WASHINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden selected New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as his nominee for interior secretary on Thursday, a historic pick that would make her the first Native American to lead the powerful federal agency that has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for generations.
Tribal leaders and activists around the country, along with many Democratic figures, cheered Haaland’s selection after urging Biden for weeks to choose her to lead the Department of Interior. They stood behind her candidacy even when concerns that Democrats might risk their majority in the House if Haaland yielded her seat in Congress appeared to threaten her nomination.
With Haaland’s nomination, Indigenous people will for the first time in their lifetimes see a Native American at the table where the highest decisions are made — and so will everyone else, said OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux vote activist who was in Georgia on Thursday helping get out the Native vote for two Senate runoffs. “It’s made people aware that Indians still exist,” he said.
Haaland, 60, is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico. The role of interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that has tremendous sway not only over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.
Haaland tweeted after the news was made public that “growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce.
“I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land,” she pledged.
Biden plans to introduce Haaland — and other picks for his Cabinet — at an event Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware.
Her selection breaks a 245-year record of non-Native officials, mostly male, serving as the top federal official over American Indian affairs. The federal government often worked to dispossess Native Americans of their land and, until recently, to assimilate them into white culture.
“You’ve got to understand — you’re taking Interior full circle,” said Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and a champion of Haaland for the job. “For years, its legacy was the disenfranchisement of the Native people of this country, of displacement, of cultural genocide.”
With Haaland’s nomination, “that in itself is a huge message,” Grijalva said.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez called it “truly a historic and unprecedented day for all Indigenous people.”
“I am SO ELATED,” the head of progressive Democrats’ Sunrise Movement, Varshini Prakash, tweeted. “This will be the first time an Indigenous person — and a badass climate champion woman at that — will hold any presidential cabinet position. Congratulations to @JoeBiden for making history.″
Get-out-the-vote activists believe their efforts, and the Native vote, helped flip Arizona in particular for Biden and secure the presidency.
“There’s a feeling something is changing,” said Ashley Nicole McCray, a member of the Absentee Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma and of an indigenous environmental coalition. “Finally, we’ve come to this point where Indigenous sentiment is no longer being silenced.”
But Biden’s pick could further deplete, at least temporarily, the narrow majority Democrats maintain in the House. Biden has already selected several lawmakers from the chamber, including Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond and Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, to serve in his administration.
Some on Biden’s transition team had expressed concerns about dipping further into the already thinned Democratic House majority for another senior administration posting. But Biden decided that the barrier-breaking aspect of her nomination and her experience as vice chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources made her the right pick for the moment.
The president-elect has been methodically filling the posts in his Cabinet, adding North Carolina environmental official Michael Regan as his nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Biden introduced former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg earlier this week as his transportation secretary and announced Thursday that former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was his nominee for energy secretary.
In a statement Thursday night, Biden said he had assembled a “brilliant, tested, trailblazing team” that “will be ready on day one to confront the existential threat of climate change.”
“They share my belief that we have no time to waste to confront the climate crisis, protect our air and drinking water, and deliver justice to communities that have long shouldered the burdens of environmental harms,” the president-elect said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear Wednesday that Biden had her blessing to choose Haaland, saying she would make an “excellent choice” as interior secretary. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House and a close Biden ally, also supported Haaland for the job.
Haaland is one of the first two Native American women in the House. She told The Associated Press before her nomination that see the difference her position in Congress made for ordinary Native Americans who came to her with business before the federal government.
“They felt comfortable just launching into the issues they wanted,” Haaland told the AP in an interview before her appointment. They would say, for example, “Oh, we don’t have to explain tribal sovereignty to you,” meaning tribes’ constitutionally guaranteed status as independent nations.
Haaland previously worked as head of New Mexico’s Democratic Party, as tribal administrator and as an administrator for an organization providing services for adults with developmental disabilities.
Born to a Marine veteran father and a Navy veteran mother, Haaland describes herself as a single mother who sometimes had to rely on food stamps. She says she is still paying off student loans after college and law school for herself and college for her daughter.
New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, who is retiring after 22 years in Congress and was initially considered the front-runner for interior secretary, congratulated Haaland on her selection, calling it “momentous and well-earned.’’
Previously, the highest-ranking administration official known to have Native American heritage was Charles Curtis, who served as Herbert Hoover’s vice president and whose mother was one-quarter Kaw tribe.
In historic pick, Biden taps native American as interior secretary
https://arab.news/vhqe2
In historic pick, Biden taps native American as interior secretary
- Haaland's selection breaks a 245-year record of non-Native officials serving as the top federal official over American Indian affairs
- Haaland, 60, is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico
Los Angeles’ image is scuffed since ICE raids and protests, with World Cup and Olympics on horizon
- Los Angeles is still reeling from January’s deadly wildfires — and with the World Cup soccer championships and the 2028 Olympics on the horizon
- Mayor Karen Bass has been urging residents to come together to revitalize LA’s image. Instead, a less flattering side of Los Angeles has been broadcast to the world in recent days
LOS ANGELES: This isn’t the image Los Angeles wanted projected around the globe.
Clouds of tear gas wafting over a throng of protesters on a blocked freeway. Federal immigration agents in tactical garb raiding businesses in search of immigrants without legal status. A messy war of words between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Photos captured several Waymo robotaxis set on fire and graffiti scrawled on a federal detention center building, while videos recorded the sounds of rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades hitting crowds.
In a city still reeling from January’s deadly wildfires — and with the World Cup soccer championships and the 2028 Olympics on the horizon — Mayor Karen Bass has been urging residents to come together to revitalize LA’s image by sprucing up streets, planting trees and painting murals so LA shows its best face to nations near and far.
“It’s about pride,” she’s said. “This is the city of dreams.”
Instead, a less flattering side of Los Angeles has been broadcast to the world in recent days. Protests have mostly taken place in a small swath of downtown in the sprawling city of 4 million people. As Trump has activated nearly 5,000 troops to respond in the city, Bass has staunchly pushed back against his assertions that her city is overrun and in crisis.
Bass, in response to Trump, said she was troubled by depictions that the city has been “invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals, and that now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming our federal agents. I don’t know if anybody has seen that happen, but I’ve not seen that happen.”
The series of protests began Friday outside a federal detention center, where demonstrators demanded the release of more than 40 people arrested by federal immigration authorities.
Immigration advocates say the people who were detained do not have criminal histories and are being denied their due process rights.
An international city
Much like New York, Los Angeles is an international city that many immigrants call home. The city’s official seal carries images referencing the region’s time under Spanish and Mexican rule. Over 150 languages are spoken by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. About half of the city’s residents are Latino and about one-third were born outside the US
Bass faulted the Trump administration for creating “a chaotic escalation” by mobilizing troops to quell protests.
“This is the last thing that our city needs,” Bass said.
Los Angeles resident Adam Lerman, who has attended the protests, warned that protests would continue if the Trump administration pushes more raids in the city.
“We are talking about a new riot every day,” Lerman said. ”Everybody knows they are playing with fire.”
It’s not the publicity LA needs as it looks to welcome the world for international sporting events on a grand scale.
“At this stage in the process, most host cities and countries would be putting the final touches on their mega-event red carpet, demonstrating to the world that they are ready to embrace visitors with open arms,” said Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor who has written widely on the political and economic impacts of the Olympic Games. The scenes of conflict are “not exactly the best way to entice the world to plan their next tourist trip to the US to watch a sports mega-event.”
A mayor under pressure
The federal raids and protests have created another dicey political moment for Bass, who has been struggling with a budget crisis while trying to recover from political fallout from the wildfires that ignited when she was out of the country.
She’s been careful not to discourage protests but at the same time has pleaded for residents to remain peaceful. The mayor will likely face backlash for involving the Los Angeles Police.
And she needs to fight the perception that the city is unsafe and disorderly, an image fostered by Trump, who in social media posts has depicted Bass as incompetent and said the city has been “invaded” by people who entered the US illegally. Los Angeles is sprawling — roughly 470 square miles (750 square kilometers) — and the protests were mostly concentrated downtown.
“The most important thing right now is that our city be peaceful,” Bass said. “I don’t want people to fall into the chaos that I believe is being created by the (Trump) administration.”
On Monday, workers were clearing debris and broken glass from sidewalks and power-washing graffiti from buildings — among the structures vandalized was the one-time home of the Los Angeles Times across the street from City Hall. Downtown has yet to bounce back since long-running pandemic lockdowns, which reordered work life and left many office towers with high vacancy rates.
Trump and California officials continued to spar online and off, faulting each other for the fallout. At the White House, Trump criticized California leaders by saying “they were afraid of doing anything” and signaled he would support Newsom’s arrest over his handling of the immigration protests.
If Los Angeles’ image was once defined by its balmy Mediterranean climate and the glamor of Hollywood, it’s now known “primarily for disaster,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney.
“A lot of perception depends on images,” Pitney added. Right now, the dominant image “is a burning Waymo.”
US defense department draws up rules on possible use of force by Marines deployed to LA protests
- 700 Marines will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA
- President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in LA in 1992
WASHINGTON: The US Department of Defense was scrambling Monday to establish rules to guide Marines who could be faced with the rare and difficult prospect of using force against citizens on American soil, now that the Trump administration is deploying active duty troops to the immigration raid protests in Los Angeles.
US Northern Command said it is sending 700 Marines into the Los Angeles area to protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA or authorized to be deployed there to respond to the protests.
The forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control and standing rules for the use of force, Northern Command said.
But the use of the active duty forces still raises difficult questions.
The Marines are highly trained in combat and crisis response, with time in conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan. But that is starkly different from the role they will face now: They could potentially be hit by protesters carrying gas canisters and have to quickly decide how to respond or face decisions about protecting an immigration enforcement agent from crowds.
According to a US official, troops will be armed with their normal service weapons but will not be carrying tear gas. They also will have protective equipment such as helmets, shields and gas masks.
When troops are overseas, how they can respond to threats is outlined by the rules of engagement. At home, they are guided by standing rules for the use of force, which have to be set and agreed to by Northern Command, and then each Marine should receive a card explaining what they can and cannot do, another US official said.
For example, warning shots would be prohibited, according to use-of-force draft documents viewed by The Associated Press. Marines are directed to de-escalate a situation whenever possible but also are authorized to act in self-defense, the documents say.
The AP reviewed documents and interviewed nine US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, about the guidance being determined for the Marines.
The Pentagon also is working on a memo with clarifying language for the Marines that will lay out the steps they can take to protect federal personnel and property. Those guidelines also will include specifics on the possibility that they could temporarily detain civilians if troops are under assault or to prevent harm, the first US official said.
Those measures could involve detaining civilians until they can be turned over to law enforcement.
Having the Marines deploy to protect federal buildings allows them to be used without invoking the Insurrection Act, one US official said.
The Insurrection Act allows the president to direct federal troops to conduct law enforcement functions in national emergencies. But the use of that act is extremely rare. Officials said that has not yet been done in this case and that it’s not clear it will be done.
President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King.
If their role expands if the violence escalates, it is not clear under what legal authority they would be able to engage, said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“If in fact those Marines are laying hands on civilians, doing searches, then you have pretty powerful legal concerns,” Goitein said. “No statutory authority Trump has invoked so far permits this.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted late Saturday that he was considering deploying the Marines to respond to the unrest after getting advice earlier in the day from Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to one of the US officials.
Still, the tweet, which was posted to Hegseth’s personal X account and not to his official government account, caught many inside the Pentagon by surprise. As late as Monday, the military’s highest offices were still considering the potential ramifications.
But the Marine Corps were asking broader questions, too: Do they send more senior, experienced personnel so as not to put newer, less experienced troops at risk of potentially making a judgment call on whether to use force against a civilian?
What’s lawful under a domestic deployment — where troops may end up in a policing role — is governed by the Fourth Amendment in the US Constitution, which forbids seizure of persons, including temporarily restraining them, unless it could be considered reasonable under the circumstances.
Troops under federal authorities are in general prohibited from conducting law enforcement on US soil under the Posse Comitatus Act.
US deploys Marines to Los Angeles as police break up fourth day of protests
- Military forces previously deployed domestically for major disasters
- California files lawsuit to block National Guard deployment *
LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON: The US military will temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in President Donald Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies.
Tensions have been rising since Trump activated the National Guard on Saturday after street protests erupted in response to immigration raids in Southern California. It is the biggest flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally.
The announcement that marines would be deployed was made on the fourth straight day of protests. Late on Monday police began to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where immigrants have been held.
National Guard forces had formed a human barricade to keep people out of the building. Then a phalanx of Los Angeles police moved up the street, starting to push people from the scene and firing “less lethal” munitions such as gas canisters. Police had used similar tactics since Friday.
The LAPD said late on Monday afternoon that some protesters had started throwing objects at officers and the use of less lethal munitions had been authorized, adding in an X post: “Less lethal munitions may cause pain and discomfort.”
California sued the Trump administration to block deployment of the National Guard and the Marines on Monday, arguing that it violates federal law and state sovereignty.
US Marines have been deployed domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the September 11, 2001, attacks, but it is extremely rare for US military troops to be used for domestic policing.
For now, the Trump administration was not invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement, according to a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that a contingent of 2,000 National Guard troops would be doubled to 4,000. Trump said on Monday he felt he had no choice but to increase the level of force to prevent violence from spiraling out of control.
Trump also said he supported a suggestion by his border czar Tom Homan that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over possible obstruction of his administration’s immigration enforcement measures. “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats said Trump’s decision to deploy military force to handle the protests amounts to an abuse of presidential power, and California’s lawsuit claimed it was illegal.
“The level of escalation is completely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unprecedented,” Newsom’s press office said on X.
Four days of protests
The protests so far have resulted in a few dozen arrests and some property damage, including some self-driving Waymo vehicles that were set ablaze on Sunday evening. The Los Angeles Police Department said five officers sustained minor injuries on Saturday and Sunday, as did five police horses used in crowd control.
Before the police intervention on Monday, several hundred protesters chanted “free them all” outside the Los Angeles federal detention facility where immigrants have been held.
“What is happening effects every American, everyone who wants to live free, regardless of how long their family has lived here,” said Marzita Cerrato, 42, a first-generation immigrant whose parents are from Mexico and Honduras.
Some in the crowd punched and tossed eggs at a Trump supporter at the event, while others fired paintballs from a car at the federal building.
Protests also sprang up in at least nine other US cities on Monday, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news outlets.
The Trump administration has argued that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration allowed far too many immigrants to enter the country and that Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles are improperly interfering with efforts to deport them. Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the US-Mexico border, setting a goal of at least 3,000 daily arrests.
Trump can deploy Marines under certain conditions of law or under his authority as commander in chief.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush to help respond to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King.
More than 50 people were killed in the 1992 riots, which also caused some $1 billion in damage over six days.
Federal law allows the president to deploy the National Guard if the nation is invaded, if there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
RFK Jr. ousts entire US vaccine panel over alleged conflicts
- Kennedy, known for promoting vaccine misinformation, claims the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies
- Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, fears Kennedy would pack the panel with "people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion"
WASHINGTON: US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced he was dismissing all current members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, accusing them of conflicts of interest — his latest salvo against the nation’s immunization policies.
The removal of all 17 experts of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and an official press release.
Kennedy, who has spent two decades promoting vaccine misinformation, cast the move as essential to restoring public trust, claiming the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” he said in a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The public must know that unbiased science — evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest — guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”
In his op-ed, Kennedy claimed the panel was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and had become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
He added that new members were being considered to replace those ousted — all of whom were appointed under former president Joe Biden.
ACIP members are chosen for their recognized expertise and are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
“RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are taking a wrecking ball to the programs that keep Americans safe and healthy,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in response.
“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who expressed concern about Kennedy’s track record during his Senate nomination but ultimately voted in his favor, wrote on X.
“I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”
“Fixing a problem that doesn’t exist”
The decision drew sharp criticism from Paul Offit, a pediatrician and leading expert on virology and immunology who served on the panel from 1998 to 2003.
“He believes that anybody who speaks well of vaccines, or recommends vaccines, must be deeply in the pocket of industry,” Offit told AFP. “He’s fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.”
“We are witnessing an escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines,” added Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement.
Once a celebrated environmental lawyer, Kennedy pivoted from the mid-2000s to public health — chairing a nonprofit that discouraged routine childhood immunizations and amplified false claims, including the long-debunked theory that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism.
Since taking office, he has curtailed access to Covid-19 shots and continued to raise fears around the MMR vaccine — even as the United States faces its worst measles outbreak in years, with three reported deaths and more than 1,100 confirmed cases.
Experts warn the true case count is likely far higher.
“How can this country have confidence that the people RFK Jr. wants on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are people we can trust?” Offit asked.
He recalled that during US President Donald Trump’s first term, several states formed independent vaccine advisory panels after the administration pressured federal health agencies to prematurely approve Covid-19 vaccines ahead of the 2020 election.
That kind of fragmentation, Offit warned, could happen again.
ACIP is scheduled to hold its next meeting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from June 25 to June 27.
Vaccines for anthrax, Covid-19, human papillomavirus, influenza, Lyme disease, respiratory syncytial virus, and more are on the agenda.
Russia has plans to test NATO’s resolve, German intelligence chief warns
- Germany has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory
BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany’s foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization.
Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defense obligations enshrined in the NATO treaty no longer had practical force.
“We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,” Kahl told Table Media in a podcast interview.
“That doesn’t mean we expect tank armies to roll westwards,” he added. “But we see that NATO’s collective defense promise is to be tested.”
Germany, already the second-largest provider of armaments and financial support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.
Without detailing the nature of his intelligence sources, Kahl said Russian officials were envisaging confrontations that fell short of a full military engagement that would test whether the US would really live up to its mutual aid obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“They don’t need to dispatch armies of tanks for that,” he said. “It’s enough to send little green men to Estonia to protect supposedly oppressed Russian minorities.”
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea involved occupation of buildings and offices by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes, who came to be known as the “little green men” when Moscow initially denied their identity.
Kahl did not specify which officials in Moscow were thinking along these lines.
Merz, who visited Donald Trump in Washington last week, pushed back against the US president’s assertion that Ukraine and Russia were like two infants fighting, telling Trump that where Ukraine targeted Moscow’s military, Russia bombed Ukraine’s cities.
Kahl said his contacts with US counterparts had left him convinced they took the Russian threat seriously.
“They take it as seriously as us, thank God,” he said.
