Connect with us

West

Bryson DeChambeau using Saudi-funded $125M LIV Golf salary to expand size of town by 200 acres

Published

on

Bryson DeChambeau using Saudi-funded 5M LIV Golf salary to expand size of town by 200 acres

LIV Golfer Bryson DeChambeau has a grand plan for the $125 million he’s receiving from his Saudi Arabian bosses. 

The controversial 31-year-old golf star said during an interview on “The Joe Pomp Show” he bought 200 acres of land in his hometown of Modesto, California, and plans to expand the town by 30%.

“We are doing a mega project,” DeChambeau said. “It’s been in the works for a couple of years now, and we’re at the place where we are getting permits to build. People know about it now. 

“We have acquired massive amounts of land in my hometown, and it’s a three-phase process to build a whole community and increase the size of where I grew up by 30%”

Advertisement

Bryson DeChambeau of LIV Golf before The Showdown: McIlroy and Scheffler v. DeChambeau and Koepka at Shadow Creek Golf Course Dec. 16, 2024, in Las Vegas.  (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images for The Showdown)

DeChambeau says his intention is to create a prominent golf presence in the community, adding the timeline for completing this project is just over a year. 

“It’s a full-scale plan, fully thought out. It’s not only to bring golfers to the game but also to bring people to the central valley. You build a community around a multisport complex center,” he said.

“It’s going to take 12-15 months to get the permits approved for the full scope. It’s over 200 acres of land what we have right now. It’s going to be a multisports complex center — driving range, golf course, residential community center, the whole thing.”

DeChambeau was paid a reported $125 million to join LIV Golf in June 2022. He says his latest project is only possible because of the massive salary from the Saudi-funded organization.

Advertisement

WOMEN’S GOLF STAR CHARLEY HULL FAWNS OVER ‘BRILLIANT, LEGEND’ TRUMP AFTER DOING HIS DANCE AT TOURNAMENT

Bryson DeChambeau reacts after putting on the fifth hole during the third round of the U.S. Open.  (Jim Dedmon/USA Today Sports)

“A lot of the reason why I have been able to do this is because of LIV. They gave me the economic viability to do these things and the platform to be able to do it, growing on YouTube,” he said. 

DeChambeau was one of many American golfers to compete in the Saudi-backed league when it launched.

Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Jon Rahm were other prominent PGA stars who chose to accept the massive LIV paychecks during the league’s aggressive pursuit of the sport’s biggest names. 

Advertisement

DeChambeau is also a close friend of President Donald Trump’s and invited Trump to play with him in a video on his YouTube channel. 

Bryson DeChambeau cradles the U.S. Open trophy after his win in the final round of the 2024 U.S. Open Championship on the No. 2 Course at The Pinehurst Resort June 16, 2024, in Pinehurst, N.C. (David Cannon/Getty Images)

DeChambeau told Fox News Digital at the time he had no regrets about it.

“There’s always risk associated to that. But, from my perspective, it was focused on entertainment,” DeChambeau told Fox News Digital in August at Maridoe Golf Club, site of the LIV Golf Team Championship. 

Advertisement

“We can talk about politics. That’s a whole different conversation, something that I was not trying to do on my YouTube channel. It was solely on providing great entertainment.”

DeChambeau joined Trump, Elon Musk and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to watch the SpaceX rocket launch in November. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.



Read the full article from Here

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Nevada

Voting rights advocates score three legal victories but remain on alert against election threats

Published

on

Voting rights advocates score three legal victories but remain on alert against election threats


Nevada’s “grace period” for accepting mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by officials in the days following will continue. The policy, set in statute by the state lawmakers in 2021, had been at risk as the U.S. Supreme Court considered a similar policy in Mississippi. “Today’s decision by the Supreme Court […]



Source link

Continue Reading

New Mexico

Did US drug agents allow lethal fentanyl to hit New Mexico’s streets?

Published

on

Did US drug agents allow lethal fentanyl to hit New Mexico’s streets?


Did the Drug Enforcement Agency break the law and gamble with public safety when it permitted large quantities of fentanyl pills to be trafficked in New Mexico in the hopes of getting a larger drug-trafficking bust?

That is the question at the heart of an explosive story published in the Associated Press, based on information provided by a former DEA agent turned whistleblower; the whistleblower filed a complaint in 2023 that claimed agents had allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills into Albuquerque – a city still reeling from the opioid crisis while many others across the country are seeing overdose rates decline.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA special agent David Howell told the outlet. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.”

Howell told the AP that, in some cases, the DEA had detailed intelligence about drug deliveries, including precise pill counts in shipments to Albuquerque.

Advertisement
David Howell, who filed a whistleblower complaint, poses for a portrait outside the US district courthouse in Albuquerque. Photograph: Susan Montoya Bryan/AP

DEA agents deciphered coded chatter over cellphones and closely surveilled a transaction of 74,000 fentanyl pills at a mobile home park in Albuquerque in June 2023, according to documents reviewed by AP. Days earlier, another shipment had also gone without seizure.

“We did nothing but sit back and watch,” Howell said.

One kilogram of fentanyl, which equates to thousands of pills, has the potential to kill 500,000 people, per the DEA’s own reporting.

The DEA has since challenged the AP’s reporting, saying in a statement to the Guardian that “public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts”.

“The cases in question involved complex, court-authorized Title III investigations in which agents and prosecutors conducted real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations,” it added.

Advertisement

The agency further said that in “operational decisions in investigations like this, DEA is mandated to coordinate investigative decisions with USAO (offices of US attorneys) leadership to ensure investigative steps are carefully coordinated to prevent harm to the public” and the decisions it had made “were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances, and consistent with department guidance”.

Nonetheless, in a subsequent statement, the DEA asked the US justice department’s internal watchdog – the office of inspector general – to investigate Howell’s complaint.

Meanwhile, New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez announced Friday the opening of a formal investigation into allegations.

“If those allegations are accurate, the consequences for New Mexicans were not abstract. They were fatal,” Torrez wrote in his letter to governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. “New Mexico already ranks among the states hardest hit by fentanyl overdose deaths, and the families who have lost children, siblings, and parents to this crisis deserve a full accounting of what the federal government knew, what it did, and what it failed to do.”

Torrez said he was “committed to pursuing every appropriate legal avenue to hold the responsible parties accountable” but warned while federal agents “are not above the law, the supremacy clause of the United States constitution provides substantial protections for federal employees acting within the scope of their authority”.

Advertisement

But the report has raised question about whether the US’s premiere drug enforcement agency underplayed the threat of fentanyl.

Additionally, there are questions about whether they have focused too much on largely Mexican criminal groups behind the trade instead of local or retail distribution and the tens of thousands of overdose deaths attributed to it.

Pills containing fentanyl seized by the DEA in New Mexico. Photograph: DEA/AP

While drug fatalities have fallen by 24% from roughly 105,000 in 2023 to 79,384 in 2024, the downward trend has not been seen in all regions – including in New Mexico, particularly along the Rio Grande valley, with its long history as a trans-shipment route for Mexican black tar and brown heroin. For decades, the Los Alamos dormitory town of Española, 80 miles north of Albuquerque, was known as the heroin-addiction capital of America.

But the issue was largely localized. Addiction soared in the area with the relaxation of the opiate prescription practices in the late 1990s. When those gates were closed 15 years later, Mexican cartels switched from costly heroin production to the cheap, synthetic and more unpredictable fentanyl.

Overdose deaths in New Mexico increased 23% over the past year, marking the second consecutive year the state led the nation in overdose mortality. During the first half of 2025, three north-east counties, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, and Taos, saw drug-related emergency room visits increase by as much as 204%, according to the New Mexico department of health.

Advertisement

Howell was uncovered as the author of the complaint to the justice department’s office of professional responsibility after reporters noticed the redactions had missed the last letter of his name; they contacted DEA agents who had worked in Albuquerque on LinkedIn. He reportedly paid a price for making the complaint – getting relegated to desk duty and getting docked in his performance evaluations.

Internal records also show prosecutors barred him from testifying in federal court, citing his “pattern of refusing to heed” admonitions to allow drugs to go without seizure during long-term investigations.

Alex Uballez, who served as US attorney in New Mexico from 2022 through 2025, told the AP that drug shipments had been allowed to go through without seizure as part of a broader effort to gather intelligence and build cases against major drug traffickers.

“The bigger fish are worth catching,” he said, “And that will save more lives.”

The finding that federal agents allowed hundred of thousands of pills to be distributed in Albuquerque has sent political shockwaves through the state.

Advertisement
A man shows a fentanyl pill he is about to smoke in Española, New Mexico. Photograph: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Governor Lujan Grisham called the DEA’s actions “reckless and dangerous” and urged the New Mexico attorney general’s office to prosecute anyone responsible, “regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.” Grisham also told the Albuquerque Journal that the result of this influx of pills was “hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.”

A Democrat who is facing a re-election contest with former interior secretary Deb Haaland, Grisham said she repeatedly petitioned Joe Biden’s administration and federal officials for help with the fentanyl crisis.

“While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in,” she said. “I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action to right these wrongs.”

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said on X that the fentanyl epidemic has “torn through our streets” and “it is disgusting to think that federal authorities may have allowed hundreds of thousands of these deadly pills to move into our community and possibly killed people through their actions.”

Keller said at a news conference on Thursday that DEA had made an “immoral decision” and called it “a huge slap in the face to all of us as New Mexicans”.

Advertisement

Bernalillo county sheriff John Allen, which incorporates Albuquerque, told the Albuquerque Journal that the DEA had been allowed “to feed poison to our community for a bigger case”.

“I agree with getting the big fish and everything, but not when people are dying while we’re doing these investigations,” he added.

In 2017, the Department of Justice issued an internal “fentanyl protocols” guidance that directed federal agents to “seize or otherwise prevent the distribution” of fentanyl “as soon as practicable” and said that “protecting public safety is paramount” irrespective of larger investigations.

But two years ago, the DoJ revised that guidance to give agents more discretion, saying investigators “may exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl”, balancing public safety risks against “the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation.”

In December last year, Donald Trump issued an executive order designating fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” and gave defense secretary Pete Hegseth and then attorney general Pam Bondi broad latitude to use the resources of both departments to combat the scourge.

Advertisement

Empower Oversight, whistleblower organization that now represents Howell, says DEA routinely “walked” fentanyl shipments from at least 2023 to March 2025. As the DEA did, it called on the justice department’s office of inspector general and congressional oversight committees to investigate.

“The same agency that warns the public, ‘one pill can kill’, should not intentionally allow hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets,” the organization said. “It’s outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case.”



Source link

Continue Reading

Oregon

Baker County was 1st official jurisdiction in Eastern Oregon – La Grande Observer

Published

on

Baker County was 1st official jurisdiction in Eastern Oregon – La Grande Observer


Baker County was 1st official jurisdiction in Eastern Oregon

Published 9:00 pm Monday, June 29, 2026

Although Native Americans had lived in what became Northeastern Oregon for millennia, when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, the better part of a century would pass before settlers began to start towns in the region.

Tens of thousands of immigrants rolled through the area, following the Oregon Trail, starting in the 1840s.

Although their destination was the trail’s end at Oregon City, and ultimately a farm in the Willamette Valley, eventually some retraced the ruts to the northeast corner of Oregon, which became the nation’s 33rd state on Feb. 14, 1859, while others halted their wagons in the valley of the Powder or Grande Ronde river, or in the Columbia Basin on the west side of the Blue Mountains.

Advertisement

The first post office in Eastern Oregon actually predates the state. The Umatilla post office was established on Sept. 26, 1851, although it was closer to present-day Echo than to the city of Umatilla. The post office closed just a year later.

The region’s first official jurisdiction was Baker County, which the Oregon Legislature carved out of Wasco County on Sept. 22, 1862.

That was prompted by the region’s first gold rush, which followed Henry Griffin’s discovery of gold in a gulch, a few miles southwest of what would become Baker City, on Oct. 23, 1861.

Just five days after designating Baker County, on Sept. 27, 1862, lawmakers shrunk Wasco County even more by creating Umatilla County.

Two years later, on Oct. 14, 1864 — apparently a busy day in Salem — the legislature added two more counties in Grant and Union.

Advertisement

Grant County was made of parts of Umatilla and Wasco counties, while Union County was originally part of Baker County.

On Oct. 14, 1887 — it’s not clear why Oct. 14 seems to have been 19th century lawmakers’ favorite day to create counties — the legislature designated a chunk of eastern Union County as Wallowa County.

In many cases, such as Umatilla, post offices were started before towns were incorporated.

And most cities in the region were settled years, or even decades, before they were incorporated.

People were living in what became Baker City, for instance, in 1863, but the city was platted in 1865 and incorporated in 1874, eight years after the post office was established.

Advertisement

La Grande was already a town when it was incorporated in 1865.

And two cities — Umatilla and Canyon City — were incorporated even earlier, in 1864.

Incorporation dates for other cities in the region:

Pendleton: 1880

Hermiston: 1907

Advertisement

Heppner: 1887

Boardman: 1921

Milton-Freewater: 1950 (Milton, 1873; Freewater, 1890)

Enterprise: 1889

Elgin: 1891

Advertisement

Echo: 1904

Haines: 1909

Halfway: 1909

Huntington: 1891

Imbler: 1922

Advertisement

Ione: 1903

Irrigon: 1957

Island City: 1904

John Day: 1901

Joseph: 1887

Advertisement

La Grande: 1865

Lexington: 1903

Long Creek: 1891

Mount Vernon: 1948

North Powder: 1903

Advertisement

Pilot Rock: 1911

Prairie City: 1891

Richland: 1917

Stanfield: 1910

Sumpter: 1901

Advertisement

Summerville: 1885

Union: 1878

Unity: 1972

Wallowa: 1899

Weston: 1878

Advertisement

Athena: 1904



Source link

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending