Month: August 2022

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

Air Force Base in Washington State to Rename Housing Units

Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State has announced it will change the names of all parts of the base named after George Wright, a 19th-century Army general with a record of unusual cruelty against tribes in the northeast of the state.

“We are renaming Ft Wright Village and Ft Wright Oval in base housing to Lilac Village and Willow Loop,” Fairchild Air Force Base posted on Facebook Monday. “This change is the result of long consideration by Fairchild leadership, in accordance with an Air Force directive to evaluate historically divisive names on installations.”

In the autumn of 1858, then-Colonel Wright launched a two-month campaign against the Spokane, Palouse and Coeur d’Alene tribes to avenge an Army defeat several months earlier.

Donald Cutler, in his book “Hang Them All”: George Wright and the Plateau Indian War, 1858, described Wright’s strategy for dealing with tribes, writing, “Col. Wright, by admitting his intent was to strike fear into the tribes, showed that he understood the power of cruelty.”

Wright captured and slaughtered 900 Indian horses, burned tribes’ crops and food supplies, and staged public hangings that Cutler describes as “theatrically gruesome.”

Fairchild’s announcement generated some criticism on Facebook, coming amid vigorous debate in the U.S. about history, democracy and patriotism in America, which has seen the removal of dozens of Confederate and Christopher Columbus statues and reviews of the way history is being taught in some school districts.

In 2021, the city of Spokane, Washington, renamed a street that formerly carried Wright’s name. The new name is Whistalks Way, after a Spokane woman warrior who played a key role in resisting Wright.

Air Force erasing decorated Union Army veteran from base over ‘brutal acts’ towards Native Americans

Labor Department to Boost Native American Employment, Training Programs

The U.S. Department of Labor has announced the award of $70.8 million in grant funding to 166 Indian and Native American tribes and organizations to help provide employment and training services to low-income and unemployed Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to help them compete in today’s workforce.

Of the funds awarded, $56,351,790 will serve low-income and unemployed American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. The remaining $13,932,627 will serve low-income American Indian, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian youth ages 14-24 living on or near Indian reservations or in Hawaii.

The unemployment rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives has declined since April 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it hit 28.6 percent, nearly double the seasonally adjusted rate of 14.7 percent for the total population.

The lack of employment and/or educational opportunities in or near Indian reservations is one of the biggest challenges to tribal well-being today. In February, for the first time ever, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published data showing that the Native American unemployment rate in December 2021 was 7.9 percent, a rate much higher than the rate of 3.9 percent for the general U.S. population.

US Department of Labor awards $70.8M in grants to expand employment, training services for low-income, unemployed Native Americans

Cherokee Lawmaker is GOP Nominee for US Senate Seat

Conservative U.S. Representative Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, this week won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat currently held by James Inhofe, who is set to retire at the end of the year.

In November midterm elections, Mullin will face off against the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Representative Kendra Horn.

Mullin, a businessman and former mixed martial arts fighter, is widely viewed as the favorite in Oklahoma, where Republicans control the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general and both chambers of the state Legislature.

Markwayne Mullin wins Republican bid for U.S. Senator Inhofe’s seat

Wailaki Astronaut to Head for the Stars

As a former Marine Corps test pilot, Nicole Aunapu Mann, a Wailaki citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California, has flown on many missions, but none can compare to the flight she’s about to undertake next month: commanding a crew of five on a SpaceX flight to the International Space Station.

Once she reaches the ISS, she’ll spend six months conducting science experiments.

“One of the ones that I’m looking most forward to is called the biofabrication facility. And it is literally 3D printing human cells,” she told Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, editor of Indian Country Today.

Scientists have long envisioned using 3D biological printers to print human organs, but they’ve found it nearly impossible to print finer tissue, such as capillaries, in Earth’s gravitational environment. That’s because gravity flattens and deforms 3D-printed tissue. But in space, the lack of gravity allows 3D printed tissues to hold up.

Flying with Mann will be NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

In 2002, John Herrington of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma became the first Native American in space.

September’s space trip may not be Mann’s last: In 2020, she was also selected to be one of a group of eligible astronauts to travel to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

First Native woman in space

Pueblo Potter Takes Top Prize in Santa Fe Indian Market

Over the weekend, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts announced winners of the 100th annual Santa Fe Indian Market in New Mexico, the largest Native North American art market in the world.

San Ildefonso Pueblo potter Russell Sanchez won best in show — and a $30,000 award — for a lidded clay jar described as a contemporary interpretation of traditional Pueblo craftsmanship.

A bear stands atop the lid, an animal the Pueblo people associate with strength and protection. Winding around the center of the jar is the deity Avanyu, a plumed water serpent to whom Sanchez’s ancestors appealed to in times of drought.

Sanchez still fires his clay pieces outdoors in the traditional Pueblo manner, using cedar and dried cow or horse dung as fuel. He then carves, paints and polishes his pieces, which are inlaid with minerals and gemstones.

Navajo silversmith Ernest Benally won best in the jewelry category for a belt made of a dozen turtles, each embedded with turquoise, lapis lazuli and other gemstones.

To see the full list of winners in 10 categories, click on the link below; to see photos of the winning artworks, visit SWAIA’s Facebook page.

Santa Fe Indian Market Announces Centennial Best of Show Winners

Digital Solution Aims to Thwart Counterfeiters of Native Art

In a related story, counterfeit Native American art is a big problem in the U.S. and abroad. Jewelry, paintings and crafts falsely marketed as Native-made make big money for fraudsters but drive down the value of genuine Native art and denies Native artists a livelihood.

In one highly publicized case, federal investigators in 2015 raided 11 jewelry and Indian arts stores in New Mexico and California, seizing 350,000 pieces of Filipino-made jewelry with a retail value of $35,000,000.

This week, the art security registry Imprint announced it would partner with the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts to supply 800 Native American artists with permanently certified Imprint digital titles to their artwork.

Imprint gives artists and galleries permanent digital titles that allow them to officially register and create a digital certificate of authenticity that will be stored on a secure blockchain database — a digital “ledger” of all art transactions.

This means that buyers of Native artwork can be sure that they are getting works by legitimate Native artists, not frauds. Squeezing out the fakes means that genuine Native artworks retain or increase their value.

“When Imprint approached us to launch their blockchain-based art security registry with SWAIA artists, we immediately recognized the opportunity as one that will help combat theft and counterfeit within the Native American art world,” said SWAIA Executive Director Kimberly Peone, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Nespelem, Washington, and an Eastern Band of Cherokee descendant. “We are thrilled to be able to provide cutting-edge solutions to SWAIA artists.”

The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 was intended to protect Native American artists by imposing fines and prison time for counterfeiting. Any individual falsely selling or presenting work as Native American can face civil or criminal penalties up to a $250,000 fine and/or a five-year prison term; any business selling fakes can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000.

Imprint, SWAIA Partner to Combat Counterfeit Native American Art With Launch of New Digital Art Registry

 
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As fall draws near in the U.S, Monarch butterflies in the eastern part of the country are primed for their winter sojourn to Mexico. Conservationists worry that the Monarchs are in peril from climate change and farming, but the science isn’t settled. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the complexities of counting and protecting Monarch butterflies.
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Cuba has asked the United States for technical help in restoring a major oil storage plant after a massive fire at the facility, killing 16 people.

Cuba’s foreign ministry said Friday that experts from Cuba and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency met online Wednesday to talk about exploring “possible ways of cooperation to rehabilitate the worst-affected areas” of the plant in Cuba’s western port of Matanzas.

The foreign ministry described the meeting as a “professional and fruitful exchange” and said the Cuban delegation asked about “the most innovative techniques and procedures” used by the EPA as well as oil companies to clean up such disasters.

A lightning strike earlier this month started the fire at the oil storage facility in Matanzas, about 100 kilometers from Havana.

The strike ignited an oil storage tank and the fire soon spread to three more tanks. It took firefighters a week to extinguish the blaze, which caused four of the eight tanks at the facility to collapse.

Sixteen firefighters were killed trying to stop the blaze and more than 130 people were injured by the fire.

Cuba’s government has described the fire as the worst blaze in the country’s history.

The governments of Mexico and Venezuela sent teams to help local firefighters put out the blaze. The United States offered technical advice by phone.

Cuba’s port of Matanzas receives crude oil and fuel imports, much of which are used to generate electricity on the island.

Damage to the facility has greatly affected the country’s ability to store crude.

The fire came as Cuba was already facing shortages of electricity and fuel that led authorities to impose energy blackouts. The power outages and economic troubles helped spark anti-government protests last year.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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As parts of rural Nevada plan to count ballots by hand amid misinformation about voting machines, the Nevada secretary of state’s office on Friday approved regulations for counties to hand count votes starting as soon as this fall’s midterm elections.

But the revised regulations will no longer apply to the one county that has been at the forefront of the drive to count by hand.

That’s because Nye County, in the desert between Las Vegas and Reno, will also use a parallel tabulation process alongside its hand count, using the same machines that are typically used to count mail-in ballots. All ballots in Nye County will resemble mail-in ballots, interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf said in an interview earlier this month.

Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust of voting machines. Nevada’s least populous county, Esmeralda, used hand counting to certify June’s primary results, when officials spent more than seven hours counting 317 ballots cast.

The longtime Nye County clerk resigned in July after election conspiracies led to a successful push to hand count votes.

Kampf, her replacement, has falsely claimed that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. He has vowed to add hand counting to the rural county of about 50,000, alongside the parallel tabulation process using machines.

Rule changes

The Nevada secretary of state’s office changed the hand counting regulations after Kampf and others criticized them during an August 12 feedback session. The state officials changed the definition of “hand count” to apply only when it is the only method of counting ballots.

The rules require bipartisan teams of at least four people to count the votes, mandate spacing between tables and require room for observers, among many other provisions. State officials originally said the teams could count batches of 20 votes at a time but increased the number to 50. Kampf had criticized the lower number of votes per batch, saying it would be more efficient for the teams to count 50-vote batches.

“I think this represents a good partnership with the secretary of state’s office in refining these procedures,” Kampf said Friday.

The regulations take effect October 1 and will last until November 2023, though officials hope to adopt them permanently.

Four voting groups — Brennan Center, All Voting Is Local, American Civil Liberties Union Nevada and Silver State Voices — had previously urged the secretary of state’s office to drop the regulations and instead ban hand counting, saying that hand counting leads to more mistakes than machine voting and takes longer.

Several showed up on Friday to again speak against the changes.

‘A slippery slope’

Voting rights attorney Sadmira Ramic of ACLU’s Nevada chapter called adopting the regulations “a slippery slope that will have dire consequences for the state,” creating more room for election errors and tampering.

“The secretary of state’s office, by passing these regulations, is condoning the use of hand counting while ignoring the urgency of the issues that such procedures will produce,” she said.

She also criticized a lack of enforcement or consequences for counties that don’t follow the rules.

Deputy Secretary for Elections Mark Wlaschin acknowledged in an interview earlier this month that there is no enforcement mechanism outlined in the regulations.

He said his office has considered “a number of contingencies” for noncompliance. Part of ensuring compliance falls on the secretary of state’s office, he said, and part of that role falls on county clerks.

Hand counting supporters have described the old-fashioned method as a way to address distrust in elections, especially unproven claims that voting machines are prone to hacking and are untrustworthy. Experts have said hand counting is far more time consuming and exposes the process to more errors.

Wlaschin has said the new rules will help counties that decide to switch to hand-counting systems, preventing clerks from drawing up rules from scratch. The regulations will also create a uniform structure so the state can ensure the counting is valid in the counties that decide to only use hand counting, of which there are currently none.

But questions remain about the implementation of the regulations and how they will unfold in counties that vary in population, size and differing political leanings.

Humboldt County Clerk Tami Rae Spero said in an interview it would be difficult to follow the guidelines that require finding bipartisan vote counters and the physical space that will be needed for observation of the hand counts.

At a hearing earlier this month, Wlaschin asked Kampf if Nye County planned to eventually phase out the parallel tabulation process, leading to an all-hand count.

Kampf responded: “I hope we can prove to you and to those who are doubting and have significant doubts that it can work, that you’d make that decision at that point in time.”

Some Nevada state lawmakers will discuss next week whether to rein in efforts by rural counties to count votes by hand.

Up for discussion

At an interim legislation session Monday for the committee on legislative operations and elections, lawmakers are scheduled to deliberate whether to draft a bill requiring counties that discontinue using voting machines to return state funds given to them for the machines.

The bill would not be voted on until at least February, when Nevada’s next legislative session begins.

The hearing for the hand-counting regulations on Friday came as several Nevada Republicans in key races have repeatedly questioned the results of the 2020 election without evidence.

Senate candidate Adam Laxalt led former President Donald Trump’s campaign in Nevada and filed paperwork in an attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 result.

Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant has made election distrust central to his platform and has repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election.

In February, he told voters that “your vote hasn’t counted in decades.”

He also worked with Kampf to design the hand-counting plan in Nye County and hopes to spread it across the country.
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The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that very few people in the United States have received a full series of monkeypox vaccinations.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the large majority of Americans who received a first dose of the vaccine have yet to get their second dose, despite being eligible.

She told a White House briefing Friday that nearly 97% of the inoculations administered so far have been first doses.

Walensky said that while the vaccine was initially hard to get, supplies have now increased.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed for the vaccine to be injected in smaller doses to help stretch supplies.

The Biden administration says it has shipped enough vaccines to jurisdictions around the United States for at least 1.6 million doses.

CDC data show that about 10% of monkeypox vaccine doses have been given to Black people despite the fact that they account for one-third of U.S. cases.

The rate was compiled from 17 U.S. states and two cities.

Walensky said the CDC has taken measures to make the vaccine more accessible to Blacks and other minorities. She said vaccines and educational materials will be available at two upcoming events — Atlanta’s Black Pride festival and New Orleans’ Southern Decadence.

Walensky said the agency is starting to roll out such pilot projects and that “they are working.”

Most cases of monkeypox in the United States have occurred in gay men, but health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.

More than 16,000 people have been infected with the virus in the United States, more than in any other country.

Walensky noted that the spread of the virus is falling in several major U.S. cities.

“We’re watching this with cautious optimism, and really hopeful that many of our harm-reduction messages and our vaccines are getting out there and working,” she said.

Across the United States, cases of monkeypox are still increasing. However, officials say the pace of the outbreak appears to be slowing.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization said global cases of monkeypox dropped 21% in the past week.

The WHO said cases appeared to be slowing in Europe but warned that infections in the Americas were on “a continuing steep rise.”

“In Latin America in particular, insufficient awareness or public health measures are combining with a lack of access to vaccines to fan the flames of the outbreak,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press briefing.

Monkeypox has been endemic in parts of Africa for decades, but since May, cases have been reported around the world.

The virus is typically spread by skin-to-skin contact with an infected person’s lesions. It can also be spread through contact with an infected person’s clothing or sheets.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The Pentagon will set up a new center in the next year to help avoid civilian casualties in military operations around the world through better education and training, and increased screening before strikes are launched.

The plan ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and released Thursday comes on the heels of widespread criticism over a U.S. airstrike in Kabul last August that killed 10 civilians, including children, during the final chaotic days of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A senior defense official said the development of a new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and other improvements will cost “tens of millions of dollars” per year, and the plan more broadly would involve the addition of about 150 staff. The center would initially start operations in the 2023 budget year that begins October 1 and would be fully staffed and working by 2025. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under department rules to provide details of the plan.

Laid out in a 36-page action plan, the changes approved by Austin call for updated policies and guidelines for military operations, and steps that must be taken in order to better analyze threats, assess who is on the ground and determine what other civilian structures could be affected.

A key criticism of the Afghanistan drone strike was that those making the final decision were too quick to conclude that the white Toyota Corolla under watch aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong vehicle. The new Pentagon plan is aimed at preventing such “confirmation bias” and more consistently involving teams to specifically challenge assumptions to make sure a strike is appropriate.

The plan would put new personnel in each of the combatant commands that are in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, South America and U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, as well as in all the military services, other senior commands and vital places such as Special Operations Command, Cyber Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

There has been persistent criticism, particularly from human rights organizations, that U.S. military strikes in Syria, Iraq and other battlefields have killed civilians but that officials have failed or been slow to acknowledge those deaths. In some cases, the U.S. military’s inability to get to a strike location in its immediate aftermath has led to conclusions that allegations of civilian deaths could not be confirmed.

An independent review done late last year found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the Kabul attack or possibly prevented it.

Under Austin’s plan, there will be ongoing education and training and more specific policies about getting positive identification for targeting. Civilian casualty assessments will become a consistent element in military exercises so troops can practice how best to avoid killing the innocent.

The new system will improve data collection and investigations so that the Pentagon can more precisely report civilian deaths. It will set up a new framework for how the Defense Department responds to deaths, including acknowledging them and providing condolences and other aid in the aftermath.

More broadly, the plan accounts for better assessment in counterterrorism strikes as well as the prospects of civilian casualties in a large-scale war, such as one with China or Russia.

A review by RAND Corp. of the August 2021 airstrike in Afghanistan concluded that military’s focus on civilian casualties has for years largely involved operations in places such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. RAND said the Pentagon is not prepared to deal with the issue in that larger type of war, which likely would involve combat in urban areas where it would be more difficult to distinguish between civilian and military targets.

The August 29 drone strike in Afghanistan killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organization and was not a militant, as first claimed by military officials.

The Pentagon initially said the attack was valid, despite 10 civilian deaths, but later acknowledged it was a “tragic mistake.” The independent Pentagon review concluded there was no misconduct or negligence.

RAND’s review concluded that the U.S. military follows a flawed and inadequate process for assessing and investigating suspected civilian damage and casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes. It said internal reporting on civilian casualties can be unreliable and incomplete, and it recommended the military take a broader view of damage to include structural damage that hurts basic community functions.
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The U.S. announced late Thursday it is suspending 26 China-bound flights from the United States by four Chinese carriers after the Chinese government suspended some U.S. flights because of COVID-19 restrictions.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said the suspensions from September 5 to 28 will affect seven flights from New York to China and 19 China-bound flights from Los Angeles. The airlines include Xiamen, Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.

The DOT said the action is in response to China’s recent cancellation of 26 American, Delta and United Airlines flights under newly-revised COVID-19 regulations.

In its statement, the department said, as of August 7, China revised its COVID-19 policies, requiring airlines to suspend a flight if the number of passengers testing positive for COVID-19 reaches 4% of total passengers onboard. Previously, if up to nine passengers on a flight tested positive, a carrier could suspend a flight for two weeks or reduce the number of passengers to 40% of its capacity.

The U.S. DOT statement says China’s rules place “undue culpability” on airlines for passengers who present negative test results before boarding but test positive after arriving in China.

A spokesperson with the Chinese Embassy in Washington told the Reuters news agency the U.S. DOT action was “extremely irresponsible” and “groundlessly suspended Chinese airline flights.” The spokesperson said China’s COVID-19 “circuit breaker” measures were fair and transparent, applied both to Chinese and foreign airlines and were consistent with bilateral air transportation agreements.

Reuters reports China and U.S. regulators have been at odds regarding air services since the start of the pandemic. In January, the U.S. suspended 44 China-bound flights from the United States by the four Chinese carriers in response to China’s decision to suspend 44 flights on U.S. carriers.

The news agency says in August 2021, the U.S. DOT limited four flights from Chinese carriers to 40% passenger capacity for four weeks after Beijing imposed identical limits on four United Airlines flights.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia is seeking to compel testimony from more allies of the former president, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Sidney Powell.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed petitions Thursday seeking to have Meadows and Powell, as well as James “Phil” Waldron, who met with Meadows, and former Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta next month.

Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and Powell, a dogged advocate of the president’s false claims of widespread election fraud, are among the highest-profile members of Trump’s circle to be summoned to testify in the probe, joining other top figures including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. It further raises the legal stakes for the former president as he weighs a 2024 presidential bid.

Because they don’t live in Georgia, Willis has to use a process that involves getting judges in the states where they live to order them to appear. The petitions she filed Thursday are essentially precursors to subpoenas. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, signed off on the petitions, certifying that each person whose testimony is sought is a “necessary and material” witness for the investigation.

Willis wrote that each of them has unique knowledge about their communications with Trump, his campaign and others “involved in the multi-state, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.”

George Terwilliger, a lawyer for Meadows, declined to comment Thursday. Epshteyn didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Powell and Waldron could not immediately be reached.

Willis last month filed similar petitions for seven other Trump associates and attorneys, including Giuliani and Graham. Giuliani, who’s been told he’s a target of the investigation, testified before the special grand jury last week. Graham is fighting his subpoena in court.

Also on Thursday, lawyers for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appeared in court to argue that he shouldn’t have to testify before the special grand jury. And Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who was part of the earlier batch of Trump associates whom Willis sought to compel to testify, filed a motion to quash his subpoena.

In the petition seeking Meadows’ testimony, Willis wrote that Meadows attended a December 21, 2020, meeting at the White House with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of electoral college votes from Georgia and other states.” The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe the audit but wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t open to the public, the petition says.

Between January 30, 2020, and January 1, 2021, Meadows sent emails to Justice Department officials making allegations of voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. He was also on a January 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested the state’s top elections official could “find” enough votes to overturn his narrow election loss in the state.

In the petition seeking Powell’s testimony, Willis wrote that Powell is “known to be affiliated with both former President Donald Trump and the Trump Campaign.” The petition says attorney Lin Wood said in a television interview that Powell was part of a group who met at his home in South Carolina “for the purpose of exploring options to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.” Wood, who’s licensed in Georgia, said Powell asked him to help find Georgia residents to serve as plaintiffs in lawsuits contesting the state’s election results, Willis wrote.

In June of this year, the U.S. House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol released a deposition of Powell in which she said that in the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump asked her to be “special counsel to address the election issues and to collect evidence,” saying he was frustrated with law enforcement agencies, Willis wrote.

Last week, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it is helping the Georgia secretary of state’s office probe an alleged breach of elections data in Coffee County in south Georgia, Willis wrote. She noted that publicly reported emails indicate that Powell coordinated with a data solutions company to get elections data from Coffee County in early January 2021 and was involved in similar efforts in Michigan and Nevada.

Special grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with large numbers of witnesses and potential logistical concerns. They can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning, but they do not have the power to indict. When its investigation is complete, the special grand jury issues a final report and can recommend action. It’s then up to the district attorney to decide whether to ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.

During the hearing Thursday on Kemp’s attempt to avoid testifying, his lawyers argued that he is protected from having to testify by the principle of sovereign immunity, which says the state can’t be sued without its consent. Prosecutors argued that’s not applicable because Kemp is not being sued but instead is being called as a witness to provide facts for an investigation.

Kemp attorney Brian McEvoy argued that, if the governor does have to testify, it shouldn’t happen until after the general election. Kemp faces a rematch with Democrat Stacey Abrams in November in one of the most high-profile and closely watched gubernatorial contests in the country.
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African Americans have been involved in filmmaking since the early days of the movie industry. A new exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures explores that vibrant history, much of it forgotten. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles.
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The general public might not know a lot about grand juries, but the closed-door panels figure prominently in the legal aftermath of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

A grand jury subpoenaed the National Archives for all materials the agency gave to the House Select Committee looking into the events leading up to January 6. Justice Department prosecutors are working with a grand jury that is reportedly looking into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to reverse the election outcome. A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, subpoenaed members of Trump’s legal team during its probe into possible illegal interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections.

Mystery often surrounds grand juries because their work is, by law, conducted in secrecy.

“Washington, D.C., has been investigating the individuals who were responsible for the [January 6] break-in, but how much farther that goes and the extent to which they’re investigating Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s confidants, we only know of that, if at all, because either people told the press or they brought litigation resisting subpoenas,” says Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor who is currently a professor at the Fordham University School of Law. “And even then, if one wanted to, you could file the litigation as a John Doe [unnamed person] if you want to preserve confidentiality.”

‘indict a ham sandwich’

Grand juries play a central role in the American justice system. They are tasked with listening to evidence presented by prosecutors and witnesses and then deciding, by a secret vote, whether there’s enough evidence to charge a person with a felony, which is any criminal offense punishable by at least one year in prison.

Grand juries are required in federal felony prosecutions, and many U.S. states have adopted a similar system. However, in some states, prosecutors can also present their evidence to a judge, who then decides whether someone can be charged with a crime.

Federal grand juries are made up of 16 to 23 members. At least 12 jurors must agree before an indictment — a formal charge — can be brought. Grand jurors are selected from the same pool of ordinary citizens who serve as trial jurors. They are identified from public records such as driver’s licenses and voting registries. Grand jurors serve from 18 to 36 months, usually meeting a few times a month, and have the power to question witnesses and issue subpoenas.

“The grand jury system is important in terms of deciding who’s going to face criminal charges, but it’s also important for involving citizens in the criminal justice system,” says Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “The origins of the grand jury system are based on, in a sense, a certain degree of trying to keep the government honest.”

Grand juries were originally conceived as a safeguard against government power, which is why the Founding Fathers wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. But former federal prosecutor Green isn’t convinced the so-called “people’s panel” fulfills that function in a meaningful way.

“If the original idea of the Founding Fathers was, as I believe it was, to be a restraint on government power … it’s probably not a very effective tool to protect people from prosecution overreaching,” Green says. “And there’s a pretty significant risk that, if the prosecutor gets it in their head that somebody’s guilty, they can achieve an indictment whether the person is guilty or not.”

Grand juries rarely decline to indict. In 2010, government statistics showed that federal grand juries brought charges more than 99% of the time. In 1985, a New York judge famously said that prosecutors have so much influence over grand juries that they could convince jurors to “indict a ham sandwich.”

High stakes

While the grand jury might be a rubber stamp in most cases, the panel is more likely to play a more meaningful role in cases that draw widespread public attention, Joy says.

“I think it’s very likely that prosecutors in presenting the evidence to the grand jury most likely tried to present more evidence than they might in a typical type of case and presented in a way that would be balanced,” he says.

Some states require prosecutors to show evidence that the accused might be innocent. However, federal prosecutors are not required to do so.

“The higher the profile the accused has, the greater the likelihood is that the prosecutor really wants to feel that he or she has a solid case, and they’re going to want to test out the evidence in a way that would give them increasing confidence in the case that they have,” Joy says.

“Because the stakes are high, a smart prosecutor — if there is some contrary evidence that might put into question guilt or innocence — they’re likely to use the grand jury as a vetting process for that.”

Green expects several grand juries to consider potential charges against people accused of breaking into the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. The high volume of cases could be too much for one grand jury to consider. However, that might not hold true in related cases higher up the food chain.

“If you’re looking at a number of people in the Trump orbit who may have been working together before January 6 to plan the break-in, then all the evidence is going to be related, and they’re all going to be in a relationship, and you’re going to want to have one grand jury look at everything because you want them to see all the evidence,” Green says.
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U.S. President Joe Biden called on Democrats Thursday “to vote to literally save democracy once again” — and compared Republican ideology to “semi-fascism” — as he led a kickoff rally and a fundraiser in the state of Maryland 75 days out from the midterm elections.

Addressing an overflow crowd of thousands at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Biden said: “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of your kids from gun violence is on the ballot, and it’s not hyperbole, the very survival of our planet is on the ballot.”

“You have to choose,” Biden added. “Will we be a country that moves forward or a country that moves backward?”

The events, in the safely Democratic Washington suburbs, were meant to ease Biden into what White House aides say will be an aggressive season of championing his policy victories and aiding his party’s candidates. He is aiming to turn months of accomplishments into political energy as Democrats have seen their hopes rebound amid the legacy-defining burst of action by Biden and Congress.

From bipartisan action on gun control, infrastructure and domestic technology manufacturing to Democrats-only efforts to tackle climate change and health care costs, Biden highlighted the achievements of the party’s unified but razor-thin control of Washington. And he tried to sharpen the contrast with Republicans, who once seemed poised for sizable victories in November.

Just months ago, as inflation soared, Biden’s poll numbers soured and his agenda stalled, Democrats braced for significant losses. But the intense voter reaction to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a productive summer on issues of core concern to Democrats have the party feeling like it is finally on the offensive heading into the Nov. 8 vote, even as the president remains unpopular.

Ahead of the rally, Biden raised about $1 million at an event with about 100 donors for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund in the backyard of a lavish Bethesda home.

After his speech at the rally, Biden lingered with the largely mask-free crowd for nearly 30 minutes, diving back into the style of campaigning that had been disrupted for Democrats for more than two years by the COVID-19 pandemic. The president, who was identified as a close contact of first lady Jill Biden on Wednesday when she was diagnosed with a “rebound” case of the virus, did not appear to wear a face covering as he posed for selfies and hugged supporters.

Biden’s Thursday events come a day after the president moved to fulfill a long-delayed campaign pledge to forgive federal student loans for lower- and middle-income borrowers — a move that Democrats believe will animate younger and Black and Latino voters.

Republicans, though, saw their own political advantage in the move, casting it as an unfair giveaway to would-be Democratic voters.

“President Biden’s inflation is crushing working families, and his answer is to give away even more government money to elites with higher salaries,” said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. “Democrats are literally using working Americans’ money to try to buy themselves some enthusiasm from their political base.”

Biden on Thursday expanded on his effort to paint Republicans as the “ultra-MAGA” party — a reference to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — opposing his agenda and embracing conservative ideological proposals as well as Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden told donors at the fundraiser. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

“I respect conservative Republicans,” Biden said later. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”

The Republican National Committee called Biden’s comments “despicable.”

“Biden forced Americans out of their jobs, transferred money from working families to Harvard lawyers, and sent our country into a recession while families can’t afford gas and groceries,” said spokesperson Nathan Brand. “Democrats don’t care about suffering Americans — they never did.”

Since the June Supreme Court ruling removing women’s constitutional protections for abortion, Democrats have seen a boost in donations, polling and performance in special elections for open congressional seats. The latest came Tuesday in a Hudson Valley swing district that, in a Republican wave year, should have been an easy GOP win.

Instead, Democrat Pat Ryan, who campaigned on a platform of standing up for abortion rights, defeated Republican Marc Molinaro.

“MAGA Republicans don’t have a clue about the power of women,” Biden said, noting the resonance of the abortion issue with women voters as some in the GOP push a national ban on the procedure. “Let me tell you something: They are about to find out.”

The shift is giving Democrats a new sense that a Republican sweep of the House is no longer such a sure bet, particularly battle-tested incumbents polling better than Biden work their districts.

Meanwhile, Democrats have benefited from Republican candidates who won primaries but are struggling in the general campaign. Trump-backed Senate candidates have complicated the GOP’s chances in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, while several Trump-aligned candidates in House races were not always the party’s first choice.

Trump’s grip on the GOP remains strong and has perhaps even become tighter in the aftermath of the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home.

JB Poersch, the president of Senate Majority Project, an outside group that is working to elect Democrats to the Senate, said the Republican candidates are “getting caught up in the Trump tornado once again — that is exactly what voters of both parties don’t want.”

Biden’s political event, sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, comes as the president and members of his Cabinet are set to embark on what the White House has billed as the “Building a Better America Tour” to promote “the benefits of the President’s accomplishments and the Inflation Reduction Act to the American people and highlight the contrast with Congressional Republicans’ vision.”

Meanwhile, the White House has benefited from a steady decline in gasoline prices, which, while still elevated, have dropped daily since mid-June.

“Our critics say inflation,” Biden said, dismissing GOP attacks that his policies resulted in inflation being at a 40-year high. “You mean the global inflation caused by the worldwide pandemic and Putin’s war in Ukraine?”

In Maryland, Biden was joined by gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore and a host of other officials on the ballot. Moore, introducing Biden, said his Trump-backed rival “Dan Cox is not an opponent. He’s a threat.”

Months ago, Democratic lawmakers facing tough reelection fights sought to make themselves scarce when Biden came to town, though White House aides said Biden could still be an asset by elevating issues that resonate with voters and sharpening the distinction with Republicans.

Now, allies see the fortunes beginning to change and the president as more of a direct asset to campaigns.

“Joe Biden is not the ballot technically,” said House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer. “But Joe Biden is on the ballot, and Joe Biden needs your support.”
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California set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world’s most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles.

The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market, which gets 10% of its sales from the nation’s most populous state.

But such a radical transformation in what people drive will also require at least 15 times more vehicle chargers statewide, a more robust energy grid and vehicles that people of all income levels can afford.

“It’s going to be very hard getting to 100%,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California-Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation — people actually have to buy them and use them.”

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom told state regulators two years ago to adopt a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035, one piece of California’s aggressive suite of policies designed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. If the policy works as designed, California would cut emissions from vehicles in half by 2040.

More to come

Other states are expected to follow, further accelerating the production of zero-emissions vehicles.

Washington state and Massachusetts already have said they will follow California’s lead and many more are likely to — New York and Pennsylvania are among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. The European Parliament in June backed a plan to effectively prohibit the sale of gas and diesel cars in the 27-nation European Union by 2035, and Canada has mandated the sale of zero-emission cars by the same year.

California’s policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas — after 2035 people can keep their existing cars or buy used ones, and 20% of sales can be plug-in hybrids that run on batteries and gas. Though hydrogen is a fuel option under the new regulations, cars that run on fuel cells have made up less than 1% of car sales in recent years.

The switch from gas will drastically reduce emissions and air pollutants. Transportation is the single largest source of emissions in the state, accounting for about 40% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The air board is working on different regulations for motorcycles and larger trucks.

California envisions powering most of the economy with electricity, not fossil fuels, by 2045. A plan released by the air board earlier this year predicts electricity demand will shoot up by 68%. Today, the state has about 80,000 public chargers. The California Energy Commission predicted that needs to jump to 1.2 million by 2030.

The commission says car charging will account for about 4% of energy by 2030 when use is highest, typically during hot summer evenings. That’s when California sometimes struggles to provide enough energy because the amount of solar power diminishes as the sun goes down. In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of people briefly lost power because of high demand that outstripped supply.

That hasn’t happened since, and to ensure it doesn’t going forward, Newsom, a Democrat, is pushing to keep open the state’s last-remaining nuclear plant beyond its planned closure in 2025. Also, the state may turn to diesel generators or natural gas plants as a backup when the electrical grid is strained.

More than 1 million people drive electric cars in California today. Their charging habits vary, but most people charge their cars in the evening or overnight, said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who has studied car charging habits and energy grid needs.

If people’s charging habits stay the same, once 30% to 40% of cars are electric, the state would need to add more energy capacity overnight to meet demand, he said. The regulations adopted Thursday require 35% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2026, up from 16% now.

But if more people charged their cars during the day, that problem would be avoided, he said. Changing to daytime charging is “the biggest bang for the buck you’re going to get,” he said.

Both the state and federal government are spending billions to build more chargers along public roadways, at apartment complexes and elsewhere to give people more charging options.

The oil industry believes California is going too far. It’s the seventh-largest oil-producing state and shouldn’t wrap its entire transportation strategy around a vehicle market powered by electricity, said Tanya DeRivi, vice president for climate policy with the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group.

“Californians should be able to choose a vehicle technology, including electric vehicles, that best fits their needs based on availability, affordability and personal necessity,” she said.

Some difficulties seen

Many car companies, like Kia, Ford and General Motors, are already on the path to making more electric cars available for sale, but some have warned that factors outside their control like supply chain and materials issues make Californians’ goals challenging.

“Automakers could have significant difficulties meeting this target, given elements outside of the control of the industry,” Kia Corp.’s Laurie Holmes told the air board before its vote.

As the requirements ramp up over time, automakers could be fined up to $20,000 per vehicle sold that falls short of the goal, though they’ll have time to comply if they miss the target in a given year.

The new rules approved by the air board say that the vehicles need to be able to travel 150 miles (241 kilometers) on one charge. Federal and state rebates are also available to people who buy electric cars, and the new rules have incentives for car companies to sell electric cars at a discount to low-income buyers.

But some representatives of business groups and rural areas said they fear electric cars will be too expensive or inconvenient.

“These regulations are a big step backwards for working families and small businesses,” said Gema Gonzalez Macias of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.

Air board members said they are committed to keeping a close eye on equity provisions in the rules to make sure all California residents have access.

“We will not set Californians up to fail, we will not set up the other states who want to follow this regulation to fail,” said Tania Pacheco-Warner, a member of the board and co-director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at California State University-Fresno.
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The first crewed flight of Boeing’s space capsule Starliner is scheduled for February 2023, the company and NASA announced Thursday, as the United States seeks to secure a second way for its astronauts to reach the International Space Station.

Since 2020, American astronauts have traveled to the ISS aboard SpaceX’s vessels, but the U.S. space agency wants to widen its options.

After a series of hiccups in its space program that led to serious delays, including a 2019 flight that did not reach the ISS, Boeing finally managed to send the gumdrop-shaped capsule to the station in May — without a crew.

This time, the aerospace giant will send up the Starliner with humans aboard to earn NASA’s green light to begin regular missions at an expected pace of one per year.

“Currently, we’re targeting a launch date as early as February of 2023,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters.

“We’re in good shape to execute these plans to be ready for that flight in February,” added Mark Nappi, Starliner program manager at Boeing.

The test flight — aptly named CFT, or Crew Flight Test — will carry U.S. astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams.

They are expected to be docked for eight days at the ISS, where they will conduct a series of experiments, said ISS program manager Joel Montalbano.

“Our agency goal is to get two U.S. commercial providers up and running as soon as we can.”

Boeing had hoped to conduct this test flight before the end of the year, but a few glitches experienced in the uncrewed May flight led to necessary adjustments to the vessel.

An issue was detected in the propulsion system: two thrusters responsible for placing Starliner in a stable orbit failed, though officials insisted there was plenty of redundancy built into the system to overcome the problem.

Boeing’s teams later determined that “debris-related conditions” were to blame, Nappi said, adding that the origin of said debris was still unknown.

Some filters were removed to fix a pressure problem, and flight software was updated to avoid a data overload.

Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts in 2014, shortly after the end of the space shuttle program, during a time when the United States was left reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets for rides to the ISS.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX filled the void first, providing space “taxi” service since a successful test mission for its Dragon capsule in 2020.
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