Charles and Heather Maude, a small, fifth-generation farming and ranching family near Pennington County in South Dakota, were prosecuted by the Biden administration via the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service in 2024. Both parents were charged separately, facing $250,000 fines and up to 10 years in prison each, for allowing their cattle to graze on 25 acres of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland.The Maudes, whose family has owned their farm for five generations, disputed the fence line that marked the edge of their property with the grasslands, and claimed the U.S. Forest Service had originally set up an informal agreement Biden’s administration later violated.What would normally be a small civil dispute was used by Biden’s Forest Service to severely prosecute the Maudes for theft and purloining. Charles Maude also told The Daily Signal that government officials advised them to find separate living arrangements for their children in the likely event that both parents were locked up for a decade.Rollins, Noem, and several state and congressional officials commended the Maudes, and announced new efforts by the Trump administration to not only review new disputes and concerns of bureaucratic overreach via a new online portal but vowed to review older government decisions against American farmers and landowners.“The prosecution of the Maudes is now over. They will not be driven from their homes, they will not be failed, they will not be fined and their children will grow up with a mother and a father that they love and who love them,” Rollins said. “We are ending regulation through prosecution.”
A happy ending, just like a Western from the golden age.
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