Gwich’in leaders were deeply disappointed Sunday by the decision by the Senate to slam the door on protecting sacred lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of budget reconciliation–the very same process by which the destructive oil and gas mandate was tucked into the 2017 Tax Act. The failure to repeal the Arctic Refuge oil and gas program in the Inflation Reduction Act undermines its claims of meaningful climate action.

“In the Arctic, we’re experiencing a warming climate at four times the rate as the rest of the world, yet Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich’in way of life by failing to stop this destructive and failed oil and gas program,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities.”... (click photo or headline to read more)
  

byDeena Zaru, ABC News  -  11JULY 2022

Native American tribal elders who attended Indian boarding schools as children shared their memories of physical and sexual abuse and emotional suffering with federal officials on Saturday, as the Biden administration confronts the U.S. government's role in a painful chapter of U.S. history.

"I still feel that pain," 84-year-old Donald Neconie said at the event, which took place at Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, according to the Associated Press.

Neconie said that Riverside, which opened in 1871, has changed today but said, "I will never, ever forgive this school for what they did to me."

More than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools run by the American government and churches to force assimilation, according to a report released in May by the U.S. Interior Department.

Neconie, a former U.S. Marine and member of the Kiowa Tribe, recalled being beaten if he cried or spoke his native Kiowa language when he attended Riverside for more than a decade starting in the late 1940s.

"Every time I tried to talk Kiowa, they put lye in my mouth," he said, according to the AP. "It was 12 years of hell."

Brought Plenty, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, said she was forced to cut her hair at a school in South Dakota and was forced to whip other girls with wet towels as punishment.

"What they did to us makes you feel so inferior," she said at the event, according to the AP. "You never get past this. You never forget it."... (click the headline to read more and watch the video)
  

by Maya Rao, Star Tribune  -  11 JULY 2022

The young Navajo woman broke down in tears as she described how tribal members in the Southwest had unsuccessfully battled the building of a border wall on sacred ancestral sites.

"When you lose that fight, what do you do?" she asked, standing in an audience before a panel of Indigenous elders. "What do you do after all that?"

More than 1,600 people from across the country came to the Minneapolis Convention Center in recent days for a tribal youth conference, and they eagerly sought insight from activists they'd heard so much about growing up. The panel commiserated with their questioner....
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On Wednesday, June 29, 1,000 acres of ancestral homeland in the Tully Valley in Central New York was returned to the Onondaga Nation.

The land return–one of the largest transfers from a state to an Indigenous nation—was part of a 2018 Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration settlement. The settlement is an agreement between the Dept. of the Interior’s trustees U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the landowner, Honeywell International Inc., to transfer the land title back to the tribe.

In 2005, the Onondaga Nation filed a federal lawsuit against the State of New York for taking 2.5 million acres of their homeland in violation of federal law and treaties between 1788 and 1822. The case was dismissed in 2010, and the Nation then brought the case to the International Court of Justice at the United Nations in 2014....
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The federal government has a responsibility to Native American tribes, Alaska Native villages and Native Hawaiian communities to fully support and revitalize education, language and cultural practices that prior boarding school policies sought to destroy, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said June 22.

Haaland testified before a U.S. Senate committee that is considering legislation to establish a national commission on truth and healing to address intergenerational trauma stemming from the legacy of Native American boarding schools in the United States.

As the first and only Native American Cabinet secretary, Haaland’s voice cracked with emotion and her eyes welled as she addressed the committee.

Haaland, who is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, said the forced assimilation that happened over a century and half through the boarding school initiative was both traumatic and violent. She noted she herself was a product of those policies as her grandparents were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools.

“Federal Indian boarding school policy is a part of America’s story that we must tell,” Haaland said. “While we cannot change that history, I believe that our nation will benefit from a full understanding of the truth of what took place and a focus on healing the wounds of the past.”...
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SALT LAKE CITY — In a 5-t0-4 decision Wednesday, the US Supreme Court ruled that states can prosecute non-tribal suspects who commit crimes in Indian country against Native Americans. Dustin Janson, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, joined KSL at Night host and attorney Greg Skordas to discuss the high court’s ruling and its implication for tribes in Utah.

Before the Supreme Court ruling, states had the authority to exercise jurisdiction over criminal activity that involved a non-Native perpetrator against a non-Native victim....
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But lack of trust is the biggest reason, said Patty Hibbeler, chief executive of the Phoenix Indian Center, which provides workforce and youth development, drug and alcohol prevention and language and culture revitalization.

“It comes from a very long and very negative history with the federal government,” she said.

In the 2010 census, 4.9% of American Indians living on reservations and Alaska Natives went uncounted – the highest of any group, according to an official Census Bureau audit. One in 7 Natives was left out of the equation the federal government uses to distribute more than $600 billion based on census data.

Native Americans, along with Latinos and African Americans, have been undercounted since the first census in 1790.

To halt this historical financial, political and societal disparity, an Arizona census outreach organization and leaders of local and national Native groups are mobilizing.

Hibbeler wants to avoid a potential undercount in the 2020 census, which officially launches in January, so more federal funds will go to schools, roads, hospitals and other needs of Native Americans in Arizona. The census, which is required by the Constitution every 10 years, also determines which states gain or lose seats in Congress....
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It's a troubling piece of Minnesota's past: Thirty-eight Dakota men hanged from a Mankato gallows in December 1862. Their deaths scarred generations of native people and cemented Minnesota as home to the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Despite that infamy, if you're a Minnesotan in your 30s or older, it's likely you were never taught about the hangings — or the prairie war between the United States and the Dakota that led to them. Minnesota didn't require students to study that tragic chapter in the state's history.

That past, and how it's taught, surfaced again recently with installation of "Scaffold," a Walker Art Center sculpture built in the shape of a gallows with a reference to the Mankato hangings. It led to an outcry from Dakota community members. While "Scaffold" has been torn down, the controversy has called into question how much Minnesotans know about what happened at Mankato.

"I think it's getting better than it used to be, but there's a long way to go," said Kate Beane, outreach and program manager for the Minnesota Historical Society.

Beane also teaches about Dakota culture and history at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. She said every year she asks her students if they know about the U.S.-Dakota War.

"Seven years ago when I started teaching that class maybe one or two hands would be raised. Now I'm seeing more hands being raised," Beane said....
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VANCOUVER—Mike Ridsdale’s voice shook as he spoke about ancient artifacts that could be destroyed as construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline continues, through the traditional lands of the Wet’suwet’en Nation.

“Where our ancestors used to be laying, (they’ll be) shoved to the side and made into a pile of dirt,” Ridsdale said.

Under provincial heritage rules, companies can apply for permits that allow them to develop land, but that could also destroy heritage items.

And as the CGL pipeline moves forward — tracking a 670 km path from Dawson Creek to Kitimat — Ridsdale says his nation feels powerless to protect these historic items.

“We need legislative tools for First Nations to have a better say in what is happening on the ground,” said Ridsdale, environmental assessment co-ordinator at the Office of the Wet’suwet’en Nation near Smithers, B.C. “If not, then we are going to lose our culture.”....
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In Canada, indigenous communities are condemning the Canadian government after it was revealed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared for the potential use of lethal force against indigenous land defenders resisting the construction of a natural gas pipeline on the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s ancestral land in British Columbia. The Guardian first revealed the documents in which commanders of Canada’s national police force argued “lethal overwatch is required” — a term for deploying snipers. The preparations came ahead of a police raid last January against a protest encampment where indigenous groups have been fighting the Coastal GasLink pipeline. In response to the revelations, the grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs in Canada said, “This form of state violence is happening to indigenous peoples around the world. It is disheartening to know that, even in Canada, this same type of planned violence is still being considered against First Nations.”....
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How would you feel if the government confiscated your land, sold it to someone else, and tried to force you to change your way of life, all the while telling you it’s for your own good? That’s what Congress did to Indian tribes 125 years ago today, with devastating results, when it passed the Dawes Act.

During the 1800s, white settlers moved west by the tens of thousands, and the US cavalry went with them, battling Indian tribes along the way. One by one, tribes were forced to relinquish their homelands (on which they had lived for centuries) and relocate to reservations, often hundreds of miles away. By the late 1800s, some three hundred reservations had been created.

The purpose of the reservation system was, for the most part, to remove land from the Indians and to separate the Indians from the settlers. Reservations were usually created on lands not (yet) coveted by non-Indians. By the late 1800s, however, settlers were nearly everywhere, and Congress needed to develop a new strategy to prevent further bloodshed.

The government decided that instead of separating Indians from white society, Indians should be assimilated into white society. Assimilation of the Indians and the destruction of their reservations became the new federal goal....
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Tribal and environmentalist groups in New Mexico protested the Bureau of Land Management’s upcoming auction of public land leases slated for February 2020, calling it the latest in a string of sales to the oil and gas industry that failed to account for the impact on the environment and sacred lands.

The groups, led by the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians, claimed to represent more than 5 million members in their opposition to the sale and called on the federal government to cancel plans to lease about 15,000 acres of tribal and federal public lands in New Mexico before a full analysis of potential public health and cultural harm.

Opposition also pointed to a June lease sale that offered almost 40,000 acres for oil and gas development after receiving “thousands” of protests from Native American tribes and other advocates....
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The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has been fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) since the historic protests that happened during its construction in 2016. Though President Obama halted construction in late 2016, President Trump lifted the hold as soon as he took office. The pipeline has now been operating for nearly 3 years, despite violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) through its environmental assessment and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) through the destruction of cultural resources during its construction.

As those violations continue to be investigated, the North Dakota Public Service Commission (NDPSC) is now considering—and set to approve—a massive expansion in the volume of Bakken crude oil carried through the pipeline, despite opposition—both legal and scientific—from the Tribe. Serious safety concerns previously documented by the Tribe were based on the pipeline transporting approximately 500 thousand barrels per day of Bakken crude. Now, an expansion is proposed that would double that volume, to 1.1 million barrels per day (over 46 million gallons/day) moving at increased pressure and higher speed (about 15 feet per second), making an oil spill more likely, and a timely and effective response near-impossible....
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President Donald Trump is determined on ensuring the Keystone XL Pipeline becomes a reality, including trying to squash lawsuits against him and the project. A court ruled Friday, however, against his motion to dismiss an ongoing lawsuit that could stop the 1,184-mile-long crude oil pipeline.

And that’s pretty amazing.

The gigantic pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day between Alberta, Canada, and the Gulf Coast. Any spill may pose to water and land, and all the oil it could transport will worsen climate change. Former President Barack Obama rejected it in 2015 after protests grew heated. Environmentalists and landowners whose backyard this monstrosity would run through were pumped.

Unfortunately, the current president decided to revive Keystone XL within his first month in the White House through executive order. U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris—the same one ruling here—reversed that in November 2018, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump who issued a new presidential permit in April.

Environmental groups such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, sued the administration arguing the new permit was illegal, but the president’s people filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit altogether. The courts denied that Friday, adding the whirlwind that’s surrounded the pipeline for a decade.

“[T]his is a complete win for the tribes on the motions to dismiss,” Native American Rights Fund attorney Natalie Landreth said in a statement. “We look forward to holding the Trump Administration and TransCanada accountable to the Tribes and the applicable laws that must be followed.”....
  

Former Vice President Joe Biden is not going to make many environmentalists and progressive Democrats happy when they learn who is on his staff.

Shady Connections

Biden, 77, has a multitude of people tied to the oil and gas industry on his campaign staff, according to a new report by Real Sludge.

Heather Zichal, the climate advisor for the Biden campaign, used to be a board member at Cheniere Energy, a natural gas company. Andrew Goldman, a former adviser to Biden and a current fundraiser, is the co-founder of natural gas company Western LNG. And Unite the County, the SuperPac that is supporting him, has a former gas lobbyist on its board, Sludge said.

Biggest Connection

But the most dangerous connection to the gas and oil industry is Biden’s campaign co-chairman Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond. Richmond has been a steady vote in favor of the expansion of the production and exporting of natural gas and oil.

He voted in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline and “voted in favor of a bill from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) that would undermine the environmental review process for natural gas pipelines by stating that all pipelines that transport 0.14 billion cubic feet per day or less should be immediately approved,” Sludge reported....
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An editor at The Christian Post has abruptly quit the publication after it aligned itself with Donald Trump as part of a spiraling evangelical Christian civil war. Another evangelical newspaper, Christianity Today, slammed the president as “immoral” and called for his removal from office last weekend, prompting a backlash and recriminations within the evangelical community....

Washington Post link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/12/23/christianity-today-called-trumps-impeachment-why-it-could-cost-magazine/....
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The decision by Christianity Today to publish an editorial describing President Trump as “immoral” and calling for his removal drew immediate rebuke from the president himself, who called the outlet “a far left magazine.” The piece drew nearly 3 million unique visitors to the magazine’s website and became the talk of TV news shows over the weekend.

At the same time, the longtime centrist-right evangelical magazine saw a rush of canceled subscriptions — and an even greater wave of new subscribers, magazine President Timothy Dalrymple said. Both he and the author of the editorial, retiring editor in chief Mark Galli, could also face personal and professional consequences, according to interviews with several other conservative Christian leaders and writers who in the past have spoken out critically about Trump.

They described losing book sales, conference attendees, donors, church members and relationships.

Journalist Napp Nazworth, who has worked for the Christian Post website since 2011, said he quit his job Monday because the website was planning to publish a pro-Trump editorial that would slam Christianity Today. Nazworth, who sits on the editorial board as politics editor, said the website has sought to represent both sides and published both pro- and anti-Trump stories....
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“People keep coming into my office asking to talk about it,” Jewish educator Jordyn Barry said as she stood in a Barnes & Noble at Tysons Corner Center wearing a menorah on her sweater and a light-up Hanukkah hat.

They want to discuss a question that’s both new and as old as Abraham: What is Judaism anyway?

It’s a religion, yes — but then again, many who identify as Jews aren’t religious. It’s passed down from parents to children and bears recognizable genetic characteristics — but then again, Jews come in all colors and racial backgrounds.

Ethnicity? Nationality? Faith? Culture? Heritage? Even Jews don’t agree on just what Judaism is. And President Trump has thrown that eternal question into sharp relief by signing an executive order meant to strengthen protections against anti-Semitism on college campuses, where the debate over Israel and Palestinian rights has grown increasingly toxic in recent years.

Trump’s order, which he signed at a White House Hanukkah party last week, says anti-Semitism is punishable under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — a clause that deals only with race, ethnicity and nationality, not discrimination on the basis of religion. The order says Jews can be considered to have been targeted on the basis of their nationality or race as Jews.

Jewish Americans, who are presumably the beneficiaries, are deeply torn about what it all means....

When hate crimes are on the rise, dark corners of the Internet are flooded with vitriol about Jews and both the president and members of Congress have been accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, the Trump administration’s attempt at protection is viewed with both suspicion and, in some corners, relief....
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BENSALEM, Pa. — As she cleans up the counter where the teenagers at her church’s Vacation Bible School ate their cookies and yogurt, Luba Yanko complains about the state of the country. President Trump is trying to act on Christian values, she believes. But from what she reads online, it seems that a certain group keeps getting in the way.

Trump, she says, “is surrounded by a Zionist environment with completely different values from Christians. It’s kabbalist (sic). It’s Talmudic values. Not the word of God.”

In other words: It’s the Jews’ fault.

“Why do we have pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ values, and we do not have more freedom to protect our faith? We are persecuted now,” Yanko says about evangelical Christians like herself. “[Jews] say, ‘We’ve got America. We control America.’ That’s what I know.”

It’s an anti-Semitic viewpoint shared by a number of evangelical Christians across the country. The relationship between Christians and Jews has been fraught for almost 2,000 years since the death of Jesus. Today, with a president who levels accusations about Jews and who encourages his fans to mistrust the mainstream media, a growing number of evangelicals are turning to the Internet for information and finding anti-Jewish beliefs there....
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President Trump went on Twitter on Wednesday to quote a conservative radio host and known conspiracy theorist who praised him as “the greatest President for Jews” and claimed that Israelis “love him like he is the second coming of God.”

In his tweets, Trump thanked Wayne Allyn Root for “the very nice words.”

Root has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States, that Democratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich was killed by any one of a number of prominent Democrats, that a mass shooting in Las Vegas was coordinated by Muslims and that the person responsible for the death of Heather Heyer at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville was paid by a wealthy Democrat.

Root has also been leading an effort to persuade Jews to leave the Democratic Party and support Trump, whom he has previously called the first Jewish president in the same sense the Bill Clinton was sometimes called the first black president.

In his Wednesday morning tweets, Trump quoted Root saying, “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world . . . and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel.”

“They love him like he is the second coming of God,” Trump quoted Root as saying.

Jews do not believe in a second coming....
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RIVERTON, Wyo. — On a momentous day for Tribal Nations, Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), the House Republican Conference Chairwoman, stated that the successful litigation by tribes and environmentalists to return the grizzly bear in Greater Yellowstone to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) “was not based on science or facts” but motivated by plaintiffs “intent on destroying our Western way of life.”

One of the largest tribal-plaintiff alliances in recent memory prevailed in the landmark case, Crow Tribe et al v. Zinke last September, when US District Judge Dana Christensen ruled in favor of the tribes and environmental groups after finding that the Trump Administration’s US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had failed to abide by the ESA and exceeded its authority in attempting to remove federal protections from the grizzly. Tuesday, USFWS officially returned federal protections to the grizzly....
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The fact that Donald Trump has now been impeached (despite what the loons on Fox News say), hasn’t slowed the discovery of new evidence of his guilt. This is one of the reasons that it’s so important to ensure a comprehensive consideration of the Articles of Impeachment when they get transmitted to the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows this, and so do the vast majority of Americans who favor a full and fair hearing, including witnesses and document production....
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Outside online  -  20 DEC 2019

Close your eyes and picture the state of Arizona. You’re likely envisioning the Grand Canyon, maybe some saguaro cacti, or a sun-drenched desertscape with craggy buttes. While none of that is wrong, it’s not the full picture, either. In addition to being home to incredible canyons and desert playgrounds, the northern part of Arizona boasts real-deal mountain towns and huge swaths of high-elevation ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and spruce forest.

Flagstaff, a hip high-desert outpost with tons of restaurants and microbreweries, is exactly that kind of place. The former cattle and lumber town sits at 7,000 feet and is surrounded by foothills, shaded by 12,000-foot peaks, and laced with hiking and mountain biking trails. There’s even a ski area, the Snowbowl, just above town. “This area is so unique,” says Nikki Cooley, a Diné educator, Flagstaff resident, and Arizona native. “There’s something for every physical ability to do,” says Cooley. “People are outside all the time, there’s incredible access to the mountains and trails.”...
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EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. (Reuters) - For the last 50 years, Bradley Upton has prayed for forgiveness as he has carried the burden of one of the most horrific events in U.S. history against Native Americans, one that was perpetrated by James Forsyth, his great-great-grandfather.

Forsyth commanded the 7th Cavalry during the Wounded Knee Massacre on Dec. 29, 1890, when U.S. troops killed more than 250 unarmed Oglala Lakota men, women and children, a piece of family history that has haunted the Colorado man since he was a teenager.

This week Upton, 67, finally got an opportunity to express his contrition and formally apologize for the atrocities carried out by Forsyth to the direct descendants of the victims at their home on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota...
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BOUDLER, Colo. — The Native American Relief Fund announced on Friday, December 20, 2019, the organization and their clients, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community (the Tribes) received some great news from a Montana court. The federal court denied the United States federal government’s and the TransCanada’s (TC Energy) efforts to dismiss the Tribes’ case against the KXL Pipeline.

NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth praised the decision, “The court’s decision means that ALL of the tribes’ claims on the current permits will proceed. The only claims dismissed are the ones that the Tribes conceded should be dismissed because they were based on an old permit. So this is a complete win for the tribes on the motions to dismiss. We look forward to holding the Trump Administration and TransCanada accountable to the Tribes and the applicable laws that must be followed.”

NARF Staff Attorney Matthew Campbell also reacted to the news, “Of course, the treaties were agreed to by the president of the United States and ratified by the Senate, so the treaties clearly apply. The court rightly found that today.”.... (click image or headline to read more)
   

by Mackenzie Scott, CBC News - 21 DEC 2019

It was only a few months ago that a group of teens from Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., formed a collective — Tuk TV — and began filming a documentary: Happening to Us.

But what a few months it has been.

The teens recently returned from Cop25 — a United Nations climate change conference held in Madrid — having screened their documentary to attendees from around the world.

The film shows the impact climate change is having on the teens' hometown, where issues like coastal erosion are so dramatic the hamlet is preparing for relocation.

"They really showed concern," said Tuk TV's Carmen Kuptana. "Their eyes opened up when they saw what was happening to our land, and how young kids were really concerned about what was happening."

Four teen filmmakers from Tuktoyaktuk attended the conference. Next to 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, they were the youngest delegates in attendance — something Kuptana thought was "really cool."

Kuptana said she really liked showing their culture, and what is at stake for them with climate change.... (click image or headline to read more)
   

by Jonathan Brater, Kevin Morris, Myrna Perez, and Christopher Deluzio,
Brennan Center for Justice - 17 DEC 2019

On April 19, 2016, thousands of eligible Brooklyn voters dutifully showed up to cast their ballots in the presidential primary, only to find their names missing from the voter lists. An investigation by the New York state attorney general found that New York City’s Board of Elections had improperly deleted more than 200,000 names from the voter rolls.

In June 2016, the Arkansas secretary of state provided a list to the state’s 75 county clerks suggesting that more than 7,700 names be removed from the rolls because of supposed felony convictions. That roster was highly inaccurate; it included people who had never been convicted of a felony, as well as persons with past convictions whose voting rights had been restored.

And in Virginia in 2013, nearly 39,000 voters were removed from the rolls when the state relied on a faulty database to delete voters who allegedly had moved out of the commonwealth. Error rates in some counties ran as high as 17 percent.

These voters were victims of purges — the sometimes-flawed process by which election officials attempt to remove ineligible names from voter registration lists. When done correctly, purges ensure the voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date. When done incorrectly, purges disenfranchise legitimate voters (often when it is too close to an election to rectify the mistake), causing confusion and delay at the polls.

Ahead of upcoming midterm elections, a new Brennan Center investigation has examined data for more than 6,600 jurisdictions that report purge rates to the Election Assistance Commission and calculated purge rates for 49 states.  

We found that between 2014 and 2016, states removed almost 16 million voters from the rolls, and every state in the country can and should do more to protect voters from improper purges.... (click image or headline to read more)
  

The president demands complete fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained it. To cross him is to risk a future in G.O.P. politics.

by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times - 21 DEC 2019

Just under four years after he began his takeover of a party to which he had little connection, Mr. Trump enters 2020 burdened with the ignominy of being the first sitting president to seek re-election after being impeached.

But he does so wearing a political coat of armor built on total loyalty from G.O.P. activists and their representatives in Congress. If he does not enjoy the broad admiration Republicans afforded Ronald Reagan, he is more feared by his party’s lawmakers than any occupant of the Oval Office since at least Lyndon Johnson.... (click image or headline to read more)
   

An attack on any part of Social Security is an attack on the entire system and all current and future beneficiaries

American workers contribute to Social Security with every paycheck. When they do, they are earning comprehensive insurance protections. Social Security insures against the loss of wages due to old age, disability, or (for the surviving family of a worker) death. While Social Security is best known as a retirement program, disability and survivor’s benefits are equally essential.

An attack on any part of Social Security is an attack on the entire system and all current and future beneficiaries. The latest proposal from Donald Trump’s administration, which is designed to rip benefits away from hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities, amounts to a declaration of war on Social Security.... (click image or headline to read more)
  

President Trump told a former senior White House official that he knew Ukraine was to blame for the 2016 U.S. election meddling because Russian President Vladimir Putin told him so, The Washington Post reports. The president reportedly embraced theories about Ukrainian interference early in his presidency, but he became more insistent after he met privately with Putin at the July 2017 G-20 summit. After meeting with Putin in Hamburg, Trump repeatedly said he believed that Putin didn’t interfere in the 2016 election—despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence—and that Ukraine had sought to have Hillary Clinton in office. “Putin told me,” he reportedly told one official. Another former official said there was a “strong belief in the White House was that Putin told him” the information.... (click image or headline to read more)
   

After Admitting "It’s Always Been Republicans Suppressing Votes," Trump Advisor Says Party Will Get Even More Aggressive in 2020

Reporting on Friday shows a top advisor for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign caught on tape in November bragging of the Republican Party's history of voter suppression—and promising to go on the offensive in 2020.

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer; Common Dreams  -  21 DEC 2019

Reporting on Friday shows a top advisor for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign caught on tape in November bragging of the Republican Party's history of voter suppression—and promising to go on the offensive in 2020.

The revelation came from the Associated Press in a report Friday on comments by Trump re-election advisor Justin Clark at an event in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Traditionally it's always been Republicans suppressing votes in places," said Clark. "Let's start protecting our voters. We know where they are... Let's start playing offense a little bit. That's what you’re going to see in 2020."...
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by Luis Martinez, ABC News  -  20 DEC 2019

 The U.S. Space Force has become the nation's newest branch of the military as President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized the creation of the new military service. Space Force went into operation almost immediately after the legislation was signed into law, but many questions still need to be decided as to how the new military service will function and who will serve in its ranks.

"For the first time since President Harry Truman created the Air Force over 70 years ago, we will create a brand new American military service," Trump said as he signed the defense budget at an event at Joint Base Andrews.

"With my signature today, you will witness the birth of the Space Force, and that will be now officially the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces," Trump said. "The Space Force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground." (click image or headline to read more)
   

The first day that Jacqueline Whitman’s daughter didn’t come home, she wasn’t that worried. It was last summer, the Fourth of July. Twenty-six-year-old Ariel had headed out the day before with her boyfriend, who had picked her up at the three-bedroom house she shared with her mother, her grandfather, and five of her six siblings at the eastern edge of the Navajo reservation in Arizona. She called the next afternoon, telling Jacqueline she’d try to make it home for dinner. She didn’t, but she’d texted the family. (“You jerks,” it said. It was what she always affectionately called them.)

The second day that Ariel didn’t come home, she called her cousins, telling them she was in a town just off the reservation with some friends. But she didn’t call her sister Valya’s three-year-old son, which she usually did every day. On the third and fourth days that Ariel didn’t come home, she didn’t call anyone. And she wasn’t active on Facebook, which was highly unusual. She was always on Facebook. She didn’t respond to texts, and calls to her phone went straight to voicemail.

By the fifth day, Jacqueline was starting to panic. If Ariel didn’t come home that night, she decided, she was going to call the police. Valya made some posters with Ariel’s picture on them, but she didn’t put them up at first; she felt a little ridiculous. “She’s going to come home,” Valya kept thinking. “When Ariel comes home, she’s going to say, ‘Why did you do this? You’re silly.’”

But Ariel didn't come home.... (click image or headline to read more)
   

This story was originally published by High Country News, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Uranium, it’s now part of Navajo DNA. With over 500 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation, people living near these mines are exposed daily to radiation exposure at a rate several times higher than normal background radiation. Last week, President Donald Trump announced he was summarily reducing the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, thereby opening archaeologically rich sites to uranium mining. 

Over the past two months, at administrative chapter houses adjacent to Bears Ears, 98 percent of Navajos voted in support of the national monument designation. These voters are likely voting for more than the protection of sacred sites. Many are likely also there for a say in the future of the uranium mining that has plagued Navajo communities since World War II, when the development of the atom bomb created a demand for yellowcake.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, 30 million tons of uranium were extracted from mines on the Navajo Nation. Today, more than 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on the reservation, which stretches 27,000 square miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon past Gallup, New Mexico, and north to the San Juan River in Utah, poisoning the water and carrying in the dust. Only one mine has been cleaned up. It is estimated that total cleanup will cost between $4 billion to $6 billion and could take a century to complete. A recent study by researchers from the University of New Mexico found 85 percent of Navajo homes had uranium contamination, and Navajos living near these mines have higher levels of uranium in their bones than 95 percent of the American population. Even infants have been found to have uranium in their urine.

In a penetrating series of articles on uranium mining’s legacy in the Navajo Nation, published by the Arizona Republic in 2014, Lillie Lane, the Navajo Nation’s Environmental Protection Agency outreach coordinator, told the newspaper the radiation has tainted their chromosomes. “I think we are still in the infant stages of seeing what the impacts are in the gene pool of the Navajo people,” she said.

Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Trump have tried not to portray the shrinking of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as energy issues. In his announcement at the Utah Capitol steps in Salt Lake City, Trump did not mention “energy dominance,” a favorite phrase. Zinke told reporters prior to the announcement his review was “not about energy.”

Maybe that’s true. In fact, a gaffe the previous week, in which Trump used a ceremony honoring the Navajo Code Talkers for their service as a chance to take a political swipe at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., by again calling her “Pocahontas,” reminded Indian Country that this wasn’t all about energy.

Hiding behind the fig leaf of “local” concerns, Trump expressed outrage at how the monument is allegedly preventing rural families in San Juan County “from enjoying their outdoor activities.”

This turn of phrase inevitably brings to mind Ryan Bundy, son of the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy who led an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management, for which he and several of his sons are presently being tried on federal charges in Nevada. Ryan and his brother Ammon famously led a second armed takeover in 2016 of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and have also been active in Utah. Ryan led armed ATV riders in 2014 over ancient Puebloan villages in San Juan County during a protest organized by County Commissioner Phil Lyman in protest of the closure of an illegally created road through the ruins. In April, Zinke announced the opening of some of these sites (although not the trail Bundy protested) to motorized traffic, citing the right of people with disabilities to have access to them.

Lyman (who was convicted of a misdemeanor for his role in the ATV ride) was on stage with Trump last week for the announcement. Trump flattered Utah Republican leaders who flanked him onstage, including Gov. Gary Herbert, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop. All have been staunch opponents of Bears Ears, a groundbreaking monument proposed by five Indigenous nations: Navajo Nation, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah and Ouray Ute.

So in that way, the monument isn’t about energy. But in another way it is, especially when it comes to uranium. During Zinke’s review of 27 national monuments, the Utah legislature submitted a 49-page comment claiming Bears Ears National Monument would destroy the state’s uranium industry.

On Friday, the Washington Post broke the story that Energy Fuels Resources, owners of the Daneros Uranium Mine and the White Mesa Uranium Mill, had lobbied the Interior Department to reduce the monument because it impeded their business interests in the area, effectively refuting Zinke and Trump’s claims energy interests did not play a role. In a May 2017 letter to the Interior, the company’s chief operating officer, Mark Chalmers, urged the monument be reduced because there are “many known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the newly created (Bears Ears National Monument) that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”

The monument has many inactive uranium mines and unused mining leases that are not being used due to a poor market for uranium. But one mill, the White Mesa Uranium Mill, is still of concern....
(click image or headline to read more)