Author: PolitCens

The congressional panel investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 of last year is wrapping up its public hearings Thursday, pledging to present new evidence to show the scope of former president Donald Trump’s connection to the violence that day as he tried to upend his 2020 election defeat and stay in power for another four years.

The House of Representatives Select Committee’s hearing is expected to be its first without live testimony from new witnesses. But the panel’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the nine-member committee plans to reveal “significant information that we’ve not shown to the public.”

Another committee member, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California, told CNN, “We discovered through our work through this summer what the president’s intentions were, what he knew, what he did, what others did.”

The hearing is unfolding less than a month before crucial nationwide congressional elections on November 8 in which the narrow Democratic political control of Congress is at stake and two years ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with Trump, a Republican, signaling he is likely to mount a new run for the White House against the Democrat who defeated him in 2020, President Joe Biden.

To this day, Trump falsely claims he was cheated out of a second four-year term in the 2020 election because of voting irregularities in several states he narrowly lost to Biden.

He has called the nine-member committee – seven Democrats and two vocal anti-Trump Republicans – “political thugs and scoundrels.”

During earlier hearings, several aides to Trump and officials in his administration testified at the House panel’s eight public hearings in June and July that they directly told the then-president he had lost and that there was not any significant fraud that would have upended his defeat.

Nonetheless, the witnesses said that Trump repeatedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, from certifying the Electoral College vote that Biden had won the election. Pence refused to acquiesce to Trump’s demand, drawing Trump’s ire as Trump-supporting rioters stormed the Capitol.

Some of the rioters, more than 800 of whom have been arrested in the 21 months since then, shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” a suggestion one Trump aide said the president thought was appropriate. Gallows had been erected on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol.

Trump, witnesses said, also considered sending the names of fake, Trump-supporting electors to the Capitol for the official Electoral College vote count to replace the official Biden electors in states Trump lost by narrow margins.

Trump is facing several criminal investigations stemming from his actions as he tried to remain in power, including a sweeping Justice Department probe into whether he helped foment the Capitol riot by urging his supporters to go there and “fight like hell” as lawmakers were certifying his Electoral College loss.

In the southern state of Georgia, a prosecutor in Atlanta, the state capital, is investigating Trump’s request to the top state elections official to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to overturn his 11,779-vote loss to Biden.

The state-by-state vote counts are essential in U.S. presidential elections because the country’s leader is not elected by the national popular vote count, which Biden won by more than 7 million votes. Rather, the overall outcome is effectively determined in the Electoral College through state-by-state elections, with each state’s number of electors roughly determined by its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway.

The House investigative panel is expected Thursday to try to make the case that Trump remains a threat to American democracy because of his actions after the 2020 election leading up to the riot, when about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol, clashed with law enforcement, injured 140 police officers and ransacked congressional offices.

The committee has no power to bring criminal charges against Trump but could make a criminal case referral to the Justice Department in a final report it expects to complete before the end of this year. If Republicans succeed in taking control of the House starting in January, they would almost certainly disband the committee if it does not finish a report by then.

Since the last public hearings, the committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents and communications from the Secret Service, the presidential security agency, that include details of how agents blocked Trump’s attempts to join his supporters at the Capitol even after their assault on the national seat of government had already erupted.

Trump, after rallying his supporters near the White House to “stop the steal” of the election, angrily berated a Secret Service agent when he realized his security detail was taking him back to the White House, where witnesses say he watched on television for more than three hours as the riot unfolded.

Late on the afternoon of January 6, he told his supporters in the Capitol to leave.

“I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace,” he said. “I know you’re in pain. I know you’re hurt.

“We had an election that was stolen from us,” he claimed. “It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.”
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The Biden administration and U.S. lawmakers are pushing this week for longtime ally Saudi Arabia to face consequences for agreeing to reduce oil production.

OPEC+, which includes Saudi Arabia, the 12 other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 other oil-exporting nations, announced last week that it would cut its oil production target by 2 million barrels a day, despite U.S. objections.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the decision was unanimous and based on economic considerations.

Some members of Congress are calling for an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. U.S. President Joe Biden signaled Wednesday he was willing to consider that proposal when Congress returns from a recess next month.

“We’re going to react to Saudi Arabia and we’re doing consultation when they come back. We will take action,” Biden told reporters.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said in a statement Monday that the Saudi decision was tantamount to underwriting Russia’s war in Ukraine. The United States has been working to sanction Russian oil exports as punishment for the unprovoked February invasion.

“There simply is no room to play both sides of this conflict – either you support the rest of the free world in trying to stop a war criminal from violently wiping an entire country off of the map, or you support him. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia chose the latter in a terrible decision driven by economic self-interest,” Menendez said.

Menendez proposed that Congress freeze all aspects of the U.S.-Saudi security relationship, including arms sales and security cooperation. Senate and House Democrats introduced a proposal late Tuesday that would halt all sales for one year.

“Saudi Arabia is clearly the driving force in this decision. It’s the dominant power in OPEC+, it has been for years and so singling out Saudi Arabia makes the most sense,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told reporters Wednesday.

“I believe the Saudis have consistently been miscalculating in the past couple years, and it’s probably because [former U.S. President Donald] Trump candidly gave them carte blanche. A lot of the deals that were taking place over the previous administration gave them a sense of security, and what President Biden is trying to do is just return to the proper balance,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, another co-sponsor, told reporters.

Blumenthal and Khanna wrote Sunday in an editorial in American political publication Politico that Saudi Arabia does not have other good options for arms purchases, giving the U.S. leverage.

“Make no mistake, this is a move on oil prices that was designed,” Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, told VOA.

The decision to cut production comes ahead of midterm elections in the United States November 8.

“What the Saudi crown did [was] to literally undermine the president’s political position, certainly with respect to oil prices, weeks before the midterms and at the same time undermine the president’s position, the international community’s position, in an effort to isolate [Russian President] Vladimir Putin in terms of his aggression against Ukraine by supporting him politically and economically,” Miller said.

Congressional Republicans have been less vocal about what consequences Saudi Arabia should face for the oil production target cut but have criticized the kingdom for human rights violations and other concerns in the past.

“Some of the senators from gas-producing states in the United States were deeply concerned about two years ago when Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ [countries] took certain decisions that led to a severe drop in the price of oil. I think the broader picture is that from a bipartisan basis, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is not on a stable foundation,” Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute, told VOA.

Blumenthal told reporters he was in talks with Republicans about his legislation. Lawmakers are due to return to Washington after the midterm elections.

Cindy Spang contributed to this report.
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The congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is set to hold what will likely be its final public hearing on Thursday, with members pledging new revelations about former President Donald Trump’s role in the events that led up to the attack.

The televised hearing, House of Representatives committee members say, will be sweeping and thematic, offering a broad overview of the panel’s findings to date while airing recently unearthed evidence tying Trump and his associates to the far-right groups that plotted the riot.

“We’re going to be going through really some of what we’ve already found but augmenting [it] with new material that we discovered through our work throughout this summer — what the president’s intentions were, what he knew, what he did, what others did,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, one of the committee’s seven Democratic members, said in a CNN interview on Tuesday.

“Obviously, there’s close ties between people in Trumpworld and some of these extremist groups. We will touch upon that,” Lofgren said, declining to say whom the circle encompassed. “There is some new material that I found, as we got into it, pretty surprising.”

The hearing was initially scheduled for September 29 before Congress recessed for the midterm elections, but it was canceled as Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida and South Carolina.

To date, the panel has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and reviewed over 130,000 documents as part of its investigation.

While the investigation will not stop after Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s focus will shift over the coming months to completing a report of its findings and recommendations for policy changes to Congress by the end of the year.

Trump has called the congressional investigation “a unilateral, completely partisan, political witch hunt.”

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, both of whom are ardent Trump critics and won’t be returning to Congress next term.

Here is what you need to know about the investigation and the committee’s last hearing.

What the hearing will showcase 

The bipartisan panel held eight televised public hearings in June and July. With the exception of the first hearing, each had a thematic focus.

The eighth hearing, held on July 21, focused on Trump’s “dereliction of duty” — the 187 minutes on the afternoon of January 6, during which he allegedly refused to condemn the riot or ask his supporters to go home.

Thursday’s hearing, set for 1 p.m. EDT, will continue in that vein, according to Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the panel.

“It will be the usual mix of information in the public domain and new information woven to tell the story about one key thematic element of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election,” Schiff said September 25 on CNN.

Declining to be more specific, Schiff added that as the last hearing of its kind, Thursday’s session “will be potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings, but it, too, will be very thematic.”

The committee will also likely air some of the previously unused “substantial footage” and “significant witness testimony” it has gathered, according to Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, committee chairman.

“So, this is an opportunity to use some of that material,” Thompson said last month.

Witness testimony  

In the two months since its last hearing in July, the committee has interviewed several high-profile witnesses, including Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state for period during the Trump administration, and Elaine Chao, Trump’s secretary of transportation.

While the panel is likely to air excerpts of those interviews, it’s not clear if it will feature testimony from another sought-after witness: Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a Republican activist and wife of conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this year, Ginni Thomas disclosed that she had attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol but said she “played no role with those who were planning and leading the January 6 events.”

It was later revealed that the January 6 committee had obtained text messages between Ginni Thomas and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which she wrote that Trump should not “concede” his loss in the presidential election to Joe Biden.

“The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” Ginni Thomas texted on November 10, 2020.

Last month, the panel interviewed Ginni Thomas, whom Lofgren said was “not a key figure” in the events leading up to January 6.

Though the interview was not videotaped, Lofgren told MSNBC on Sunday that the committee “may” use a transcript, “but we have plenty of other information, as well.”

Secret Service communications

Among the new information the committee will be showcasing is a massive cache of Secret Service communications it recently received.

Last month, Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chair, disclosed that the panel had obtained about 800,000 pages of communications material from the Secret Service.

The presidential protection service has come under scrutiny ever since information emerged this summer that text messages exchanged between agents had been erased.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in June that Trump knew his supporters gathered in Washington were armed and that he was so intent on joining them at the Capitol that he lunged at the head of his security detail in the presidential vehicle when they instead drove him to the White House.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival last month, Cheney said that while Secret Service agents “were playing a hugely important and very courageous role” on January 6, “there are some that have not been forthcoming with the committee, and you’ll hear more about that.”

What’s next for the committee? 

As a House “select” committee, the January 6 panel is set to expire at the end of the current congressional term on January 3, 2023. But before its term ends, the panel is mandated to present a report of its findings and policy recommendations to Congress. That report is expected to be released by the end of the year, according to committee members.

One legislative proposal the panel was expected to recommend has already been pushed through Congress.

The proposed legislation seeks to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century law that Republican supporters of Trump argued gave Vice President Mike Pence the power to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.

Last month, the House passed a version of the legislation. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown his support behind a Senate version, raising the prospects of its enactment into law.

Will there be any consequences for Trump? 

While the committee does not have the power to bring criminal charges, it can refer Trump and others to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Justice Department has been investigating the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the investigation will continue, regardless of a congressional referral.

Still, on the question of whether to make any criminal referrals to the Justice Department, committee members appear divided.

While some members such as Schiff favor making criminal referrals, others such as Thompson have said the panel lacks the authority to do so.

Among Trump’s actions in the lead-up to January 6, Democrats say his pressure on Pence to overturn the electoral count was both “illegal and unconstitutional.”
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Carrying on a long-established tradition, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) plans to deploy teams of federal observers around the country on Election Day next month while requiring the FBI to receive high-level approval for politically sensitive investigations that might call into question the integrity of the election.

At stake in the Nov. 8 congressional races is not only control of Congress but also the legitimacy of U.S. elections — fallout from former President Donald Trump’s attempt to undo the outcome of the 2020 presidential vote.

Many Americans are questioning the credibility of elections. At the same time, new laws passed by Republican state legislators have thrown up barriers to voting, rights advocates say, prompting the Justice Department to challenge the new measures in court.

The Justice Department, which under the Biden administration has made voting rights a central plank of its law enforcement agenda, says federal monitors will observe the midterm elections in an effort “to ensure that all qualified voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots and have their votes counted free of discrimination, intimidation and suppression.”

“The Civil Rights Division undertakes its important work to protect the right to vote all throughout each year, and this year’s work continues longstanding department tradition,” the Justice Department said in a statement Tuesday.

The U.S. has a decentralized election system, with voting administered at the county level.

But the federal government has a role too. The Justice Department’s civil rights division is responsible for enforcing a string of federal laws designed to protect the right to vote. These include the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

Federal election monitors, drawn from the Justice Department’s civil rights division as well as U.S. attorney’s offices across the country, will observe compliance with these laws, according to the Justice Department.

In the past two election cycles, the Justice Department dispatched election monitors to about 20 states. It is likely to cover the same number of states this year, according to Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the watchdog group Common Cause.

“I’ve been given no indication that they are going to stray greatly from prior behavior, and they told us that they are continuing to do their job as they’ve always done,” Albert said.

The locations to be monitored are determined based on whether “they have a history of problems and voters or community groups in the area making them [the DOJ] aware,” Albert said.

“You always use the institutional knowledge, the history of the location, any complaints from voters and voter advocates to monitor,” Albert said.

The Justice Department releases its election-monitoring plan on the eve of the midterms. A representative did not have any additional details about the department’s monitoring plan beyond the press statement.

Zack Smith, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the Justice Department observers play an important role in ensuring equal access to voting.

“Their goal is to really be kind of a quick reaction force if issues come up to us to potentially address those issues in real time,” Smith said.

In addition to the Justice Department monitors, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which the U.S. is a participating state, will deploy observers throughout the country to “closely monitor all aspects of the elections, including pre- and postelection developments.”

“The mission will assess the elections for their compliance with OSCE commitments and other international obligations and standards for democratic elections, as well as with national legislation,” the OSCE said in a statement Sept. 29.

Staying above politics

While taking steps to protect the right to vote, the Justice Department is keeping up another of its long-standing traditions: avoiding the appearance of partisanship during an election year.

In a May 25 staff email entitled “Election Year Sensitives,” Attorney General Merrick Garland urged Justice Department employees to be “particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship.”

“Simply put, partisan politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigation or criminal charges,” Gartland wrote.

The exhortation was a mere restatement of long-standing DOJ policies. But to the outrage of many on the left, Garland went on to say that he was keeping in place a 2020 directive issued by his predecessor, William Barr.

The Barr directive says the FBI must get the attorney general’s written approval before opening criminal or counterintelligence investigations of “politically sensitive individuals or entities.”

Garland’s decision to extend that policy gave fodder to critics who say he hasn’t moved aggressively enough to charge Trump and his associates for their alleged roles in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

But the attorney general has said that “no person is above the law” and that the Justice Department “will follow the facts and the law, wherever they lead.”

Garland is a former federal judge and Supreme Court nominee. Defenders say he has restored the Justice Department’s traditional role as an independent law enforcement agency after four years of the Trump administration, during which the attorney general was accused of doing the president’s bidding.

But Republicans say that it is under Biden that the Justice Department has become politicized. They point to the FBI’s unprecedented investigation of Trump’s handling of presidential records as well as Justice Department lawsuits filed against “election integrity” laws enacted by Republican state lawmakers.

“I think there certainly is the perception, if not the reality that there’s a disconnect between what Merrick Garland is saying and what the department is actually doing,” Smith said.  
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When voters in Jefferson County, Colorado, cast their ballots in the Nov. 8 midterm election, they will see security guards stationed outside the busiest polling centers.

At an election office in Flagstaff, Arizona, voters will encounter bulletproof glass and need to press a buzzer to enter.

In Tallahassee, Florida, election workers will count ballots in a building that has been newly toughened with walls made of the super-strong fiber Kevlar.

Spurred by a deluge of threats and intimidating behavior by conspiracy theorists and others upset over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat, some election officials across the United States are fortifying their operations as they ramp up for another divisive election.

A Reuters survey of 30 election offices found that 15 have enhanced security in various ways, from installing panic buttons to hiring extra security guards to holding active-shooter and de-escalation training.

Reuters focused on offices in battleground states and offices that had openly expressed a need for security improvements, for example in congressional testimony. While the survey does not speak to how widespread such moves are, it does show how election officials are responding to threats in parts of the country where the election will likely be decided.

Election officials around the country said they were coordinating more closely with local law enforcement to respond quickly to disturbances. Many have also trained workers in de-escalating conflicts and evading active shooters.

Until recently, such threats to safety were seen as hypothetical in a country that has seen few instances of election-related violence since the civil rights battles of the 1960s, when the presence of armed officers sometimes intimidated rather than reassured Black voters.

Now those risks are seen as real, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan public-interest group founded by entrepreneur and Democratic donor Pierre Omidyar.

“The likelihood that they could occur has definitely increased, so everyone is taking that to heart,” she said.

Election officials in 12 states, including some who have paid for moderate security improvements, said they have not received enough money to make their desired upgrades due to bureaucratic hurdles.

In Champaign County, Illinois, clerk Aaron Ammons would like to install metal detectors at his office, where visitors have filmed staff and the layout of the space in what he described as a threatening manner.

“It makes us feel like we’re targets, or we’re not a priority in the same way our men and women in uniform are. And we’re on the front lines of democracy just like they are,” said Ammons.

Ammons gave testimony to Congress in August that he and his wife received anonymous messages threatening their daughter’s life ahead of the 2020 election, and he told Reuters he recently saw someone filming his house.

The Justice Department says it has investigated more than 1,000 messages to election workers since the 2020 election, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution. Reuters documented the campaign of fear being waged against election workers in a series of investigative reports.

Seven cases have been charged so far. The first sentence came Thursday, when a Nebraska man received 18 months in prison for threatening an election official.

Spooked workers

One in five U.S. election officials said that they were unlikely to stay in their job through 2024, when Americans will go to the polls again to elect a president, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice that was released in March. They cited stress, attacks by politicians and impending retirement as reasons.

The lingering bitterness from the 2020 election has also spooked many of the temporary workers who check in voters, count ballots and perform other tasks that make elections possible, officials say.

Philadelphia has boosted pay for election day workers from $120 to $250 to help recruiting efforts that have been complicated by fears of harassment, as well as a tight labor market, said Omar Sabir, one of the city’s three election commissioners. After receiving death threats in 2020, he himself changed his travel patterns.

“You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel,” Sabir said.

“Sometimes I have nightmares thinking about that, somebody walking up and causing me harm.”

Protective measures

Many election officials blame disinformation, such as Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud in the 2020 election, for the surge in threats.

Justin Roebuck, the Republican clerk of Michigan’s rural, conservative Ottawa County, said Trump’s rhetoric had “really poisoned the well,” inspiring other candidates to sow doubts about elections. In Michigan, Republican candidates for governor, attorney general and other positions have questioned the outcome of the 2020 election.

Roebuck’s office held a three-hour role-playing exercise with local emergency management officials this year to plan how to respond to violent incidents. They also printed a brochure explaining balloting procedures that workers can hand to people to de-escalate confrontations with anyone aggressively questioning their work.

In addition to adding Kevlar walls, the Leon County, Florida, elections office has held active shooter training for its workers, installed bullet- and bomb-resistant glass, and invested in security cameras and video file storage, according to elections supervisor Mark Earley, who says he gets frequent hostile and profane calls from strangers.

“I’ve got to worry about my workers leaving the building and walking up to their cars after dark,” he said.

Earley paid to stiffen his facility’s security with a 2020 grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a non-profit group funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But Florida and 25 other states have since banned such outside funding.

Funding Woes

Election officials say they have struggled to get federal aid for safety measures.

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security said this year that funds would be available for election office security, but that money was claimed by local police departments and others more familiar with those programs, said Amy Cohen, the head of the National Association of State Election Directors.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said the agency’s Election Threats Task Force had worked since its launch in 2021 to steer federal aid to local election offices for security enhancements and had urged Congress to provide more such funding.

Some offices have paid for security enhancements by cutting back elsewhere. Jefferson County, Colorado, has scaled back mailings to voters to pay for four security guards who will monitor the busiest four voting locations in the weeks surrounding the election.

“It’s worth it for us, having the ability to be proactive rather than reactive,” said George Stern, the Jefferson County clerk.
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A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Thursday of plotting with other members of the far-right Proud Boys to violently stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election, making him the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge. 

Jeremy Joseph Bertino, 43, has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a federal prosecutor said. 

Bertino’s cooperation could increase the pressure on other Proud Boys charged in the siege, including former national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. 

The guilty plea comes as the founder of another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, and four associates charged separately in the January 6 attack stand trial on a seditious conspiracy charge — a rarely used Civil War era offense that calls for up to 20 years behind bars. 

Bertino traveled to Washington with other Proud Boys in December 2020 and was stabbed during a fight, according to court documents. He was not in Washington for the January 6 riot because he was still recovering from his injuries, court papers say. 

Bertino participated in planning sessions in the days leading up to January 6 and received encrypted messages as early as January 4 indicating that Proud Boys were discussing possibly storming the Capitol, according to authorities. 

A statement of offense filed in court says that Bertino understood the Proud Boys’ goal in traveling to Washington was to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and that the group was prepared to use force and violence if necessary to do so. 

Bertino also pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully possessing firearms in March 2022 in Belmont, North Carolina. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to release Bertino pending a sentencing hearing, which wasn’t immediately scheduled. 

Justice Department prosecutor Erik Kenerson said sentencing guidelines for Bertino’s case recommend a prison sentence ranging from four years and three months to five years and three months. 

A trial is scheduled to start in December for Tarrio and four other members charged with seditious conspiracy: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. The charging document for Bertino’s case names those five defendants and a sixth Proud Boys member as his co-conspirators. 

The indictment in Tarrio’s case alleges that the Proud Boys held meetings and communicated over encrypted messages to plan for the attack in the days leading up to January 6. On the day of the riot, authorities say, Proud Boys dismantled metal barricades set up to protect the Capitol and mobilized, directed and led members of the crowd into the building. 

Video testimony by Bertino was featured in June at the first hearing by the House committee investigating January 6. The committee showed Bertino saying that the group’s membership “tripled, probably” after Trump’s comment at a presidential debate that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.” 

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on January 6, but authorities say he helped put into motion the violence that day. Police arrested Tarrio in Washington two days before the riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020. Tarrio was released from jail on January 14 of this year after serving his five-month sentence for that case. 

More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol riot have been identified by federal authorities as leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys. Two — Matthew Greene and Charles Donohoe — pleaded guilty of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, the January 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the Electoral College vote. 
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The Supreme Court is taking up an Alabama redistricting case that could have far-reaching effects on minority voting power across the United States. 

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the latest high-court showdown over the federal Voting Rights Act, lawsuits seeking to force Alabama to create a second Black majority congressional district. About 27% of Alabamians are Black, but they form a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. 

The court’s conservatives, in a 5-4 vote in February, blocked a lower court ruling that would have required a second Black majority district in time for the 2022 midterm elections. 

A similar ruling to create an additional Black majority district in Louisiana also was put on hold. 

Conservative high-court majorities have made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021. A ruling for the state in the new case could weaken another powerful tool civil rights groups and minority voters have used to challenge racial discrimination in redistricting. 

The case also has an overlay of partisan politics. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress. 

Two appointees of President Donald Trump were on the three-judge panel that unanimously held that Alabama likely violated the landmark 1965 law by diluting Black voting strength. 

The judges found that Alabama has concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice. 

Alabama’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found. 

The state argues that the lower court ruling would force it to sort voters by race, insisting that it is taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting. 

That argument could resonate with conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. He has opposed most consideration of race in voting both as a justice and in his time as a lawyer in Republican presidential administrations. 

Tuesday’s arguments are the first Supreme Court case involving race for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice. 

A challenge to affirmative action in college admissions is set for arguments on October 31.

 
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Democratic lawmakers have unveiled a stopgap spending measure to finance the federal government through December 16, provide additional support to Ukraine and help communities respond to recent natural disasters. 

Both chambers of Congress must approve legislation by Friday, which is the end of the fiscal year, to prevent a partial government shutdown. It represents the last bit of unfinished business for lawmakers before the midterm elections in November. Both sides are eager to wrap up and spend time on the campaign trail, lowering the risk of a federal stoppage. 

The first test vote of the measure’s popularity will take place Tuesday evening in the Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to proceed to a short-term spending measure. It’s going to be hard to reach that threshold with lawmakers from both parties opposing provisions in the measure aimed at speeding up the permitting process for energy projects. 

The bill provides about $12.3 billion in assistance related to Ukraine, including training, equipment, weapons, and direct financial support for the Ukraine government. The assistance would be on top of some $53 billion Congress has already approved through two previous bills. 

The measure excludes the White House call for spending $22 billion to respond to COVID-19, and $3.9 billion to fight against an outbreak of the monkeypox virus. Republican lawmakers were overwhelmingly opposed to the health funding. At least 10 Republican senators would have to support the measure to overcome procedural hurdles and advance in that chamber. 

The most contentious piece of the legislation is Senator Joe Manchin’s plan to streamline the permitting process for energy projects and make it easier for a pipeline project in his home state and Virginia to proceed. 

Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, secured a commitment from President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders to have a vote on the permitting package in return for his support of a landmark law to curb climate change. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York made it clear he intended to include it in the must-pass continuing resolution.

While Republicans have voiced support for streamlining the permitting process for energy projects, some, including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, are panning the effort.  

“What our Democratic colleagues have produced is a phony fig leaf that would actually set back the cause of real permitting reform,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. 

McConnell said he would vote against proceeding to the short-term spending bill if it included Manchin’s legislation and encouraged others to vote no, too, a powerful signal to GOP lawmakers. Senator Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, also said he would vote against the continuing resolution if it’s included. 

“We have made significant progress toward a Continuing Resolution that is as clean as possible. But, if the Democrats insist on including permitting reform, I will oppose it,” Shelby said. 

Top Democratic appropriators also said they were unhappy with the inclusion of Manchin’s proposal, but said keeping the government running took priority. 

“I am disappointed that unrelated permitting reform was attached to this bill. This is a controversial matter that should be debated on its own merits,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “However, with four days left in the fiscal year, we cannot risk a government shutdown; we must work to advance this bill.” 

The Mountain Valley Pipeline sought by Manchin would run through Virginia for about 100 miles. Manchin’s plan would expedite the pipeline and steer legal challenges to a different federal court. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he opposes an expedited review for the pipeline and will vote against taking up the package, another sign that lawmakers won’t have the 60 votes needed to move forward. 

“We should pass a continuing resolution that is free of the unprecedented and dangerous” pipeline deal, Kaine said. 

The disaster assistance in the bill includes $2.5 billion to help New Mexico communities recover from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in the state’s history; $2 billion for a block grant program that aids the economic recovery of communities impacted by recent disasters and $20 million for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements previously authorized for Jackson, Mississippi. 

The bill would also provide an additional $1 billion for a program that helps low income households afford to heat their homes. 

There has been wide, bipartisan support for boosting support for Ukraine. The bill includes $4.5 billion to help Ukraine’s government provide basic citizen services and authorizes the president to drawdown $3.7 billion worth of equipment from U.S. stocks to support Ukraine’s armed forces. There’s also money to replenish U.S. stocks of equipment and munitions sent to Ukraine and to provide Ukraine with intelligence support and training. 

“With Russia holding fake elections to annex parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people urgently need our support to continue protecting their families and defending global democracy,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee. 

 
…

Arizona Democrats vowed Saturday to fight for women’s rights after a court reinstated a law first enacted during the Civil War that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances, looking to capitalize on an issue they hope will have a major impact on the midterm elections.

Republican candidates were silent a day after the ruling, which said the state can prosecute doctors and others who assist with an abortion unless it’s necessary to save the mother’s life. Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, and Blake Masters, the Senate candidate, did not comment.

Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes, the Democratic nominees for governor and attorney general, implored women not to sit on the sidelines this year, saying the ruling sets them back more than a century to an era when only men had the right to vote.

“We cannot let (Lake) hold public office and have the power to enact extreme anti-choice policies that she’s spent her entire campaign touting,” Hobbs said during a news conference outside the attorney general’s office. “As Arizona’s governor I will do everything in my power and use every tool at my disposal to restore abortion rights in Arizona.”

The ruling presents a new hurdle for Republicans who were already struggling to navigate abortion politics. It fires up Democrats and distracts attention from Republican attacks on President Joe Biden and his record on border security and inflation less than three weeks before the start of early and mail-in voting, which are overwhelmingly popular in Arizona.

Abortion rights are particularly salient among suburban women, who play a decisive role in close elections in Arizona.

“In Arizona, with a draconian abortion law in effect today, I think you will see suburban women take a real look at Democratic candidates who promise to do something even if it’s not in their power,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant.

Democrats have poured tens of millions of dollars into television advertising focused on abortion rights, and women have been registering to vote in greater numbers than men across the country.

The old law was first enacted among a set of laws known as the “Howell Code” adopted by the first Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1864. It has been periodically re-adopted throughout the state’s history, including in 1901 and as recently as the 1970s.

Lake has spoken positively of Arizona’s territorial ban on abortion, which she called “a great law that’s already on the books.” She has called abortion “the ultimate sin” and has also said abortion pills should be illegal.

Masters called abortion “demonic” during the Republican primary and called for a federal personhood law that would give fetuses the rights of people. He’s toned down his rhetoric more recently, deleting references to a personhood law from his campaign website and dropping language describing himself as “100% pro-life.”

More recently, Masters has said he would support a bill proposed by Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape, incest or risk to the physical health of the mother. He has also said he supports a different Arizona law that seeks to ban abortions at 15 weeks.

Neither the Lake nor Masters campaign responded to requests for comment.

“Their silence speaks volumes,” said Mayes, the Democratic attorney general candidate. “They know how absolutely unpopular this 1901 law is. They know how indefensible it is. And they know that when Nov. 8 comes the people of Arizona are going to resoundingly reject this extreme abortion ban, this attack on the people of Arizona by voting them down.”

If elected, Mayes said, she would not enforce the abortion law and would direct county prosecutors to do the same. She said she believes it violates the privacy rights guaranteed by the state constitution.

Hobbs said she’d push lawmakers on her first day in office to repeal the abortion ban, a long shot for a legislature that is widely expected to be controlled by Republicans. Failing that, she said she’d support a ballot measure giving the voters the chance to decide in the 2024 election.

Hobbs also said she’d veto any legislation that further restricts abortion.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the ruling, which she said would have “catastrophic, dangerous and unacceptable” consequences.

“Make no mistake: this backwards decision exemplifies the disturbing trend across the country of Republican officials at the local and national level dead-set on stripping women of their rights,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. 
…

Two Republican senators have expressed concern to the Biden administration at the growing cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We are troubled by news reports that Russia and North Korea are strengthening their relationship, which will aid [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s unjust and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Hagerty said in their letter dated Thursday. 

“North Korea and Russia have recently agreed to dispatch North Korean laborers to areas in Ukraine seized by Russia,” their letter continued. “We also learned that Russia is attempting to purchase millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea.”

Rubio and Hagerty urged the Biden administration ”to fully enforce Congressional and multilateral sanctions to increase the pressure on the Kim regime.”

The senators sent the letter  Thursday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Rubio is the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations. Hagerty is a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the Committee on Foreign Relations.

In response to the senators’ letter, a spokesperson for the State Department told VOA’s Korean Service on Saturday that “it is important for the international community to send a strong, unified message that the DPRK must halt its unlawful actions, abide by its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions, and engage in serious and sustained negotiations with the United States.”

North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The spokesperson continued, “U.N. sanctions on the DPRK remain in place, and we will continue to encourage all member states to implement them, including through diplomacy at the United Nations and with the DPRK’s neighbors.”

VOA Korean Service contacted North Korea’s U.N. mission in New York City requesting comment on the senators’ letter but has not received a reply. The service also contacted the Russian embassy in Washington ​and its U.N. mission in New York City but has not received a reply.

The U.N. Security Council has sanctioned North Korea against exporting arms in multiple resolutions dating back to 2006, and in December 2017, it passed a resolution banning member states from hiring North Korean workers in response to Pyongyang’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile a month earlier.

The U.S. and its allies and partners sanctioned Russia, excluding it from the global financial system days after its Feb. 21 invasion of Ukraine.

After setbacks in the war, Moscow has turned to Pyongyang for support.

In July, Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia that Moscow was willing to hire North Korean workers to rebuild the Russian-controlled Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region.

North Korea recognized the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, on July 14.

According to the U.S. State Department, Russia wants to purchase rockets and artillery shells from North Korea as it runs short on weapons.

During a press briefing on Sept. 6, Vedant Patel, deputy spokesperson at the State Department, said, ”The Russian Ministry of Defense is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use in Ukraine.”

He added, ”This purchase indicates that the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages due in part because of export controls and sanctions.”

Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya said that the U.S. claim of Moscow’s arms purchase from Pyongyang is “another fake,” according to Tass, a state-owned news agency.

North Korea said on Thursday it has ”never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia” and “will not plan to export them,” it said in the statement released through KCNA.

The North Korean statement did not address sending workers to the Donbas.

North Korea continued to say it ”never recognized” the U.N. Security Council’s ”unlawful sanctions resolutions” imposed against North Korea ”which was cooked up by the U.S. and its vassal forces.”

If Moscow hires workers and buys weapons from North Korea, it would be violating sanctions it imposed on the regime as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Such transactions would also put North Korea in violation of sanctions designed to prevent Pyongyang from earning much-needed hard currency to finance the development of nuclear missiles and ballistic missiles. 
…

Key U.S. lawmakers are rebuking Iran for its human rights record in the aftermath of the death of a young woman while held in captivity by the country’s morality police for failing to properly cover her hair with a hijab.

The lawmakers rebuffed claims by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in his speech Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly that Tehran supports human rights.

Raisi did not mention the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, and the protests that have erupted over her death, but rather assailed what he characterized as oppression, injustice and human rights violations in Western countries, including the United States.

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen told VOA’s Persian Service, “What’s happening in Iran, generally, is an outrageous treatment of its people. And then you have this, these attacks on Iranian women … a woman who was killed for not conforming” to a religious edict “with respect to her hair in a veil.”

“It’s just another example of the atrocious human rights record in Iran,” Van Hollen said.

Senator Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Raisi, in claiming that Tehran supports human rights, “lives in a parallel, alternative universe” detached from reality.

“The death of this young 22-year-old woman by the morality police in Iran is an example that that is not about human rights,” he said. “It’s not about human rights when Iranian women cannot fully enjoy their place in Iranian society. It’s not about human rights when you use your money not to help feed the people, but to arm different groups who create acts of terrorism.”

Republican Senator Rob Portman said he thought it was “a strange time” for Raisi to claim that Iran supports human rights in the wake of Amini’s death.

“So, the facts are the facts, and the people in Iran know what’s going on,” Portman said.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said, “Iran pretends like it’s a democracy, but it isn’t. They don’t have rights. And there’s only so long the people will put up with their desire to be free and to express their opinion to be crushed like it has in Iran.”

“I worry about what’s going to happen to these protesters,” he added. “They’re speaking up. The kind of repression we’ve seen in the past has been brutal. But I’m proud of anybody in this world who speaks up for … their dignity.”

In his speech at the U.N., Raisi condemned abuses by Canada against Indigenous people, the United States for its treatment of migrants and Israel for its relations with Palestinians, while saying nothing of abuses in his own country.

“Human rights belong to all but are unfortunately trampled upon by other governments,” Raisi said. “We believe any oppressive action is a threat to world peace and stability. America cannot stand that some countries are able to stand on their own two feet.”
…

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa made his first visit to the White House on Friday, where he and US President Joe Biden discussed global security, climate change, trade, food security and health — and African nations’ reluctance to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
Video editor: Kim Weeks
…

A U.S. federal judge has unsealed further portions of the legal document the FBI submitted justifying its reasons to secure a search warrant of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part of its investigation of his handling of classified documents after he left the White House in January 2021.

The portions of the affidavit that were unsealed Tuesday shows investigators served a subpoena on the Trump Organization, the ex-president’s company, on June 24 demanding any video footage and photographs from the surveillance cameras located near a storage room in the resort where dozens of boxes filled with classified material. The affidavit says the Trump Organization handed over a hard drive with the surveillance footage on July 6 in response to the subpoena.

The FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, seizing nearly 13,000 items, including more than 100 classified records.

The FBI is investigating several possible criminal offenses in connection with Trump’s retention of presidential records, including a potential violation of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.

The FBI investigation suffered a setback last week after a federal judge ordered the appointment of a special master and temporarily barred agents from using the records, including classified documents.

The Justice Department has said it would appeal the ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon unless she allows agents to regain access to the classified documents and bars the special master from viewing them. The department has given Cannon until Thursday to issue a “partial stay” of her order.

The Justice Department and the Trump legal team have each proposed two candidates to serve as special master.

In a late Monday court filing, the Justice Department indicated it would accept one of the two candidates proposed by Trump lawyers: Raymond Dearie, a federal judge on “senior active” status.

Dearie and the department’s own candidates — retired federal judges Barbara Jones and Thomas Griffith — have “substantial judicial experience, during which they have presided over federal criminal and civil cases, including federal cases involving national security and privilege concerns,” the filing said.

The Justice Department opposed the Trump team’s other candidate, Paul Huck Jr., former Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida, saying he “does not appear to have similar experience.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, has requested the National Archives to conduct a review of all presidential records from the Trump administration to determine whether any records “may still be outside the agency’s custody and control.” In a letter requesting the review, Maloney said staffers from the Archives recently told the committee the agency is not certain it has all the records from the Trump White House.

Maloney asked the Archives, the agency that collects and preserves all official government documents, for an initial assessment of its findings by September 27.

The investigation of the missing documents is taking place as the Justice Department appears to be widening its probe of efforts by former President Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The New York Times reported Monday that the Justice Department has issued about 40 subpoenas over the past week to various people connected to both the Trump administration and his re-election campaign, from low-level aides to senior advisers to the former president.

One is reportedly Dan Scavino, who served as Trump’s White House social media director and has remained as an adviser to the former president. Another is Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, who pushed claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election along with former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, also a longtime close ally of Trump, the Times reported.

In addition, Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist for Trump, had their phones seized last week as evidence.

The latest steps by the Justice Department represent a sharp escalation in its investigation into Trump’s attempt to hang on to power despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

The subpoenas issued over the past week sought information about two separate lines of inquiry. One is examining efforts by Trump associates to enlist fake presidential electors in battleground states won by Biden. The other is focused on Save America PAC, a fundraising group created by Trump after the 2020 election.

The inquiries grew out of the Justice Department’s expansive investigation into the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. That sprawling investigation, which has led to the arrest of more than 800 people, is ongoing.

The Justice Department is seeking any records or communications from people who organized, addressed, or provided security for Trump’s rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House that preceded the attack, the Times reported.

VOA Justice Correspondent Masood Farivar contributed to this article. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

The National Archives is still not certain that it has custody of all former President Donald Trump’s presidential records even after the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago club, a congressional committee said in a letter Tuesday. 

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform revealed that staff at the National Archives on an August 24 call could not provide assurances that they have all of Trump’s presidential records. The committee’s letter asked the agency to conduct an assessment of whether any Trump records remain unaccounted for and potentially in his possession. 

“In light of revelations that Mr. Trump’s representatives misled investigators about his continued possession of government property and that material found at his club included dozens of ’empty folders’ for classified material, I am deeply concerned that sensitive presidential records may remain out of the control and custody of the U.S. Government,” Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, wrote in the letter. 

The House committee has jurisdiction over the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law that requires the preservation of White House documents as property of the U.S. government. The request is the latest development in a monthslong back-and-forth between the agency and the committee, which has been investigating Trump’s handling of records. 

The request also comes weeks after the FBI recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings and more than 10,000 other government documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The search came after lawyers for Trump provided a sworn certification that all government records had been returned. 

Maloney and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel have been seeking a briefing from the National Archives but haven’t received one due to the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation into the matter. 

But the letter notes a call between National Archives staff and the committee on August 24, in which lawmakers were informed that documents could still be missing. 

As a result, Maloney wrote, the committee is asking the agency to conduct an “urgent review” of all of the government records that have been recorded from the Trump White House to determine whether any additional records remain unaccounted for and potentially in the possession of the former president. 

In addition, the committee also asked for the National Archives to get a personal certification from Trump “that he has surrendered all presidential records that he illegally removed from the White House after leaving office.” 

The committee is asking the agency to provide an initial assessment of this review by September 27. 
…

On the eve of her first day in Congress, Mary Peltola stood outside what was once the office of the late Alaska Representative Don Young, swarmed by the local and national press, and marveled at the moment. 

“I really hope that Don is getting a kick out of this,” Peltola told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. “I can’t help but think that some things broke my way on account of his great sense of humor.” 

The kicker is that 50 years ago, right before Peltola was born, her parents worked on Young’s first campaign for the only congressional seat in Alaska. Young won and went on to hold it for 49 years before his death in March. 

Last month, on her 49th birthday, Peltola, a Democrat, won the special election to finish out Young’s term, besting a field of candidates that included Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was governor. 

On Tuesday night, Peltola, who is Yup’ik, will make her own history when she is sworn in as the first Alaska Native in Congress and the first woman to hold the seat. She previously was a state lawmaker for 10 years representing the rural hub community of Bethel, Alaska. 

“To have a seat at the table is different,” Peltola said. “But I am just always reminding people that I’m not here to represent just the 16% of Alaskans who are Alaska Natives. I’m here to represent all Alaskans.” 

Two other new members also will be sworn in to office Tuesday evening: Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Joe Sempolinski of New York. 

Peltola’s campaign has emphasized her dedication to “fish, family and freedom.” Fish are a staple in Alaskan life, and salmon holds particular cultural significance to Alaska Natives. A subsistence lifestyle — relying on fish, wildlife and berries — is essential in rural Alaska, including in many Native communities, where goods must be flown or barged in and costs for basic necessities can be exorbitant. 

Peltola said she sees her few weeks in office as an homage to Young’s service as a more moderate force in an increasingly polarized Congress. Like the often gruff Young, Peltola said she is bringing a sense of humor to the job, along with a history of being a consensus builder with even the most conservative of colleagues. 

After Palin came in second to Peltola in the special election last month, the two women shared a cordial back-and-forth. In a text message, Palin congratulated her and wrote that she was a “real Alaskan chick! Beautiful & smart and tough.” 

Peltola replied, “Your text means the world to me … We really are in this together.” 

The newly elected congresswoman’s time in the Alaska Legislature overlapped with Palin’s time as governor, and the women have remained cordial. Peltola has said that one of the most “unsavory” parts of American politics is negative campaigning. 

But staying above the fray could prove difficult. Peltola is on the ballot in November to serve a full two-year term, again facing off against Palin, Republican Nick Begich and Libertarian Chris Bye, all of whom advanced from last month’s open primary. 

That’s partly why Peltola said she doesn’t plan to get too comfortable in her new office, which Young, a Republican, adorned with the heads of bucks and bears and large rifles in a nod to his love of hunting. Now those walls are bare. 

“It didn’t make sense to really become too entrenched, or decorate, or set up shop,” Peltola said. “I really just feel like I’m camping here until the term is over. And then being open and seeing what happens next.” 

 
…

Two months before midterm elections, U.S. President Joe Biden and other Democrats are coalescing on a strategy they hope will help them maintain their slim majority in Congress: spotlighting legislative accomplishments while politically singling out loyalists of former President Donald Trump. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
…

Here is a look at Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:

Homeland Security Department Establishes Tribal Advisory Council

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is creating an advisory council to collaborate on homeland security matters relating to tribal nations and Indigenous communities including emergency management, law enforcement, cybersecurity, domestic terrorism, targeted violence, and border security.

“The inaugural Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Council is a result of sustained engagement to improve nation-to-nation relationships and comes at a time of critical importance,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “I look forward to building a new council that will provide timely advice and recommendations directly from Indian country regarding how we can better work together to improve homeland security.”

Individuals will be considered for membership based on their qualifications to serve as representatives of a tribal nation or tribal organization.

According to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), nearly 40 tribes are located directly on or near America’s borders with Mexico and Canada and are thus directly involved in combating illegal immigration, smuggling and terrorism; further, a high number of oil and gas pipelines, missile sites, dams and nuclear facilities sit on tribal lands.

“While state governments have received billions of taxpayer dollars for homeland security program infrastructure development and enhancement, tribes have yet to receive equitable assistance to perform the same functions,” NCAI states on its website.

DHS Establishes First-Ever Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Council

DOI Finalizes Replacements for Demeaning Place Names

For generations, a gap in the Santa Teresa Mountain Range in Graham County, Arizona has carried a name that uses an offensive ethnic, racial and sexist slur for Indigenous women.

From now on, however, it will be known as Rattlesnake Saddle. It is one of 650 geographic features in the U.S. with names that include a derogatory word. But all that is about to change with the Interior Department announcing Thursday that its Board on Geographic Names has voted on final new names for all these features and locations.

“I feel a deep obligation to use my platform to ensure that our public lands and waters are accessible and welcoming. That starts with removing racist and derogatory names that have graced federal locations for far too long,” said Secretary Deb Haaland, who in late 2021 ordered the names be changed.

“I am grateful to the members of the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force and the Board on Geographic Names for their efforts to prioritize this important work. Together, we are showing why representation matters and charting a path for an inclusive America.”

The list of new names and a location map can be found on the U.S. Geological Survey website.

Interior Department completes removal of “sq___” from federal use

Wisconsin Judge Sides With Chippewa Band in Pipeline Dispute

The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa received both good and bad news this week.

A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled late Wednesday the tribe had the right to revoke permission for an oil and gas pipeline to cross through the Band’s reservation.

He also ruled that the band is entitled to monetary compensation, though he did not elaborate.

But he ruled against shutting down the pipeline altogether, saying the 60-year-old pipeline can continue to flow while operators work to reroute it.

In 2019, the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa sued the Canadian energy firm Enbridge Inc., claiming a 40-mile (64 km.) section of the company’s Line 5 pipeline was “a grave public nuisance” and threatened the tribe’s water supply.

The Bad River Reservation spans 125,000 acres (50,585 hectares) on the south shore of Lake Superior and is home to a network of rivers, streams, and wetlands which in turn are home to 44 species of flora and fauna that are federally and/or state recognized as threatened or endangered.

The decision comes one month after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources received reports of contamination just outside the reservation. Enbridge says they believe the contamination was from a historical leak and was not ongoing.

And it comes just days after Ottawa invoked the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty to prevent U.S. courts from shutting down the Line 5 pipeline, which carries crude oil and natural gas from Alberta to Ontario through the U.S.

Wisconsin judge rules against Enbridge in dispute over Line 5 pipeline

South Dakota Must Take Steps to Give Tribe Voter Access

Parties reached settlement in a lawsuit this week which will require the state of South Dakota to make it easier for Native Americans to participate in elections.

As VOA has previously reported, Native Americans in South Dakota and other states have long complained about barriers to voting.

The National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) requires all public assistance agencies and motor vehicle departments provide voter registration forms, but South Dakota tribes complain these forms aren’t always available, or if they are, registrations are not always processed.

In September 2020, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe filed a federal court complaint against the South Dakota secretary of state for failing to offer voter registration services.

In May 2022, the court denied a motion by the state to dismiss the case, and days later ruled in favor of the tribes, finding that South Dakota had committed numerous violations of the NVRA.

According to a settlement agreement reached Wednesday, the state must now appoint a voting rights coordinator and train and monitor state agencies to ensure they comply with the law. The state will also reimburse the tribes’ legal fees.

Rosebud Tribe, secretary of state settle over voting registration act

Commerce Department to Boost Development at Fort Apache Reservation

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration has awarded a $4.7 million grant to the Fort Apache Heritage Foundation, Inc., to support the expanding small business on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, home to the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

The funds will go toward renovating and converting a residential building into office and commercial space for tribal startup businesses. Local sources will match the grant with more than $406,000.

“Tribal communities were disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Alejandra Y. Castillo. “This project will help the White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation plan for future business development and economic growth, creating opportunities for job creation for Tribal members.”

This project is funded under EDA’s American Rescue Plan Indigenous Communities program, which is allocating $100 million in funding specifically to aid tribal governments and Indigenous communities to recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $4.7 Million in American Rescue Plan Funds to Support Small Businesses on Fort Apache Indian Reservation

South Dakota’s First Ever Indigenous-Run School Opens in Rapid City

This week saw the grand opening of the first Indigenous-led, community-based elementary school in Rapid City, South Dakota. The Oceti Sakowin Community Academy is designed to provide students with an inclusive and diverse education grounded in the language, culture and traditions of the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, the collective name of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people.

A community grand opening included prayer and drum songs welcoming the school’s first class of 35 kindergartners. The school will add one more grade level each year up to the 12th grade level.

“The government tried to beat our language out of us, assimilate and erase us,” said Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of NDN Collective, which founded the school in partnership with NACA Inspired Schools Network (NISN) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “They were unsuccessful. Today, we launch this school – not only as an act of resistance, but an act of power.

School founder Mary Bowman, who is Hunkpapa Lakota from the Standing Rock Reservation, welcomed the children to the classroom Wednesday.

“It was a really great day,” she told VOA. “I think the kids really enjoyed themselves!”

Bowman said the school will operate according to South Dakota Education Department standards.

“It’s just the materials that we’re using that will be different,” she said. “We’re piloting a literacy program from the Native American Community Academy in Albuquerque, and all the books in the curriculum are by Indigenous authors.”

South Dakota legislators have tried to get state funding for charter schools which could address the specific cultural needs of Native American children in the state, but their efforts have so far failed.

“South Dakota is a very Republican state and they’ve been wildly oppositional and resistant to school choice,” said Sarah White, an Oglala Lakota citizen and founder and executive director of the South Dakota Education Equity Coalition. “And the main concern expressed by opposition has been funding and the scarcity of resources. They believe that [public] schools will lose money.”

Opponents also worry that charter schools could promote unorthodox teaching methods.

Rapid City’s first Indigenous-led school opens

Archaeologists: Ancestral Muscogee Among World’s Oldest Democracies

It is commonly held that democracy and democratic institutions are a Western European innovation inherited from ancient Greeks. But a team of archaeologists working in the U.S. state of Georgia say they have evidence that today’s Muskogee tribal council is one of the oldest and most inclusive democratic institutions in the world.

When the Georgia Power Company announced plans to dam the Oconee River in the 1970s, archaeologists scrambled to conduct surveys of the valley which was once the homeland of the Ancestral Muskogee. Researchers catalogued more than 3,000 sites but excavated and removed artifacts from only a few of them, including the remains of a 1,500-year-old plaza once surrounded by earthen mounds and large circular buildings used as council houses.

“Council houses were the hub of political life within communities and often across regions,” explain the study authors, who included historians and cultural preservationists from the Muscogee Nation, now based in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. “And although council houses were, in part, a bridge to ceremonial worlds, they were key forums in which to discuss and debate the collective good and governance.”

“Democracy and democratic institutions in particular are not solely the purview of Western societies,” notes the study, acknowledging that science has only now begun to realize what Native Americans have been saying for years: that Native American tribes practiced inclusive decision making in what is now Canada, the U.S. and Mexico long before Europeans.

Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the US did

Indigenous TikTok User Shares as He Learns

It was only two years ago that 20-year-old Zane Lerma-Switzer discovered who his father was.

“He was never in my life, so I never had a chance to find out who I was, where I came from,” he told VOA.

In 2020, Lerma-Switzer took a DNA test, which identified him as 50% Indigenous; and connected him to a close genetic match who turned out to be a first cousin.

“And she revealed that she and the rest of the family live in a small mountain village called Chicueyaco, in the state of Puebla in Mexico, and it turns out I’m Nahua.”

The Nahua are a people who dominated Southern Mexico and Central America until the Spanish invaded in 1519. Today, they are the largest Indigenous group in Mexico and still speak dialects of Nahuatl, an Aztecan language once spoken across Mexico and Central America (hear the language spoken in the video, below).

His discovery triggered a passion to learn more— not just about his Nahuan ancestors, but Indigenous peoples across the Americas. In 2021, he took to TikTok as @indigenouszane, posting short informative videos on Indigenous histories, languages and cultures which have earned him tens of thousands of followers and millions of “likes.”

“My goal is to reach everyone, no matter whether they are non-Native or if they’re Native,” Lerma-Switzer said. “I do feel there are a lot of Natives that don’t even know their own history due to colonization.”

He said he recently obtained his first passport and is working up to 70 hours a week in a local pharmacy to save enough money to travel to Mexico next year.

“That is my No. 1 goal as of now,” he said. “That’s the only reason I work all these hours—it’s to visit my family and visit the culture I never knew I had.”

Troy man takes off on TikTok making videos on Indigenous American culture

British Network Showcases Film by Ho-Chunk/Pechanga Visual Artist

Britain’s BBC News website this week is streaming a short film by visual artist Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people of Southern California.

In a 16-minute film called “Kicking the Clouds,” Hopinka interviews his mother about their family history after being given a 50-year-old audio recording of his grandmother learning to speak the highly endangered Luiseno language from her mother.

“After being given this tape by my mother, I interviewed her and asked about it, and recorded her ruminations on their lives and her own,” Hopinka states on his website. “The footage is of our chosen home in Whatcom County, Washington, where my family still lives, far from our homelands in Southern California, yet a home nonetheless.”

The BBC is featuring the film as part of its online LongShots film festival, which highlights short documentaries from promising new filmmakers across the globe.

Hopinka’s work has been featured in several important film festivals, including Sundance, the New York Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.

To see Hopinka’s film, click here: LongShots: Kicking the Clouds.
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