The 2026 Election, 2nd Edition: The early season.

July 6, 2025

I started drafting this, barely, as the Big Ugly started its final set of debates in the Senate.  As I did that, this came out Musk broke, for the second time, with Trump, and claimed he'd form a new party if the Big Ugly passed.

And now Musk has announced he's doing just that.

Well, good for him.

I'm not posting this a a cheerleader for Musk.  Musk is very much part of what's wrong with the United States.  He's a poster child for what occurs in a country where has unrestrained capitalism.  His caring about people claim can be doubted.  The largest donor to the 2022 election, and the former Gauleiter of DOGE, there's no reason to trust that his view of what the nation's politics ought to look like comport with an actual decent set of political beliefs.

But this does symbolize something I'd noted at the time.

The 2026 election has begun.It'll interesting to see how this pays out.

Lummis is up for reelection, assuming she runs, and she will.  She'll blame the Democrats for anything that goes wrong, and talk about being the Cyberqueen.

If she faces a solid challenger, after the Public Lands vote, she'll be in trouble.

The House seat is also up.  Hageman won't run for that however, she's going to run for Governor.  She's going to lose that.

Chuck Gray is going to run for the House, and he'll lose that.

Times are changing. Whether or not The Big Ugly passes, Trump has shot his bolt.  True acolytes can wear "Trump was right about everything" truckers caps, but the opposite is proving to be true.

And this is about to get a lot worse for the GOP.

cont:

And now Nebraska's Don Bacon.  The Congressman is in a district that's becoming increasingly Democratic, and my guess is it likely now will be a Democratic seat.  The Republicans only hold a seven seat majority right now, which will be reduced to a five seat majority once the Democrats fill two vacant seats.  Even assuming the Republicans hold every seat they currently have with out Bacon, that would reduce them to a four seat majority.

But they won't hold every seat. The House will flip.

cont:

Even Elon suddenly woke up.

At the time I posted that, I noted the departure of Don Bacon from the candidate rolls for the next election.  Now, Tennessee's Mark Green has outright left.  The GOP held 220 seats and the Democrats 213, but two of the unfilled seats will go to Democrats once vacant seats are replaced, reducing the pre Big Ugly margin to 220 to 215.  With Green actually now gone, that's 219 to 215.

The House will return to the Democrats in the 2026 election.

By that time, it's my guess that the utility of Donald Trump will be gone, and the utility of being shocked that he has dementia will set in.

J.D. Vance will be President by then, with the NatCons hoping that he isn't tainted by anything that went wrong under Trump.  Without Vance, nothing that's happened so far will last very long.

What will occur in the Wyoming midterm, which will address in another post on a somewhat separate theme will be really interesting. There's a good chance that Hageman and Lummis won't survive the midterms and that Gray will be defeated in his effort to climb the next rung of the latter, a sign that he'll he'll soon leave the state entirely, it no longer serving any purpose for him.

July 10, 2025

Interesting article pointing out that Musk's third party effort is a long shot, but still has a shot.

Jonah Goldberg: Elon Musk’s America Party is a long shot

Already, I'd note, the one thing the Democrats and the GOP are agreeing on right now is that you must not vote for any new Musk party.

Not that I would.  The values that the South African Mass Sperm Donor Billionaire hold are very far from mine.  DOGE was stupid beyond belief.  And frankly, I don't think that the Federal Government needed to be smaller in the first place, and that the common belief that it does is simply a "common sense" bromide that people believe because they believe it.  But he is right about the looming budget crisis.  I'd fix that much differently than Musk would.

But I don't think his party, should he form it, can necessarily be discounted.  By next election the declining Trump, will sound more and more like mush.  Trump already often sounds like this:

Or this:

 

The room to take Trump on is increasing, and the question is how much the NatCons really want to invest in a bowl of oatmeal as a figurehead.  That could prove to be a bad strategy.

One thing I'll note is that I have a thread I haven't posted yet pondering a sort of Wyoming Party.  I should have finished it as I could sort have been to this topic first.

And Musk certainly has the cash to get his views out. As he does that, the GOP will spend a lot of cashing yelling "don't listen to the right wing nut!"

Of course, the Democrats will agree with the Republicans on that, as not voting for a third party is the one thing they agree on. . . which is ironically one of the things that an American Party could point to as a reason to vote for it.

I'd also note that if an American Party was intelligent, which there's big reason to doubt that it would be, and carved off some of the real conservative topics from the GOP, and was actually fiscally conservative, it might appeal more broadly than the GOP suspects.

In more local news, former primary candidate Reid Rasner, who ran to the right of John Barrasso, and who forced Barrasso to run to the right of himself, has filed a lawsuit in the 2nd Judicial District against far right former state senator Anthony Bouchard for defamation.

July 10, 2025, cont.

So, the news on Ranser and Bouchard seems more clear.  Rasner claims that Bouchard ruined a major economic deal he was working on to buy TikTok by emphasizing that Rasner is a homosexual, which Rasner does not deny. Bouchard had a sexual scandal of his own that came to light earlier on, which, the way I typed it out, would seem to suggest that Rasner's being a homosexual is a scandal, which he doesn't deny (his orientation) in his lawsuit. 

Bouchard dropped out of the legislature after his own rather gross sexual scandal came to light, so the fact that he'd make any kind of a big deal out of Rasner's homosexuality is really petty.  Apparently screwing and impregnating 14 or 15 year olds, albeit when he was 19, is not as bad as Rasner having same sex attraction.  At least, the argument seems to be, you are screwing the opposite gender, so that's better.  I'll leave that to others to judge. But why would one far right figure go after the other?

Proper sexual orientation seems to be the only reason. So, really, in the MAGA world screwing a 14 or 15 year old when you are 19 is, well, one of those "Romeo and Juliet" type of deals, to use Bouchard's words, but being a homosexual is just wrong.

Of course, from an Apostolic Christian point of view, sexual relations are only licit between a man and a woman inside a valid marriage, which can occur only once, while both of the couple are living.  Inclination doesn't matter, and is not sinful inside itself.  But that's not the modern United States, where a serial polygamist is the alleged President and who was a friend of a procurer (which perhaps he was unaware of), but he's okay as he has the right attraction.  Most Populist Americans seem to believe that there's nothing really wrong with 1960s sexual libertine behavior, as long as its directed towards the opposite sex.

Rasner must figure his bolt is shot politically, as publishing himself as a homosexual will kill any chance he has of office in contemporary Wyoming.  He's not the first Wyoming homosexual to have sought office, and three Wyomingites who were homosexuals have served in elective office, with two of them being open about it.  I'd be stunned if there aren't any now, other than the one legislator who admits to being homosexual.  Indeed, it'd be interesting if the sexual conduct of every Wyoming political figure came to light so that the MAGA adherents could be exposed to the full sunlight.   Maybe they're all pure in their carnal desires, and properly oriented, but I'd be surprised.

An interesting thing here, I'd note, is that Rasner ran to the right of Barrasso, which puts him in full NatCon territory.  The NatCons feel that homosexuality is a total abomination.  This points out a really curious aspect of it, however, as individuals who can carry the Populist banner don't seem to see a conflict with those who would basically burn them at the stake.  No matter what a person thinks of it, homosexuality wasn't something that traditional conservative Republicans cared about at all.  Hardcore NatCons sure do.

July 11, 2025

The Secretary of State, whose job in Wyoming is to be a Secretary, is once again criticizing the Governor, whose job is to govern.

Gordon Defends Energy Platform; Gray Says Wind, Solar A ‘Woke Clown Show’

Gray clearly can't stay in his own lane, and is clearly running for something else.  Wyomingites are pretty sharply divided on him, with the far right seeing him as some sort of brilliant crusader, and many others seeing him as a self serving buffoon looking for the spotlight to shine on himself.

July 22, 2025

In what was very clearly the first political campaign rally of Chuck Gray's 2026 campaign for Governor, Chuck spoke at The Hanger in Bar Nunn. 

Spewing his usual stew of nonsense decrying "the radical left", he then turned against Radiant Energy, which has reportedly received opposition in Bar Nunn.  Chuck has learned how to sound like a diehard full Trump right winger except on things unpopular, at which point he becomes nearly a Green Peace activist.  You really can't thread his positions together in a straight line.

He also predictably railed against Governor Gordon.  Gordon is theoretically barred from a third term, but only theoretically.  Gray clearly feels that Gordon may be running, and the fact that Gordon hasn't been a far right drone has made him the target of Gray's ire. 

An interesting thing here is that this the opening of his attempt at the Governor's office. Very reliable inside information had Gray going for Harriet Hageman's seat, but this would suggest that might have changed, or that Gray just doesn't have anything real to discuss.  If Hageman decides to run for a second term, which as an opponent of public lands she might regret doing, Gray won't challenge her.  Hageman may know, however, that her chances for the Governor's office are now dead in the water. For that matter, her chances of reelection to Congress may be as well, but there she can try to deflect attention by clinging tightly to her support of the still popular, in Wyoming, for right now, Trump.

You also can't really explain why a Secretary of State would need a "town hall".  The job is about as interesting as wall paper paste if it's actual role is discussed.

July 29, 2025

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Hageman's Popularity Has Many Uncertain If They’ll Run For Governor

Worth noting, Hageman might not be as popular as she once was following her support of Mike Lee's land grab effort.

July 30, 2025

Gordon among nation’s most popular governors despite criticism from right flank, poll finds

: National survey of Wyoming voters shows Gordon’s popularity has remained steady throughout his tenure.

July 31, 2025

Tom Lubnau:  Which Gubernatorial Candidates Can Raise the Funds Necessary to Run

August 2, 2025

Gray weighs his odds in race for Wyoming governor or U.S. representative

Anonymous Rifle-Themed Site Targets Hageman For Defending Public Lands Sale

The site:

Project Winchester

Hageman has condemned the site as promoting violence due to its use of a rifle theme, which is pretty ironic for the GOP in Trump's era.

August 11, 2025

I suspect people are beginning to get a bit nervous about what their support of the land disposal move will mean at the ballot box.

They should.

One reason I suspect this is that billboards thanking the politicians are showing up.  Two billboards featuring all three are thanks from "the energy industry', and ironically show the background of the Tetons.

That presumably means petroleum and coal, but it's really hard to say. The energy industry wasn't under attack to start with, so its not even clear what the thanks is for.  Why do they need to be thanked?

Somebody wants everyone to remember, I guess, that all three stand with the "energy industry".  We knew that. They stand with us on public lands. That's the point.

Another one around here thanks John Barrasso from the health industry.  That's laughable.  It's supposed to be for cutting waste from Medicaid.  His support of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says all you really need to know about where Dr. John's heart really lies.

Both Barrasso and Gov. Gordon were at some  health related event last week.  I've lost track of what it was.  Barrasso isn't up for reelection for years, so all of this image redirection is really interesting.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 1st Edition: Spring Training Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2024, 2026, 2026 Election, Carpetbaggers, Catholic, Conservatism, homosexuality, Politics, Populism, Predictions, religion, Republican Party, The Big Ugly, The relationship between men and women, trends, Wyoming

A response from Hageman.

 Received this today, a bit latter than expected.

Dear Mr. Yeoman,   On July 4th, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This is the completion of the budget reconciliation process, which allows for expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation, and delivers on the agenda the American people voted for in November. When the OBBBA was before the Senate, Senator Mike Lee from Utah submitted a proposal to allow for limited, targeted public land sales to assist with housing and community development. This draft provision was ultimately removed from the bill, did not become law, and was something I was never asked to vote on in the House.   While this proposal was never before the House, I did receive countless messages of concern regarding what it meant. Unfortunately, much of this concern was manufactured via misinformation issued by environmental groups who want to “rewild” the West and who do not have our state or our communities’ best interests in mind.    The federal government owns over 640 million acres of our surface estate, with the vast majority being located in the interior west and Alaska. I believe that much of those lands should remain in the public domain. Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Devils Tower, our national forests, wild and scenic rivers, and our abundance of wildlife and fisheries habitat are just some of the amenities that we enjoy and must protect now and into the long distant future.      There is also a reality, however, that the federal government, through agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and United States Forest Service (USFS), currently own land that they cannot or will not manage, and many of these lands are now contiguous to our cities and towns and hinder our ability for these communities to grow. By way of example, there is no reason for the BLM to own urban lots in downtown Las Vegas and Reno, yet it does. We have communities in Wyoming that are landlocked by the BLM, such as Kemmerer, who are unable to meet the housing demand of young families and workers who seek to make those places home. I am often asked about how we keep our children and grandchildren in Wyoming rather than watching them move away. In short, the only way to do so is if we have jobs and housing, and that is the exact issue that Senator Lee was attempting to address. It was his effort to begin the consideration of a narrow and targeted fix to address the housing and development challenges that plague the West.    Contrary to some of the misinformation circulated about Senator Lee’s bill (e.g., that it would sell off 15 million acres, that Bill Gates would be buying the National Parks, etc.), he specifically proposed the disposal of only 0.25% to 0.50% of BLM lands located within five miles of existing population centers and only for the purpose of housing development. “Federally Protected Lands” (for example, National Parks, National Monuments, the National Wilderness Preservation System, the National Wildlife Refuge System, and more as defined in the text) would not be eligible for sale. Lands with existing rights (i.e. grazing and energy development) and lands utilized for recreation were further excluded from the proposed sales. In order to be sold, lands would need to be nominated by a buyer, who would be limited in acres acquired under any single purchase, which would then trigger a consultation process with the state and local government. If approved, a portion of the revenue generated from the sale would be returned to the community to assist with community development needs.    The fact is that the Senate started a discussion centered around finding a sensible solution to the housing crisis in our communities, an issue that is exacerbated by the large federal footprint in states like Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. Unfortunately, there were several groups that saw this as an opportunity to raise money through fearmongering and misinformation.     I want to reiterate that this proposal was never introduced in the House, and I never voted on it.  Senator Lee withdrew it shortly after he introduced it. I was encouraged to see this issue finally receiving some attention at the national level. While we in the western United States deal with the challenges of a large federal footprint on a daily basis, our counterparts in the East do not.  As your member in the U.S. House of Representatives, I have introduced the No Net Gain in Federal Lands Act, which would restrict further expansion of the federal estate, which I think is an even more crucial policy as we assess how we address this issue.    Thank you again for your willingness to reach out to me directly with your inquiry. Please understand that much of what you have heard about this proposal is likely inaccurate and that Senator Lee was merely attempting to answer the needs of our local communities, who are hampered from further development due to the oversized footprint of the federal government in our states.  Sincerely, Rep. Harriet Hageman Member of Congress

At least Hageman seems to have the courage in her convictions.  Here, however, that provides a reason not to support her in the future for concerned with public land, or the users, of any kind, of public land.

Pioneer Myths, Imported Politicos. Public land sales, part 2. The historo-religious motivation for some (but certainly not all) of the backers.

Indians attacking a wagon train, Frederic Remington.

Recently we posted this, arguing that Mike Lee's background and religion informs his views on grabbing Federal lands in the West:

Lex Anteinternet: Pioneer Day. Pie & Beer Day. Public land sales, ...: Flag of the putative State of Deseret. Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact - religion and politics should not be...

In that, we noted this:

One of the Salt Lake newspapers has started a series on this, noting basically what I just did (I actually started this tread prior to the paper).  This doesn't cover it all, however.  It'd explain none of what we see in Wyoming backers like Harriet Hageman.  We'll look at that next.

Now we're taking that look.  More specifically, we're looking at the question of how Harriet Hageman, John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis can look at the people who voted them in, and say, basically, "screw you and the horse you rode in on".

We'll note first that we don't think the answer is the same for all three of them.

Let's start with Hageman.

Hageman, unlike Mike Lee, is not a Mormon. For that matter, neither are Barrasso or Lummis (although we'll note that Barrasso's religious history should inform our views on him.  Indeed, it's difficult to learn much about Hageman's religious background at all.  Sometimes she's listed as a "Protestant", which she no doubt is, but that doesn't mean much in this context, as that category includes such things as Anglo Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans, to liberal Episcopalians.  It also includes the vast numbers of various small Protestant churches that often ignore vast tracts of American Christianity while being either very conservative or very liberal on things they pay attention to.  Hageman never really says what her Protestantism is allied to, or where she attends church, or if she even does.  One biography says she's a "non denominational" Christian, which fits in well with the far right she's part of.  A slight clue of her views is that she's married to a Cheyenne lawyer who is much older than she is with nearly twenty years on her age and who had a prior marriage.  They have no children.  Those last two items pretty much take her out of the Apostolic Christianity category, and out of those Protestant churches that are close to Apostolic Christianity.

If Hageman has no children, what she has is the weak tea of a career, the thing feminist sold on women as the fulfillment of their testimony and which, just as with men, turned out to be a fraud foisted upon them, and which continues to be each year at high school graduation.  I'm not saying having a career is bad, but the focus on it as life defining is pretty much living a lie.

What Hageman also has is a history.

Harriet Maxine Hageman was born on a ranch outside of Fort Laramie, Wyoming, in the Wyobraska region of Wyoming, a farming dominated portion of the state that lacks public lands and which is unique in many ways.  Her father was  James Hageman, who served as a longtime Republican member of the Wyoming House of Representatives until his death in 2006.  She is a fourth generation Wyomingite, descending from James Clay Shaw, who moved to Wyoming Territory from Texas in 1878.  Harriet is one of six siblings.  Her brothers are Jim Hageman, Dewey Hageman, and Hugh Hageman,   Her sisters are Rachel Hageman Rubino and Julie Hageman.  Rachel Rubio passed away in 2024, shortly after Harriet was elected to Congress.  One of her kids is a lawyer. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was read at her funeral.¹

When Harriet ran for Governor, all three of her brothers, but not her sisters, were included in a video talking about how much she loved people, and how family was central to her.  Maybe all that is true, but here's where the story, from our prospective, gets a bit interesting.  

Hageman went to Casper College on an ag scholarship.  Indeed, she was at CC at the same time I was.  From there, like me, she went on to US, and ultimately on to law school.

She didn't go on to the ranch, or a career in agriculture.

I guess I didn't either, but my story is the story of early death, which intervenes with our desires and which determines our path in life more than we care to admit.  I don't know what Harriet's story is, but I would note that as a rule, from her generation, daughters of ranchers weren't going back to the family ranch after high school graduation.  It wasn't that they would not, it was that they could not.  Those that retained a role in agriculture did so through the result of marriage, often knowing men who were farmers and ranchers.  Indeed, off hand, the few daughters of farmers or ranchers I know who ended up in agriculture ended up in it in just that fashion.

Hugh Hageman ended up in ranching.  Dewey Hageman seems to has well.  Jim Hageman seems to have as well, or at least he's still in the Ft. Laramie area.  In the video, all three really look like ranchers.

When I was growing up, as noted, women didn't end up in ranching except through marriage.  Usually no effort was made whatsoever to try to incorporate them into a ranching future.  Quite a few times, quite frankly, they were expected to marry into a ranching family, but even by the 1980s things had turned to where that was no longer the case, and many started to move into other careers.  Law has always been a really popular career for ranchers and farmers to send their children into, as basically farmers and ranchers don't believe that lawyers work.  Indeed, for the most part, they don't believe people in town actually work either.

Jim Hageman, the father of the family, himself came from a large ranching family in Converse County.  In the near hagiographies written about his daughter, it's noted how he built the ranch from nothing, but frankly, that's just not true.  He was born in an era in which the younger sons of ranchers could still secure ranch land, with help through loans and loan programs.  Now that's impossible.

But that puts Harriet straight into the Wyoming agricultural family myth.

I love ranching, as anyone here can tell.  But I'm a realist, and perhaps a cynic.  My own family has been in the region since at least 1879.  Hageman's, apparently, since 1873.  People who came out here didn't do so because, usually, they were wealthy, although some did, which is another story.  Rest assured the progenitor of the Hageman family in Wyoming, a Clay, wasn't.

What they were, however, were beneficiaries of one of the largest social welfare programs in American history, maybe the largest.  In 1873 the genocidal aspect of that program was still well under way.  Basically, the US used the Army to remove, at gunpoint, the native inhabitants and corral them into largescale concentration camps and then gave the land away to those willing to engage in agriculture.  Most of those who took up the opportunity were dirt poor.   The program was kept up and running until 1932, at which time the Taylor Grazing Act was thankfully passed and the land preserved.  

Homesteading was very hard and difficult work and the majority of homesteads failed.  But still, it wasn't as if homesteaders came into "virgin" lands and tamed it with their own two bare hands.  The government removed or killed the original inhabitants.  In many areas, the government built large-scale irrigation projects for the new ones, at government expensive.  Homesteaders were admirable in many ways, but they weren't without assistance.

James Hageman was born in 1930, which means when he was first starting his ranching life, land was still affordable, something that ceased to be the case in the 1980s but which would still have somewhat been the case when Harriet's brothers were entering their adult lives.  Most men from ranch families tried to stay in ranching, if they could.  Most still do.  When you meet somebody who talks about having grown up on a ranch, but isn't in ranching, it's because the "ranch" was a 20 acre plot outside of town (not a ranch) or because they were left with no alternative.

What those left with no alternative were given, so that their older brothers could carry on without trouble, was what English "Remission Men" were given in earlier eras. . . something else to do.  In a lot of cases, that something else was a career in law or medicine.

That's what Harriet got.

Well, what does that tell us?

Well, quite a lot.  A girl from a ranching family who had nowhere to go, she had to marry into agriculture or pursue a career.  While I knew her when she was young, a bit, I don't know if there was every a ranching suitor.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if there had been, as the tobacco chewing young Hageman was quite cute and very ranchy.

Well, whatever the case was then, she ended up with what lawyers call a boutique firm and made it the focus of her life, seemingly.  She ultimately married a lawyer twenty years her senior, more or less, and they didn't have a family for whatever reason.  Frankly, it's sad.

She was also left with a heritage that focused on the frontier pioneer myth.

Lots of ranch families have that, and in their heart of hearts believe they should have been given their public lands they were leasing by right, even though they couldn't afford it then, and they couldn't now.  They often don't believe that other people really work, as they falsely believe that their own work is exceptionally hard.  Many believe, at least in the back of their minds, that they are the population of the state, and those who aren't in agriculture are only able to get by as agriculture supports them.

It's a false, but deeply held, narrative.

And hence Hageman's, in my view, desire to transfer public lands from the Federal Government.  In her  mind, I suspect, those lands somehow, magically, go write to farmers and ranchers who, in her view, probably, rightfully deserve them.

That's not, of course, what would happen.  It'd actually destroy ranching.  But being from the  Wyobraska wheat belt, where most agriculture is farming, and the land is already publicly held, she doesn't realize it.

And she hasn't been on the farm, really, since sometime in the late 1970s or early 80s, at least in the sense we're talking about.

The whole thing is really sad, quite frankly.  But personal grief shouldn't make for bad public policy.

What's the deal with Lummis and Barrasso.

Let's take Barrasso up first.

Barrasso isn't a Wyomingite and its an open question to what extent he identifies with the state or its people at all. He's from Reading Pennsylvania, and the son of an Italian American cement finisher who had left school after 9th grade and an Italian American mother.  He was born in 1952, putting him solidly in the Baby Boomer generation. The beneficiary of a Catholic education, he came here as a surgeon.  

He's nearly the archetypical Baby Boomer, and in more ways than meets the eye. But to start off with, he was the child of hardworking blue collar Italians from the Catholic Ghetto who were probably bound and determined not to see him suffer they way they had, so they aimed for the blue collar mid Century minority's dream. . . send your kids into a profession and they'd really be something.  Hence why there were so many Irish American, Italian American and Jewish American lawyers and doctors.

But a lot of that dream really went awry.

Dr. Barrasso and his first wife Linda had two children.  His ex wife has had a local public life, but remains pretty quiet about their marriage.  She remarried to a local lawyer.  

Barrasso remarried too to a widely loved local woman who had been to law school, but who was not barred. She's since tragically died of brain cancer.  I knew her before their marriage.

None of this is facially surprising or atypical, but in context, its' revealing.  Barrasso's early connection with Wyoming was professional.  That's why he came here.  And his early life has the appearance of being very Catholic. That is significant.

It's significant in that when Barrasso was growing up, Catholics did not divorce easily and bore the brunt of having done so for the rest of their lives.  In my family, back before World War One, or around it, one of my mother's uncles divorced and remarried and the relationship with the family was completely severed.  Apparently it was later somewhat repaired, but only somewhat.  Leaving a spouse and leaving the faith was a betrayal.  It's still not taken lightly by serious Catholics.

But seriousness was not what the Baby Boomer generation was about.  It was about "me".   The couple divorced, for some reason, and he remarried.  The whys of the topic were never raised in his political career as post 1970s, that isn't done.

It probably should be.

Barrasso has pursued his political career the way it seems he pursued his life.  He compromised.  He compromised on his faith (he's now a Presbyterian) and he's compromised in his political views.  He was a moderate, but now is Trump's lap dog.  His views change when they need to change.  Apparently here, he thought it better to side with Lee and stay as quite as possible.

What about Lummis?

I know very little about Cynthia Lummis, which frankly is fairly typical of Wyomingites.  He website says she was born on a Laramie County ranch, but Wikipedia just states Cheyenne.  Her father was active in Republican politics and she, a lawyer, was elected state treasurer at one point.  Like Hageman, she has an agricultural degree.  She's a Missouri Synod Lutheran, which puts her in a very conservative branch of the Lutheran faith, but that appears to have no bearing on this matter.

She tends to stay out of public view for the most part.

On the public lands matter, her connection with a southeast Wyoming ranch may indicate something. As noted here, there's very little public land in the eastern part of Wyoming.  But overall, we just don't know very much about her.  She's basically a legacy of an earlier era in Wyoming when we didn't feel it was important to really know too much about a person.

Maybe we should.

Footnotes:

1.  Blessings on the hand of women!

Angels guard its strength and grace,

In the palace, cottage, hovel,

Oh, no matter where the place;

Would that never storms assailed it,

Rainbows ever gently curled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Infancy's the tender fountain,

Power may with beauty flow,

Mother's first to guide the streamlets,

From them souls unresting grow—

Grow on for the good or evil,

Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Woman, how divine your mission

Here upon our natal sod!

Keep, oh, keep the young heart open

Always to the breath of God!

All true trophies of the ages

Are from mother-love impearled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Blessings on the hand of women!

Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,

And the sacred song is mingled

With the worship in the sky—

Mingles where no tempest darkens,

Rainbows evermore are hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Related threads:

Pioneer Day. Pie & Beer Day. Public land sales, part 1. The historo-religious motivation for some (but certainly not all) of the backers.

Labels: 1838 Mormon War, 1840s, 1847, 1890s, 1896, Fr. Hugh Barbour, Harriet Hageman, Mormon, Pioneer Day, polygamy, religion, Second Great Awakening, State of Deseret, Third Great Awakening, Utah War, WASP

SAVE Act would silence American voters, mainly women

SAVE Act would silence American voters, mainly women: Sen. John Barrasso has not yet taken a stand on Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, but Sen. Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Harriet Hageman are all for HR 22, writes Marion Yoder.

Pioneer Day. Pie & Beer Day. Public land sales, part 1. The historo-religious motivation for some (but certainly not all) of the backers.

Flag of the putative State of Deseret.

Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact - religion and politics should not be mingled.

Millard Fillmore

Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither.

Albert Einstein

It was 170 years ago that Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley in search of religious freedom… and, finally, a land of their own in which to practice it.

Mike Lee.

In this thread, we're going to tread, which will be part one of two, where we shouldn't.

Religion and politics.

Well, religion, politics and history.

And in the context of public land.

Eh?

Well, exactly.

Albert Einstein was exactly correct.  Those that believe politics and religion do not mix truly do not understand either.  Indeed, they should mix.  A person who holds a religion should let him inform  his views.  If a person doesn't, they're not very sincere about their religion, or have a weakly developed intellect.  If a person strongly believes that something is wrong, such as abortion, and their religion informs them on that, well, they can't really walk away from that, a la Joe Biden.  By the same token, however, a person should not be foreclosed from advancing their views for other reasons, nor should a person demand that another person except their views solely because of their religious views, unless they clearly put it that way.

The thing a person ought not to do, however, is to advance a position for religious views, while keeping that view hidden.

Particularly if it forms the primary basis for the view.

And we look here first, at the transfer of public lands.  Later on we'll look at the US support of Israel in warfare this past year.

Yesterday was Pioneer Day in Utah, a state holiday.  

Like Wyoming Day here, probably almost nobody gets it off.  The day commemorates the first entry of Brigham Young and his group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

That's interesting in that, essentially, it's sort of a species of religious observation.  There are no doubt other such observations in the US, but they're rare.  Wyoming Day commemorates the day that Wyoming became a state.  Utah became a state in 1896, after Wyoming.  Pioneer Day, however, celebrates an event occurring fifty years before that, and which is inseparable from the LDS religious migration.  Unlike the often cited landing of the passengers of the Mayflower, which is often erroneously to be an exclusively a religious migration, nobody in that 1847 team of travelers was not a Mormon.¹ 

There have been two big backers of the concept of Utah grabbing Federal lands in Congress, Celest Maloy and Mike Lee, both of Utah.

Routine analysis of this notes that the grab the land movement is strong in Utah in general. Their state took a recent run at it in court, and their legislature has been in favor of it, even if certain districts in Utah are not. Congressman Jason Chaffetz found out the demographic differences when he went down the same path as Lee a decade ago.

While its changing, over 50% of Utah is a member of the Latter Day Saints.

No surprise there.  

Nor is it a surprise that Lee is, and that Maloy is.

Nor is there something shocking or wrong with that, just as there isn't anything wrong, right wing pundits aside, with the next Mayor of New York City (probably), Zohran Mamdani, being Shi'a Muslim.

But the argument here is that their religious convictions are informing them, and other Utah politicians, to seek to remove Federal ownership from Federal land, as well as the history of their faith.

Which takes us to the Mormon War and the Utah War, with the former name sometimes being used for the latter (indeed, we've done that here in the past).

The actual Mormon War was the period of violence that occurred in Missouri when members of the LDS church were there. 

Which probably requires some background to make sense.

The Latter Day Saints are not a Christian religion, although if you ask them, they'll most certainly maintain that they are.  The fact is, however, they aren't.  The LDS is a polytheistic religion holding that there are many gods and many worlds.  We simply happen to live in a world in which God the Father, as Abrahamic religions worship, is actually a man who became a god after having lived his life in another world.  The Mormons believe that Jesus Christ was the product of a Devine man (God) and a Devine mother and that Jesus Christ is their elder brother, since he was the firstborn in the spirit world.   Perhaps in order for that to make sense to non Mormons its important to note that Mormon's believe that all the souls in our world already exist, and that when a child is born, a preexisting soul is embodied in that person, with the souls memory of his pre birth existence blocked.  Mormons do admit that Christ became God before his birth.  Mormon's also feel that if you live as a Mormon and adhere closely to the tenants of the LDS, you too can become a god, and will have your own world in the afterlife.²

That sort of sums up their beliefs today, sort of, although no doubt very unfairly.

What's that have to do with public lands?

Bear with us.

Joseph Smith started out is religious career in the Second Great Awakening as a fairly conventional protestant evangelist.  Indeed, his evangelical career started after the dates for the events he claimed made him a profit, which raise the question of why he was a regular protestant at first and didn't mention his later claims at the time.  By the early 1830s, however, he'd relocated to Ohio along with his early adherents and was espousing a new set of beliefs, some of which we've summarized above, but which also claimed that Native Americans were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel and that giant battles featuring armored men and elephants had taken place in North America.  He also had Jesus Christ visiting the continent, and blacks as descendants of a union between Cain and an ape. Most controversially, however, his new religion strongly advocated polygamy.

Sexual libertine behavior, which Smith personally displayed, was not unknown at the time, and there were "free love" movements even then, although they were not linked with religion.³  Smith, whose own sexual behavior exceeded the bounds of what he espoused for his followers, was unique in doing so.  It was all too much for the residents of Ohio, and it proved to be too much for the residents of Missouri, to which he relocated with adherents in 1838.

Violence ensued and Smith himself lost his life over the matter of sex, when breakaway members of the LDS accused him of advocating polygamy in order to dally with women, a fairly fair charge.  Smith reacted with destruction of a press that made accusations against him.  He ended up in jail, and a riot of upset locals ultimately resulted in storming the jail.  He was shot through a jail door he was attempting to block.

The LDS suffered a schism right at the time, with one branch of it evolving rapidly back into a conventional protestant church. The main branch, however, took off for the West and started settling in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847, at which time the region was in Mexico.  The first really largescale American settlement of that type (Spanish settlements up into the West dated back to the 1600s and were well established, but not in what is now upper Utah), they became a major presence right away.

The Great Salt Lake Valley is a long ways from Missouri, and it was even a greater distance if you had to walk or travel by horse, but the entire oddity of Mormon beliefs remained bothersome to most Americans, particularly Second and Third Great Awakening Americans for whom even Catholics were way too much.  And it wasn't just Americans.  John Stuart Mill in his great book On Liberty briefly pondered the practically of the British landing troops in Texas in order that they could march to Utah and stamp out the religion.

On Liberty came out in 1859, and was no doubt written prior to that. While Mill concluded that such an expedition was impractical, by 1857 the United States and the Mormons were actually at war.  The war ended in 1858 with concessions on the part of the LDS combatants, but like a lot of people who've lost a war (consider the American South) a sort of lost cause element to it remains, even though the Mormons did not seek to separate from the US.  They did seek, however, autonomy.

Early on the LDS hoped for a huge state in the southwest, which they called Deseret.

Utah Territory in blue, State of Deseret dashed lines  By derivative work: Mangoman88 (talk)Blank_US_Map.svg: User:TheshibbolethWpdms deseret utah territory legend.png: User:Tsujigiri - Blank_US_Map.svgWpdms deseret utah territory legend.pngFile:1855 Colton Map of Utah and New Mexico (first edition, first state) - Geographicus - UtahNewMexico-colton-1855.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16103609

The US didn't see eye to eye on that.  Be that as it may, they heavily settled throughout the region of what was imagined to be Deseret and are strongly represented throughout it today.  And the name "Deseret" lives on, preserving its memory.

Early on, Mormon pioneers often viewed land communally.  The LDS church today owns 1.7 million acres of land, operates some of the largest agricultural businesses in the US.  It owns major blocks of land throughout the US, including in Wyoming and Nebraska.  The fact that it a gigantic landowner is often missed.  It's reasons to purchase land are varied, and it makes no effort to hide that it does this.  Part of this is done for a sort of agrarian charitable reason, but there are other reasons as well.

Mormons tend to have large families, although this is not always the case by any means.  The extent to which their families are abnormally large, moreover, is exaggerated as in the American WASP culture any number of offspring over two is regarded as freakishly large.  I am, of course, from a Catholic family and got this all the time growing up, even though I'm an only child.

Having said that, the more traditionalist a Catholic family is, the more children there tends to be in it.

The reason differs considerably however.  Catholics would point toward the marriage vow itself and how it notes that it includes the question “Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?”  I've heard one Catholic cleric, Fr. Hugh Barbour, note the purpose of the marriage is to bring up children willingly for the worship of God.  

Catholics, like most Christians, believe that human beings cooperate in the creation of souls through the marital act.  Mormons, however, do not believe that.  They believe that there are a finite number of souls and that they exist in already, and that the marital act causes those souls to inhabit a body.  One the full number is run through, the end of time occurs.  By having large families, in their view, they are assisting in bringing that about.

Which brings us back to Mike Lee.

Not all Mormons are traditionalist by any means.  The Mormon church itself has been fluid over the years in regard to its beliefs and has abandoned polygamy and certain other tenants which brought them disrepute in American society.  There remains, however, a conservative element that is sympathetic to the original views and while it embarrasses the larger LDS church, it's usually not to hard to find examples.  Polygamy, for instance, persisted in being widely accepted in Mormon communities for well after its official abandonment, and of course, it continues on in Mormon communities today, even though it is definitely a minority view, and definitely condemned.

But amongst those like Lee, the history of Deseret and deeply held LDS beliefs heavily inform his views.  He was willing to abandon Montana from his land grab, but Montana had never been part of Deseret.  Everywhere else he held on.

Grabbing the land from the Federal government would sort of reverse a position that early Mormon pioneers had to abandon, and it satiates a fear of the Federal government that remains in some quarters today.  Additionally, the "more land for housing" view makes some sense for those who imagine very large families.  Lee himself was one of seven children to a father was president of BYU, although Mike Lee only had three children himself.

In the background of it all, however, are changing times.

Even now you will hear reports on how fast the LDS faith is growing. But it isn't.  Having had a dramatic late 20th Century and early 21st Century increase, its numbers are now really dropping off and its in decline.  The late 20th Century and very early 21st was sort of the golden age of Mormon expansion, and it altered the culture of the faith a bit.  Outside of the "Jello Belt", that region of the west, and predominantly in southwestern Wyoming, southeastern Idaho, and Utah, where Mormons are a majority or at least very strongly represented in the population, Mormons were a little reluctant to identify too strongly with their faith, lest they run into a prejudiced reaction.  At least two Mormon lawyers I knew would make excuses for their Mormonism, usually on the basis of "not being a Mormon" and "marrying into the faith", even though they were really in the LDS and at least one of them was born into it.  When I was a kid, Mormon kids routinely identified themselves as "Jack Mormons", i.e.., those who only weekly observed their faith, even though they were not.

By the early 21st Century things really began to change, and particularly did after Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee for the President.  Mormons had sort of arrived and come out of the shadows.

It didn't really last long, however, as a variety of forces began to work against it.  One was that the industrial nature of Mormons had made Utah into a really attractive place to live. Utah's towns and cities are beautiful and well kept, something that is frankly often not the case for a lot of the West.  Compared to Salt Lake, Denver is a dump.  Towns like Morgan Utah make small Wyoming towns look pathetic.

What that means, however, is that Utah has attracted a lot of non Mormons and Salt Lake shows it in particular. Salt Lake has the temple, to be sure, but it also has a young non Mormon community, some of which outright flaunt their non Mormon status.  Hence the title of this entry.  July 24 is Pioneer Day, but it's also Pie & Beer Day in which hipsters celebrate with, well, pie and beer.  It's become sort of a big deal.

And as Mormons have moved into the mainstream, the mainstream has sort of pushed back.  Regular Mormon families are moving more towards the conventional American midstream in terms of belief, than the other way around.

What this means for it long term cannot yet be known, but Mormon birthrates are also dropping off dramatically.

When things start changing, the reaction often is to grasp back towards the past to try to drag it into the future.  In the West, the Ghost Dance provides a spectacular late 19th Century example of that.  What Lee and Maloy are doing does as well.  It's probably not so much part of a deliberate plan as an instinct.

It's an instinct that a lot of Mormons in Utah and elsewhere outright reject, which shows that its always dangerous to assume that any one group can be really narrowly defined. And we're not saying that this is an overall Mormon world view on the topic.  We're only noting what we think we're seeing in Lee, Maloy, and Utah's elected government.

And we'd note this is probably a fading, if presently strong, effort.

One of the Salt Lake newspapers has started a series on this, noting basically what I just did (I actually started this tread prior to the paper).  This doesn't cover it all, however.  It'd explain none of what we see in Wyoming backers like Harriet Hageman.  We'll look at that next.

Footnotes.

1.   Most of the passengers on the Mayflower were not Puritans.

2.  There's a lot more to the LDS faith than this, including that the Book of Mormon is "another testament", but I'm not going to go into it here as I only hope to touch on what's relevant to the topic.  In shorty, this isn't a discussion on Mormonism itself.

3.  Such movements must have been extraordinarily risky for secular women, but they were oddly common, and not just in the US.  There were a variety of them, and it was a feature such varied movements pre Stalinist Communism and Russian Orthodox Khlysts.