The bank claims to value ‘stakeholder engagement’ but dropped Arctic drilling without consulting us
by Harry Brower, Jr.' Wall Street Journal  -  24 JAN 2020

Utqiagvik, Alaska — As the mayor of Alaska’s North Slope Borough, I represent about 10,000 people in an area larger than most states. Beneath our lands are some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, including Prudhoe Bay and the coastal plain of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Since the 19th century, when our Inupiat ancestors made initial contact with the West, we have worked to maintain a balance between the modern world and our rich cultural inheritance. Largely because of the oil and gas under our lands, which are developed using the highest environmental standards, we have come far. My biggest fear is that we will be set back in our quest—this time by those who claim to care about us but are using my lands and my people as symbols for a larger political goal.

Last month, Goldman Sachs announced it will no longer fund oil and gas development in the Arctic region. The announcement came as a shock to me and my constituents, particularly because the New York-based investment bank claims “stakeholder engagement” and “consultation” with indigenous peoples are core business principles. No one will be more affected by Goldman Sachs’s decision than the people of Alaska’s North Slope, yet we learned about it in the media....
  

After winning a historic battle over hunting and fishing rights in the Swedish Supreme Court, members of Sweden's indigenous Sami community have reported receiving several threats of violence both online and in person.

Several police reports have so far been filed regarding threats and hate towards members of the plaintiff in the landmark case, Girjas Sami village, and members of a neighbouring village, Baste.

"There's a lot of hatred and an aggressive mood," the chief of the police investigation, Emma Lindberg, told The Local.

"If you come here with your reindeers we will shoot them, I've already shot seven. And if I come upon you alone in the forest I'll shoot you too!" a man reportedly told Lars-Ola Jannok, the head of Baste Sami village, while he was releasing his reindeers outside of Gällivare municipality on Monday morning.

"I got very frightened, we're often alone in the forest," Jannok told Swedish news agency TT.

The threats started coming in after Girjas Sami village won a ten-year court battle that granted them the exclusive right to determine who could hunt and fish in their area. This right had been revoked by the Swedish state in 1993 in a contested land reform....
  

Youth Advisory Council would expand to ude tribal members

by Shannon Mullane, Pine River Valley reporter, The Durango Herald  -  12 JAN 2020

Native American youths might receive more representation in the state government through legislation introduced Wednesday in the Colorado Legislature.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Hugh McKean, a Republican, would give Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute youths a voice in policymaking through the Colorado Youth Advisory Council. The council membership includes youths from around the state, but this bill would specifically designate membership for Native American students....
  

“Somebody’s Daughter,” a documentary on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic, premieres Wednesday in Las Vegas at the Four Directions and Nevada Tribal Nations Native American Presidential Forum.

The all-Indigenous production presented by Alter-Native Media addresses racism, colonialism and genocide, while focusing on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) victims from the Blackfeet Nation and Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes in Montana. "Somebody's Daughter" was directed by RAIN, the team that created "Not in Our Name," a short film about tribal opposition to hunting Yellowstone grizzly bears.

The film also explores MMIW-related legislation, including Hanna’s Act and Savanna’s Act, features clips of 2020 presidential candidates as well as members of the Montana delegation, includes interviews with tribal chairs and council members and exposes drug cartels and gangs for their possible roles in human trafficking and MMIW cases....
  

For the Blackfeet, the importance of observing the tragic slaughter of American Indians by U.S. troops has not diminished with the passage of 150 years

byTristan Scott, Flathead Beacon  -  15 JAN 2020

For more than two decades, John Murray always knew where he’d be on the morning of Jan. 23, pressing himself against a wind-swept foothill or a snow-marbled bluff overlooking the Marias River, contemplating a history he’d rather forget — or, at least, one he’d rather not have to remember.

Some years he’d posthole alone through waist-deep snowdrifts to visit the historic site; other years, Murray brought company, retelling the story of the Marias Massacre as the day dawned blue and bright over the river, which at sunrise on Jan. 23, 1870, literally ran red with the blood of his ancestors....

This month, the Blackfeet will observe the 150th anniversary of the Marias Massacre, alternately known as the Baker Massacre and the Bear River Massacre, in which an estimated 200 Piegan (Blackfeet) Indians were killed in what one company commander, Lt. Gus Doane, described as “the greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. troops.”....
  

More than 100 turned out Tuesday to save the Shinnecock Nation's ancestral burial grounds from desecration in the Hamptons.

by Lisa Finn, Patch Staff, Patch  -  14 JAN 2020

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — A crowd of more than 100 stood in solidarity Tuesday with members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation engaged in an ongoing rally to save their ancestral burial grounds from development in the Hamptons.

According to Tela Troge, a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, about 100 supporters arrived on Tuesday from sister tribes and also from various groups the Shinnecocks have been networking with; the Mashantucket Peqouts sent a bus of their tribal members and tribal leaders from Connecticut, she said....
  

by Tanisha Thomas, WOSU Public Media  -  14 JAN 2020

An advocacy group is opposing an Ohio bill that would restrict protests at sites that are considered "critical infrastructure facilities,” including oil and gas pipelines.

Organize Ohio hosted a meeting in Cleveland on Monday to discuss opposition to SB 33, which was passed by the Ohio Senate in May 2019.

The measure would criminalize protests occurring at places such as pipelines or utility poles. Backers say they aim to protect the facilities from serious harm.

But Jacie Jones of Organize Ohio believes the bill would have a "chilling effect" on free speech. She says that’s happened in other states where similar laws have passed, such as Louisiana and Texas....
  

For literally about the hundredth time, we’re suing the Trump Administration over its attacks on the environment. This time around, we’re defending California—which as a Californian I’m proud to say is Trump’s least favorite state—against the Administration’s plans to frack it....
  

The decennial count ‘impacts everything’ from federal funding to political representation for the tribes

It was the largest rollback of federal lands protections in US history.

When President Donald Trump signed a 2017 executive order that reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante national monuments by nearly 2m acres, he said the move was supported in the state of Utah and by the local county where the monuments were located.

On the ground, however, that opposition didn’t add up.

San Juan county, Utah, is majority Native American and includes parts of the Navajo Nation’s and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s reservations – both tribes officially support the protection of Bears Ears. Through gerrymandering, the majority Native county maintained a majority white county commission, where Native views were outnumbered – until last year....
  

by Laura Kane, The Canadian Press, Financial Post  -  07 JAN 2020

VANCOUVER — A United Nations committee working to end racism is urging Canada to immediately stop the construction of three major resource projects until it obtains approval from affected First Nations.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which monitors a convention to end racial discrimination signed by countries including Canada, is calling for a suspension of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Site C dam and Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The committee, made up of 18 experts, says in a written directive last month that it is concerned by the approval and construction of the three projects without the free, prior and informed consent of impacted Indigenous groups....
  

by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, New York Times  -  06 JAN 2020

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper sought to douse an international outcry on Monday by ruling out military attacks on cultural sites in Iran if the conflict with Tehran escalates further, despite President Trump’s threat to destroy some of the country’s treasured icons.

Mr. Esper acknowledged that striking cultural sites with no military value would be a war crime, putting him at odds with the president, who insisted such places would be legitimate targets. Mr. Trump’s threats generated condemnation at home and abroad while deeply discomfiting American military leaders who have made a career of upholding the laws of war.

“We will follow the laws of armed conflict,” Mr. Esper said at a news briefing at the Pentagon when asked if cultural sites would be targeted as the president had suggested over the weekend. When a reporter asked if that meant “no” because the laws of war prohibit targeting cultural sites, Mr. Esper agreed. “That’s the laws of armed conflict.”....
  

Family Seeks Assistance to Find Crow 16-Year-Old Teen Who Went Missing on New Year’s Day
by Levi Rickert, Native News Online  -  06 Jan 2020

HARDIN, Mont. — The family of Selena Not Afraid, a 16-year-old teen female and tribal citizen of the Crow Tribe of Indians, who went missing on January 1, 2020 is seeking assistance from the public to locate her.

Law enforcement say Selena walked away from a broken down vehicle from a rest area between Hardin and Billings, Montana.
According to local press reports, the family believes that Not Afraid may have moved from the area and says the search also includes South Dakota and Wyoming.

Authorities say Selena was last seen wearing a black coat, grey sweater, blue jeans, and gray ankle boots. She is 5’9″, 133 pounds, and has a scar near her mouth. She also has a tattoo of a cross on her middle finger.

If you have any information on her whereabouts — please call the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office at 406-665-9780 or dial 9-1-1.....
  

The president's tweets come amid escalating tensions with Iran.

by Jordyn Phelps, ABC News - 06 JAN 2020

On his first morning back in Washington following a 16-day holiday at his Florida resort, President Donald Trump called for a speedy end to the impeachment saga in a series of tweets Monday morning.

“Get this done,” the president wrote on Twitter:

Donald J. Trump: "The Impeachment Hoax, just a continuation of the Witch Hunt which started even before I won the Election, must end quickly. Read the Transcripts, see the Ukranian President's strong statement, NO PRESSURE - get this done. It is a con game by the Dems to help with the Election!"

The House passed two articles of impeachment against President Trump last month, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has yet to formally transmit the charges to Senate, a step that is necessary before the upper chamber can commence with a trial. Pelosi has withheld the articles as a bargaining chip to assist Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer in negotiations over the rules of the pending trial Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell....
  

Pelosi Statement on Airstrike in Iraq Against High-Level Iranian Military Officials
by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House - 02 JAN 2020

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement after the Trump Administration conducted a deadly airstrike targeting Iranians and Iraqis at the Baghdad International Airport:

“American leaders’ highest priority is to protect American lives and interests. But we cannot put the lives of American servicemembers, diplomats and others further at risk by engaging in provocative and disproportionate actions. Tonight’s airstrike risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence. America – and the world – cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return.

“The Administration has conducted tonight’s strikes in Iraq targeting high-level Iranian military officials and killing Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani without an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran. Further, this action was taken without the consultation of the Congress.

“The full Congress must be immediately briefed on this serious situation and on the next steps under consideration by the Administration, including the significant escalation of the deployment of additional troops to the region.”....
  

The Trump administration has proposed removing logging protections from the Alaskan rainforest. But now is the time to plant trees, not cut them down.

by Jane Fonda, Opinion Contributor, USA Today  -  31 DEC 2019

I’ve been in Washington, D.C., for the last three months doing weekly actions called Fire Drill Fridays — because what 97% of active climate scientists are saying scares me, and I feel the need to do more.

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report issued in October 2018, if we don’t make great strides toward lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 years, the magnitude of the changes we’re already seeing will accelerate and may become irreversible.

We have the technology to transition away from fossil fuels, and this can’t happen soon enough. At the same time, we need to take proactive measures to reduce the concentration of carbon emissions already in the atmosphere....
  

Nova Scotia Community College has opened smudging rooms at each of the college's 13 campuses across the province.

Jude Gerrard, Mi'kmaq and Indigenous advisor at Nova Scotia Community College and a member of Millbrook First Nation, N.S., helped facilitate the opening.

Previously, smudging was only done outdoors at campuses, and required 24 hours notice.

"The question I always ask is, when you're celebrating birthdays, are you blowing candles out? Because you're producing just as much smoke from the cake that you are from a smudge bowl," said Gerrard.

Watch the Video.......
  

Kelly Fraser collaborated with her friend Martha Kyak in 2013 to translate Rihannas Diamond into their Inuit language Inuktitut. The song went viral posting hundreds of thousands of views.

Six years later, and while she had been working on her third musical album, Kelly Fraser has died at the age of 26....

Editor's Note: This is just one tragic and sad example of the damage that racism can do. A young life full of promise and potential ended tragically at her own hands because the pressure and ridicule became too great for her to bear. Our hearts and condolences go out to her family and friends. -- Al Swilling, SENAA International....
  

The federal government is trying to catch up with a crisis of missing Native American women. But no one is addressing the problems that arise when they’re found.

by Jack Healy, Photographs by Adriana Zehbrauskas, New York Times - 25 DEC 2019

GALLUP, N.M. — Prudence Jones had spent two years handing out “Missing” fliers and searching homeless camps and underpasses for her 28-year-old daughter when she got the call she had been praying for: Dani had been found. She was in a New Mexico jail, but she was alive.

It seemed like a happy ending to the story of one of thousands of Native American women and girls who are reported missing every year in what Indigenous activists call a long-ignored crisis. Strangers following Dani’s case on social media cheered the news this past July: “Wonderful!” “Thank you God!” “Finally, some good news.”

But as Ms. Jones visited Dani in jail, saw the fresh scars on her body and tried to comprehend the physical and spiritual toll of two years on the streets, her family, which is Navajo, started to grapple with a painful and lonely epilogue to its missing-persons saga.

“There’s nothing for what comes after,” said Ms. Jones, 48, who has five daughters. “How do you heal? How do you put your family back together? The one thing I’ve found is there’s no support.”

Indigenous activists say that generations of killings and disappearances have been disregarded by law enforcement and lost in bureaucratic gaps concerning which local or federal agencies should investigate.

There is not even a reliable count of how many Native women go missing or are killed each year. Researchers have found that women are often misclassified as Hispanic or Asian or other racial categories on missing-persons forms and that thousands have been left off a federal missing-persons database....
  

The Tribe's Watershed Restoration Department removed three downed old growth redwood logs last month from the Redwood Experimental Forest in Klamath.

The project was possible due to the combined efforts of the Yurok Tribe and Six Rivers National Forest so the logs could be used for cultural purposes.

The three logs removed will be carved by the Tribe into ten traditional dugout canoes to be used in the Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, a Yurok Country attraction that will open spring of 2020....
  

SUSAN PHILLIPS, BYLINE: From the get-go, opponents cried foul over three parallel pipelines, collectively called Mariner East. They alleged politics played a hand in rushing through permits on a project they predicted would cause environmental damage. And soon after construction began in early 2017, accidents piled up - damaged streams and wetlands, polluted drinking water wells and then large sinkholes in suburban Philadelphia, including in T.J. Allen's backyard.

TJ ALLEN: But look at that. Do you think that's safe?

PHILLIPS: The construction of one line exposed another pipeline full of highly flammable natural gas liquids.

ALLEN: I could've been blown up. I mean, it's crazy, man.

PHILLIPS: Opposition grew. Safety became a rallying cry. The pipelines run close to schools, hospitals and neighborhoods. A year ago, a local district attorney and the state's attorney general took the unusual step of launching a criminal investigation into the pipelines' builder, Energy Transfer. That's the same company that built the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

Chester County DA Tom Hogan says he was frustrated that state regulatory oversight wasn't forcing Energy Transfer to clean up its act.

TOM HOGAN: Ten, 12 million dollars in fines are pocket change, as far as they're concerned. It's not going to do anything to stop them because this is a process that is going to net them billions of dollars.

PHILLIPS: Hogan says one potential criminal charge is risking a catastrophe. A spokeswoman for Energy Transfer says the company did not break any laws. But in February, CEO Kelcy Warren admitted on an earnings call with investors that the company had made mistakes.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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.”....
  

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.”....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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/....
  

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....
  

“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....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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....
  

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.” ...
   

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...
  

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.”....
   

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....
   

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....
  

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....
   

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....
  

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....
   

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."...
   

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."
   

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....
   

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....