Bundy standoff
Cliven and Ammon Bundy, and their supporters, have claimed that the federal government lacks the authority to manage public lands. These arguments have been repeatedly rejected by legal scholars and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court; the property clause of the United States Constitution grants plenary authority to Congress to manage federal property, including land.
The land to which Cliven Bundy claims ancestral rights was originally inhabited by the Moapa Paiute people. In 1848, as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States purchased from Mexico land that is now the southwestern region of the United States. Since then, the government has continuously owned land in what is now Nevada, including the Bunkerville Allotment. The Nevada Territory was partitioned in 1861 from the Utah Territory, and became a state in 1864. The original settlers in the 1840s and 1850s were Mormons from Utah and southern small-time farmers and ranchers from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. After the end of the American Civil War, much of the land was settled by rural farmers, squatters and small-time cattle ranchers from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Kansas, escaping from the post-Civil War Reconstruction and the associated violence and displacement. Since 1934 federal rangelands in Nevada have been managed principally by either the Bureau of Land Management or its predecessor, the United States Grazing Service, or the United States Forest Service. , 47.8 million acres (more than two-thirds of Nevada's 70.3 million acres) were managed by the BLM. Throughout the nation, the BLM manages nearly 18,000 grazing permits and leases, of which about 700 are in Nevada. The season of use and the details of forage are stipulated in permits and leases; thus federal control can be exerted on the land used for grazing.
Bundy standoff
Republican Senator Dean Heller of Nevada said of the Bundy supporters, "These people are patriots." Heller made that statement during the same television interview in which Senator Harry Reid described the Bundy supporters as "domestic terrorists." Heller also complained of federal actions during the standoff, saying, "I told him [BLM Director Neil Kornze] very clearly that law-abiding Nevadans must not be penalized by an over-reaching BLM". After the resolution he stated, "emotions and tensions are still near the boiling point." Later on he said that Bundy should pay the BLM the more than $1 million in grazing fees owed to the agency.