MARCH 20, 2025|
Photo – Mellon logo – Bigfoot99 file photo
Standing off Interstate 25, south of Cheyenne and north of the Colorado State line, is a billboard paid for by American businessman Timothy Mellon which greets drivers with this ominous warning: “Venezuela Ahead. Be Prepared.”
Mellon is the grandson of the famous early 20th century banker Andrew Mellon of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—the founder of Mellon Bank. The elder Mellon served as U.S. Treasury Secretary and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
In the 1960s, the younger Mellon generated new family wealth in the computer industry by founding a software company. By the 1980s, the young Mellon had expanded into transportation with the purchase of struggling railroad companies and cash-poor airlines in the 1990s.
Mellon moved to Wyoming in 2005, where he donated $1 million to a nonprofit group to assist in the efforts to find the plane and remains of 20th century missing adventurer Amelia Earhart. He later sued the group for fraud.
Despite his wealth and political capital, Mellon maintains a low profile.
The title of his autobiography is “My name is Timothy Mellon. Please call me Tim.”
Although he has avoided the media spotlight throughout his career, when Ronald Regan was in the White House, Mellon wrote in 1984, “Something had obviously gone dreadfully wrong with the Great Society and the Liberal onslaught. Poor people had become no less poor. Black people, in spite of heroic efforts by the “Establishment” to right the wrongs of the past, became even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations. … Drugs rose to the level of epidemic. Single parent families became more and more prevalent. The likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pandered endlessly to fan the flames.”
The course of liberalism continues to this day.
When more than two-dozen Republican-led states argued this week in a federal appeals court that the judge should uphold President Donald Trump’s deportation plan targeting members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, Wyoming was not among them.
The state’s attorney general, Bridget Hill, did not file an amicus brief in the case, claiming a time crunch.
Apparently, Governor Mark Gordon did not apply much pressure, either.
In Washington, D.C., the White House took a more urgent approach. President Donald Trump declared the TDA, which moved its drug operations into public housing north of Denver and onto Indian reservations in the Cowboy State, is a “Foreign Terrorist Organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”
The purpose of the White House brief, before the appellate court – that the Wyoming attorney general did not enjoin, was to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to undo U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The federal judge told the Trump administration to direct two flights carrying noncitizens back to the United States.
Wyoming’s attorney general defended her lack of action saying that she will have other opportunities to support President Trump’s efforts.
Governor Mark Gordon also echoed support for the president’s efforts, saying through a spokesperson that he favors “the deportation of dangerous criminals from the United States.”
Meanwhile, the socialist country of Venezuela launched a new web site this week that allows individuals to report alleged “unjust deportations” of Venezuelan illegal migrants from the United States.”
The website is part of dictator Nicolás Maduro’s “response” to President Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport 238 Venezuelans suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization to El Salvador on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Wyoming-based Mellon, who avoids the spotlight and rarely speaks to the media, donated $53 million in stock to the state of Texas in 2021 to pay for construction of walls along the US–Mexico border.
