The armed occupation of a federally owned wildlife outpost in remote Oregon has entered its fourth day. A self-styled right-wing antigovernment militia calling itself the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday in support of two ranchers sentenced to prison for setting fires that burned federal land. The wildlife refuge is located outside the town of Burns, Oregon, about 300 miles southeast of Portland. Leaders of the occupation include Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who refused to pay decades’ worth of cattle grazing fees, prompting a standoff with federal rangers in 2014 in Nevada, during which an armed militia rallied to his support. Cliven Bundy declared victory after the federal government backed down and released cattle they had seized from him. The Oregon occupation also stems from a fight over public lands in the West and comes as a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found the number of militias in the United States jumped 37 percent over the past year.
We speak with Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.