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Two weeks before chaos hit St. Lukes hospital in Boise, Idahobefore Ammon Bundy showed up with an armed mob and the hospital doors had to be sealed and death threats crashed the phone linesa 10-month-old baby named Cyrus Anderson arrived in the emergency room.

The boys parents, Marissa and Levi, knew something wasnt right: For months, Cyrus had been having episodes of vomiting that wouldnt stop. When he arrived in the ER, he weighed just 14 pounds, which put him in the .05th percentile for his age. Natasha Erickson, the doctor who examined him, had seen malnutrition cases like this in textbooks but never in real life. Cyruss ribs were clearly visible through his chest. When he threw up, his vomit was bright green.

Erickson hooked the baby up to an IV and a feeding tube, and he slowly started to gain weight. But Levi and Marissa were anxious to leave. They were members of an anti-government activist network that Bundy, the scion of Americas foremost far-right family, had founded, and they shared his distrust of medical and public-health authorities. To Marissawhose father, Diego Rodriguez, is himself an extremist leader and Bundys close friendthe hospital was a lions den.

By the next evening, Levi and Marissa were demanding to take their baby home, but hospital staff said it wasnt yet safe. They left a few days later, with instructions to bring Cyrus in for follow-up appointments. When they failed to show up for a scheduled weigh-in at a local clinic the following weekMarissa was feeling sick herself and decided to postpone ita nurse there referred the case to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Cyrus missed another appointment that afternoon at St. Lukes, and another nurse contacted the detective on the case. Someone had to see the infant right away, she said.

That night, officers pulled the family over at a gas station in nearby Garden City. Marissa begged for Bundys help by phone. Theyre trying to take my baby. Theyre trying to take my baby, she kept telling him, until she was out of breath. Police lights were flashing all around her as a crowd began to gather. She couldnt understand how things had escalated so fast.

Bundy put out a call for help from his group, the Peoples Rights Network, which claimed to have more than 50,000 members, and told Marissa to livestream what was happening on Facebook. When a police officer demanded that she hand Cyrus over, she pleaded with him. Do you understand what happens when the state takes custody of babies? she said. Ive seen this so many times. I cant be that next personI cant. While Bundy was driving to the gas station, he learned that both Levi and Marissa had been arrested, and Cyrus was on the way to another St. Lukes branch, an ER about 10 miles away in Meridian. Bundy and his supporters headed there.

Within an hour, a small crowd was blocking the ambulance bay, forcing the hospital to divert patients elsewhere. Protesters shouted that the hospital staff were kidnappers and child molesters. Some followed nurses to their cars as they left the building. Bundy himself was arrested for trespassing on hospital property, and Rachel Thomas, the lead doctor in the ER that night, feared that the crowd would break down the doors and try to take the baby.Protesters gather outside St. Lukes Boise Medical Center in downtown Boise, Idaho, in March 2022. (Darin Oswald / Idaho Statesman / AP)

In the early hours of the next morning, after getting out of jail, Bundy posted a video urging more of his followers to join the protest. Its just sickening, sickening, sickening, he said. These people believe they have the authority to take our little babies. They are wicked.

By that time, it was clear to Dr. Thomas that the child had to be moved back to the hospital in Boise as quickly as possible for security reasons. She wrapped Cyrus in a blanket and carried him through the bowels of the hospital to an ambulance at a back entrance. Security officers led the way, searching each area for intruders before giving the all clear and letting her enter. She felt like she was in a cheap action movie. To avoid the crowd, the ambulance jumped the median as it made a U-turn and sped east on I-84.

Dr. Erickson met Cyrus on his arrival. He looked even sicker than he had the week before. His weight now put him below the .02nd percentile. As doctors reinserted the IV and the feeding tube, Bundy sent out a new Peoples Rights alert redirecting the crowd to the Boise campus. Protesters arrived with Free Baby Cyrus signs. Bundy told his followers to call St. Lukes, and soon threats were pouring in by the hundreds.

The parents of a child have all the rights, one caller said. I need you to remind everybody who works there before we come and lop off your fucking head, bitch. We will fucking kill you. Rodriguez, Marissas father, began holding regular rallies at the hospital and at one of them called on God to crush the necks of those that are evil. Three days into this ordeal, the FBI and state authorities warned St. Lukes that some of Bundys followers were planning to storm in and take the baby by force. About 30 Boise police officers were called in. Hospital workers constructed a barricade of furniture to block access to the childrens wing.

As the protest escalated, Health and Welfare workers spirited Cyrus to a secret location, where they babysat him in shifts. A few days later, and about a pound heavier, he was returned to his parents. The protesters dispersed, and Bundy and Rodriguez celebrated. Cyruss return home, Bundy said, was nothing short of a miracle.

In the months that followed, Bundy pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing at the hospital and avoided time in jail. But the protests he and Rodriguez had fomented with their false accusations of child trafficking resulted in a civil suit against them. This past August, after a weeklong trial that Bundy and Rodriguez skipped, a judge assessed $52 million in damages, almost certainly more than their combined net worth.

Bundy has promised to hold firm. If the county sheriff ever showed up on his property to collect, he told one interviewer, hed meet em at the front door with my friends and shotgun.

In early August , I flew out to Idaho to visit Bundy. But at 3:11 a.m. the night before we were scheduled to meet, he texted me to cancel. He was on the verge of financial ruin, he said, and it was getting harder and harder to shield his children from the effects. The message went on for some 230 words about how a man described as one of Americas most dangerous right-wing extremists was fighting a lot of emotional anxiety.

If he did confront the sheriff, it wouldnt be the first time his family had done battle with the law. In 2014, about a thousand militiamen and other supporters helped his family repel government agents trying to impound their cattle in Bunkerville, Nevada. Bundys followers still speak with awe about how officers Tasered him three times, and three times, with the help of the crowd behind him, he ripped out the Taser darts and stood his ground. His father, Cliven, led that battle, but when the Bundys clashed with government agents again in 2016, Ammon was in charge. His six-week occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge left a rancher dead, shot down by police officers after a backwoods car chase.Left: An armed man stands guard as Bundy supporters arrive at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016. Right: Early morning at the front-gate guard post during the occupation. (Alex Milan Tracy / AP; Jeffrey Schwilk / Alamy)

In 2020, with the start of the pandemic, Bundy found a new purpose. One of the first meetings of his Peoples Rights Network, held in April of that year, was to plan an Easter service in defiance of local COVID-19 restrictions. At another early demonstration, members gathered outside a health commissioners home in Montana and burned masks on a grill. In August 2020, Bundy was arrested and jailed after leading a contingent of supportrs, some with guns, as they stormed the Idaho statehouse, pushing officers and shattering a glass door, during a special legislative session on public-health precautions.

When Peoples Rights members started telling Bundy about how the government was unjustly separating children from their parents, that became another cause. Instances of actual overreach by Child Protective Services became, for them, evidence supporting QAnon-style conspiracy theories about government subsidized child trafficking, as Rodriguez put it, which were proliferating in extremist circles and beyond. By the time Cyrus was taken, Peoples Rights members had already staged protests on behalf of supposedly kidnapped children in Missouri, Oregon, and Washington. But none of those had escalated like the one at St. Lukes.

Despite his late-night text, Bundy did in the end agree to see me, for what was supposed to be a quick hello but stretched into a day-long visit. Id spend more time with him in the weeks that followed, and speak with him regularly on the phone. We discussed many aspects of his life, but most of all we talked about the judgment against him, and what would happen if the government tried to take his home.

I feel like Im not supposed to yield, he told me at one point. If he were killed, he said, his friends and followers would avenge him: Theyll go take the life of the judge and the sheriff and St. Lukes CEO and the head attorney and all the most culpable people. He delivered these words with an unnerving lack of menaceless like a threat than like a weather forecast.Ammon Bundy in his auto-repair workshop

Bundys home sits on a five-acre property at the edge of Idahos Emmett Valley, just across the road from Last Chance Canal. If he could choose any place in the world to live, he told me, it would be here.

When I showed up, I found him pacing around his auto-repair workshop, looking for parts. His beard is almost fully gray, and at 48, he has a bit of a belly, which he finds embarrassing. As always, he wore a chocolate-brown cowboy hat and a mechanics jacket with the logo of the fleet-maintenance company he once ran. Hes worked on cars ever since he was a teenager, when his father told him that the family ranch could not sustain him and his siblings.

Ammon was the fourth of six children of an unhappy marriage. Cliven was often away, working construction jobs in Las Vegas. Ammons mother, Jane Marie, resented the lonely domesticity shed been consigned to, he told me. When he was 5 years old, she left. One night soon after, a huge storm took down a tree in the yard. The next morning, as he and his siblings played in the wreckage, he remembers thinking, Wheres Mom? She had not said goodbye.

With their mother gone and their dad away, the Bundy children mostly raised themselves. Instead of doing homework, Ammon and his brothers hunted rabbits in the hills and built Quonset huts. After high school, he went on his Mormon mission to Minnesota and then started a truck-repair business. A couple of years later, he married Lisa Sundloff, a student at Southern Utah University whom he met through his secretary, and they moved to Arizona.

Their first apartment was tiny, but as Bundys business took off, they moved into a house in the Phoenix suburbs, then a bigger one with a stone fireplace and a swimming pool, a home he still speaks of with pride. He didnt drink or smoke; he had five kids and avoided trouble with the law. He leaned libertarian, but he was no militant: In 2010, he took out a $530,000 loan from the Small Business Administration.

It isnt easy, now, to reconcile that law-abiding suburban dad, his growing business supported by a federal loan, with the man he has become. Thirteen years and two standoffs later, Ammon believes the proper functions of government are limited to preventing violent crime, protecting private property, and defending the country from foreign threats. He says that abortion is murder and homosexuality is an abomination, but also that the government doesnt have any business outlawing gay marriage (though it should prohibit same-sex couples from raising children). He opposes a border wall and views Trumpian policies as insufficiently compassionate, a position for which he has been criticized by other prominent right-wingers. He thinks it would perhaps be best if the country were divided in half before a partisan civil war breaks out.

At one point, he asked about my faith, and when I said Jewish, he remarked on how interesting it is that Jews hold so many positions of power in government, media, and finance. Somehow this didnt sound like conspiracism, the way he said it. More like: Well played, Jews, from our small religious minority to yours.

Invariably, though, conversation turned back to his current predicament. He ranted for hours about the corruption of the government, the corruption of medical institutions, the corruption of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The courts, he said, are simply a playbox for the rich and powerful, a place for them to justify their misdeeds. Though hed been cleared of any crime associated with the standoffs in Oregon and Nevada, the final legal victory came after hed already spent nearly two years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, he said. By the time he was released, his business had all but collapsed, and hed missed those years of his childrens lives. That changed me, he said. It taught him that even when you win, the process is the punishment.

I asked Bundy what he thinks motivates his many enemies, and how he accounts for so much wickedness. He reached for the Book of Mormon, put on his glasses, and began to read aloud. The passage hed chosen told the story of Jared, a prince who devises a scheme to have his father beheaded and seize the throne for himself. The conspirators form a secret combination, which is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God, and their scheme succeeds.

That is what Ammon Bundy believes is happening in America. His enemies, motivated by the desire for power, have formed secret combinations, which threaten, as the Book of Mormon warns they will, to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries.Ammon Bundy with one of his sons in Emmett

That night , I tagged along with Bundy to a barbecue hosted by Scott Malone, a friend of his who runs a dietary-supplement business and lives just down the road. About 30 people, many of them members of the LDS Church and most of them members of Peoples Rights, sat at picnic tables with checkered tablecloths eating burgers and hot dogs and peach cobbler. After dinner, we played cornhole.

Im pretty much into conspiracy theories, Malone told me. A sprawling web of nefarious forces is undermining our freedom, he explained, at the center of which are the Freemasons. In Gem County, where he and Bundy live, the sheriff and his deputies are all Masons. Malone knows this because he rents office space directly below the Masonic lodge, and he says he sometimes catches evil spirits wandering around the office on his security cameras. To cast them out, he performs exorcisms. We think the basement has some kind of an underworld connection, he said. Crazy things, but we take it in stride.

When Ammon launched the Peoples Rights Network in early 2020, Malone was an early member. The group is sometimes described as a paramilitary organizationa sort of Uber for militias. That description is not wholly inaccurate, but it is misleading. Peoples Rights membership does overlap with that of militias like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, and it serves in part to connect groups like these around the country. But its much bigger than those other groups, and it draws in people who would never join a traditional paramilitary organization. Most of its activities are mundane. Some members use the network to trade and barter; others organize workshops with naturopathic doctors. When one members truck broke down in early August, he put out a call via Peoples Rights for someone to pick him up. In that sense, te group is less of a militia than a mutual-aid organization, where the aid sometimes takes the form of armed resistance to perceived despotism.

From the November 2020 issue: Mike Giglio on the pro-Trump militant group that recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans

Which is not to say that it doesnt pose a threat. In addition to the protest at St. Lukes and other instances of potentially dangerous intimidation, one member got into a shootout with police after a traffic stop in 2020. And its leaders have stated plainly that bloodshed is not only justified but necessary for resisting tyranny. There is no silver bullet to securing liberty, Bundy himself wrote on the Peoples Rights website. It is going to take unity, suffering and the willingness to use violence in defense. The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors extremist organizations such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, ranks Bundys group at the top of our threat matrix.

Beyond some basic tenets and anxieties of extreme libertarianism, those in Bundys group dont agree on much. Some are fans of Donald Trump; others arent. Few would say that they support the police. Each seems to have his or her own peculiar origin story. While visiting Bundy, I met a onetime Ron Paul delegate whod grown disillusioned with the Republican Party and stepped away, only to be drawn back in by the imposition of pandemic-era Sharia law. I met a former foster child turned chain-smoking Hempfest organizer who tried to live as a hermit before deciding that the only answer to government tyranny was active resistance. I met a Black kickboxing champion who has an on-screen credit in a Mad Max movie and, over the course of a decade, went from protesting the gentrification of Boises historically Black neighborhoods to sketching a portrait of Barack Obama with swastika-pupils.

And I met Malone, who may well be Bundys most loyal supporter. Hes a good man, and I love him as a brother, Malone told me. I told my wife, If I die with him, I die with him Im 72, and if this is how I end my life, then thats how it ends. It couldnt happen in a better way.

By 9 oclock, the party was winding down. The group prayed for me, just as they had when Id arrived. (Were also grateful for our new friend, Jacob. Please bless him and help him on his journey and on his way.) A grandmotherly woman who seemed genuinely concerned for my health warned me to stay away from the COVID vaccine. Another told me to be very careful driving home at this hour. A kid whod recently returned from his Mormon mission invited me to go fishing the next day. Over the course of the evening, several people joked about the media calling them a militia. A militia?! they seemed to say. Just look at us!

As the sky darkened, everyone gathered in a circle to sing hymns. Bundy sat with his youngest son on his lap, the sunset at his back.

The next day , I met with Rachel Thomas, the ER doctor whod ferried baby Cyrus to the back exit of the Meridian hospital as the mob pressed in. We sat at a small round table in a Boise coffee shop while her 6-year-old son ate a chocolate-chip muffin and watched Minions on his iPad for the dozenth time.

As we talked, Thomas noticed that a user named Wolf Man had just left a series of comments on her Facebook profile calling her a criminal and a perpetrator of vile, disgraceful and appalling acts. The comments linked to a new YouTube video Bundy had posted about the St. Lukes case that very morning. See, this is the problem with people like Rachel Thomas, he says to the camera, after offering a litany of examples of her alleged dishonesty. They are revered by the public because they are doctors and professionals, but they have no scruples. They are liars.

With each new post like this, Thomas told me, the harassment ramps up again. This is my life, she said. The second I feel like I can take a breath, they come after us again. She pointed at her son, oblivious and chocolate-smeared behind her. He didnt sign up for this.

For Natasha Erickson, the St. Lukes pediatrician who first saw Cyrus, the threats and abuse began immediately and never stopped. Diego Rodriguez posted her photo and hospital bio on his website under the heading Child Trafficker Profile. It is obvious she has a god complex, he wrote, and loves to threaten families using CPS as a weapon. Bundy posted a video of his own calling Erickson a wicked person for instigating this. They said that shed run unnecessary tests on Cyrus in order to profit off him and that shed misdiagnosed his mild dehydration as life-threatening malnutrition. Commenters asked her how shed feel if her kids were stolen.Supporters gather on Bundys property after a judge issued a misdemeanor warrant for his arrest for contempt-of-court charges in April 2023. (Kyle Green / AP)

Erickson was less worried that large numbers of people would end up believing these claims than that a delusional person would take it upon himself to exact justice. She attached an emergency whistle to her purse, and her husband started carrying his handgun around whenever they were in public. She forbade her kids from playing in the front yard or answering the door, no matter who they thought was on the other side. The locks stayed bolted at all times.

For a while, Erickson was obsessed with what Bundy and Rodriguez were saying about her. Shed check their websites two or three times a day. At the grocery store, she was constantly afraid of who might be in the next aisle over. She took to wearing sunglasses whenever she could. Almost every time she saw a new patient, she worried that the parents might have seen her Child Trafficker Profile, and that they might genuinely believe it. So much of her job had been about forging personal connections with the kiddos: You like unicorns? My children love unicorns. But now even that felt fraught. When one childs father asked her how old her kids were, she froze, retreated to the nurses station, and broke down sobbing. She considered leaving medicine entirely.

Both she and Thomas testified in the defamation case against Bundy and Rodriguez; so did a nurse who had seen Cyrus for a checkup and then coordinated his care for weeks after. But whereas Erickson and the nurse were named as plaintiffs, Thomas was not, because at the time St. Lukes filed the lawsuit, she hadnt yet been doxxed. She wound up getting the worst of both worlds: all of the harassment, none of the money.

This past summer, as she was driving with her son, he asked her out of the blue if that Ammon Bundy guy was gone yet, and whether he might hurt them. No, buddy, were going to be okay, she told him. By that point, the family had already taken steps to ensure their safety. In September, they packed up for New Zealand. They plan to stay for at least a year.

In between my trips to Bundys land in Idaho, I made a stop in Bunkerville, Nevada, to visit his father at the family ranch. When I got there, Cliven Bundy was sitting in a black leather recliner beneath a portrait of him by Jon McNaughton, the realist painter famous for his hagiographic renderings of Donald Trump. In the portrait, titled Pray for America, Cliven rides on horseback and raises an American flag. In the flesh, he chuckled a lot in a folksy-grandpa sort of way and held forth for some three and a half hours in his high-pitched rasp about faith, politics, biodiversity, and his decades-long conflict with the U.S. government.

If you were to tell the complete story of that conflict, you could begin in 1844, with the murder of Joseph Smith. Or you could begin in 1877, with the arrival of the Bundy familys ancestors in Utahs Virgin Valley. Or in 1934, with the Taylor Grazing Act. Or even in 1976, with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. But you could not begin any later than 1989, with the Mojave desert tortoise. That year, the tortoise was given an emergency endangered-species designation, and as part of its recovery plan, the Bureau of Land Management told Bundy and his fellow Clark Cunty ranchers a few years later that they would have to limit their use of public lands for grazing cattle. At the same time, the county struck a deal with the Fish and Wildlife Service that allowed real-estate developers to expand the Las Vegas metropolitan area into the tortoises habitat. The ranchers got squeezed in favor of the city.

Almost all of the roughly 50 ranchers in Clark County took a buyout from the government. Cliven refused. He continued grazing his cattle the same way he always had, and his herd fanned out into the lands vacated by his former neighbors. For 20 years, this remained the uneasy status quo: Bundys fines soared into the seven figures, but no one tried very hard to collect. Finally, a federal judge ordered Bundynow calling himself the last rancher standing in the valleyto remove his cattle. He ignored the judge, and so in early 2014, the BLM came in to do it for him. The next day, Clivens wife, Carol, posted on the family website: Range War begins tomorrow.Left: Cliven Bundy speaks during a news conference near his ranch in April 2014. Right: Protesters gather at the Bureau of Land Managements base camp, where the Bundys cattle were being held. (David Becker / Getty; Jim Urquhart / Reuters)

The climactic standoff took place at a sandy underpass beneath Interstate 15, near the spot where the BLM was keeping the impounded cattle. Federal agents were outnumbered and outgunned by Clivens militiamen supporters, and within a couple of hours, theyd released the herd. A group of armed vigilantescowboy heroes, they believed, in their own modern Westernhad prevented the U.S. government from enforcing the law. And they seemed to be facing no repercussions.

Almost overnight, the Bundys were the first family of the Patriot Movement, with Cliven as its public face. Republican Senators fawned over him; Sean Hannity had him on Fox News again and again. And then, at a public meeting less than two weeks later, Cliven self-destructed. I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro, he said, before wondering aloud whether Black people were maybe better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, than they were on the dole.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Polite society can condemn Cliven Bundy and ignore the American racism that remains

That was the end of Cliven Bundys brief stint as a Republican darling. Ammon took over as the family spokesman. He was good in front of a camera, with a soft-spoken polish that none of his siblings could match. A few weeks earlier, hed been a successful businessman in Phoenix, living a comfortable, suburban life. He hadnt been particularly political, and was certainly not a militantan early BLM threat assessment had labeled him the least dangerous of the Bundy menbut now he was angry, and he saw the federal government as his enemy. Less than two years later, at Clivens urging, he went to Oregon to stage a standoff of his own.

To this day, Clivens cattle continue to graze on public lands, the courts be damned. At dusk on the evening of my visit, he rose from his recliner, and Ammons brother Ryan drove us up into the desert hills to see them. On the way, Cliven and Ryan explained their not-entirely-scientific theory of the mutually beneficial relationship between cattle and tortoises. A cow never conflicted with a tortoise ever, Ryan said.

The Mojave desert tortoise is extremely rare, but wed been driving for only a few minutes, when, sure enough, we came face-to-face with one. Ryan stopped the car and we all got out. The animal looked prehistoric, its mud-colored shell weathered and chipped in places, its scales the same dusty black as the stones around it. Cliven walked over and started knocking on its shell. Hey! Hey! he said. The tortoise retreated inside. Go on. Go on then! Cliven said. It did not go on.

Youre not gonna make him move, Ryan said. Cliven reached down to try to overturn the tortoise, but it squirmed and hissed at him. After a few tries, he gave up. Hes protecting himself, Ryan said. Imagine having to live in the rocks like he does. What a life, huh?

On a Friday evening near the end of summer, six sheriffs deputies arrested Ammon Bundy at a fundraiser for his sons high-school football team. This was not the dreaded standoff, not the government coming for his land. But there had been a warrant out for Bundys arrest on contempt-of-court charges since April, and the sheriff seized his chance.

The officers marched into the hall just as people were finishing dinner. Bundy did not resist. He just put on his cowboy hat and placed his hands behind his back. Some people shouted and booed as the officers led him outside. Some sat quietly and looked away. Nobody knows what theyre going to do to him! his wife yelled. They will abuse him! Her voice broke. This is our son! Were here to support our boy! Come on! Come on, you guys, rally together! Help us! She was sobbing now. Nobody moved.

When I went out to Emmett a few days later, I again found Bundy in his workshop, this time lying on his back beneath a 67 Chevy Nova with his phone beside him. Hed posted bond Sunday morning, and now he had his father on speaker. I feel like you shouldnt have bailed out, Cliven said. You shouldve made a process of it.

I was going to, but the last time I did that, when they sent me to Ada County, they literally about killed me, Ammon told him, referring to time hed served as a result of the 2020 statehouse protest. They call it the cold box. Its an extremely cold cell. No pads, all concrete. And then they strip you. So all youve got is your underwear. No shoes, no nothingthe jail says this isnt accurateand it literally is torture, and thats what they do. I just couldnt think about going through that again.

I understand. Ive been there before, Cliven said. But I dont know.

There was no sympathy in his voice. And perhaps one shouldnt expect any from a man who, during the trial that followed the Bunkerville standoff, at the age of 71, had spent an extra month in prison rather than be released on house arrest, because he would accept nothing short of unconditional freedom. I know its hard, he seemed to be telling his son, but youve gotta suck it up.

That day, Ammon seemed more resigned, more circumspect than he had a week earlier. He told me that hed decided to contest the legal case against him. Not because I have a whole lot of faith in the courts, he said. But hed already started mourning the loss of his home, and he wasnt sure it made sense to hold his ground. Theres many ways to fight, and I may very well go down that route, he told me, but it just gets tiring to fight those battles. Alone, almost. Least it feels that way.

This was a strange admission from the leader of a national network of rights-defending citizens, a network designed for just this sort of situation. Maybe I shouldnt say, but I think in his mind he was really hoping that Peoples Rights would back him, Cliven would later tell me. But when it gets right down to it, I dont know. He claims he has, like, 70,000 or more followers, but does he have one that would actually stand and fight with him? Many of the Peoples Rights members I put that question to were noncommittal. Theyd have to see how the situation played out.

I visited Bundy one last time in mid-September. The dog seems to always be chasing me, hed told me during our very first conversation, and now it seemed it might finally catch him. He didnt have a lawyer, so hed been staying up all night writing his own legal motions. Sometimes he lost track of what day of the week it was. At one point, I watched him try and fail to navigate a CAPTCHA prompt six times in a row as he attempted to access a legal document. The courts had frozen his assets and forbidden him from continuing to make false accusations against St. Lukes and its staff.

Bundys co-defendant, Diego Rodriguez, had already moved, in 2022, to Florida, where he lives with Levi, Marissa, and Cyrus, who celebrated his second birthday in May. (Rodriuez declined to be interviewed for this story.) The babys vomiting problem has not gone away entirely, Marissa told me, though he is doing much better now. As of this month, she said, Cyrus is in the 28th percentile on the growth chart. (Though Levi was arrested at the gas station, he was never charged with a crime; charges against Marissa were dropped last December. The medical staff at St. Lukes have said this didnt seem like a case of intentional abuse or neglect but rather that Levi and Marissa did not appear to appreciate the gravity of their babys health problems.)

Just a few weeks earlier, Bundy told me, hed nearly given up and fled the state too. This whole saga could devour years of his life, hed realized, and so rather than let it, hed go elsewhere, start fresh. The kids had been upset at first, but theyd come around. The boxes were packed. The mover was scheduled. And then, as Bundy lay in bed on the morning they were supposed to leave, he thought he heard the voice of God. The Lord wanted him to stay and fight.

How long? He didnt know. Fight how? He couldnt say. But he trusted that this would all become clear in time. I have to believe that the things going on here are going to mean something, he said in a video about his decision. It was hard not to hear these words as a sort of desperate self-exhortation, the sort of thing you whisper to yourself over and over in the hope that repetition will make it so.Emmett, Idaho

One morning a few weeks ago, Scott Malone arrived at the Bundy property to find it deserted. Hed come to pick up some pots and stoves hed lent to Ammon for the apple harvest, and he found those in the driveway. Otherwise there was nothing. The trucks were gone. The house was cleaned out. The workshop was stripped. Bundy hadnt even said goodbyea noble act, Malone believed, meant to protect friends from being implicated.

A few days after they left, Lisa posted a farewell message on Facebook (Its not goodbye, its Ill see you later), but she and Ammon stopped answering my messages and calls. When I finally managed to get in touch with Ryan Bundy, he told me that his brother had tried to muster a group to fight with him, but when it come down to it, only about half of em are willing to stand. And so now, Ryan said, Ammon was a refugee.

Malone says he has no idea where Bundy is. Lawyers for St. Lukes have heard that the family is in southern Utah, hardly an hours drive from where Cliven lives, and from where the family staged its first standoff nearly a decade ago. But Bundy seems to have kept his plan a secret, even from his father. I dont know why he quit, Cliven told me a few days later. My way of thinking is you cant give up on something like this. You got a battle going, and its a terrible one, and you knowhe trailed off, seemingly at a lossI dont know.

Ammon Bundy still faces an ever-growing list of contempt-of-court charges, and there is still a warrant out for his arrest, with bail set at $250,000. For Rachel Thomas and Natasha Erickson, the news of his flight delivered both relief and frustration: relief because it meant that, for the moment at least, they would not have to testify in the scheduled contempt trial; frustration because, once more, he had escaped accountability. Seeing him behind bars wouldnt have undone the pain of the past year and a halfErickson was still considering leaving medicine, and even in New Zealand, Thomass son was still asking, Mommy, that Ammon Bundy guy cant come here, can he?but it would have brought a degree of closure, a feeling that justice had been served.

Law enforcement could still come looking for Bundy in Utah, or wherever he is, and bring him back to Idaho. And if that happens, he could face months or even years in jail. Even if it does not, St. Lukes will soon claim possession of the home he left behind.

Standing there alone on the deserted property, Malone felt his own mix of emotions. He, too, was relieved: Had Bundy stayed and fought, the sheriff and his deputies would have gunned him down, Malone was sure of it. He, too, was frustrated: Peoples Rights could have done more; people werent prepared to lay down their lives for freedom the way they used to be. And he was also heartbroken: The others may have been afraid, but he really would have died by his friends side. And now Ammon Bundy was gone. The specific era of American extremism that had begun a decade earlier at Bundy Ranch was, in some sense, over.

Ammon never returned my calls, but he did eventually send me a brief message via an encrypted app. I have always told the truth, he said, and God will be my judge.

His note called to mind something hed once told me about his enemies. I think most people over the years come to think that theyre doing what should be done, he said. And it doesnt change the fact that what theyre doing is not right.

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The anniversary of George Floyd’s murder is a reminder of America’s racial divides

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The anniversary of George Floyd's murder is a reminder of America's racial divides

In Minneapolis, the spot where George Floyd was murdered has been turned into a mural.

His face is depicted in street art on a pavement covered in flowers, rosaries, and other trinkets left by people who have come to pay their respects in the last five years.

His final moments, struggling for breath with white police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, were captured in a viral video that provoked anger, upset, and outrage.

Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck
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Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck

In Minneapolis and other parts of America, there were protests that at points boiled over into unrest.

The events to mark the fifth anniversary of his death took on a very different tone – one of celebration and joy.

Behind a wooden statue of a clenched fist on one end of a junction now renamed George Perry Floyd Square, people gathered in the morning.

There was a moment of prayer before a brass band began to play and the group marched, while singing and chanting.

George Perry Floyd Square, a makeshift memorial area
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George Perry Floyd Square, a makeshift memorial area

‘It made us want to fight harder’

Among those gathered in front of a makeshift stage built in the square were two of Floyd’s family members – his cousin Paris and aunt Mahalia.

To them, the man whose death sparked a racial reckoning in America and further afield, was simply “Perry,” a larger-than-life figure whose presence is missed at family gatherings.

Speaking to me while the speakers behind them thumped and people danced, they didn’t just reflect with sadness though.

There was also pride at a legacy they felt has led to change.

“It made us want to fight harder,” said Mahalia, “and it’s a feeling you cannot explain. When the whole world just stood up.”

George Floyd's aunt Mahalia and cousin Paris
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George Floyd’s aunt Mahalia and cousin Paris

Referring to Chauvin’s eventual murder charge, Paris added: “I think that from here on out, at least officers know that you’re not going to slide through the cracks. Our voices are heard more.”

The tapestry of items outside the Cup Foods convenience store, now renamed Unity Foods, is not the only makeshift memorial in the area.

A short walk away is the “Say Their Names” cemetery, an art installation honouring black people killed by the police.

Meeting me there later in the day, activist Nikema Levy says the installation and George Floyd Square are called “sacred spaces” in the community.

As someone who took to the streets at the time of Floyd’s death and a community organiser for years before that, she’s constantly stopped by people who want to speak to her.

Activist Nikema Levy speaking to Sky News
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Activist Nikema Levy speaking to Sky News

‘White supremacy on steroids’

Once we do manage to speak, Levy reminds me of a wider political picture. One that goes beyond Minneapolis and is a fraught one.

In the week of the anniversary, the US Department of Justice rolled back investigations into some of the largest police forces in the country, including in Minneapolis – a move she calls “diabolical.”

“That type of cruelty is what we have seen since Donald Trump took office on January 20th of this year,” she continued.

“From my perspective, that is white supremacy on steroids. And it should come as no surprise that he would take these types of steps, because these are the things that he talked about on the campaign trail.”

Read more from Sky News:
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Has US changed five years after George Floyd’s death?

‘True healing has never taken place’

Trump has argued his policing reforms will help make America’s communities safer.

Even on a day of optimism, with a community coming together, Levy’s words in front of headstones bearing the names of black people who have died at the hands of the police are a reminder of how deep the racial divides in America still are – a sentiment she leaves me with.

“From the days of slavery and Jim Crow in this country, we’ve just had the perception of healing, but true healing has never taken place,” she says.

“So the aftermath of George Floyd is yet another example of what we already know.”

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Panthers one game away from another Cup Final: Grades, biggest takeaways from Game 3

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Panthers one game away from another Cup Final: Grades, biggest takeaways from Game 3

One team is a win away from advancing to a third straight Stanley Cup Final. The other is about to once again come up short in a conference final. As drastic as that sounds, that is the reality facing the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes following the Panthers’ 6-2 win Saturday in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers opened the series by scoring five goals in each of the first two games and exposing the Hurricanes in a way that hadn’t been done by another team this postseason. On Saturday, it appeared that the Canes may have found a solution as they entered the third period tied at 1-1 … before the Panthers exploded for five straight goals to close out Game 3 in emphatic fashion.

How did both teams perform? Who is worth watching in Game 4? And given that there’s a sweep in play, what could Monday mean for both teams, knowing that one of them could see their season come to an end? Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton answer those questions while reviewing what has been a lopsided Eastern Conference finals.

The Panthers withstood an expected early push from Carolina and settled swiftly into their own game. They failed to capitalize on their first-period power-play chance but made up for it by opening the scoring with a goal credited to Niko Mikkola (that actually went off Carolina’s Dmitry Orlov) midway through the first. It was a deflating marker for Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov to cede right after a solid Hurricanes penalty kill and appeared to diminish Carolina’s confidence.

There was potential to shift Carolina’s momentum, though. Before the first period ended, Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen finished a check sending Jackson Blake awkwardly into the boards. That earned Luostarinen a five-minute penalty and game misconduct, putting the Panthers down two of their top forwards in Luostarinen and an injured Sam Reinhart. But Florida didn’t let the lengthy man advantage hurt its momentum. The Panthers killed it off and matched Carolina’s shot total while shorthanded.

While the score was tied at 1-1 going into the third, Florida regained its lead with Jesper Boqvist undressing (to put it mildly) Orlov in shocking fashion. Boqvist entered the lineup to replace Reinhart, and it was the type of contribution Florida could only hope to see from its depth skater.

It was all Panthers from there, with goals from Mikkola, Aleksander Barkov (capitalizing on a turnover by Orlov), Evan Rodrigues and Brad Marchand giving Florida a 6-1 lead halfway through the third and putting Carolina against the ropes going into an elimination Game 4. Florida will wonder about Mikkola’s status ahead of that tilt. (He left in the third period Saturday after slamming into the end boards.) But the Cats can’t be too frustrated given their win. — Kristen Shilton

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Jesper Boqvist puts Panthers back ahead

Jesper Boqvist goes through the goaltender’s legs to restore the Panthers’ lead vs. the Hurricanes.

Unofficial Canadian poet laureate Avril Lavigne once posed one of more philosophical questions of her generation: Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?

Everything the Hurricanes did through the first two periods of Game 3 created the belief that they could potentially stick with the Panthers. Only to then fall apart in the third period. Again.

There are numerous reasons why losing Game 3 is so damning for the Hurricanes. What might be the most prominent and prevalent is there might not be anything else they can do at this stage. We have seen the Panthers take a 3-0 series lead only to be pushed to a Game 7 in a playoff series. That was the case in last year’s Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers.

But through three games of this series? The Hurricanes have switched goaltenders, adjusted their lineups and sought out other alterations within their structure — and still lost by a large margin while once again falling prey to being on the other end of a big period. — Ryan S. Clark


Three Stars of Game 3

Mikkola has had quite a series. The defensemen has broken up plays, taken command off the rush and created quality scoring chances. He had two goals in Game 3 for his first career multigoal playoff game and the fourth multigoal playoff game in Panthers franchise history.

It was two goals and a helper for the Cats’ captain. This was Barkov’s 20th career multipoint playoff game, the most in Panthers franchise history.

3. The Panthers’ third period

The Panthers unloaded in the final frame, scoring five goals to run away with Game 3 by a final score of 6-2. Five tucks is the most in any period in a playoff game in franchise history. The Hurricanes have now lost 15 straight conference final games since they won the Stanley Cup in 2006. — Arda Öcal

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Panthers pour it on with 2 more quick goals

The Panthers net two more goals in just over a minute to pad their lead vs. the Hurricanes.


Players to watch in Game 4

There’s no question Florida’s netminder has been building a Conn Smythe case with his excellent play in this postseason. However, Bobrovsky hasn’t been at his most dominant in (initial) closeout games during the playoffs. He made 26 saves for an .897 save percentage in Florida’s Game 5 win over Tampa Bay to send the Lightning home, and made just 15 stops (.882 SV%) in Florida’s Game 6 loss to Toronto in the second round, when the Panthers had a chance to advance.

Bobrovsky was practically impenetrable in Game 7 of that series as the Leafs imploded, but it’s fair to wonder what version of Bobrovsky the Panthers will get in Game 4.

When Florida had an opportunity to close out Edmonton in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final last spring, Bobrovsky turned in his worst showing of the playoffs, with five goals allowed on 11 shots that saw him chased from the net in an 8-1 thumping. Florida has put itself in a good position to send Carolina home, but wouldn’t it be nice to do it sooner than later? Bobrovsky at his best will help Florida do just that. — Shilton

Benching Frederik Andersen was done with the belief that Kochetkov could give the Hurricanes a stronger chance to win. Through two periods, it appeared that that could be the case, as Kochetkov received the necessary support from the Hurricanes’ defensive structure, something that had been an issue in the first two games.

But the Panthers’ five consecutive goals in the third period derailed things. The Hurricanes have now allowed 16 goals over three games. It’s a stark contrast to the first two rounds, when Carolina allowed 18 total in 10 games against the Devils and Capitals.

Kochetkov’s first two periods of Game 3 provided a level of consistency the Hurricanes have struggled to find at times. Is it possible they take something from the opening two-thirds of Game 3 and parlay it into a different outcome in Game 4? Or will it be game and season over instead? — Clark


Big questions for Game 4

Is Florida ready to end this series?

The cliché that the fourth win of a playoff series is the hardest to get exists for a reason. The Panthers experienced that firsthand last season when they took a 3-0 lead over Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Final, then crisscrossed the continent over the next week as the Oilers clawed back to force a Game 7.

Did the Panthers learn their lesson on how to close an opponent out quickly? Florida did it to these very Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals two years ago with a tidy four-game sweep featuring many of the same elements we’ve seen from the Panthers in this round. But Florida appeared to have Edmonton well in hand 11 months ago, too.

Game 3 was arguably the Hurricanes’ best of the series. If they can channel some significant desperation into their game Monday, how will Florida handle the pressure of an urgent club trying not to be embarrassed with a 16th consecutive loss in a conference final situation? The Panthers can’t afford to look past what will be a dramatic Game 4. — Shilton

Is this it for the Hurricanes — and what comes next if it is?

That in and of itself is a rather loaded question for several reasons, with the obvious being: Will Monday be Carolina’s last game of the 2025 playoffs? If it is, what could that mean for the franchise going forward?

The way the Hurricanes have been constructed has allowed them to become a perennial playoff team with a legitimate chance of reaching the conference finals. But that comes with the caveat that the Canes might not go any further than that.

It was a dilemma the Panthers faced before making the changes that saw them not only win a Stanley Cup, but also be one win away from a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. Maybe it doesn’t come to that point for the Hurricanes. But if they allow five or more goals for a fourth straight game while also struggling to score? It could lead to some difficult questions this offseason in Raleigh. — Clark

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Up 3-0, Panthers will not ‘start looking ahead’

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Up 3-0, Panthers will not 'start looking ahead'

SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers are one win away from an Eastern Conference finals sweep. They’ve outscored the Carolina Hurricanes, a team that’s lost 15 straight conference final games, by a count of 16-4. Yet Panthers forward Brad Marchand is still ready for this series to go the distance.

“We’re prepared to go seven here,” he said after their 6-2 victory in Game 3 on Saturday night. “I mean, you can’t start looking ahead. That’s such a dangerous game to play.”

Contextually, that mindset might seem preposterous. The Panthers are trying to match the Tampa Bay Lightning as the only teams since the Edmonton Oilers’ 1980s dynasty to advance to the Stanley Cup Final in three straight seasons, having won the Cup last season. They’ve dominated the Hurricanes with their physicality, scoring depth and the goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, who now has a .947 save percentage and a 1.33 goals-against average in the conference finals.

It seems like a matter of when, not if, Florida will eliminate Carolina — and the “when” is trending to be Monday night at home in Game 4. Yet the Panthers are the last team to take a 3-0 lead for granted.

Coach Paul Maurice recalled their semifinals series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2023, when they went up 3-0 and dropped a Game 4 on home ice. “We wanted it so bad that we tried to win the game on every play,” he said.

Then came the ultimate lesson on how not to close out a series: The 2024 Stanley Cup Final, which saw the Panthers squander a 3-0 series lead to the Edmonton Oilers before finally winning Game 7 to hoist the Cup for the first time.

Maurice hopes his players understand the dynamics at play in Game 4.

“They have the desperation advantage. You have, potentially, the desire advantage. Both teams will fight that. Can we control the desire emotion and play the game? Can they control the desperation emotion and play the game? The common denominator is just playing the game,” he said.

Game 3 saw the Hurricanes play with more desperation than they’ve exhibited in this series. The game was tied 1-1 entering the third period after Carolina’s Logan Stankoven — who Bobrovsky robbed earlier in the second period with a lunging blocker save — managed to knock the puck past him for a power-play goal at 14:51 to even the score.

The Hurricanes were finally looking like the stingy, tight-checking team they’re known for being. Maurice wasn’t expecting a windfall of offense from the Panthers after the first 40 minutes of Game 3.

“We’re not going out to the third period saying, ‘Well, we can tell this is going to work out [for us]. I’ve got an extra piece of gum in my pocket for the second overtime. That’s how our experience with Carolina has been,” the coach said.

The gum stayed in his pocket. Florida scored five goals in the first 10:37 of the third period to put the game — and potentially the series — away.

“We knew we needed to be a little better than what we were in the second period, so we tried to keep things simple and I think we got rewarded for that,” said captain Aleksander Barkov, who had two of the goals in the onslaught.

Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour was left dumbfounded.

“We’re playing better and then we just turn pucks over. It’s not what we do. I think everyone’s just pretty surprised, you know what I mean?” he said. “Just you can’t do that. In a preseason game it’s going to cost you. But against that team, and you turn it over for odd man rushes? Forget it.”

The key to the rally was a goal by forward Jesper Boqvist, who was put on Barkov’s line as an injury replacement for Sam Reinhart, the Panthers’ leading scorer in the regular season. He took a short pass from linemate Evan Rodrigues and then turned Carolina defenseman Dmitry Orlov (minus-4) inside out before scoring on the backhand against Pyotr Kochetkov (22 saves), who got the start over Frederik Andersen in Game 3 for Carolina.

Boqvist had just one goal and one assist in 9 playoff games this postseason, averaging 8:53 in ice time. In Game 3, he had three points (1 goal, 2 assists) and skated 15:08 for the Panthers.

“He’s an extremely gifted player. I love playing with him. He can kind of play anywhere in the lineup and he’s such an incredible skater. So strong with the puck, so smart. And that was a massive goal,” Marchand said.

The Panthers won Game 3 without Reinhart and without having forward Eetu Luostarinen for most of the game, after he was ejected for boarding Carolina forward Jackson Blake in the first period. Luostarinen was tied for the team lead with 13 points entering Game 3, with 4 goals and 9 assists.

The Panthers would kill off that 5-minute major in what Maurice called “a real inflection point in the game,” considering that Florida was missing key penalty killers in Luostarinen and Reinhart, who is day-to-day with a lower body injury. When they needed him, Bobrovsky (23 saves) was a great last line of defense.

Thanks to their third-period deluge, the Panthers are now poised to sweep the Hurricanes in the conference final for the second time in three postseasons. Yet even with Florida’s domination of the series, Marchand said his team is anything but overconfident.

“I don’t think the way the games have been played is really an indication of what the outcome’s been, score wise. They’ve been pretty tight. It just seems like we’ve gotten a couple bounces, a couple lucky breaks here and there that have given us a pretty good lead,” he said.

“But it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to change anything about next game. We’ve got to come in and prepare the same way. It’s always the toughest one to get, so we got to make sure we bring our best.”

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