Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins Drops All Charges Against Beleaguered South Dakota Ranchers

Government overreach has always (and will always) be a problem, but the Biden administration seemed more than willing to take it to the next level. Overregulation was piled on overreach was piled on overzealous enforcement, and there can be no better example of this than the case of Charles and Heather Maude. The Maudes are South Dakota ranchers who had a dispute over land that had been leased by the Maudes for grazing, and instead of sitting down and talking with the Maudes, the Biden Department of Agriculture filed criminal charges. We originally brought you the story last September.

That ordeal for the Maudes is over. On Wednesday, the Trump administration's Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced that all charges against the Maudes have been dropped.

🚨 @SecRollins announces that the Trump administration will be dropping all criminal charges against South Dakota cattle ranchers Charles and Heather Maude, who were prosecuted by the Biden admin for "theft of government property" for a dispute over 25 acres of land. pic.twitter.com/4EZRODB59n
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 30, 2025

The Secretary announced:

This un-American sentiment, this claim to a right to rule without recourse, is also precisely the prerogative that some bureaucrats under the Biden regime decided to assert, and their targets were an innocent and unimpeachable American farm and ranch family, the Maudes of South Dakota, who join us here today.
This family, targeted solely over what should have been a civil dispute over grazing rights over 25 acres of government land, was prosecuted, credibly threatened with jail sentences, so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children. Charles and Maude live on a 5th-generation family farm in Pennington County, South Dakota, close to Mount Rushmore. There, they farm 400 acres. They raise about 250 head of cattle, and about 40 sows.

In other words, a typical American farming and ranching family - the kind of people that, quite literally, feed the country.

Here's the kicker:

The Biden administration criminally charged the Maude family for theft of government property. And for too long, for years now, they have endured a torturous legal process and suffered as victims of the Biden regime's reckless lawfare. Just imagine, a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute over 25 acres of land. The men of Lexington and Concord knew what (this) sort of government was like, and they knew what to do about it. The Maude family too, faced with destruction at the hand of the state, made their appeal to heaven, and providence answered. Thanks to the leadership and the unequivocal, bold leadership of President Trump and his directive to put Americans first, we now have the pleasure to announce that the criminal prosecution of the Maudes is now over. They will not be driven from their home. They will not be jailed. They will not be fined. And their children will grow up with a mother and a father who they love and who love them.

The Biden administration, in this matter, engaged in one of the most egregious examples of government abuse of a citizen that we've seen.

This dispute - and there was, legitimately, some confusion over the status of the 25 acres and the exact boundaries between that acreage and the Maude family land - should never have come to this in the first place. In a sane world, this would have been resolved by having one or two Department of Agriculture officials come out, sit down with the Maudes, make sure everybody understood and agreed to a solution to the dispute, and arrive at a mutually agreed-upon survey of the property boundaries.

Instead, the Biden administration threatened the Maudes with jail time. The Biden administration threatened to break up the Maude family, to effectively orphan the Maude children. And all of this is over a dispute over 25 acres of grazing land. This is the same administration, mind you, that allowed millions of unscreened, unvetted, illegal immigrants to flood into the United States.

This case is over for now, and the Maudes can breathe a sigh of relief. But the Biden administration has created many messes like this, that will be years in the unraveling. There may well be hundreds of families like the Maudes suffering from the heavy hand of overzealous government.

As George Washington noted, government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. The Maudes have learned this the hard way, and there can be no better illustration of the veracity of this claim by President Washington than the Biden administration.

The Deep State is working overtime to subvert President Trump's agenda and the will of the people.

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