If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years.
Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of lawfare, & launched a @USDA portal to protect farmers.
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) April 30, 2025
Over-criminalization by the federal government is OVER. Regulation by prosecution is NO MORE! pic.twitter.com/79yM1VxpXv
So here's the full story. Charles and Heather Maude are a couple in their thirties who own a large ranch — Maude Hog and Cattle — in western South Dakota. According to their website, the ranch has been a part of Charles' family since 1907. Charles himself has been a part of the business throughout his entire life, even receiving his very own cow as a gift before he was born. He purchased the ranch from his grandfather in 2002 and 2003. Here's the rest of the history of the ranch from their site:
Maude Hog and Cattle began in 1907 when Thomas Maude purchased land on the Cheyenne River in eastern Custer County, South Dakota. His two sisters had homesteaded a few miles south, and are likely who suggested he buy land in the area. He was an absentee landowner, living in Burbank, South Dakota. His son Bill arrived in the area in 1917 and homesteaded 160 acres within a mile of Thomas’s land. Bill was a jack of all trades, running cattle and hogs in addition to growing both livestock feed and a truck garden on the river bottom. He and wife Nellie also raised six kids. Bill designed and built an extensive irrigation system which rerouted the entire Cheyenne River channel, using the water multiple times before dumping it back into the river downstream.
One of Bill’s sons, Walter, returned to Scenic, South Dakota in 1945 after WWI. He and wife Gen lived in Scenic until they purchased a place nine miles north of town, on the south side of the Cheyenne River, just west of Highway 44. In 1963, the couple purchased the original Maude place from Bill. Walter and Gen continued living on Hwy 44, where they raised four children, milked cows, had chickens, farmed and ran Hereford beef cows. Walter’s brother Ward purchased land adjoining Walter on Hwy 44, and the brothers traded labor and machinery.
In 2002, Walter sold the original Maude place owned by Thomas and Bill Maude to his grandson Charles, who was 17 years old at the time. Following Walter’s passing in 2003, Charles purchased the remainder of Walter’s operation with the help of his parents.
There's a lot more about what they do on their site, and I encourage you to check it out. It sounds like they're excellent stewards of the environment and use several sustainable practices that should be a lot more common in modern farming and agriculture, but that's a topic for another day.
"We believe we borrow the land from our children, and make decisions daily with the hope of creating the opportunity for them to have a life in agriculture, should they so choose. Agriculture has always been focused on sustainability, and we strive to build and improve upon what our forefathers started to ensure our place remains a viable, productive farm and ranch for another century," their website reads.
Charles and Heather also have two young children, Lyle and Kennedy. Now, let's get into what the Biden administration did to these poor people that nearly caused them to lose those young children. I'll let the Tri-State Livestock News explain (and I dare you not to get angry):
According to a June, 2024 letter from South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds to then U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, on March 29, 2024, special agent Travis Lunders and U.S. Forest Service patrol captain Jeff Summers told the Maudes they received a complaint from a hunter that a no trespassing sign was posted on a fence not built upon the correct boundary. The Maudes removed the sign from the fence. The family has owned the property adjacent to the U.S. Forest Service-managed Buffalo Gap National Grasslands since 1910.
The fence assumed to be in question was accepted as the property boundary by the USDA annually through the certification of acres by the USDA Farm Service Agency every year since Buffalo Gap National Grasslands was established in 1960.
The Maudes met on May 1 with Lunders and USFS district ranger Julie Wheeler. The conclusion reached that day was a land survey would be the first step, and that would take up to a year according to Wheeler. The Maudes scheduled a meeting at the allotment so Wheeler could see the fence and move toward a resolution. Five days later, without informing Maudes, Lunders arrived with a survey crew to complete the survey on both the Maudes’ private property and the public property. Neither the survey nor the original complaint allegedly made by a hunter has been made available to the press or to Maudes.
Lunders arrived unannounced at the Maudes’ home on June 24, 2024, armed and in tactical gear, to serve the couple with separate federal indictments. The indictments were for the alleged theft of government property stemming from the placement of a fence built at least 75 years before. The Maudes each faced 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines over the 50 acres in question and were ordered not to speak to one another about the case.
Is that not the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard? Earlier this week, the Trump administration dropped the charges, and the United States Department of Agriculture issued a statement that said, in part, "This family has endured a senseless politically motivated prosecution waged by the Biden Administration over 25 acres of federal land. Government resources for prosecution should be focused on true criminals, not a family farm trying to make ends meet."
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Rollins added, "The Maudes are not criminals. They have worked their land since the early 1900s, and something that should have been a minor civil land dispute that was over and done with quickly turned into an overzealous criminal prosecution on a hardworking family that was close to losing their home, children, and livelihood. Not in this America, not under President Trump."
What's a little scary is that she said other cases like this are currently "under review."
Earlier today, I wrote about how Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that the Biden administration was literally spying and keeping records on the social media posts of U.S. citizens for being "purveyors of disinformation."
The more we learn about what happened over the last four years, the more frightening it is. No wonder Democrats are spending all of their time defending criminals now. They think hard-working U.S. citizens are the true criminals. They see us as their enemies. Stories like this one just underscore that. If you're in the country illegally and have a shady past that includes potential gang affiliation and multiple accounts of domestic violence, or you're here on a visa pretending to be a student but really spreading antisemitism, trashing campuses, and threatening Jewish students at universities, they'll fight to the death for you.
But if you're a hard-working business owner or even just someone who has an opinion on social media, they'll fight against you. Keep that in mind every time you vote from here on out.
Go do a quick Google search for the Maude family. I'll wait.
You'll find that not one single member of the fake news has covered the story of how unfairly these hard-working people were treated over a what should have been a minor civil dispute. That's why I do what I do. That's why all of us here at PJ Media do what we do.
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