2026-01-12 04:35:40
Kristi Noem spent Sunday defending the actions of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week. The Trump administration, she asserted, was fully committed to ensuring that laws are enforced evenhandedly.
But it quickly became clear that wasn’t true.
During the Sunday interview on CNN’s State of the Union, the Secretary of Homeland Security reiterated the Trump administration’s position on the shooting, insisting that Good had supposedly been “breaking the law by impeding and obstructing a law enforcement operation.” Noem repeated the extremely dubious allegation that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle to “attack” Ross in “an act of domestic terrorism.” And she said that Good had “harassed” law enforcement at additional locations throughout the morning.
“These officers were doing their due diligence—what their training had prepared them to do—to make sure they were handling it appropriately,” Noem insisted.
But when anchor Jake Tapper played video of the January 6 insurrection, Noem struggled to explain how Trump’s mass pardons for the Capitol rioters could be reconciled with the administration’s current support for federal law enforcement.
“Every single situation is going to rely on the situation those officers are on,” she said, without directly mentioning the Capitol attack. “But they know that when people are putting hands on them, when they are using weapons against them, when they’re physically harming them, that they have the authority to arrest those individuals.”
As Tapper pointed out, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of every single January 6 defendant on his first day back in office—suggesting that the president is willing to tolerate some assaults on federal law enforcement. But Noem, improbably, maintained that the Trump administration was consistent. “When we’re out there, we don’t pick and choose which situations and which laws are enforced and which ones aren’t,” she said. “Every single one of them is being enforced under the Trump administration.”
“That’s just not true,” Tapper responded. “There’s a different standard for law enforcement officials being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters.”
Later in the show, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected Noem’s allegation that Good was intentionally attacking Ross and said that the Trump administration’s portrayal of Minneapolis as an unsafe city that requires more federal law enforcement is unfounded.
“You know how many shootings we’ve had this year? Two. And one of them was ICE,” Frey said. “ICE and Kristi Noem and everything they’re doing is making it far less safe.”
According to an analysis of Minneapolis crime data by the Minnesota Star Tribune, gun violence peaked during pandemic lockdown, but shootings have declined since then in all but one of the city’s five police precincts.
As Noah Lanard reported on Thursday, immigration agents across the country have shot at least nine people since September. All of them were in cars, despite cops being trained not to shoot at moving vehicles and, instead, to get out of the way. Noah spoke with Seth Stoughton, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina and a former Florida police officer, who cited the long history of people getting hurt when police shoot at moving vehicles.
Meanwhile, many Democrats have called for new rules to curb abuses by federal immigration officers, including a requirement to show warrants prior to making arrests. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is expected to introduce legislation to push these changes.
“In many ways they’ve become lawless at this point,” one House Democrat said Friday, according to the Hill. “No search warrants. Masks. Refusing to tell people why they’re being picked up. Deporting people to places without telling their family. You can’t have that.”
On Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC, Murphy said that his proposal is not a “sweeping” reform but simply aims to return to when ICE “cared about legality.”
“It’s reasonable for Democrats, speaking on behalf of the majority of the American public who don’t approve of what ICE is doing, to say, ‘If you want to fund DHS, I want to fund a DHS that is operating in a safe and legal manner,’” Murphy said.
2026-01-12 03:56:23
Two days after an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, Rep. Roger Williams issued an ultimatum to the Trump administration’s critics in Minnesota and beyond.
“People need to quit demonstrating, quit yelling at law enforcement, challenging law enforcement, and begin to get civil,” the Texas Republican told NewsNation. “And until we do that, I guess we’re going to have it this way. And the people that are staying in their homes or doing the right thing need to be protected.”
That’s a pretty clear encapsulation of MAGA-world’s views on dissent these days. You aren’t supposed to protest. You aren’t supposed to “yell at” or “challenge” the militarized federal agents occupying your city. And anyone who wants to be “protected” should probably just stay “in their homes.” Williams isn’t some fringe backbencher; he’s a seven-term congressman who chairs the House Small Business Committee. He is announcing de facto government policy.
For nearly a year, President Donald Trump and his allies have been engaged in an escalating assault on the First Amendment. The administration has systematically targeted or threatened many of Trump’s most prominent critics: massive law firms, Jimmy Kimmel, even, at one point, Elon Musk. But it’s worth keeping in mind that some of the earliest victims of the president’s second-term war on speech were far less powerful.
Early last year, ICE began arresting and attempting to deport people with legal immigration status—such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk—who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activism or expressed pro-Palestinian views. The administration was explicit about the new policy. Troy Edgar, Trump’s deputy secretary of Homeland Security, made clear that the government was seeking to remove Khalil in large part because he’d chosen to “protest” against Israel. Asked about such cases, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that engaging in “anti-American, antisemitic, pro-Hamas protest will not be tolerated.”
It should have been obvious at the time that Trump allies were laying the groundwork for an even broader crackdown. “When it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of them the same: Send them to jail,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in March, discussing Khalil’s arrest on Fox Business Network. “Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities.”
That’s pretty close to Williams’ demand on Friday that “people need to quit demonstrating.” It also sounds a lot like Attorney General Pam Bondi’s widely derided threat in September that the DOJ “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Hate speech—regardless of what the Trump administration thinks that means—is protected by the First Amendment. Bondi can’t prosecute people for expressing views she dislikes. And ICE can’t deport US citizens like Good.
But of course, federal law enforcement has more direct ways to exert control. “The bottom line is this,” said Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Texas Republican running for US Senate, in the wake of Good’s death. “When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.”
Moment’s later, Newsmax anchor Carl Higbie complained to Hunt that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) had “literally told Minnesotans to get out and protest and that it is, quote, ‘a patriotic duty.'”
“People are going to go out there,” Higbie warned ominously. “And what do you think is going to happen when you get 3, 4, 5,000 people—some of which are paid agitators—thinking it’s their ‘patriotic duty’ to oppose ICE?”
2026-01-11 20:30:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
One year on from the Eaton Fire, long after the vicious winds that sent embers cascading from the San Gabriel mountains and the flames that swallowed entire streets, a shadow still hangs over Altadena.
Construction on new properties is under way, and families whose homes survived the fire have begun to return. But many are grappling with an urgent question: is it safe to be here?
The fire upended life in this part of Los Angeles county. By the time firefighters brought it under control, 19 people were dead, tens of thousands displaced and nearly 9,500 structures destroyed, primarily in Altadena but also in Pasadena and Sierra Madre.
The flames incinerated many older homes and businesses filled with lead paint and asbestos. They showered the community with toxins, leaving tall piles of ash and unseen traces of heavy metals in the soil and along and inside standing structures. Research has indicated some hazards remain even after properties have undergone remediation, the clean-up process that is supposed to restore homes and ensure they are safe to occupy.
As Altadena fights to return, residents—some eager to stay in the community and others who simply can’t afford to go anywhere else—are facing immense challenges while trying to rebuild their lives and come back home.
Official information about the health risks was limited early on and those returning often only learned about the dangers as they went. Some people have developed health concerns such as migraines and respiratory issues. Many are still battling their insurance companies to fully cover their costs, and make certain their homes are habitable.
Their predicament highlights the increased dangers that come with urban fires, and shows how Altadena has come to serve as a sort of living laboratory with scientists and residents learning in real time.
Nicole Maccalla, a data scientist, and her family moved back into their Altadena home over the summer after their property underwent an extensive cleanup process, but their air purifiers still register high levels of particulate matter, heavy sediment appears when they vacuum and when it rains the distinctive smell from the fire returns.
“The toll of displacement was really high on my family. And I just had to move home and try [to] mitigate risk and keep fighting the good fight,” she said. “There’s always that back-of-your-mind concern: Did I make the right choice? But I also don’t have other choices.”
Early on in those first careening hours of the fire, as thick smoke and ash fell like snow over her yard, Dawn Fanning was sure her home would not be spared. The wind was blowing from the fire straight to the Spanish bungalow the producer shared with her adult son, and it seemed there was no way to stop it.
Fanning’s home, miraculously, escaped the flames. But, while the stucco structure was intact—clothes still hanging undisturbed in her closet and her son’s baby photos packed carefully in bins in the garage—it hadn’t been unscathed either. Virtually nothing in Altadena was.
“It’s dusty and there’s piles of ash in the windowsills and on the floor. At first glance, it doesn’t look any different,” Fanning said. “Your house looks the same—but it’s not. There’s toxicity in your attic and in your crawlspace and on your mattresses and on all the things.”
Confused and frustrated with the local government’s handling of health concerns, Maccalla and Fanning joined other fire survivors to form Eaton Fire Residents United in hopes of ensuring the impacted areas recover safely. The community group is developing testing and remediation guidelines, gathered hygienic testing reports of hundreds of homes, and advocated for fire survivors and workers.
“When she awoke at 3 a.m., the blaze had formed a horseshoe shape around her house, and smoke filled the room.”
“There [have been] huge threats to the health and safety of residents, children in schools, elderly and immunocompromised, workers that are coming into this area that are being exposed to hazards in the workplace,” Maccalla said. “We’re still trying to work on that and get the protections people need.”
Barely 15 miles north-east of downtown Los Angeles, Altadena at the start of last year was home to some 43,000 people, many lured by the affordable home prices, proximity to the mountains and bucolic feel. It has long been one of the most diverse cities in the region with a thriving Black community that began to grow during the great migration.
In the early evening on January 7 2025, Fanning, who had lived in her home in the area for two decades, had a feeling she couldn’t shake that something could go very wrong. There were treacherous winds that forecasters warned posed a serious fire risk. Already, a fire was spreading rapidly on the other side of the county in the Pacific Palisades, where frantic residents were trying to evacuate and firefighters were clearing the area.
Some 35 miles away, Fanning and her son were watching coverage of the unfolding fire while readying their property. Then came an alert—not from officials—but from a local meteorologist who was telling his followers to get out now. Fanning spotted flames several blocks away and she and her son decided it was time to leave.
A few miles to the east, Rosa Robles was evacuating with her grandchild in tow, leaving her husband and adult children. She wanted them to go—but they were protecting the home. Armed with garden hoses, they tried to save the residence and the other houses on their block. Sometimes the wind was so strong it blew the water back in their faces, Robles said.
Maccalla’s power had gone out that morning, and she and her children were sitting around watching the TV drama Fire Country on an iPad in the dark when they got the call about the fire. It seemed far away at the time, Maccalla recalled, and she felt prepared as a member of a community emergency response team.
They got out lamps and began packing in case they needed to leave. She set alarms hourly to monitor the progress of the fire while her children slept.
When she awoke at three, the blaze had formed a horseshoe shape around her house, and smoke filled the room. The family evacuated with their two dogs and two cats.
Tamara Artin had returned from work to see chaos on the street, with fierce winds and billowing smoke all around the house she rented with her husband. Artin, who is Armenian by way of Iran and has lived in Los Angeles for about six years, always loved the area. She enjoyed the history and sprawling green parks, and had been excited to live here.
Now the pair was quickly abandoning the home they had moved into just three months earlier, heading toward a friend’s house with their bags and passports.
Fanning and her son had gone to a friend’s home too. As they stayed up late listening to the police scanner, they heard emergency responders call out addresses where flames were spreading. These were friends’ homes. She waited to hear her own.
“We were worried, of course, because we were inhaling all those chemicals without knowing what it is.”
In the first days after the fire began, the risk remained and there was little help available with firefighting resources spread across Los Angeles. Maccalla and her son soon returned to their property to try to protect their home and those of their neighbors.
“I was working on removing a bunch of debris that had flown into the yard and all these dry leaves. I didn’t know at the time that I shouldn’t touch any of that,” she said.”
The devastation in Altadena, as in the Palisades, was staggering. Many of the 19 people who died were older adults who hadn’t received evacuation warnings for hours after people in other areas of town, if at all.
Physically, parts of Altadena were almost unrecognizable. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, bright red flame retardant streaked the hillsides. Off Woodbury Road, not far from where Robles and Artin lived, seemingly unblemished homes stood next to blackened lots where nothing remained but fireplaces and charred rubble—scorched bicycles, collapsed beds and warped ovens. The pungent smell of smoke seemed to embed itself in the nose.
Robles would sometimes get lost in the place she had lived her whole life as she tried to navigate streets that had been stripped of any identifiable landmarks. Fire scorched the beloved community garden, the country club, an 80-year-old hardware store, the Bunny Museum and numerous schools and houses of worship.
Artin and her husband returned to their home, which still stood, after a single night. They had no family in the area and nowhere else to go—hotels were packed across the county. For nearly two weeks they lived without water or power as they tried to clean up, throwing away most of their furniture and belongings, even shoes, and all of the food in the fridge and freezer.
“We were worried, of course, because we were inhaling all those chemicals without knowing what it is, but we didn’t have a choice,” Artin recalled.
As fires burn through communities, they spread particulate matter far and wide, cause intense smoke damage in standing structures and cars, and release chemicals even miles beyond the burned area.
After one round of remediation, “six out of 10 homes were still coming back with lead and or asbestos levels that exceeded EPA safety thresholds.”
When Fanning saw her home for the first time, thick piles of ash covered the floors. She was eager to return, but as she tried to figure out her next steps, reading scientific articles and guides, and joining Zoom calls with other concerned residents, it was clear she needed to learn more about precisely what was in the ash. Asbestos was found in her home, meaning all porous items, clothing and furniture, were completely ruined.
“You can’t wash lead and asbestos out of your clothing. I was like, OK, this is real and I need to gather as much evidence [as I can] to find out what’s in my house.”
In Altadena, more than 90 percent of homes had been built before 1975 and likely had lead-based paint and toxic asbestos, both of which the EPA has since banned, according to a report from the California Institute of Technology. All sorts of things burned along with the houses, Fanning said: plastic, electric cars, lithium batteries. “The winds were shoving this into our homes,” she said.
The roof on Maccalla’s home had to be rebuilt, and significant cleanup was required for the smoke damage and layers of ash that blanketed curtains and beds.
Despite these concerns, residents grew increasingly frustrated about what they viewed as a lack of official information about the safety of returning to their homes. Many also encountered pushback from their insurance providers that said additional testing for hazards, or more intensive remediation efforts recommended by experts, were unnecessary and not covered under their policies.
So earlier this year a group of residents, including Fanning and Maccalla, formed Eaton Fire Residents United (EFRU). The group includes scientists and people dedicated to educating and supporting the community, ensuring there is data collection to support legislation, and assembling an expert panel to establish protocols for future fires, Fanning said. They’ve published research based on testing reports from hundreds of properties across the affected area, and advocated that homes should receive a comprehensive clearance before residents return.
Research released by EFRU and headed by Maccalla, who has a doctorate in education and specializes in research methodology, found that more than half of homes that had been remediated still had levels of lead and/or asbestos that rendered them uninhabitable.
“There’s still widespread contamination and that one round of remediation was not sufficient, the majority of the time. Six out of 10 homes were still coming back with lead and or asbestos levels that exceeded EPA safety thresholds,” said Maccalla, who serves as EFRU’S director of data science and educational outreach.
Maccalla moved back home in June after what she viewed as a decent remediation process. But she hasn’t been able to get insurance coverage for additional testing, and worries about how many people are having similar experiences.
“We’re putting people back in homes without confirming that they’re free of contamination,” she said. “It feels very unethical and a very dangerous game to be playing.”
She couldn’t afford not to come home, and the family couldn’t keep commuting two hours a day each way from their temporary residence to work and school or their Altadena property where Maccalla was overseeing construction. But she’s experienced headaches, her daughter’s asthma is more severe, and her pets have become sick.
“I don’t think anybody that hasn’t gone through it can really comprehend what [that is like],” she said. “For everything in your environment that was so beloved to now become a threat is mentally a really hard switch,” she said.
Robles settled back to the home she’s lived in for years with a few new additions. Seven of her relatives lost their homes, including her daughter who now lives with her. “I thank God there’s a place for them. That’s all that matters to me.”
After the fire, she threw away clothes, bed sheets and pillows. The family mopped and washed the walls. Her insurance was helpful, she said, and covered the cleanup work. Robles tries not to think about the toxic contamination and chemicals that spread during the fire. “You know that saying, what you don’t know?” she said, her voice trailing off.
Artin said she received some assistance from her renter’s insurance, but that her landlord hadn’t yet undertaken more thorough remediation. She’s still trying to replace some of the furniture she had to throw away. The fire had come after an already difficult year in which her husband had been laid off, and their finances were stretched.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again.”
She shudders when she recalls the early aftermath of the fire, a morning sky as dark as night. “It was hell, honestly.”
Her rent was set to increase in the new year, and while she fears exposure to unseen dangers, moving isn’t an option. “We don’t have anywhere else to go. We can’t do anything,” Artin said.
Fanning has been battling her insurance company to cover the work that is necessary to ensure her house is safely habitable, she said. Her provider is underplaying the amount of work that needs to be done and underbidding the costs, Fanning said. She and her son have been living in a short-term rental since late summer, and she expects they won’t be able to return home before the fall.
Sometimes she wonders if she’ll be up to returning at all. Even now, when Fanning drives through the area to come get her mail or check on the house, she gets headaches. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe, no matter all the things that I know and all the things that I’m gonna do. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again.”
In between trying to restore her home, she’s focused on advocacy with EFRU, which has become her primary job, albeit unpaid. “There are so many people that don’t have enough insurance coverage, that don’t speak English, that are renters, that don’t have access like I do … I feel it’s my duty as a human.”
There’s much work to do, Fanning said, and it has to be done at every single property.
“It’s a long road to recovery. And if we don’t do it right, safely, it’s never gonna be what it was before.”
2026-01-11 04:10:15
Scores of people are once again taking to their streets this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s ongoing offensive against immigrants and those who attempt to stand up for them.
More than 1,000 demonstrations are slated for Saturday and Sunday after federal immigration agents shot three people in the past week. On Wednesday, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis in her vehicle, and on Thursday US Border Patrol shot a man and a woman in a car in Portland.
“The murder of Renée Nicole Good has sparked outrage in all of us,” Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the organizations spearheading the nationwide demonstrations, told Mother Jones. “Her death, and the horrific nature of it, was a turning point and a call to all of us to stand up against ICE’s inhumane and lawless operations that have already killed dozens before Renee.”
Just got home from our local ICE OUT protest. 24 degrees and snowing, hundreds came out. Others were in the next town over responding to ICE trapping roofers.
— Ashley(@coyotebee.bsky.social) 2026-01-10T19:08:06.443Z
The weekend protests are happening or poised to happen in blue cities like New York and Chicago, as well as Republican strongholds like Lubbock, Texas, and Danville, Kentucky.
The demonstrations are being organized by the ICE Out For Good Coalition, which in addition to Indivisible, includes groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Voto Latino, and United We Dream.
“For a full year, Trump’s masked agents have been abducting people off the streets, raiding schools, libraries, and churches,” Katie Bethell, the civic action executive director for MoveOn, another organization in the coalition, said. “None of us want to live in a country where federal agents with guns are lurking and inciting violence at schools and in our communities.”
According to tracking from The Guardian, 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025—the most of any year in more than two decades.
Additionally, The Trace reports that since June 2025, there have been 16 incidents in which immigration agents opened fire and another 15 incidents in which agents held someone at gunpoint. The outlet writes that, in these incidents, four people were killed and seven injured. The Trace noted that the number of incidents involving guns could likely be higher, “as shootings involving immigration agents are not always publicly reported.”
Since Wednesday, an already tense situation in Minneapolis—and in other cities—boiled over. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, officers on the scene met protesters with chemical irritants. In the days since, border patrol agents outside the Whipple Building in Minneapolis have used violent tactics against protesters, including using chemical agents on demonstrators.
Online, some videos show escalating moments between immigration agents and those resisting them. In one instance, a border patrol agent is seen telling multiple women sitting in cars in Minneapolis: “Don’t make a bad decision today.” The women were seemingly attempting to interrupt immigration agents by taking up road space.
The coalition hosting the protests said in its list of stated goals that the groups hope to “Demand accountability, transparency, and an immediate investigation into the killing of Renee Nicole Good,” “Build public pressure on elected officials and federal agencies,” and “Call for ICE to leave our communities,” among other aims.
These are just the latest protests to take over cities since President Donald Trump was sworn in for the second time. In April, it was the “Hands Off!” protest against Trump and Elon Musk’s gutting of government spending and firing of federal workers. Months later, in October, the “No Kings” demonstrations sought to call out Trump’s growing, often unchecked executive power. According to organizers, each saw millions of protesters. And now, only the second weekend of the new year, people are once again angry and outside.
“The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were not the beginning of ICE’s cruelty, but they need to be the end,” Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer with the ACLU, said. “These tragedies are simply proof of one fact: the Trump administration and its federal agents are out of control, endangering our neighborhoods, and trampling on our rights and freedom. This weekend Americans all across the country are demanding that they stop.”
2026-01-10 20:30:00
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On Thursday, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move signals their commitment to the White House over their prior support for the measures.
The Miccosukee have always considered the Florida Everglades their home. So when Republicans in Congress voted to expand the tribe’s land base under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act—legislation that would transfer 30 acres of land in the Everglades to tribal control—the Miccosukee were thrilled. After years of work, the move would have allowed the tribe to begin environmental restoration activities in the area and better protect it from climate change impacts as extreme flooding and tropical storms threaten the land.
“The measure reflected years of bipartisan work and was intended to clarify land status and support basic protections for tribal members who have lived in this area for generations,” wrote Chairman Cypress in a statement last week, “before the roads and canals were built, and before Everglades National Park was created.”
The act was passed on December 11, but on December 30, President Donald Trump vetoed it; one of only two vetoes made by the administration since he took office. In a statement, Trump explained that the tribe “actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” after the tribe’s July lawsuit challenging the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center in the Everglades.
“It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.”
When a tribe regains land, the process can be long and costly. The process, known as “land into trust” transfers a land title from a tribe to the United States, where the land is then held for the benefit of the tribe and establishes tribal jurisdiction over the land in question. When tribal nations signed treaties in the 19th century ceding land, any lands reserved for tribes—generally, reservations—were held by the federal government “in trust” for the benefit of tribes, meaning that tribal nations don’t own these lands despite their sovereign status.
Trump’s veto “makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance.”
Almost all land-into-trust requests are facilitated at an administrative level by the Department of Interior. The Miccosukee, however, generally must follow a different process. Recognized as a tribal nation by the federal government in 1962, the Miccosukee navigate a unique structure for acquiring tribal land where these requests are made through Congress via legislation instead of by the Interior Department.
“It’s ironic, right?” said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “You’re acquiring land that your colonizer probably took from you a long time ago and then gave it away to or sold it to someone else, and then years later, you’re buying that land back that was taken from you illegally, at a great expense.”
While land-into-trust applications related to tribal gaming operations often meet opposition, Fletcher says applications like the Miccosukee’s are usually frictionless. And in cases like the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act, which received bipartisan support at the state and federal levels, in-trust applications are all but guaranteed.
On the House floor on Thursday before the vote, Florida’s Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “This bill is so narrowly focused that [the veto] makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance that seems to have emanated in this result.”
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), did not respond to requests for comment. In July last year, Gimenez referred to the Miccosukee Tribe as stewards of the Everglades, sponsoring the bill as a way to manage water flow and advance an elevation project, under protection from the Department of the Interior, for the village to avert “catastrophic flooding.”
“What you’re asking is for people in the same political party of the guy who just vetoed this thing to affirmatively reject the political decision of the president,” Fletcher said.
The tribe is unlikely to see its village project materialize under Trump’s second term unless the outcome of this year’s midterms results in a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Studies show that the return of land to tribes provides the best outcomes for the climate.
2026-01-10 16:01:00
Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.
“At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.”
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.
This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2025.
