The US Interior Department will start consultations with Native American tribal leaders next month on Covid-19, economic security, racial justice and climate change, report Reuters. It is part of efforts py President Joe Biden to get more tribal input in federal policy deliberations.
Biden issued an executive order on 26 January aimed at strengthening relations between the federal government and Native American tribes.
The Interior Department, which oversees the country’s tribal and federal lands, will be led by New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland, who would become the first Native American to head a cabinet-level agency if she is confirmed by Congress.
Some tribes felt sidelined after major decisions by former president Donald Trump’s administration, such as approving the Dakota Access Pipeline and drastically reducing the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah that had been created with input of an inter-tribal council.
A 2019 Government Accountability Office report found serious lapses in outreach to tribes, especially on infrastructure projects.
Native American tribes have also been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic due to health disparities and higher rates of poverty. Under Trump tribes received $8 billion in coronavirus aid, but only after major delays caused by a legal dispute.
The consultations will take place by video in the week of March 8.
“Meaningful consultations ensure we center Tribal voices as we address the health, economic, racial justice and climate crises – all of which disproportionately impact American Indian and Alaska Natives,” said Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, the department’s designated Tribal Governance Officer and Deputy Solicitor for Indian Affairs.
Haaland is awaiting her confirmation hearing, which has not yet been scheduled.
A few western state Republican senators have said they are likely to oppose her because of her support for policies like the Green New Deal championed by the progressive Left, but she is still expected to have enough support to be confirmed.
In states across the US legislation from Republican lawmakers seeking to undermine abortion rights is on the move. For anti-abortion activists, the goal has long been to challenge the supreme court decision that gave pregnant people the right to abortion 48 years ago: the landmark Roe versus Wade.
Each spring, especially in the last decade, Republicans have introduced restrictive abortion laws tailored to challenge that supreme court precedent by creating test cases. In 1973, Roe versus Wade provided women with a right to abortion up to the point the fetus can survive outside the womb, generally understood to be 24 weeks.
Abortion restrictions investigate the outer limits of that right, by creating laws that provoke reproductive rights advocates to sue, and for courts to consider their legitimacy.
“The more ambitious a restriction the court upholds, that will greenlight even more restrictions in the states,” said Mary Ziegler, a Florida State University law professor whose recent book, Abortion in America: A Legal History, tracked the history of the nation’s most important abortion cases.
“What we’ve been seeing is not what anti-abortion lawmakers want, but it’s been tailored to what they think the supreme court wants,” said Ziegler.
This effort is not meant to reflect the will of the majority of Americans, 77% of whom believe the supreme court should uphold Roe v Wade. The effort is meant to please a motivated, religious voter base, who have helped power Republican victories since the Reagan era. Trump played for the same “social conservatives” when vowing to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn Roe. But since Trump rose to power, exactly how to do that has become a vexing question for the Republican party.
Bills that ban abortion, demand doctors perform the impossible and “reimplant” ectopic pregnancies, punish women and doctors under murder statutes and whose authors believe the fundamental legal principle of precedent should not apply to their cases have all shown up in state legislatures in the last couple years.
Bans in recent sessions have been “extremely aggressive”, said Hillary Schneller, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, and who is now fighting a Mississippi law that could ban abortion at 15 weeks. The state has appealed to the supreme court.
Recent bans have been, “saying the quiet part out loud – that they’re not just restriction abortion, they want to end access to abortion entirely”, said Schneller.
Fast-food workers in 15 cities will hold a Black History Month strike on Tuesday to demand that the McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s restaurant chains pay them $15 an hour.
The action comes as Congress prepares to debate a federal rise in the minimum wage to $15 from its current rate of $7.25, the first federal raise since 2009.
Workers in cities including Atlanta, Charleston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and St Louis will be joined by home care and nursing home workers in support of a $15 minimum wage and the right to join a union.
Joe Biden pledged to increase the minimum wage during his election campaign but has recently suggested the increase may not make it into the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package he is trying to push through Congress. Biden has said the increase is central to his pledge to narrow racial economic inequality.
“This Black History Month, we have a chance to make our own history by winning a living wage of at least $15 an hour and lifting millions of families out of poverty,” said Taiwanna Milligan, a McDonald’s worker from Charleston, South Carolina.
Milligan added: “For decades, McDonald’s has made billions in profit off the backs of workers like me, paying us starvation wages. I’m striking today because I need at least $15 an hour to survive and because I know the only way to make change is to stand up, speak out and demand it.”
Biden has more important things on his mind than Valentine’s Day, as this report from Mike Memoli and Carol E. Lee at NBC News sets out:
Even before he has secured his first major legislative priority, President Joe Biden is crafting the pitch for his second: an even larger spending plan that the White House is billing as the infrastructure package long sought by both parties.
Biden has already begun wooing Republicans over his infrastructure push, which is likely to be the focus of a historically late first address to Congress, probably sometime in March. But even as he courts Republican support, White House officials have already begun discussing the possibility of moving ahead without it, just as Democrats appear poised to do with pandemic relief.
Biden outlined a more than $2 trillion infrastructure plan during the presidential campaign, saying at the time that it would be the “largest mobilization of public investment since World War II.” The plan and a similar framework that passed the Democratic-led House in the last Congress are the basis of what Biden will propose.
Beyond just repairs or new construction of roads and bridges, the plan included expanding broadband access, as well as an ambitious climate agenda.
As well as Lunar New Year celebrations, this weekend also sees Valentine’s Day, and Dr. Jill Biden has decorated one of the White House lawns for that, with hearts bearing messages like ‘compassion’, ‘unity’, ‘healing’ and ‘love’. The Bidens – and their dogs – have just been out to have a look at them.
Kate Sullivan(@KateSullivanDC)
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden walked out on the North Lawn of the White House this morning with their dogs, Champ and Major, to look at the Valentine’s Day messages that Jill Biden had installed overnight. pic.twitter.com/kFLc9wUply
Two more little snippets of detail about the defense legal team’s plans today, courtesy of Trump advisor Jason Miller appearing on Newsmax. Their presentation will last about four hours out of their possible sixteen, and Bruce Castor, a man whose performance was widely questioned on Tuesday, will get a do-over.
Kaitlan Collins(@kaitlancollins)
Jason Miller makes clear on Newsmax that Bruce Castor WILL have a speaking role today. He says his arguments are “crisper” and “tighter” and adds that the defense team reviewed their plan with Trump last night. They will go about four hours.
Though in-person gatherings might be limited across the world, millions are still celebrating Lunar New Year today and ushering in the year of the ox.
Based on a traditional calendar observed by China, South Korea, Vietnam and others, this year’s new year and spring festival comes with its own specific significance. “The ox, in Chinese culture, is a hardworking zodiac sign. It usually signifies movements so, hopefully, the world will be less static than last year and get moving again in the second half of the year,” said Thierry Chow, a Hong Kong-based feng shui master, in a CNN interview.
Meanwhile, some are encouraging the celebration as a means of diplomacy. Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison encouraged federal politicians to celebrate the Lunar New Year to help foster good relationships with Chinese people in the country, despite ongoing political tension with Beijing, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Others are highlighting the recent racism and attacks against Asian American people in their posts about the festival.
Velo Librarian(@velolibrarian)
Happy Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, Tết, and Seollal!🧧 Please remember that the United States has a history of violence and racism towards Asian Americans and we need to acknowledge that we are celebrating a holiday of people we systematically oppress. https://t.co/gu0ibyftL0
Here in New York, organizations in the city are holding both in person and virtual events in a year like no other.
Lunar New Year decorations are displayed in Chinatown on the eve of the Lunar New Year in New York. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The Senate will reconvene today for the impeachment trial at noon EST (1700 GMT). Bearing in mind that he will almost certainly be acquitted by enough Republican senators to make it immaterial anyway, the Associated Press have this rundown on what to expect from Trump’s defense team later today.
They report that after a prosecution case rooted in emotive, violent images from the Capitol siege, his lawyers will make a fundamental concession and agree that the violence that day was every bit as traumatic, unacceptable and illegal as Democrats say.
But, they will say, Trump had nothing to do with it.
The move is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the House Democrats’ case and quickly pivot to what they see as the core — and more winnable in the public eye — issue of the trial: whether Trump can be held responsible for inciting the deadly 6 January riot.
The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who themselves want to be seen as condemning the violence without convicting the president.
“They haven’t in any way tied it to Trump,” David Schoen, one of the president’s lawyers, told reporters near the end of two full days of Democrats’ arguments aimed at doing just that.
He had already previewed the essence of his argument on Tuesday, telling the Senate jurors: “They don’t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened, and you know all about it.”
Democrats used the rioters’ own videos and words from 6 January to pin responsibility on Trump. “We were invited here,” said one. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”
The prosecutors’ goal was to cast Trump not as a bystander but rather as the “inciter in chief” who spent months spreading falsehoods and revving up supporters to challenge the election.
But Trump’s lawyers have made clear their position – that the only people responsible for the riot are the ones who actually stormed the building and who are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.
The Georgia state election board referred two cases to prosecutors on Wednesday connected to organizations that helped mobilize a record number of voters in the state during the 2020 election, a move critics say is an intimidation effort.
One case involves the New Georgia Project (NGP), the group founded by Stacey Abrams in 2014, that helps mobilize voters of color. In 2019, investigators allege, the group violated state law by not handing in 1,268 voter registration applications within the 10 days required under state rules. The named respondent in the matter is Senator Raphael Warnock, who the group says was serving as the chairman of its board at the time, but was incorrectly listed on documents as the group’s CEO, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The February 10th State Election Board meeting was the first time NGP heard about the allegations regarding NGP’s important voter registration work from 2019,” Nse Ufot, who has served as the group’s CEO since 2014, said in a statement. “We have not received any information on this matter from the Secretary or any other Georgia official so we will have no further comment on the investigation.”
The episode marks the latest example of Republicans targeting the group. In 2014, Brian Kemp, then the state’s top election official, announced an investigation into allegations of forged registration materials but found no widespread wrongdoing. Late last year, the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, accused the group of soliciting people from outside of Georgia to register in the state – which the group denied.
Those investigations force the organization to allocate resources towards lawyers it says could otherwise be invested in voter registration.
“Every dollar that we have to spend to defend ourselves against the nuisance and partisan investigations is a dollar that we aren’t able to put into the field to register new voters and have high quality conversations about the power of their vote and the importance of this moment,” Ufot told the Guardian last year.
The Biden administration has announced its plans for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico for their next immigration court hearings to be allowed into the United States while their cases proceed.
The Associated Press report that the first of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers in Mexico with active cases will be allowed in the United States on 19 February, authorities said. They plan to start slowly with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer.
The move is a major step toward dismantling one of Trump’s policies to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the US. About 70,000 asylum-seekers were enrolled in “Remain in Mexico,” officially called “Migrant Protection Protocols,” since it was introduced in January 2019.
On Biden’s first day in office, the Homeland Security Department suspended the policy for new arrivals. Since then, some asylum-seekers picked up at the border have been released in the US. with notices to appear in court.
Biden is quickly making good on a campaign promise to end the policy, which exposed people to violence in Mexican border cities and made it extremely difficult for them to find lawyers and communicate with courts about their cases.
“As President Biden has made clear, the US government is committed to rebuilding a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement. “This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values.”
Homeland Security said the move “should not be interpreted as an opening for people to migrate irregularly to the United States.” Administration officials have said repeatedly that the vast majority of people who cross the border illegally are quickly expelled under a public health order in place since the pandemic struck in March
Hearings for people enrolled in “Remain in Mexico” have been suspended since June due to the pandemic. Getting word out on when to report to the border for release in the United States may prove a daunting job.
Homeland Security said it would soon announce a “virtual registration process” available online and by phone for people to learn where and when they should report. It urged asylum-seekers not to report to the border unless instructed. Asylum-seekers will be tested for Covid-19 before entering the US.
Alexander Bolton has some choice quotes from a Republican senator in his piece for the Hill today. According to Bolton one senator, after watching day two of the House managers’ presentation, said: “It just makes you realize what an asshole Donald Trump is.”
There will be some who suggest for this to be a revelation now raises questions about what the senator was watching for the last four years. Bolton’s piece outlines that while Trump will doubtless be acquitted, for some Republican senators, it does mean the possibility of any Trump comeback is dead in the water.
From the viewpoint of some Republican senators, the compelling case presented by House prosecutors carries a silver lining: It means they likely won’t have to worry about Trump running for president again in three years, while at the same time eroding his influence in party politics more generally.
Several Republican senators became irate watching videos of the violence and chaos inside the Capitol on 6 January, including footage of police officers being called “pigs” and “traitors” and one officer screaming as he was crushed by rioters battering a police line.
Other Republican senators, even those who have indicated they will vote to acquit, say it would be a good thing if the impeachment trial helps distance the party from Trump, who has thoroughly dominated GOP politics over the past five years.
“I can’t imagine the emotional reaction, the visceral reaction to what we saw today doesn’t have people thinking, ‘This is awful,’ whatever their view is on whether the president ought to be impeached or convicted,” said another GOP senator. “What would stand out to my colleagues is there was no rescue, there was nothing that came to put an end to it.”
