New Mexico taps agency veteran as new Indian Affairs secretary
The former pueblo leader nominated by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to head the state’s Indian Affairs Department is leaving that post less than a year into the job to take on a new role as a policy adviser to the governor. James Mountain’s new role as senior policy adviser for tribal affairs was confirmed Friday by the governor’s office in a statement. Josett Monette will take the reins of the Indian Affairs Department, after serving previously in roles as deputy director and general counsel at the agency. Monette is affiliated with the North Dakota-based Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa. NEW MEXICO SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE FATE OF LOCAL ABORTION RESTRICTIONS Mountain’s appointment in February as cabinet secretary immediately fueled anger among Native American advocates who worked to address violence and missing persons cases within their communities. They pointed to sexual assault charges against Mountain, saying he wasn’t the right person to lead the state agency. Lujan Grisham’s office pointed out that charges against Mountain were dismissed in 2010 after prosecutors said they didn’t have enough evidence to go to trial, and it urged those raising concerns about his past to “respect the judicial process and acknowledge the results.” The governor also had highlighted Mountain’s history as a leader at San Ildefonso Pueblo and his expertise in state and tribal relations, as she pushed for a Senate committee to hold a confirmation hearing so Mountain could be vetted like other cabinet members. But the governor’s office never forwarded his nomination to the committee for consideration — and did not answered questions about whether it sought input from Native American communities when choosing Mountain as a successor for Lynn Trujillo, who stepped down as secretary in November 2022 before taking a job with the U.S. Interior Department. In March, protesters gathered at the state capitol to call for greater accountability in the system for vetting state-appointed positions that serve Indigenous communities. Mountain never directly addressed the concerns about his nomination. In a letter to state lawmakers, his daughter, Leah Mountain, described him as a devoted father who instilled cultural identity, confidence and aspiration in her after her mother left. She said the allegations against him are false. Mountain served as governor at San Ildefonso Pueblo from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2017. He oversaw the completion of the Aamodt Water Settlement, concerning the pueblo’s water rights, and the Indian Land Claims Settlement in 2006. He also ran his own state-tribal affairs consulting firm in recent years.
Los Angeles DA Gascón promotes former public defender who called LAPD ‘barbarians’ and an ‘occupying army’
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has promoted a former public defender to his chief of staff who has called the Los Angeles Police Department “barbarians.” Tiffiny Blacknell, who has served in the district attorney’s office as a grade 4 prosecutor, special advisor, and chief of communications, was promoted to be Gascón’s chief of staff on Friday, multiple sources tell Fox News. Her new role will begin Jan. 16. During the protests following George Floyd’s death, Blacknell made a post on X referring to the Los Angeles Police Department as “barbarians,” and “an occupying army,” and used the “#DefundPolice” hashtag. In a previous post on X, she also said that “prison is obsolete,” calling on Americans to “reimagine America without it.” LA DA GASCÓN HIRES LAWYER WHO CALLED LAPD ‘BARBARIANS,’ SAID PRISONS SHOULD BE ABOLISHED “Angela Davis said it years ago. Prisons disappear problems, they don’t solve them,” she wrote. “We’ve been warehousing people for a generation it’s time to free America.” Blacknell has also posted a picture of herself wearing a shirt which read, “the police are trained to kill us.” She faced heavy criticism in 2020, after allegedly going behind the backs of the prosecutor and the victim’s family in a gang murder case to offer a “sweetheart” plea deal. LOS ANGELES COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY GEORGE GASCON CREATING RACIAL JUSTICE ACT SECTION The former prosecutor also posted during a series of looting in May 2020, that she was a looter during the 1992 Rodney King riots. “I was a “looter” in 1992. I was 15. I was furious, sad and scared. I had no way to process my emotions about the murder of Latasha Harlins or the beating of Rodney King. So we went out and we watched our city burn. And when the opportunity arose, we took some s–t,” Blacknell wrote. “So please don’t come on my page complaining about protestors or looters. Don’t text me SHIT about the Whole Foods in West Hollywood and your beloved Santa Monica. My whole community was leveled. Cry me a river! NORDSTROMS WILL BE OK. All this respectability by Black folks and complaining by Westside white liberals is maddening.” Fox News Digital reached out to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office for comment.
Biden admin finalizes most restrictive offshore oil drilling plan in US history
The Biden administration on Friday finalized a plan to dramatically curb the number of offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years as it continues to aggressively push green energy development. The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program schedules just three Gulf of Mexico lease sales through 2029, marking the fewest number of sales ever included in such a plan, which the agency is mandated to issue periodically. According to the DOI, holding the sales will enable future offshore wind leases under an Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provision that tethers the two. “President Biden’s approach to severely limit leasing significantly curtails access to a critical national asset,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents both traditional and renewable offshore energy producers, said in a statement Friday. “The White House simply ignores energy realities by once again limiting U.S. energy production opportunities.” “With global demand at record levels and continuing to rise, regressive policies will harm Americans of all walks of life by putting upward pressure on prices at the pump, destroying good-paying jobs that form the fabric of Gulf Coast communities, and relinquishing geopolitical advantages of energy production to countries like Russia, Iran and China,” he continued. ALASKAN NATIVE AMERICANS UNLEASH ON BIDEN ADMIN’S CLIMATE AGENDA: ‘COMMUNITIES AND CULTURE ARE AT RISK’ Milito added that policies limiting offshore production in the U.S. only serve to force greater reliance on energy imports, including from nations with higher emissions and worse environmental standards. “This jeopardizes our energy security, and economic prosperity, and undermines our efforts to reduce emissions and combat climate change — goals purportedly championed by the current administration,” he said. OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS PERMITTING PLUMMETS TO 2-DECADE LOW UNDER BIDEN Under the plan, the DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold the three sales of parcels in the Gulf of Mexico in 2025, 2027 and 2029. It also rules out any leasing off the Alaskan coast, and in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in another departure from previous plans. The administration, meanwhile, signaled that it could have pursued an even more restrictive five-year program if not for the IRA. That legislation — Democrats’ $739 billion climate and tax package signed by President Biden in 2022 — ties new offshore wind energy leases to new oil and gas leases, meaning the former could be threatened without consistent fossil fuel leasing. Issuing a program with less than three sales — a possibility the DOI floated last year to the dismay of energy industry groups — may have jeopardized Biden’s plan to ensure the U.S. develops 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The nation currently has just two tiny pilot projects, one off the coast of Rhode Island and the other off Virginia’s coast, but the DOI has permitted several large-scale facilities since 2021 that are slated to come online in coming years. APPEALS COURT FORCES BIDEN ADMIN TO HOLD OFFSHORE OIL LEASE SALE WITHOUT ECO RESTRICTIONS “It’s now clear without a shadow of a doubt that without the IRA, this Administration would have ended federal oil and gas development completely,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said in September after the DOI proposed the plan finalized Friday. “But instead of embracing the all-of-the-above energy bill that was signed into law, this Administration has once again decided to put their radical political agenda over American energy security, and the American people will pay the price,” Manchin, who was a lead author of the IRA last year, continued. “Granting the bare minimum of oil and gas leases will result in a minimum of renewables leases as well because the IRA tied the two together. You can’t have one without the other.” Under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the federal government is required to issue plans every five years laying out prospective offshore oil and gas lease sales. The most recent plan, which was implemented in 2017, expired in June 2022. The persistent delay in issuing a replacement plan, though, represented a departure from precedent set by both Republican and Democratic administrations, which have historically finalized replacements immediately after previous plans expired. The most recent two plans, both formulated under the Obama administration, included more than 10 offshore oil and gas lease sales each. And the Trump administration sought to hold a total of 47 lease sales across the Atlantic region, the Pacific region and the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coasts between 2022 and 2027.
What next for Ukraine’s EU membership application?
EU votes to start membership talks, but block billions in aid funding. Mixed messages are being sent from Brussels to Kyiv. The European Union votes to advance accession talks for Ukraine, but Hungary blocks billions of dollars in aid money. Money from the US to Kyiv is also being held up, as Republicans push for aid to be linked to extra funds to secure the US-Mexico border. It comes as winter settles on the battlefield, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive which stoked high hopes in spring has ground to a halt. Where does that leave the war effort – and Ukraine’s hopes for EU membership? Presenter: Sohail Rahman Guests: Mariia Zolkina – Head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank. Donnacha O’ Beachain – Professor of Iinternational relations at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. Ben Aris – Founder and editor-in-chief of bne IntelliNews. Adblock test (Why?)
Israeli army says it mistakenly killed three captives held in Gaza
The captives were killed during combat with Palestinian fighters after they were erroneously identified as a threat. The Israeli army has killed three captives held by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza after “mistakenly” identifying them as a threat, according to Israeli military officials. The military said on Friday that the captives were killed during combat with Palestinian groups in Gaza and expressed its condolences to the families while saying there would be “full transparency” in the investigation into the incident, which is “under review”. “During combat in Shujayea, the [Israeli army] mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat. As a result, the troops fired toward them and they were killed,” the army said in a statement. “The [Israeli army] began reviewing the incident immediately … Immediate lessons from the event have been learned, which have been passed on to all [Israeli army] troops in the field,” it added, expressing “deep remorse over the tragic incident”. The hostages were identified as three young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities during the Hamas attack on October 7 – 28-year-old Yotam Haim, 25-year-old Samer Al-Talalka and 26-year-old Alon Shamriz. The army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said Israeli troops found the hostages and erroneously identified them as a threat. He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned. Israeli troops have engaged in fierce battles with Palestinian fighters in the area in recent days. About 250 captives were taken into Gaza by Palestinian groups during the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, most of them women and children. Thousands more are missing and trapped beneath the rubble. The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that bringing home all of the hostages is one of its principal aims in the war. To date, 110 of the captives have been freed, mostly during a seven-day truce last month in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Israel has also repatriated eight bodies, including on Friday those of dual Israeli-French national Elia Toledano, 28, abducted from an electronic music festival, and two 19-year-old soldiers. The deaths were announced as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the US and Israel were discussing a timetable for scaling back the offensive against Hamas, even though they agree the overall fight will take months. Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the besieged enclave’s postwar future. US President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support for Israel with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing. Israeli air raids and shelling continued Friday, including in the southern city of Rafah, part of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians had been told by Israel to evacuate. Adblock test (Why?)
Israeli air attack on residential home in Rafah kills four Palestinians
Israeli warplanes have bombed a house belonging to the Shehadeh family in the Brazil neighbourhood in the Rafah governorate, south of the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in the attack on Thursday, and dozens of others wounded. At least 15 people remain missing under the rubble. The wounded were transferred to the Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital and the Kuwaiti Specialty Hospital in Rafah. The house, which belonged to Abdullah Shehadeh, a doctor, sheltered dozens of displaced people. People in the neighbourhood, alongside the civil defence crews, dug through the wreckage with simple tools and their bare hands, in an attempt to retrieve the bodies of those killed that remained under the rubble. In two separate attacks on the Abu Dabaa and Ashour family homes in Rafah, the number of people killed from the aerial bombardment increased to 25. The attacks came on the same night when communication networks were cut off once again by Israeli forces, the fifth time since October 7. In a statement, the government media office in Gaza announced the Israeli policy as a “deliberate act”. “Cutting off communications and the internet means that Palestinians will face life-threatening disasters, as there will be many killed and wounded people [in Israeli attacks] that no one will be able to reach,” the media office said. “Thus, the number of victims killed will increase.” More than 280 Palestinians and about 800 others were injured on Thursday, as air raids and artillery shelling continued throughout the Gaza Strip, especially in the southern city of Khan Younis, northern Gaza, and the neighbourhoods east of Gaza City. Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive on the coastal territory, at least 18,797 people have been killed, and more than 50,000 wounded, according to Palestinian authorities. Some 7,780 Palestinians remain missing and are presumed dead under the rubble of their own homes. More than 253,000 housing units have been partially damaged by the ongoing bombing, and more than 52,000 housing units were completely demolished by the Israeli air attacks or have become uninhabitable. Adblock test (Why?)
Texas’ debate over school chaplains escalates school board culture wars
A new law lets schools use safety funds to pay for unlicensed chaplains working in mental health roles. Supporters say it helps address student mental health while critics blast it as a Christian nationalist attempt to convert children to a specific form of faith.
DeSantis pledges support for devil statue decapitator, says govt should not recognize Satanism as ‘religion’
GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said that the Satanic Temple “should not be recognized” as a religion by the U.S. government. DeSantis made the declaration on X Friday morning, saying that satanism does not have a place in American society. The Florida governor’s tweet came after Mississippi state House candidate Michael Cassidy admitted to tearing down the Satanic Temple’s display in the Iowa state capitol. Cassidy was arrested Friday and charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief, KCCI reported. SATANIC DISPLAY INSIDE IOWA STATE CAPITOL DESTROYED, MAN CHARGED: OFFICIALS “Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a ‘religion’ by the federal government,” DeSantis tweeted. “I’ll chip in to contribute to this veteran’s legal defense fund.” “Good prevails over evil — that’s the American spirit,” DeSantis continued. DeSantis also addressed the Satanic Temple display at the Iowa state capitol during a recent CNN town hall event, pointing to former President Trump’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as to why the non-theistic religious organization is recognized as a religion. In 2019, the IRS recognized the Satanic Temple as an official house of worship, granting the entity both tax-exempt status and protections under the First Amendment. “So it’s interesting, I heard this, and then I was like, ‘Well, how did it get there? Is that even a religion?’” DeSantis said. “And low and behold, the Trump administration gave them approval to be under the IRS as a religion.” “So that gave them the legal ability to potentially do it,” DeSantis said. DeSantis said that “it very well may be because of that ruling” under Trump that the Satanic Temple “may have had a legal leg to stand on.” “My view would be that that’s not a religion that the Founding Fathers were trying to create,” DeSantis said. “But I do think that IRS ruling, I was really surprised to see that they did that.” Jake Tapper noted that the IRS granting tax-exempt status does not necessarily mean the government supports satanism. “No, yeah, exactly,” DeSantis responded. “But they recognized it as a religion, because otherwise you wouldn’t’ve been able to do it.” “I don’t think that was the right decision. Even as a religion, that’s wrong,” he continued. Lucien Greaves, one of the Satanic Temple’s founders, told Fox News Digital that “DeSantis’s remarks are raw cowardice dressed up in false heroism.” “He would like voters to believe that he is standing up against the Satanic Temple, but he is, in actuality, simply yielding to an angry, undemocratic mob that would rather see the fundamental pillars of democracy destroyed than suffer the nuisance of seeing a viewpoint they disagree with in a public forum,” Greaves said. “It is cowardice that compels him to abandon his pledge of office to uphold constitutional law and religious liberty because he can not, or will not, articulate those ideals to voters, opting instead to appeal to their most base fears and ignorance,” he continued. “I have announced that I am happy to debate DeSantis on these points at any time, but I suspect he is too cowardly for that as well,” Greaves added. The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 and does not express belief in Satan, God, or any higher power. Instead, the atheist organization follows “seven tenets” that emphasize science and reason, and uses Satanic imagery to push their tenets and political goals, like abortion access and addressing “religious privilege.” The organization has also been known to jab at Christians, and Greaves has openly stated that the group is “openly atheist,” in a 2015 Salon interview. “Those who dislike us claim that we are not really a religion, but by what standard?” Greaves said. “These things beg for definition. In the Hobby Lobby case, there was no sincerity test at all, and no test that their exemption had some kind of spiritual basis.” “In regard to our atheism, if you have a society that grants religious privilege and exemption, and you’re willing to give privilege and exemption to certain groups, then it’s unacceptable to give that only to people who believe in the supernatural,” Greaves said. “We are openly atheist, but we have cultural identity and symbolic constructs that are deeply meaningful to our members,” he continued. In a text message to Fox News Digital, Cassidy confirmed that he had torn down the satanic display, which was erected last week by the Satanic Temple of Iowa to represent the group’s right to religious freedom. “It was extremely anti-Christian,” Cassidy told Fox News Digital when asked why he had torn the statue down. The former congressional candidate didn’t elaborate on why he had torn the statue down, but he posted a Bible verse Thursday night to X after being charged. “1 Peter 5:8 KJV Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” he posted. Fox News Digital’s Adam Sabes contributed reporting.
Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay $148 million as defamation trial wraps up
Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay $148,169,000 to two women he falsely accused of committing election fraud in the 2020 election. The former New York City mayor, and Donald Trump ally and former personal lawyer, was on trial for the defamation of two Georgia election workers this week at a federal court in Washington, D.C. Giuliani had accused Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, of fraud while advancing former President Trump’s unproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell had already awarded default judgment to Freeman and Moss in August. HUNTER BIDEN SUES RUDY GIULIANI OVER LAPTOP, ACCUSES EX-TRUMP LAWYER OF ‘HACKING’ Giuliani was also ordered to pay legal fees for Moss and Freeman, amounting to around $270,000. Speaking outside the courthouse Friday, Moss said “the past few years has been devastating.” “The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives, our home family, our work, our sense of safety and mental health,” Moss said. “And we’re still working to rebuild as we move forward and continue to seek justice.” HEAVILY REDACTED RECORDS SHOW FBI’S TARGETING OF CATHOLICS WENT BEYOND WHAT IT CLAIMED: WATCHDOG “Our greatest wish is that no one, no election worker or voter or school board member or anyone else ever experiences anything like what we went through,” she added. Giuliani said Friday he’d appeal the ruling. “The absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding, where I’ve not been allowed to offer one single piece of evidence in defense,of which I have a lot,” he said. “So I am quite confident when this case gets before a fair tribunal, it will be reversed so quickly, it’ll make your head spin and the absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.” The purpose of this week’s trial was to determine how much money Giuliani would have to pay the women in damages. Fox News’ Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
Disgraced NC Auditor Beth Wood pleads guilty to misdemeanor charges on last day in office
On her last day on the job, North Carolina State Auditor Beth Wood pleaded guilty Friday to two misdemeanors for misusing a state-issued vehicle for personal activities. Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway sentenced Wood to 12 months of unsupervised probation on the counts, news outlets reported. Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said that Wood had paid $1,064 in restitution as part of a plea agreement. The sentencing and her resignation appear to complete a year in which Wood’s driving ultimately led to her departure as auditor, an office she first won in 2008. Wood announced her resignation last month, two days after a grand jury indicted her on the charges. JUDGE DROPS FELONY CHARGES AGAINST VIRGINIA ELECTIONS OFFICIAL ACCUSED OF 2020 MISCONDUCT The counts said that in 2021 and 2022, Wood used an assigned state-owned vehicle for “hair appointments and dental appointments out of town, traveling to shopping centers and spa locations where she was not engaged in business in her official capacity.” Wood, a Democrat, said last month that she had reimbursed the state to cover personal use of the car by purposely overpaying for miles in which she commuted to her job. Wood attorney Roger Smith Jr. said Friday that she accepted responsibility for driving her state car for personal use. “This is a sad day for Beth Wood,” Smith said in a statement. “For the past 15 years, she has been honored to serve the people of this state. She absolutely loved her job and is thankful for the opportunity to have served. She has paid a heavy price, but she looks forward to her next chapter.” While auditor, Wood was apt to receive praise or scorn from officials from both parties for reviews from her agency that criticized the misuse of government funds. “One of the things striking in this case is she, for 15 years, held people accountable but then violated the rules,” Freeman said Friday. “This is a double standard.” The indictment followed a monthslong investigation by state agents that appeared to mushroom after she was cited in December 2022 for leaving the scene of a crash when she drove her state-owned vehicle into a parked car in downtown Raleigh. No one was hurt. An apologetic Wood pleaded guilty in March to misdemeanor hit-and-run involving the crash and paid fines and court costs. A few months later, Wood, now 69, said she was still planning to run for reelection. In keeping with the state constitution, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper appointed former Wake County Commission Chair Jessica Holmes to complete Wood’s term as auditor through the end of 2024 once she departs. Holmes filed this month to run for the position next year. Several Republicans also are seeking their party’s nomination for auditor in an upcoming primary.