Thursday, November 18, 2021
WASHINGTON – Tribal leaders said the just-ended White House summit on tribal affairs “shows promise” for the federal commitment to solving problems in Indian Country and to giving Native Americans a voice in the process.
The two-day “Nation-to-Nation dialogue on critical issues in Indian Country” revives what had been an annual gathering under the Obama White House that was suspended during the Trump administration.
“It is very important that we come back together in unity with the federal government,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said Tuesday, as the summit was winding down.
That was echoed by the Association on American Indian Affairs, which said in a prepared statement that the summit shows “promise for federal commitment to protect and invigorate Native nation sovereignty.”
“Though federal policy of the past has deemed Native Peoples as a ‘problem’ and worked to outlaw and terminate every part of our personhood and sovereignty, Native Nations and their citizens are finally being recognized as an important part of the future of this country,” the statement said.
This year’s event was staged virtually because of COVID-19 concerns, but President Joe Biden still made the most of the event, using it to announce several tribal initiatives and to push for his Build Back Better plan.
Biden called it a “big day” Monday as he kicked off the summit, which included presentations by him and by Vice President Kamala Harris as well as listening sessions with Cabinet secretaries, from Interior to Homeland Security, from Justice to Health and Human Services.
Biden unveiled five initiatives Monday, including a directive to get federal agencies more involved in protecting Tribal treaty rights and to give tribes a greater voice in the management of public lands. He said his administration is moving to halt oil and gas drilling around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and that he was directing agencies to incorporate tribal ecological knowledge to help fight climate change.
The biggest action was the signing of an executive order “addressing the crisis of violence against Native Americans.” It directs Justice, HHS and other agencies to work more closely with tribal authorities on the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous people, to improve the collection of missing persons data, and more.
“Today, I’m directing federal officials to work with tribal nations on a strategy to improve public safety and advance justice,” Biden said Monday as he signed the order, flanked by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
The following travel restrictions and road closures will be in place at 6 a.m. Saturday because of the annual El Tour de Tucson bike race.
Downtown – Sixth Avenue, north of 22nd Street and south of Broadway, will be closed to motorists from 3 a.m. to 5 p.m., after the last rider. Expect additional downtown side street closures.
East side – Houghton Road will be closed to motorists from Mary Ann Cleveland Way/Old Vail Road to Sahuarita Road from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
West side:
- Silverbell Road southbound from Ina Road to Goret Road
- Mission Road eastbound ramp onto Starr Pass Boulevard
- Aviation Parkway eastbound from Broadway to Golf Links Road
- Wilmot Road southbound from Golf Links Road to Davis Monthan
- Nicaragua Drive/Calle Polar/Escalante Road eastbound from Wilmot Road to Kolb Road
Additional closures include:
- I-10 and Houghton Road exits
- Kolb Road southbound from Escalante Road to Valencia Ramp Road
- Valencia Road eastbound from Kolb Road to Old Vail Road
- Mary Ann Cleveland Way westbound from Colossal Cave Road to Houghton Road
- Irvington Road eastbound from Kolb Road to Houghton Road
- Houghton Road northbound from Irvington Road to Escalante Road
- Escalante Road eastbound from Houghton Road to Old Spanish Trail will be highly restricted to travel
Further information about El Tour de Tucson, including a route map, can be found at eltourdetucson.org/el-tour-de-tucson/route/.
Motorists may experience lengthy traffic delays associated with this event, so please plan accordingly. The traveling public should use caution when driving, bicycling or walking in these areas. Please watch for event participants, obey all traffic control, and watch for detour signs and personnel providing traffic control.
A majority of Republican respondents in a recent poll wrongly believe that the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election in Maricopa county definitely or probably found evidence of fraud.
Monmouth University polled 811 people across the United States earlier this month, asking a series of questions about the state of the country, the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, government regulation of Facebook and fraud allegations surrounding the 2020 election. The poll included a question about the election review in Maricopa County.
According to the live-caller poll, 62% of Republicans falsely believed the “audit” discovered fraud — 32% of Republican respondents said the audit found evidence, and another 30% aren’t sure but believe it probably found such evidence. Only 23% of Republicans said the audit found that President Joe Biden won or probably won the state fairly.
By contrast, 89% of Democrats said Biden won the state fairly, while 55% of independents say Biden won fairly and 27% said the audit uncovered fraud. In total, 57% said the audit showed that Biden fairly won Arizona, while 29% said it found or probably found fraud in the 2020 election.
The “audit” that Senate President Karen Fann ordered of the election affirmed that President Joe Biden won Arizona and found no evidence of fraud or rigging. The team that Fann hired to conduct the “audit,” which had no qualifications to review an election and was led by people who openly believe false claims that the election was rigged against Donald Trump, presented a number of issues it considered potentially suspicious. But the team acknowledged that there might be legitimate explanations for those alleged issues.
Maricopa County officials denied the allegations and provided explanations for many of the issues the audit team raised. The county, the Arizona Mirror and others have proven some, such as claims surrounding signature verification on early ballot affidavits, to be false.
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court said Friday that an Arizona water district can charge more in upfront fees to public housing residents, even though the policy disproportionately affects minority customers and single mothers.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the policy by the Maricopa Domestic Water Improvement District does have a discriminatory effect. But the court said the policy is not “impermissibly discriminatory” because there is a legitimate business reason for it – covering unpaid bills that Pinal County, which owns the Edwards Circle public housing, has refused to pay.
Jeffrey Matura, the water district’s attorney, welcomed the court’s decision because it “affirms what we always believed to be true.”
“This policy was never intended to discriminate against anyone who lived in the public housing units, but rather as a way to protect the district’s financial stability,” said Matura, who argued the case before the court.
An attorney for the Southwest Fair Housing Council and the two tenants who brought the suit said she was disappointed with the ruling in what she called a “tough case.”
Monday, November 15, 2021
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Series: St. Jude’s Unspent Billions - Behind the Hospital’s Claims to Donors
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
A series of sharp knocks on his driver’s side window startled Jason Burt awake.
It was the middle of the night on a Saturday in 2016. Burt was sleeping in his pickup truck in the parking lot of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, where his 5-year-old daughter was being treated for brain cancer. He’d driven more than 500 miles from his home in Central Texas to visit her.
A St. Jude security guard peered into the truck and asked Burt what he was doing. Burt explained that his daughter and her mother, his ex-girlfriend, were staying in the hospital’s free patient housing. But St. Jude provides housing for only one parent. Burt, a school bus driver making $20,000 a year, told the guard he couldn’t afford a hotel. The guard let the exhausted father go back to sleep.
St. Jude would do no more to find him a place to stay.
“They were aware of the situation,” Burt said. “I didn’t push anything. I was just grateful she was getting treated and I was doing what I needed to do.”
St. Jude is the largest and most highly regarded health care charity in the country. Each year, the Memphis hospital’s fundraisers send out hundreds of millions of letters, many with heart-wrenching photographs of children left bald from battling cancer. Celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Sofia Vergara sing the hospital’s praises in televised advertisements. This year, St. Jude’s fundraising reached outer space. The SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September included a former St. Jude patient as a crew member.
