Democrats pressure Donald Trump to keep national monuments
Western Democrats are pressuring President Donald Trump not to rescind land protections put in place by President Barack Obama, including Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. Obama infuriated Utah Republicans when he created the monument in late December on 1.3 million acres of land that is sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings. Republicans have asked Trump to take the unusual step of reversing the designation, saying it will add another layer of unnecessary federal control and close the area to new energy development. In a letter this week, nine Western Democratic senators wrote Trump to say that weakening protections for Bears Ears or any other national monument would be a direct affront to local communities and stakeholders. “This is especially true in the case of Bears Ears National Monument, for the Native American tribes who call this living cultural landscape their ancestral home,” the senators wrote. The White House has said it is reviewing the decisions by the Obama administration to determine economic impacts, whether the law was followed and whether there was appropriate consultation with local officials. In an ongoing back-and-forth with Republicans over the monument, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee released documents Thursday to try to bolster their argument that there was adequate consultation. The documents from Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the senior Democrat on the panel, detail repeated phone calls and visits between the Obama administration and Utah’s congressional delegation and governor. The emails show that Utah officials hoped to work with the federal government on the issue before Obama designated the monument in the final days of his administration on Dec. 28. In an email on Dec. 21, as state officials grew increasingly concerned that the designation was coming, a member of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert‘s staff wrote an Interior Department official and thanked her for her time. “I’m not kidding when I say you’re an amazing example of a public servant,” wrote Herbert’s director of federal affairs, whose name was blacked out in the emails. Democrats said the back-and-forth showed collaboration. “If anyone wants to paint Bears Ears National Monument as a surprise or the product of rushed or incomplete planning, they’ll have to explain hundreds of emails and dozens of pages of shared work product,” Grijalva said. A spokeswoman for House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, fired back. The spokeswoman, Molly Block, said that releasing the documents was a “desperate attempt to create a façade of local support.” When the designation was announced, Republicans in the state said it was an egregious abuse of executive power. It was opposed by the governor and the entire congressional delegation, in addition to many local residents. Herbert said then that the designation “violated assurances made by (Obama’s) interior secretary to take into account local concerns before making a monument designation.” In his January confirmation hearing, incoming Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told senators that the president would probably be challenged in court if he tried to nullify a monument, and he would prefer to work with the state. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Donald Trump embraces legacy of Andrew Jackson
It was an ugly, highly personal presidential election. An unvarnished celebrity outsider who pledged to represent the forgotten laborer took on an intellectual member of the Washington establishment looking to extend a political dynasty in the White House. Andrew Jackson‘s triumph in 1828 over President John Quincy Adams bears striking similarities to Donald Trump‘s victory over Hillary Clinton last year, and some of those most eager to point that out are in the Trump White House. Trump’s team has seized upon the parallels between the current president and the long-dead Tennessee war hero. Trump has hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office and Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who has pushed the comparison, told reporters after Trump’s inaugural address that “I don’t think we’ve had a speech like that since Andrew Jackson came to the White House.” Trump himself mused during his first days in Washington that “there hasn’t been anything like this since Andrew Jackson.” It’s a remarkable moment of rehabilitation for a figure whose populist credentials and anti-establishment streak has been tempered by harsher elements of his legacy, chiefly his forced removal of Native Americans that caused disease and the death of thousands. “Both were elected presidents as a national celebrity; Jackson due to prowess on battlefield and Trump from making billions in his business empire,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. “And it’s a conscious move for Trump to embrace Jackson. In American political lore, Jackson represents the forgotten rural America while Trump won by bringing out that rural vote and the blue collar vote.” The seventh president, known as “Old Hickory” for his toughness on the battlefield, gained fame when he led American forces to a victory in the Battle of New Orleans in the final throes of the War of 1812. He did serve a term representing Tennessee in the Senate, but he has long been imagined as a rough and tumble American folk hero, an anti-intellectual who believed in settling scores against political opponents and even killed a man in a duel for insulting the honor of Jackson’s wife. Jackson also raged against what he deemed “a corrupt bargain” that prevented him from winning the 1824 election against Adams when the race was thrown to the House of Representatives after no candidate received a majority in the Electoral College. Even before the vote in November, Trump railed against a “rigged” election and has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, widespread voter fraud prevented his own popular vote triumph. Jackson’s ascension came at a time when the right to vote was expanded to all white men — and not just property-owners — and he fashioned himself into a populist, bringing new groups of voters into the electoral system. Remarkably, the popular vote tripled between Jackson’s loss in 1824 and his victory four years later, and he used the nation’s growing newspaper industry — like Trump on social media — to spread his message. Many of those new voters descended on Washington for Jackson’s 1829 inauguration and the crowd of thousands that mobbed the Capitol and the White House forced Jackson to spend his first night as president in a hotel. Once in office, he continued his crusade as a champion for the common man by opposing the Second Bank of the United States, which he declared to be a symptom of a political system that favored the rich and ignored “the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves.” Jackson, as Trump hopes to do, expanded the powers of the presidency, and a new political party, the new Democratic party, coalesced around him in the 1820s. He was the first non-Virginia wealthy farmer or member of the Adams dynasty in Massachusetts to be elected president. “The American public wanted a different kind of president. And there’s no question Donald Trump is a different kind of president,” Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this past week. “He’s now comparing himself to Andrew Jackson. I think it’s a pretty good, a pretty good comparison. That’s how big a change Jackson was from the Virginia and Massachusetts gentlemen who had been president of the United States for the first 40 years.” But there are also limits to the comparison, historians say. Unlike Jackson, who won in 1828 in a landslide, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. Jon Meacham, who wrote a 2008 biography of Jackson, “American Lion,” said Jackson was “an outsider in style but not in substance” and his outlandish public pronouncements would often be followed by hours of deep conversations and letter-writing hashing out political calculations. “He was a wild man during the day but a careful diplomat at night,” said Meacham, who said it was too early to know whether Trump, like Jackson, “had a strategy behind his theatrics,” and whether Trump had the ability to harness the wave of populism that has swept the globe as it did in the 1820s. “The moment is Jacksoninan but do we have a Jackson in the Oval Office?” Meacham asked. Trump’s appropriation of Jackson came after his victory. Trump never mentioned Jackson during the campaign or discussed Jackson during a series of conversations with Meacham last spring But it is hardly unique for a president to adopt a previous one as a historical role model. Barack Obama frequently invoked Abraham Lincoln. Dwight Eisenhower venerated George Washington. Jackson himself had been claimed by Franklin Roosevelt and his successor, Harry Truman, both of whom — unlike Trump — interpreted Jackson’s populism as a call for expanded government, in part to help the working class. There could be other comparisons for Trump. A favorable one would be Eisenhower, also a nonpolitician who governed like a hands-off CEO. A less favorable one would be Andrew Johnson, a tool of his party whose erratic behavior helped bring about his impeachment. Trump’s embrace could signal an
Tribes get say in land management but worry about Donald Trump
Native Americans who have long bemoaned their lack of participation in federal land decisions scored a major victory when President Barack Obama designated a new national monument in Utah that gives five tribes an opportunity to weigh in on the management of their ancestral home. But federal bureaucrats working under President-elect Donald Trump‘s cabinet appointees will still have the final say on all land decisions, and some tribal officials are concerned that the shared-management arrangement could quickly sour if the incoming administration charts a different course for the 1.35-million acre Bears Ears National Monument. Navajo Nation lawmaker Davis Filfred, who hopes to be on the tribal commission helping to oversee the monument, said he and others are worried, but they are trying to stay hopeful that the administration will give the commission a legitimate voice. “Now is not the time to bash him,” Filfred said, “because I need him.” Federal officials will also create a different advisory committee made up of local government officials, business owners and private landowners to provide recommendations. That board will probably lean heavy with people who opposed the designation over concerns about adding another layer of federal control and closing the area to new energy development, a common refrain in the battle over use of the American West’s vast open spaces. The language designating the monument creates a tribal commission composed of one elected official from each of five tribes. That arrangement falls short of the full co-management system the tribes requested, but they still considered the setup a significant improvement. “It’s double, not a home run from the tribes’ perspective,” said Kevin Washburn, a University of New Mexico law professor and the Obama administration’s former assistant secretary for Indian affairs. “But it gives the tribes an important seat at the table.” Obama has protected more acreage through new or expanded national monuments than any other president. But Trump is not expected to carry on that legacy. The Republican businessman has pledged to honor Theodore Roosevelt‘s tradition of conservation in the West but has also said he will “unleash” energy production and has railed against “faceless, nameless bureaucrats” in land-management agencies. Utah’s Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, vowed to work with the Trump administration to get the Bears Ears monument repealed. On Thursday, state elected officials and county commissioners blasted federal officials at a protest in the small city of Monticello, Utah, declaring that the monument shows the Obama administration ignores the wishes of Utah residents. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service will co-manage Bears Ears. The red rock lands are home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including intact ancient cliff dwellings that attract visitors from around the world. Obama also designated the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada outside Las Vegas, protecting 300,000 acres of scenic and ecologically fragile area near where rancher Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff with government agents in 2014. It includes rock art, artifacts, rare fossils and recently discovered dinosaur tracks. The monument designation allows current oil and mining within the boundaries, but it bans new activity. Grazing, hiking, hunting and fishing will still be allowed. White House officials touted the tribal commission as a first-of-its-kind setup that will ensure management decisions reflect tribal expertise and traditional and historical knowledge. The commission will include one elected officer from each of the five tribes that formed a coalition to push for the monument: Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Zuni and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uinta Ouray. The tribes “will help set a new standard for collaborative management at the national monument,” Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said. “We look forward to the day when all national monuments on native lands are collaboratively managed with tribes.” The commission and monuments are part of a concerted push by the Obama administration to protect native lands and show respect for tribal voices, said Athan Manuel, Sierra Club director of lands protection in Washington, D.C. The Chimney Rock National Monument in Colorado, designated in 2012, is another example. “Politically, it’s a great message that Native American communities are being recognized this way,” Manuel said. Zuni councilman Carleton Bowekaty is optimistic that the commission will have a legitimate role in decisions no matter the political agenda of the White House because of specific legal language in the designation. It not only ensures that the commission cannot be scrapped but requires that the Interior and Agriculture secretaries give written explanations if they decide not to incorporate formal recommendations made by the tribal commission. The first test will be the creation of a monument-management plan, a process that sometimes takes years to complete. “This is more than consultation,” Bowekaty said. “We believe it’s a very important step in making our voices known. This is definitely a milestone.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
High court rejects appeal over long hair in Alabama prisons
The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from Native American inmates who want to wear their hair long in Alabama prisons. The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the state’s prison system could keep in place its policy requiring male inmates to cut hair short. Inmates argued that keeping their hair long is part of core Native American religious traditions. But prison officials said long hair was a hygiene risk and could be used to conceal weapons and contraband. The 11th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that many other prison systems allow inmates to follow the grooming practices of their religion. But the appeals court ruled that Alabama’s system could make its own assessment on the benefits and risks. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
U.S. House of Representatives: Oct. 5 – Oct. 9
Monday morning Speaker John Boehner postponed the election of majority leader and majority whip until next month, a move many consider a direct blow to Rep. Steve Scalise who announced Sunday night he had the votes necessary to win the race for majority leader. The election was scheduled for Thursday. Instead, on that day, the 247-member Republican caucus will select a speaker to replace Boehner, who announced his resignation last month. The U.S. House of Representatives returns Tuesday to consider several bills under suspension of the rules. A full list of bills can be found here. This week the house will consider: H.R. 538: the Native American Energy Act. The bill provides for the expedited review and consideration of energy projects on Native American lands, and it limits federal fracking regulations on Indian trust lands, vesting Indian tribes with more authority over energy and natural resources activities on their own tribal lands. H.R. 3192: the Homebuyers Assistance Act. The bill provides a temporary safe harbor for lenders from from enforcement of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure requirements for mortgage loan transactions, prohibiting enforcement of the rules and lawsuits against lenders until then as long as the lender makes a good-faith effort to comply with the rules through Feb. 1, 2016. H.R. 702: a bill to Adapt to Changing Crude Oil Market Conditions. The bill allows the export of crude oil produced in the United States by repealing the outdated ban on crude oil exports imposed by the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (PL 94-163). Alabama co-sponsor: Rep. Bradley Byrne (AL-01) Next week, the House is in recess.
