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Voter breaks silence after Biden campaign staffer tried to end interview critical of the president: 'Chilling'

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A voter who criticized President Biden is speaking out about his encounter with a Biden campaign staffer after he said she tried to shut down his interview with a New York Times reporter. 

Stephen Stubbs, a First Amendment attorney from Henderson, Nevada, told Fox News Digital in an interview that he was invited to attend a June 28 campaign event at the East Las Vegas Community Center featuring Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Stubbs said he initially wanted to attend the Harris event to hear how the administration planned to deal with inflation, but in the wake of Biden’s performance at the CNN Presidential Debate, he wanted to hear what she would say regarding questions about Biden’s mental acuity.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally on June 28, 2024, in Las Vegas.  (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“Everybody was talking about the debate the night before. Everybody was. And everybody was concerned. There were a few people that were vocal and saying, we have to move forward with what we have, so let’s not talk negatively. But 90% of the people were critical of Joe Biden and [were] very, very worried,” he recalled. 

Staffers wearing Biden-Harris shirts at the event went around “strongly hinting” that people shouldn’t say anything negative about the president at a Biden event, according to Stubbs. 

He said he was sitting outside eating his tacos and ice cream and happened to sit next to the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Nevada, who was approached a few minutes later by New York Times politics fellow Simon Levien for an interview. 

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A Biden/Harris campaign sign is seen during a press conference regarding the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 29, 2024.

A Biden/Harris campaign sign is seen during a press conference regarding the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 29, 2024.

Stubbs said he began talking to Levien, who then asked him what he thought about the debate the night before. 

A Biden staffer who was following Levien around took out her phone and began recording their conversation. “That in itself was kind of intimidating,” Stubbs told Fox News Digital.

BIDEN TAKES BLAME FOR ‘BAD NIGHT’ IN DEBATE AGAINST TRUMP: ‘MY FAULT, NO ONE ELSE’S FAULT’

He said he began questioning why Biden couldn’t articulate for 90 minutes at the debate what he’s doing daily as president.

trump and biden

President Joe Biden (R) and Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump participate in the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“I’m concerned about who’s running the country right now. And I said, from what I saw last night, Biden should step down and Kamala Harris [who] was elected the vice president, that is her job, she should fulfill the rest of his term. And when I said that, the staffer said, I’m going to stop this right now. This is a Biden event. I’m sorry, but I’m going to stop this. She tried to stop it,” Stubbs explained. 

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“Now, to the New York Times’ credit, they turned to her and said, no. I’m continuing with this interview, but the whole time she was giving me, like, daggers. Just daggers. Like, how dare you talk negatively about Biden to the New York Times.” 

Levien identified the staffer as Clio Calvo-Platero, deputy communications director for the Biden campaign in Nevada.

Calvo-Platero twice tried to end interviews with voters who were critical of Biden: once with Democratic voter Amy Nelson and the other with Stubbs, according to a vice presidential pool report from Levien. 

biden nevada

US President Joe Biden, left, speaks during a campaign event at Pearson Community Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024. (Ian Maule/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Biden campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment about the incident.

Stubbs, who describes himself as a constitutionalist, said he’s a registered Democrat who voted third-party in the 2020 election because he wasn’t happy with either Trump or Biden.

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He said his interaction with Calvo-Platero “shocked” his conscience. “I didn’t appreciate it,” he added. “She is the one that ordered us; it wasn’t a request; she ordered us to stop talking. That was chilling.”

Stubbs told Fox News Digital he’s an undecided voter heading into November. He has issues with both Trump and Biden and likens the choice to “chlamydia” or “gonorrhea.”

“Neither one is a good choice,” he said. “I’m begging someone to give me a reason not to vote for Trump.”

Trump and Biden

Donald Trump (L) and Joe Biden (R) during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 22, 2020.               Brendan Smialowski and Jim WatsonAFP via Getty Images (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKIJIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The Nevada native added that he likes Biden’s Supreme Court pick, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, the administration’s environmental policies and its support for unions and unionized workers. 

As for Trump, Stubbs said he takes issue with his “pro-police militarization and selling weapons of war to police departments.” 

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FOX NEWS POLITICS: BIDEN-TRUMP REMATCH?

Inflation is the most important issue for him heading into November because it’s hurting his family and adult children “deeply.” 

Stubbs said his final concern about Biden is that he’s being kept in a “bubble.”

“He’s not hearing feedback from real Americans, right? Look, I am not convinced that Biden has the mental acuity to do the job today. I think the responsible thing for him to do is to say, for the good of the country, I’m going to put myself aside and any ego I might have, step down and Mrs. Harris is going to finish out my term. It’s not very long, right? And you know what? Give her a shot,” he told Fox News Digital.

“My problem is, is that if Biden stays in the race, we don’t really know who Trump is running against. It’s a person behind a curtain. We don’t know who’s making the analysis and the decisions because Biden doesn’t have the mental acuity,” Stubbs continued. 

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“The curtain has to be open. We have to know what is going on, who is running the country. That’s the first thing I asked that reporter. Who is running the country? We need to know.” 

The White House has repeatedly said Biden had a bad night during the debate, citing a cold and jetlag and insists that he is the one making decisions. Biden himself insists he is up for his duties as president and is the candidate best suited to defeat former President Trump in November.

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Montana

As Grizzlies Fill In Corners Of Montana, Are They Closer To Mingling…

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As Grizzlies Fill In Corners Of Montana, Are They Closer To Mingling…


The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is telling people they should be prepared to run into grizzlies anywhere west of Billings – but it remains unclear whether a long expected mingling of Wyoming and Montana bears is imminent. 

“We can’t tell with certainty that we haven’t had bears moving between those two populations,” Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Greg Lemon told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. 

Most recently, there was a confirmed sighting early this summer of a grizzly in southwest Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains. That’s a place where grizzly bears haven’t been spotted in decades.

It’s typically young male grizzlies that take off on long-distance adventures. But the age and sex of the Tobacco Roots grizzly hasn’t been determined, Lemon said. 

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Does that mean grizzlies are moving toward a major mingling between two populations centered in Wyoming and Montana? Probably not quite yet, a Wyoming bear expert said. 

“The Tobacco Roots are a stepping stone” toward genetic exchange, retired federal ecologist Chuck Neal of Cody told Cowboy State Daily. 

“But it’s a fragile stepping stone,” he added. 

‘Island Ranges’

So far, the West’s two main populations of grizzlies have remained essentially separated. 

About 1,100 bears make up the Northern Continental Divide population, radiating out of Montana’s Glacier National Park. 

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And a roughly equal number of grizzlies are thought to live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, centered in the heart of northwest Wyoming’s Yellowstone country. 

Those two populations could be within 60 miles of each other in some places, and a grizzly in the Tobacco Roots opens new possibilities, Neal said. 

The Tobacco Roots are one of the isolated “island ranges” in southwest Montana, he added. If a bear could get across open county to the south, it could get into continuous mountain ranges that would take it into Wyoming. 

And adding to the intrigue is the fact that biologists haven’t determined where the grizzly seen traipsing through the Tobacco Roots came from, Lemon said. 

Lacking DNA samples from the bear, there’s no way of confirming which population it came from. But the Greater Yellowstone population is the one closer to that area, he said. 

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Growing Population Or Genetic Exchange?

By the mid-1970s, the grizzly population in the Lower 48 was barely hanging on by a claw. Fewer than 100 of them were left, including some holed up in Yellowstone National Park. 

Grizzlies in the Lower 48 were put under federal endangered species protection in 1975. 

Since then, they’ve increased in numbers and range across Wyoming, Montana and parts of Idaho. In north-central Montana, they’ve been pushing far out into the open prairies. 

Last summer, there was excitement when a grizzly was spotted on the Montana side of the Pryor Mountains. It was near the Wyoming state line, in a place where grizzlies hadn’t been seen since the late 1800s. 

 And there was a huge buzz this spring when a grizzly bear was confirmed in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. It was a lone bear that was killed by wildlife agents after it preyed on cattle near Ten Sleep. 

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With so many grizzlies showing up in so many places, many have argued it’s well past time to delist them and turn management of the bears over to the state. 

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has plans in place for a grizzly hunting season if and when that happens. And agency director Brian Nesvik told members of the U.S. Congress last year that he favors delisting grizzlies

But Neal and other conservationists argue that full recovery won’t happen unless and until there is significant genetic exchange between the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone populations. 

The sheer number of bears doesn’t matter if that genetic exchange isn’t happening, they claim. 

Neal added that getting bears “into Central Idaho” – in the remote Bitterroot-Selway region – is also key to recovery. 

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Delisting efforts reached a fever pitch last year, with Wyoming’s U.S. Congressional delegation and Gov. Mark Gordon all clamoring for it to happen. Then those efforts fizzled. 

But delisting could be warming up again. During recent hearings in Washington, D.C., Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman again told federal wildlife officials that grizzly delisting is overdue. 

‘The Yuppies Haven’t Found It Yet’

Though a bear in the Tobacco Roots, as well as grizzlies popping up elsewhere raises hopes, the arguments over delisting could still be deadlocked. 

But wildlife overpasses might break the impasse, Neal said. 

As the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone grizzlies continue to inch ever closer to each other, Interstate highways in Montana remain a significant barrier between them, Neal said.  

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“A lone bear occasionally making it across I-90” isn’t going to do the trick, he said. 

What might pave the way for widespread grizzly romance between populations would be an overpass or overpasses across isolated stretches of Interstate 15, running between southwest Montana and the Idaho state line. 

“That’s one of the least-developed parts of southwest Montana. The yuppies haven’t found it yet,” he said. 

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.



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Nevada

Nevada pitcher Doktorczyk taken by Twins in MLB draft

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Nevada pitcher Doktorczyk taken by Twins in MLB draft


RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – Nevada right-handed pitcher Jason Doktorczyk was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the ninth round of the 2024 MLB Draft.

Doktorczyk was drafted with the 278th pick of Monday’s draft.

Doktorczyk is Nevada’s eighth MLB draft pick since 2019 and the third pitcher over the last two seasons. Kade Morris and Peyton Stumbo were drafted by the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates respectively last year.

Over the course of two years at Nevada, Doktorczyk struck out 150 batters over 148.1 innings, picking up eight wins. He also posted a strikeout-to-walk ration of 4:1 over 25 career appearances and posted an ERA of 3.21.

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New Mexico

State lawmakers prepare for upcoming special session

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State lawmakers prepare for upcoming special session


New Mexico state lawmakers are heading back to the Roundhouse this week for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public safety special session.

SANTA FE, N.M. – New Mexico state lawmakers are heading back to the Roundhouse this week for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public safety special session.

It’s been in the works for months now and with just three days left to prepare it seems legislative leaders aren’t feeling very confident about the governor’s top goals.

“The unintended consequences of passing something that is not ready are far too great,” said Speaker of the House Javier Martinez. 

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“Unfortunately, it feels a little bit like the governor’s throwing spaghetti up against the wall to see what sticks,” said House Minority Leader Rod Montoya.   

Martinez and Montoya appear to be on the same page when it comes to Lujan Grisham’s special session agenda.

“We just don’t think that a special legislative session is the place to do it, given how complex these bills are,” said Martinez. “These are very, very complicated areas of law. As one of my colleagues said, this is actually kind of rocket science.”

He’s talking about the governor’s plan to rework New Mexico’s criminal and civil competency laws. They’re proposals that consumed nearly half a dozen legislative meetings ahead of the special session, and are still far from the finish line.

“The committees that have seen these bills have seen variation after variation after variation of bill that, frankly, the legislators, are unwilling to bite on any one of them,” said Montoya. 

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But that’s not because lawmakers don’t support the big picture idea.

“Do I think that these things need to be addressed? Absolutely. Will they have an impact? Yeah, they will,” said House Minority Whip Alan Martinez. 

And not for lack of trying either.

“We’ve been working diligently, very hard over the past several weeks, six dedicated interim committee meetings to these issues, countless staff hours, countless legislative hours working on these different concepts,” said Martinez. “We just don’t think that we’re in a place where there’s agreement.” 

But it seems both sides do believe the special session may be much shorter than anticipated.

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“We’re not even sure necessarily if there will be a session, or if there is a session. We don’t know if we’re gonna walk in and gavel down because there’s no consensus and walk out the door,” said Montoya. 

“Whether or not we have a special session, whether or not it lasts 15 minutes or lasts a today, this work is going to continue, right? A special legislative session is not the end all be all for these issues,” said Martinez. 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say one of the other big concerns here is the price of a special session. It costs taxpayers roughly $50,000 a day to bring lawmakers back. Without some type of consensus ahead of time, it seems that money could go to waste.

So what are the big hangups on the competency bills? It seems lawmakers want more time to address constitutional concerns.

These bills would essentially force some New Mexicans into behavioral treatments against their will, and there are a lot of potential issues there.

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Some lawmakers also raised concerns about the simple lack of behavioral health resources across New Mexico, and suggest these bills might be putting the cart before the horse.



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