of empty promises

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The Islamic regime has been killing Americans since 1979. Now Trump’s response proves we’re no longer playing defense — we’re finally hitting back.

The United States has taken direct military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever you think of the strike, it’s over. It’s happened. And now, we have to predict what happens next. I want to help you understand the gravity of this situation: what happened, what it means, and what might come next. To that end, we need to begin with a little history.

Since 1979, Iran has been at war with us — even if we refused to call it that.

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell.

It began with the hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were seized and 52 were held for over a year by the radical Islamic regime. Four years later, 17 more Americans were murdered in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, followed by 241 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing.

Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 more U.S. airmen. Iran had its fingerprints all over it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian-backed proxies killed hundreds of American soldiers. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan and 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, Iran supplied IEDs and tactical support.

The Iranians have plotted assassinations and kidnappings on U.S. soil — in 2011, 2021, and again in 2024 — and yet we’ve never really responded.

The precedent for U.S. retaliation has always been present, but no president has chosen to pull the trigger until this past weekend. President Donald Trump struck decisively. And what our military pulled off this weekend was nothing short of extraordinary.

Operation Midnight Hammer

The strike was reportedly called Operation Midnight Hammer. It involved as many as 175 U.S. aircraft, including 12 B-2 stealth bombers — out of just 19 in our entire arsenal. Those bombers are among the most complex machines in the world, and they were kept mission-ready by some of the finest mechanics on the planet.

USAF / Handout | Getty Images

To throw off Iranian radar and intelligence, some bombers flew west toward Guam — classic misdirection. The rest flew east, toward the real targets.

As the B-2s approached Iranian airspace, U.S. submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities. Minutes later, the bombers dropped 14 MOPs — massive ordnance penetrators — each designed to drill deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers. These bombs are the size of an F-16 and cost millions of dollars apiece. They are so accurate, I’ve been told they can hit the top of a soda can from 15,000 feet.

They were built for this mission — and we’ve been rehearsing this run for 15 years.

If the satellite imagery is accurate — and if what my sources tell me is true — the targeted nuclear sites were utterly destroyed. We’ll likely rely on the Israelis to confirm that on the ground.

This was a master class in strategy, execution, and deterrence. And it proved that only the United States could carry out a strike like this. I am very proud of our military, what we are capable of doing, and what we can accomplish.

What comes next

We don’t yet know how Iran will respond, but many of the possibilities are troubling. The Iranians could target U.S. forces across the Middle East. On Monday, Tehran launched 20 missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, Syria, and Kuwait, to no effect. God forbid, they could also unleash Hezbollah or other terrorist proxies to strike here at home — and they just might.

Iran has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to begin the process. If the Supreme Council and the ayatollah give the go-ahead, we could see oil prices spike to $150 or even $200 a barrel.

That would be catastrophic.

The 2008 financial collapse was pushed over the edge when oil hit $130. Western economies — including ours — simply cannot sustain oil above $120 for long. If this conflict escalates and the Strait is closed, the global economy could unravel.

The strike also raises questions about regime stability. Will it spark an uprising, or will the Islamic regime respond with a brutal crackdown on dissidents?

Early signs aren’t hopeful. Reports suggest hundreds of arrests over the weekend and at least one dissident executed on charges of spying for Israel. The regime’s infamous morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, are back on the streets. Every phone, every vehicle — monitored. The U.S. embassy in Qatar issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans.

Russia and China both condemned the strike. On Monday, a senior Iranian official flew to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. That meeting should alarm anyone paying attention. Their alliance continues to deepen — and that’s a serious concern.

Now we pray

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell. But either way, President Trump didn’t start this. He inherited it — and he took decisive action.

The difference is, he did what they all said they would do. He didn’t send pallets of cash in the dead of night. He didn’t sign another failed treaty.

He acted. Now, we pray. For peace, for wisdom, and for the strength to meet whatever comes next.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Globalize the Intifada? Why Mamdani’s plan spells DOOM for America

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If New Yorkers hand City Hall to Zohran Mamdani, they’re not voting for change. They’re opening the door to an alliance of socialism, Islamism, and chaos.

It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?

Mamdani blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone.

Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he's saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.

Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.

Rising Islamism

But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.

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This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.

Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.

Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.

Blending the worst ideologies

And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.

If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.

This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.

Call out radicalism

We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.

The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

How private stewardship could REVIVE America’s wild

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The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

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Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.