Navajo Nation hosts 'historic' meeting over uranium mines
Take uranium contamination off our lands, residents tell nuclear regulatory commissioners

NEW MEXICO IN DEPTH
APR 26, 2022

"Thank you, @NNPrezNez and Red Water Pond Road Community for hosting us at the Shade House to hear the painful stories of how uranium contamination from abandoned mines has harmed generations of Navajo. It is a shameful legacy of federal actions during the Cold War." (Jeff Baran via Twitter)

The gale-force winds that swept across New Mexico on Friday, driving fires and evacuations, gave Diné residents in a small western New Mexico community an opportunity to demonstrate first hand the danger they live with every day.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission members were in the Red Water Pond Road community, about 20 minutes northeast of Gallup, to hear local input on a controversial plan to clean up a nearby abandoned uranium mine.

It was the first visit anyone could recall by NRC commissioners to the Navajo Nation, where the agency regulates four uranium mills. Chairman Christopher Hanson called the visit historic, and the significance was visible with Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and other Navajo officials in attendance.

As commissioners listened to 20 or so people give testimony over several hours Friday afternoon, high winds battered the plastic sheeting hung on the sides of the Cha’a’oh, or shade house, making it hard for some in the audience of many dozens to hear all that was said

“This is like this everyday,” community member Annie Benally told commissioners, mentioning the dust being whipped around outside by the wind. “They say it’s clean, it’s ok. But we have more piles back there and you see it blowing this way.”

Benally was referring to piles of contaminated radioactive soil and debris at two adjacent abandoned uranium mines. One mine is near enough to the shade house that its gate is visible.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to move some of that waste to a mill site regulated by the NRC, where contaminated groundwater is still being cleaned up. To drive north of Church Rock to the Red Water Pond Road community is to appreciate how close that mill site is to the surrounding community. It sits one mile south of the shade house, on private land but right next to a highway driven every day by local residents.

Read the entire special report: ‘At the Crossroads’

Day 1
— ‘Stealth’ economy for tribes hides billions in rural jobs, growth and revenue
Day 2
— Tribes contemplate future beyond casinos
— Cleanup of abandoned uranium mines means jobs
— Sports team provides economic boost for OK tribe
Day 3
— Renewable energy: Jobs of the future
— ‘Reservation worthy’ cattle operation expands tribal enterprise
— Work Penalties: Why jobs can cost more than being unemployed
Day 4
— Boom or bust: Oil industry hits North Dakota
— Green energy’s hidden costs spark opposition+
— Working Together: Tribal partnerships bring regional jobs

After Friday afternoon’s listening session, the federal commissioners conducted a public meeting in Gallup in the evening where they heard from EPA officials. The NRC is expected to decide in June whether or not to permit the EPA to move the mine debris to the mill.

The swirling dust outside was a consistent theme during the Friday afternoon session as residents described a generational struggle with significant health risks from uranium contamination.

“I’m glad we don’t have air sampling going, because that might scare some people,” said Dariel Yazzie, head of the Navajo Nation EPA Superfund program.

Yazzie connected the swirling dust outside to historic uranium exposure experienced by residents. Prior to running water being made available to them, people used to haul water in open containers, he said.



“Guess what? You’re sitting there with a little bit of dust on you," he said. "Everything had dust on it. Where does that dust come from? Right behind us.”

Residents described growing up playing in contaminated landscapes, drinking water from mine sites, not told that it was dangerous. Commissioners heard about the worry parents feel about whether their children are safe playing outside. Others implored commissioners to help speed up the cleanup process, which has taken decades, as health impacts like cancer and lung disease, which have stretched across generations, continue.

“This is not right, it brings anger,” Benally said about decades of living with the contamination. “I’m 64 years old now, when they first came I was only 12. How long are we going to stay here, and plead and cry.”

She urged commissioners to save the dust on them so that when they’re back home they’ll remember.

The multiple hours of testimony concluded with remarks by Nez, who put a point on the message residents were sending: the mining waste should be moved completely outside of their community.

“This is what the Navajo people live with, just imagine 500 open uranium mines on a windy day,” Nez said. “The Navajo people in this area have lived with this for a very long time, so we plead with you, I plead with you, let’s get this waste, and get it way far away from the Navajo Nation.”

The EPA cleanup plan wouldn’t move the contamination far, though, just to the nearby mill site. At the public meeting Friday evening, NRC commissioner Jeff Baran asked San Francisco-based EPA Region 9 Superfund and Emergency Management Director Michael Montgomery whether there are other disposal locations outside Indian Country but still reasonably close.

Montgomery said current law only allows the EPA to go so far. It can’t site or create facilities for disposal, or ask a private party to do it either, he said. The agency is working to identify locations on federal land for other mine cleanups, Montgomery said, but for the Church Rock area there are no easy solutions for taking the waste out of Indian Country. Should the NRC not approve the current plan, the agency would be at an “impasse” that would take years to move beyond, he said.

Montgomery suggested that Navajo aspirations to remove all uranium mine waste from their land would be difficult to achieve by the EPA alone. “If the solution for all the mines is to take all the waste off of tribal land, it’s going to require a dialogue that’s possibly outside our authority,” he said.

Montgomery’s answers seemed to confound Baran. “Would EPA proceed with the mill site option if the community it is meant to benefit opposes it?” he asked.

“There are a lot of perspectives within the community,” Montgomery said. “You can’t always get everyone to agree.”

Nez challenged those remarks later in the meeting after Baran asked him if he wanted to respond to any of Montgomery’s comments.

“I’ve heard 100 percent of my Navajo relatives there say they didn’t want the waste. So I’m just wondering who are these individuals who can’t agree?” he asked.

Indigenous climate efforts vital to fight against environmental destruction

The Land Back movement has become a climate justice tool for activists.

ByKiara Alfonseca

28 April 2022, 

When the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, hundreds of thousands of acres of water were threatened.

The 1989 spill, considered one of the most devastating environmental disasters in U.S. history, destroyed the livelihood of local Indigenous fishermen, local food sources, as well as the natural habitats of local fish, whale and bird species.

"The thing about the oil spill that a lot of people don't realize is that was like climate change happening to us overnight," said Dune Lankard, the founder of the Native Conservancy. The organization was born out of the devastation that the spill caused to the local economy and ecosystem.

The group was created by Lankard to protect the region from further devastation by corporate development. He's just one of the many environmentalists who argue that Indigenous traditions and tools can turn the tide on climate injustice through the Land Back movement.

Indigenous people make up less than 5% of the world population, however, they have protected 80% of the Earth's biodiversity for centuries, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

However, climate change and environmental injustices continue to threaten vulnerable populations, including Indigenous tribes. To combat this looming threat, Lankard and his team have cultivated rich kelp mariculture farms, which Lankard calls the "waterkeepers" of the ocean.

Native Conservancy

Lankard and his team have cultivated rich kelp mariculture farms, which Lankard calls th...

He says kelp farming not only supplies a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but it has the ability to pull in and remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

According to a panel by the science research nonprofit Energy Futures Initiative, kelp farms can sequester up to nine billion metric tons of carbon per year, essentially reversion the effects of climate change.

It's become an exciting tool for climate activists and scientists alike in taking the fight against environmental destruction back into their own hands.

The more land and water Indigenous people can conserve and repair, the more they can implement climate-saving strategies such as kelp farming.

Native Conservancy

Kelp farming presents a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but...

"What people have to do is: they have to organize, we have to direct their energy, their time, money or love in whatever direction they may need to, in order to save the last of the wild places that are not only dear to them, but they need in order to survive," Lankard said.

What is the Land Back Movement?

The Land Back movement is a widespread, Indigenous-led effort to return land to Indigenous tribes to conserve, restore and revitalize important landscapes and biodiversity.

"We are calling for the return of land and putting it into indigenous land management or governance, so that we can really have indigenous-led conservation," Jade Begay, the climate justice campaign director at the Indigenous activist group NDN Collective, said.

99% of Indigenous lands have been taken from tribes over the development of modern-day America, according to 2021 findings in the Science Journal.

The research also found that the lands Indigenous people have been forcibly moved to are more likely to be at high risk to the ongoing effects of climate change.

The decentralized movement demands that tribes be able to manage environmental efforts on ancestral lands, efforts that can halt or reverse negative climate impacts.

Land Back has already begun to be successful. The government has begun to return and repatriate Native and Indigenous land to tribes.

The Rappahannock Tribe recently reacquired roughly 465 acres at Fones Cliffs in Virginia.

Native Conservancy

Dune Lankard, the founder of the Native Conservancy, runs a kelp farm. Kelp can seques...

Fones Cliffs is not only the ancestral land of the tribe, but also an important region for resident and migratory bald eagles and other birds. It's home to one of the largest nesting populations of bald eagles on the Atlantic coast.

Now that the land has been reacquired, they hope to create trails and a replica 16th-century village to educate visitors about Rappahannock history and conservation efforts, as well as train tribal youth in traditional river knowledge.

"We look at the Mother Earth as our mother, and what would you do to harm your mother?" said Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe.

"The work that I've done to get land back on the Rappahannock River is to teach the public how to think the way we think, how to utilize the incredible value systems that have kept our people sustaining on this land for 11,000 years."

The work of the Eyak people, the Rappahannock Tribe and more Indigenous groups seek to align with the goals of climate scientists as they continue the dire fight against a changing climate.

Climate fears grow

The most recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions will need to peak by 2025 at the latest, and steeply reduce thereafter, to prevent worsening impacts on the climate.

Right now, countries are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the conservative figure established by the Paris Agreement.

The report named a wide range of solutions to reduce global emissions, including reducing fossil fuel use; large-scale renewable energy resourcing; improving energy efficiency; and reducing methane and carbon emissions drastically.

Native Conservancy

Kelp farming presents a valuable food source and business opportunities for tribes, but...

"If we wanted to really expedite and be efficient about decarbonization, honoring indigenous rights, honoring, calls to action for Land Back will really push us to meet those climate targets to meet that target of keeping temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees," Begay said.

Some of the efforts of the Land Back movement, which include water filtration, carbon sequestering and wildfire management can tap into the IPCC's recommendations.

"I love it when tribal values and traditions validate what the professional scientists have found," Richardson said. "It's important for the tribes to be in the care of and to be able to train and teach the public on how to really care for the land and all of our natural resources."

Much like the Eyak and Rappahannock Tribes, Indigenous groups across the country have already begun to do the work on the ground to save the planet -- one river, cliff, or forest at a time.

Land Back as a climate justice solution

The impacts of the oil spill into the Copper River have yet to be completely resolved more than 30 years later.

Lankard called the $2 billion cleanup effort by Exxon after the oil spill "a dog and pony show."

"Once the oil spill -- any oil spill -- hits the water, the war is over. You've lost. There's no way you can clean it up," said Lankard.

"The best thing you could possibly do is get environmental laws in place and preventive measures that will actually protect the environment," he said.

He says efforts like the Land Back movement can prevent such disasters. Following the spill, Alaskan Natives were able to take control of and preserve more than a million acres of wild salmon habitat along the Gulf of Alaska coastline.

In the meantime, kelp farming has helped bolster the local economy thwarted by the oil spill, as well as provided an environmental element.

Kelp farming is just one of many traditional practices used in environmental justice efforts, joining methods like oyster cultivation for natural water filtration or fire management methods of burning land to reduce grass fuel and limit wildfires.

"We want to figure out how we can be a part of this new emerging regenerative industry and we don't get owned by the corporations in this next 150 years," Lankard said.

"They're going to use all the fun words like conservation and restoration and mitigation and say that they're the ones that are helping save the ocean when they're the ones who got us into this mess in the first place," Lankard said.

The US Supreme Court Weighs Another Historic Shift on Tribal Sovereignty

The high court's ruling in a 2020 case upended Oklahoma's relationship with Indian country. Now, the justices are considering an even bigger step.

SCOTT J. FERRELL/GETTY IMAGES

Matt Ford/April 28, 2022
INDIAN COUNTRY

The Supreme Court often decides cases that affect everyday life for Americans. But few of its recent decisions have matched the real-world impact of McGirt v. Oklahoma, which recognized the continued existence of tribal reservations to the eastern half of the state after a century of abeyance; it was one of the most significant legal victories for Native Americans in recent memory. Now, the high court has another such matter to ponder: In its latest case on tribal sovereignty, the court may be poised to change who can prosecute crimes in Indian country through the entire United States.

Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta is a sequel of sorts to the court’s landmark ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma two years ago, as well as a wholly new dispute over the relationship between state and tribal sovereignty. In McGirt, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had never actually disestablished the reservations of Native American tribes in eastern Oklahoma in the years leading up to Oklahoma’s statehood. As a result, roughly half the state officially became Indian country once again. The 5-4 decision brought Justice Neil Gorsuch together with the court’s four liberals at the time.

Recognizing eastern Oklahoma as Indian country affected a wide range of legal questions. In McGirt, the question at hand was criminal jurisdiction. Jimcy McGirt, that case’s namesake, had been convicted by an Oklahoma state jury of committing serious sexual crimes. Both he and his victim were tribal members. Under federal law, certain major crimes committed by one tribal member against another tribal member in Indian country must be prosecuted by the federal government, not the states. McGirt received a new life sentence from a federal judge last year after the Justice Department took over his case.

Victor Castro-Huerta, the current case’s namesake, also found his own criminal case affected by the McGirt ruling. An Oklahoma state jury convicted him of child neglect for his maltreatment of his five-year-old stepdaugher, who is legally blind and has cerebral palsy. The Supreme Court decided McGirt while he was appealing his case on other grounds. After learning that Castro-Huerta’s stepdaughter was an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and that it had occurred in Indian country, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals vacated his conviction. Oklahoma unsuccessfully argued that it had concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute him, an argument it had explicitly disclaimed in the McGirt litigation, in addition to the federal jurisdiction. Castro-Huerta soon thereafter pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors for the same offense and received a seven-year prison sentence.

Top Oklahoma officials, including Governor Kevin Stitt, have argued that McGirt has upended the state’s criminal-justice system by throwing numerous state-court convictions and sentences into doubt. The state first asked Congress to intervene in its favor without success, then urged the Supreme Court to overturn McGirt. It would be virtually unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn one of its own decisions so soon after it was decided. Oklahoma officials have pointed to data that they believe would justify the court’s about-face: In their petition for review in Castro-Huerta, for example, the state claimed that the 2020 ruling that state prosecutors had lost jurisdiction over more than 18,000 prosecutions each year.

Those numbers, however, have come under scrutiny. Journalists Rebecca Nagle and Allison Herrera, writing earlier this month in The Atlantic, found a “gap” of only 1,000 prosecutions since the McGirt, which they said could be attributed to the pandemic’s general impact on arrests and prosecutions. In most other instances, federal and tribal prosecutors have brought new charges in their respective courts as those offenses shifted to their jurisdictions. Nagle and Herrera found only 33 instances where a state prisoner was released without further charges because of McGirt, a far lower number than state officials had hinted at in their public comments.

When it urged the justices to take up the Castro-Huerta case, Oklahoma also asked the Supreme Court to consider overturn McGirt. The justices declined to take up that question and instead stuck to the jurisdictional question. While McGirt focused on crimes in Indian country where both the offender and victim were tribal members, Castro-Huerta is about crimes in Indian country where the offender was non-Indian and the victim was a tribal member. (States have jurisdiction when both sides are non-Indian, even on tribal land.)

For the tribes and the Justice Department, the answer to this question is pretty straightforward: jurisdiction falls to the federal government under the federal General Crimes Act, which explicitly extends the prosecution of “general” federal crimes to Indian country. That law reflects a principle dating back to the Supreme Court’s 1832 ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, which stripped states of their jurisdiction over crimes involving tribal members in Indian country.

In everyday practice, criminal jurisdiction in Indian country is often the result of complex compromises struck between Congress, the states, and tribal governments over the past two centuries. In some states, the tribes allow state prosecutors to try cases on their lands rather than do it themselves. In others, the tribal governments exercise that power for most offenses and leave major crimes to the feds. “[Oklahoma] invites this Court to undo those choices, upend Congress’s scheme, and jettison an understanding settled for 75 years or more—all to create by judicial fiat sweeping criminal liability without precedent since the Founding,” Castro-Huerta told the justices in his brief for the court.

Oklahoma, for its part, cited two Supreme Court cases from 1882 and 1896 that suggested that the states could exercise criminal jurisdiction and argued that the federal government had not explicitly pre-empted it. “While the holdings in those cases were limited to crimes committed against non-Indians, their reasoning sweeps more broadly and supports the exercise of jurisdiction when the defendant is a non-Indian and the victim is an Indian,” the state claimed

The hiccup here is that the General Crimes Act appears to preempt state prosecution, stating that “the general laws of the United States as to the punishment of offenses committed in any place within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, except the District of Columbia, shall extend to the Indian country.” Oklahoma argued that when Congress said “sole and exclusive jurisdiction,” it actually just “identifies only the body of criminal law borrowed and applied to Indian country; it does not describe federal jurisdiction in Indian country itself.”

In Wednesday’s oral arguments, the justices who were members of the McGirt majority appeared unconvinced by Oklahoma’s claims, pointing to later rulings and long-established practice that belied the stance attributed to the two late-19th century cases. “This Court has indicated six times that you are wrong,” Justice Elena Kagan told Kannon Shanmugam, who argued on behalf of Oklahoma. “Congress has indicated that you are wrong given its consistent enactment of statutes that make no sense in light of your position, Public Law 280 and the state-specific ones. The executive branch has said that you are wrong in all but one decade. You know, you’re asking us to do a big lift on the basis of language that, as I say, seems to me more naturally read against you.”

Gorsuch, the author of McGirt, noted that state governments historically had a track record of “abusing Indian victims in their courts,” which shaped how the federal government structured the jurisdictional relationships. “George Washington wrote letters about this at the outset of the nation’s history,” he recounted. “In the 1920s, Oklahoma systematically used its state courts to deprive Indians of their property when oil was discovered on their lands. There’s a long history of this.” Gorsuch also noted that the treaties signed between the United States and the Oklahoma tribes had effectively promised them that they wouldn’t be placed under state jurisdiction because of the tragic history there.

The justices who dissented from McGirt, by comparison, appeared more sympathetic to Oklahoma’s stance. Justice Samuel Alito questioned Erwin Kneedler, who argued on behalf of the Justice Department in the tribes’ favor, why state and federal jurisdiction wouldn’t be more beneficial for crime victims than exclusive state jurisdiction. Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh also appeared to favor their interpretation of the laws and precedents.

Predicting outcomes from oral arguments is always tricky, and the remaining two justices did not help matters. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the only member who didn’t take part in McGirt, did not clearly tip her hand in her questions for the parties. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote a rare dissent in McGirt, implicitly chastised Oklahoma for invoking McGirt’s consequences so often in their arguments. “Really, at the end of the day, when you’re talking about McGirt, you’re really just waving a bloody shirt,” he told Shanmugam. “It doesn’t have any direct pertinence on the legal analysis here.” At the same time, some of his questions to Castro-Huerta’s lawyer appeared to suggest he might favor Oklahoma’s reading of the General Crimes Act.

In McGirt, the ruling’s impact was limited to Oklahoma and its unique relationship to Native American tribes. A victory for Oklahoma in Castro-Huerta, however, could have broader implications. By expanding state prosecutions on tribal lands, the court could upset the balances struck between Congress, the tribes, and the states for more than a century. In McGirt, it was the state of Oklahoma that wanted to maintain a long-standing status quo. In Castro-Huerta, it’s the tribes’ turn. When it comes to the court’s recent rulings on tribal sovereignty, the only constant thread might be change. A ruling is expected by the end of June.
In Wednesday's oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan did not mince words: “This Court has indicated six times that you are wrong,” she told the state of Oklahoma's attorney.

Matt Ford @fordm  is a staff writer at The New Republic.

U$A

Major corporations quietly funnel millions to national group behind regressive state laws

Judd Legum,
Tesnim Zekeria,

and
Rebecca Crosby
Apr 28


Republican state legislators across the country have embraced an aggressively regressive agenda, targeting the LGBTQ community, abortion access, voting rights, and candid discussions of race in classrooms.

But these legislators are not acting alone. They are backed by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), the “largest organization of Republican state leaders in the country and only national committee whose mission is to recruit, train, and elect Republicans to multiple down-ballot, state level offices.” The RSLC prides itself on “deliver[ing] wins for Republican state legislators” and takes credit for the fact that “Republicans currently hold majorities in 61 of 99 state legislative chambers” across the country.

The RSLC has backed the Republicans responsible for the most radical new laws enacted in 2022. In January, Florida politicians introduced the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, prohibiting any discussion of “sexual orientation or gender identity” through the third grade and any discussion “that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students” in other grades. The bill passed the Florida Senate on March 8. Less than three weeks later, on March 25, the RSLC donated $100,000 to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. The RSLC also donated $100,000 to the Florida Republican Majority Fund on February 22, the same week the Florida House passed the legislation.

The bill was signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) on March 28. The RSLC has praised DeSantis for “ensuring FREEDOM for anyone moving to the Sunshine State.”

This is not an isolated incident. According to the Charlotte Observer, when legislators in North Carolina worked to pass House Bill 2 in 2017, which required “transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate in government buildings,” the RSLC “spent $850,000 on behalf” of former Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest (R), a “vocal HB2 supporter.”

The RSLC also supports the politicians behind abortion bans. In September 2021, Republicans in Texas passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the country, prohibiting all abortions after six weeks. On February 15, 2022, the RSLC gave $135,000 to the Associated Republicans of Texas, a non-profit “committed to maintaining the Republican majority in the Texas Legislature.”

During the 2018 election cycle, “the RSLC spent roughly $1.2 million” supporting Republican candidates in Georgia, according to the Center for Political Accountability. The following year, Georgia “GOP lawmakers passed a near-total abortion ban,” that was ultimately struck down by a federal court. The RSLC does not keep this agenda a secret. In 2019, the RSLC tweeted this quote: “... [S]tate legislative races, which are often overlooked by voters…can shape the course of policy from abortion rights to education.”

When it comes to education, the RSLC has been seeking to ban candid discussions of race in schools. Critical Race Theory is a “graduate-level academic framework” which explores “laws, policies, and procedures that function to produce racial inequality.” In nearly every school district in the country, CRT is not part of the K-12 curriculum. The RSLC however, claims that “CRT is dangerous” to K-12 students.

Republican State Leadership Committee @RSLCRadical schoo

l boards and Democrats are taking their cues from special interests groups and activists. But, parents are showing up to make their voices heard — CRT is dangerous. Republicans are listening to parents. Dems are ignoring them.


June 23rd 202110 Retweets24 Likes

In December, the RSLC praised Florida Republicans for “looking to ban critical race theory in schools” and “ensuring that students are in class to learn, not to be indoctrinated with divisive, politicized curriculum.”

The RSLC has also publicly supported voter suppression efforts across the country. In 2020, the RSLC supported a proposal in Georgia that would “end no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia,” “ban drop boxes,” and make voter ID for absentee ballots mandatory.
Republican State Leadership Committee @RSLCGeorgia Senate Republicans have vowed to: ✅ Ban 'At-Will' Absentee Voting ✅ Outlaw Ballot Drop Boxes ✅ Require Voter ID for Absentee Ballots We must have election integrity! times-georgian.com/villa_rican/ge…

December 12th 202021 Retweets85 Likes

In 2021, the RSLC launched its “Commission on Voting Integrity.” The goal of the Commission is “to roll back changes to voting procedures put in place during the pandemic.” The Commission website reads: “Democrats in 2020 used the pandemic to alter election laws in their favor – now they want to make those changes permanent.” In May 2021, Popular Information obtained a presentation from the RSLC’S “Election Integrity Committee,” which included proposals to suppress voting, including purging voter lists, imposing more stringent voter ID requirements, and targeting voting centers.

So far in 2022, the RSLC has received million in funding from major corporations — many of which claim to oppose the policies the RSLC supports.
Anthem: $200,000 to the RSLC

Anthem says it has “long understood how social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors impact women’s health and well-being.” On International Women’s Day last year, the company invited everyone to join them in “removing the health disparities that reduce positive outcomes for women.” This call was part of their #ChooseToChallenge gender bias and inequality initiative.

The health insurer also claims to be fierce advocates of racial justice. Last year, the company launched a National Health Equity Strategy to “confront the nation’s crisis in racial health disparities.” In a 2021 report, Anthem found that “racial disparities impact women of color across all socio-economic levels” and called for “a multi-system approach that considers interpersonal, institutional and structural racism.”
Anthem, Inc. @AnthemIncOur new research suggests racial disparities impact women of color across all socio-economic levels. A multi-system approach that considers interpersonal, institutional and structural racism is needed to reduce these disparities. Learn what we’re doing to drive change.

April 22nd 202151 Retweets101 Likes

When it comes to LGBTQ+ issues, Anthem believes it is “vital” that LGBTQ+ patients have access to quality healthcare. During Pride Month last year, the company encouraged the public to “celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life” and “advocate for their rights.” Anthem also boasts of its free training for healthcare providers who want to learn how to “create an LGBT-friendly practice”––an initiative it launched to address the LGBT health disparities gap.

Yet, so far in 2022, Anthem donated $200,000 to the RSLC, supporting legislators who are pushing for regressive policies.

Anthem did not respond to a request for comment.
Walmart: $65,000 to the RSLC

Walmart believes that "[e]mpowering women creates shared value: it’s good for society, and it’s good for business."
Walmart Inc. @WalmartIncWe’re proud to be among the 230 companies selected to the @Bloomberg 2019 Gender-Equality Index! Empowering women creates shared value: it’s good for society, and it’s good for business. bloom.bg/2Co5dL9#BloombergGEIBloomberg - Are you a robot?bloom.bg

January 16th 201927 Retweets72 Likes

The company claims it is "committed to providing opportunities for women inside and outside of Walmart to grow and achieve their goals while creating a more inclusive and innovative workplace, resilient supply chain and thriving communities."

It also says it will “continue to focus on inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community.”

Walmart also purports to be a champion of voting rights. The company touted that its CEO, Doug McMillon, was actively involved in drafting the Business Roundtable’s statement on voting rights, which declared that “​​unnecessary restrictions on the right to vote strike at the heart of representative government.” A spokesperson told Business Insider that the letter “affirms that the right to vote and the integrity of our elections are cornerstones of our democracy.”

But the company donated $75,000 to the RSLC so far in 2022, a group that seeks to ban abortions, attack LGBTQ rights, and limit voting access.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.
Eli Lilly: $40,000 to the RSLC

Last year, when Indiana legislators introduced a bill that would tighten mail-in voting by requiring a photo ID, drugmaker Eli Lilly spoke out.

“Our belief is that we should do everything in our power as a Hoosier-based company to make it easier for people to exercise that fundamental right to be heard and we will work against any effort that makes exercising that right more difficult,” Eli Lilly Senior Vice President Stephen Fry said.

According to Fry, the bill would “confer acceptance of a widespread falsehood that there is something to be questioned about the outcome of last year’s election.”

Currently, “Election Integrity”–– a euphemism for new voting restrictions –– is listed as one of four focus areas on the RSLC’s website.

Eli Lilly also claims to be committed to “to bringing people and organizations together to acknowledge racial inequity in its many forms and create a call to action for lasting change.” In 2020, the company launched a Racial Justice Commitment to “confront racial inequities head on.”

Previously, the company has asserted that “Lilly's value of Respect for People and #LGBTQ pride go hand in hand.”
Eli Lilly and Company @LillyPadLilly's value of Respect for People and #LGBTQ pride go hand in hand. Learn about our PRIDE employee resource group and how they're cultivating a community of inclusion. #WeAreLilly #PrideMonth


June 15th 201811 Retweets23 Likes

Nevertheless, Eli Lilly donated $40,000 to the RSLC so far in 2022.

Eli Lilly did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $250,000 to the RSLC

In 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest lobbying group, has given the RSLC $250,000. In 2020, the Chamber was the largest donor to the RSLC. The Chamber’s membership consists of nearly every prominent corporation in this country.

According to its website, the Chamber believes that “the business community is a powerful voice and network that can drive LGBT inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment.” In 2019, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation published a report stating that “standing up for employees and the community in the face of anti-LGBT legislation is paramount to being inclusive.”

“When a company matches its public and private positions on LGBT inclusion, it demonstrates its authenticity about LGBT inclusion,” the report read.

In another report, titled “The Business Case for Racial Equity,” the Chamber stresses “the importance of racial equity as both an imperative for social justice and a strategy for economic growth.” Following the death of George Floyd, the Chamber said that it “stand[s] in solidarity against racism and advocate[s] for diversity, equity, and inclusion in our society and economy.”

But the Chamber’s donations to the RSLC bankroll legislators who are behind bills that attack LGBTQ+ rights and restrict how we can talk about race and racism.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.

Other prominent corporate donors to the RSLC include Altria ($300,000), Koch Industries ($225,000), GlaxoSmithKline ($75,000), Disney ($60,000, in-kind), Bayer ($50,000), Nationwide ($50,000), T-Mobile ($50,000), Uber ($50,000), Google ($30,000), 3M ($25,000), eBay ($25,000), Charter Communications ($20,000), PepsiCo ($15,000), MolsonCoors ($10,000), Mastercard ($5,000) and Wendy’s ($5,000). None of the companies responded to Popular Information’s requests for comment.

From the Pilgrims to QAnon: Christian nationalism is the "asteroid coming for democracy"

Scholar Samuel Perry says the myth of a "Christian nation" has distorted American history from 1690 to Trump

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED APRIL 29, 2022 

John Eliot, (1604-1690), American Puritan minister and missionary, 

preaching to the Algonquian Indians. 

(Bettmann/Getty Images)


If the New York Times' "1619 Project" and Donald Trump's 1776 Commission mark two defining moments in American history, as well as opposite sides of an ideological chasm, a new book by sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry identifies a third defining moment. It's not a new proposed founding, but rather an "inflection point," the moment when the nation's history could have gone in another direction.

In "The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy," Gorski and Perry argue that in the years around 1690 — when Puritan colonists began envisioning their battles against Native Americans as an apocalyptic holy war to secure a new Promised Land, when Southern Christians began to formulate a theological justification for chattel slavery — a new national mythology was born. That mythology is the "deep story" of white Christian nationalism: the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, blessed by God and imbued with divine purpose, but also under continual threat from un-American and ungodly forces, often in the form of immigrants or racial minorities.

The result was an ethnic nationalism sanctified by religion as it established a new "holy trinity" of "freedom, order and violence," meted out variously to in-groups and out.

RELATED: How this tiny Christian college is driving the right's nationwide war against public schools

When rioters driven by that vision broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they were just reenacting a story that has been told in this country for centuries. But it's a story that again threatens to "topple American democracy" unless, Gorski and Perry write, a new "united front" is formed to defend it.

Perry spoke with Salon this April.

You describe white Christian nationalism as the "San Andreas Fault" of American politics.

We see America torn apart by an authoritarian populism that was characteristic of Trump's movement, which distrusts any opinion not tied to the nationalist leader. There's a lot of distrust for experts, even medical experts when it came to COVID, in favor of somebody like Trump or organizations that put a conservative slant on all news related to politics, COVID, immigration, Muslims, all those things. So when we say white Christian nationalism is the San Andreas Fault, we mean it is a thread running through all of our current conflicts.

And the implication that we're waiting for the big one.

Rather than seeing Jan. 6 as a fringe event and the religious symbols seen there as puzzling, we see it as an eruption of forces that have been building for a long time.

Exactly. We all observed the events that took place on Jan. 6 with horror and shock, but there's this puzzling juxtaposition of images from that day: violent chaos, suffused with Christian symbolism. There are "Jesus Saves" signs and Christian flags and a prayer in Jesus' name in the Senate chamber. Rather than see that event as fringe and those religious symbols as puzzling, we believe Jan. 6 should be thought of as an eruption of forces that have been building for a long, long time.

I appreciated the book's long historical view: You weren't just focusing on Jan. 6, but looking to the past to understand this idea of the "deep story" behind contemporary Christian nationalism.

From our perspective today, the white Christian nationalist deep story is that we as a country have our roots in white Anglo-Protestant culture, and that's what made us prosperous and successful. In the colonial era, we wouldn't have called it white Christian nationalism, but it would have tied together all the same elements: race, religion and nation. In the time of the Puritans, it could be called white Protestant Britishism: that the people to whom the land rightly belongs are white as opposed to Native American, Protestant as opposed to Catholic or any indigenous religious group, British as opposed to French or certainly the nations of Native Americans. White Christian nationalism in that form was just as exclusive, just as brutal, even apocalyptic in its thrust.

Manifestations of white Christian nationalism have ebbed and flowed throughout America's history, and usually they ebb and flow in response to threats against the ethno-cultural majority. Sometimes the enemies change. Early on it was Native Americans; later it was the French and Roman Catholics. At different times it was Asians and certainly Black Americans who were the out-group. Starting in the mid-20th century, it was socialists and all things associated with communism — which is racialized but also religious, because communists and socialists are thought to be godless. So all throughout American history, you see this tying together of race, religion and nation in the boundaries of who is and is not truly American. Who is not changes in response to the enemies. But the in-group is almost always the same. It's white, Christian and those who are either born in the U.S. or at least "belong" here as part of the dominant ethnic group.

The book includes a lot of original data research that's often absent from these conversations. What were some of your most surprising or compelling findings?

One thing we really wanted to contribute is to operationalize this thing called Christian nationalism and see how it plays in response to various issues. We collected all this national data over the last two years that allowed us to track national events — the election, COVID, George Floyd's and Ahmaud Arbery's murders, all these different factors. One of the most surprising findings is how differently Christian nationalism works for white and Black Americans, how stark the contrast is to the same questions. When African Americans hear the language of "Christian values" or "Christian nation," either it doesn't change their attitudes at all or they seem to think aspirationally about the country America should have been, but never was. When white Americans hear that language, they seem to think nostalgically about a time when the right people ruled and the right culture dominated.

I was also not only shocked but discouraged at how Christian nationalist ideology shaped responses when we asked who Americans went to for information about COVID. White Christian nationalism was powerfully associated with rejecting everybody's opinion about COVID-19 except for Donald Trump's.

I was also taken aback by how powerfully Christian nationalist ideology was associated with responses to the Capitol insurrection. White Christian nationalism powerfully predicted people blaming the violence on antifa or Black Lives Matter and placing none of the blame on Trump. We saw even a correlation between Christian nationalist ideology and supporting the rioters or being reluctant to say they should be prosecuted.

Christian nationalist ideology strongly predicted people blaming the violence of Jan. 6 on antifa or Black Lives Matter, and placing none of the blame on Donald Trump.

The association between Christian nationalist ideology and violence used for political purposes is one of the more sobering findings. We've collected more recent data since we finished the book, and there is a quite linear association between affirming Christian nationalist ideology and believing that things have gotten so far off track that true patriots may have to resort to physical violence. This is an ideology that doesn't just acknowledge violence as a possibility but in some ways actually affirms it as the way to get things done in our society.

White Christian nationalism supports the idea that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun; it affirms the use of torture if it means national security; it affirms that police should be able to use any means necessary to maintain law and order. There seems to be this powerful connection between Christian nationalist ideology and support for violence to accomplish political goals, and often that means to control "problem populations."

You describe a "holy trinity" within white Christian nationalism of freedom, order and violence.

White Christian nationalism seems to be characterized by a libertarian mindset that's only applied to the inside group. The ideology powerfully predicted a belief that we need to protect the economy rather than the vulnerable during COVID and that socialism is anathema — actually, that socialists are the worst. White Christian nationalism predicts antipathy towards atheists and Muslims, but socialists are the real demonized group, because socialism represents everything that is leftist or "anti-American." It is not only an economic threat, but a cultural, ethnic and religious threat.

White Christian nationalism advocates for maximum freedom for our group. But there is also this connection between authoritarian violence and social order. Christian nationalism wants order in the form of hierarchies. Men on top. Whites on top. Christians on top. Heterosexuals on top. And any threats to that order are met with justified, righteous, good-guy violence. That is what we saw on Jan. 6: the justification of righteous violence in taking back our country from, in the words of the QAnon Shaman, "the tyrants, the communists and the globalists," and showing them "this is our nation, not theirs." So there is this kind of holy trinity: Freedom for us, order for everybody else. And when that order is violated, they get the violence.

You include a number of historical examples of how this played out, long before Jan. 6, at various times in American history, including in the post-Reconstruction era and through lynchings, which you describe as the "high mass" of white Christian nationalism. Why is violence such an important element?

A thread through our narrative is this metaphor of blood. White Christian Americans' place in the cosmos and in our country has always been interpreted through the idea of blood purity — that we are distinct and superior people. There is also the idea of bloody conquest: that America is out there and the land is ours and we are justified in using violence to take what God has given us. Then there is this idea of bloody apocalypse — that violence is an inevitable part of the story, that there is a cosmic struggle going on that will involve us going to war against evil forces who try to take away what God has given us.

One thing we try to underscore is that Americans gripped by the white Christian nationalist deep story see violence as inevitable. Christian nationalism doesn't seem to be too strongly associated with violence for its own sake. But violence in the service of our group and of control is what white Christian nationalism is about — not a celebration of it, but an endorsement of violence as a tool to maintain order and maximize our freedom and power.

Tell me about the idea behind "The Spirit of 1690" and where that fits into the narrative battle between "The 1619 Project" and Trump's 1776 Commission.

The 1776 project is one narrative of America's past: this whitewashed story where Anglo-Protestant values are the secret to our national prosperity, and yes, slavery was real, but it was an aberration. Obviously, "The 1619 Project" has a completely different narrative that sees slavery and white supremacy as a constant thread throughout our history, and that we as a nation were set on the trajectory of white supremacy because our roots are founded in it.

We take a slightly different approach from "The 1619 Project." We see contingency. We see opportunities throughout America's history where oppression could have been lifted. And yet we decided not to go in that direction but to continue to live according to this white Christian nationalist mythology. And of course, different from the 1776 project, we believe that white supremacy has been a constant thread throughout our nation's history, not one that had to be, but one we chose again and again and again.

Much of this mythology involves white Christian nationalism framing itself in a position of victimhood.

White evangelicals — the group most beholden to Christian nationalist ideology — have long been characterized by what sociologist Christian Smith called an idea of "embattlement." They constantly feel they are at war with a surrounding culture that aims to persecute or marginalize them. This is part of the Christian nationalist story, because when you believe your culture is inextricably linked to the state of the nation, and you believe it is not your story but America's story, when you start to see cultural change, you perceive that as an attack on your group.

It used to be that people like Jerry Falwell could look at pornography and say, "That is immoral" and use the language of "filth" or "degradation." America has shifted so profoundly that what Christians on the right now do is to evoke the language of religious freedom — to claim the defensive posture and say, "We are under attack for claiming our moral views." What is happening now is that language of rights or religious freedom is no longer a shield but a sword and a battering ram to slash at your cultural enemies and justify discriminating against certain populations, even in agencies that take money from the government.

It seems that language is also being used to cast voter suppression in defensive terms.

When we surveyed Americans in October 2020, we found that white Christian nationalism was the most powerful predictor that you already thought voter fraud was rampant, that we make it too easy to vote and that you would support hypothetical civics tests in order to vote or disenfranchising certain criminal offenders for life. This paints a picture of white Christian nationalism being fundamentally anti-democratic, that it supports limiting voting access to those who prove worthy — and the people who are worthy are the people like us. If there is a thread tying together today's white Christian nationalists with the founding fathers, it is that only white landowning Anglo-Protestants should be able to vote.

In subsequent surveys, we asked, "Is voting a right or a privilege?" Thankfully, the majority believe that voting is a right, which it is. But we found that white Americans who affirm Christian nationalist ideology are more likely to think voting is not a right, but a privilege. In other words, something we can take away.

The book discusses figures like Christian right revisionist historian David Barton. How has historical misinformation played a role in both getting us to this point as well as the conflicts we're seeing now around education?

One of the things we document is that Christian nationalist theology is powerfully associated not just with believing misinformation about COVID, QAnon or the Capitol insurrection, but about religion in American history. That you believe the Constitution references our obligations to God, which it does not. Or that the First Amendment says Congress can privilege Christianity, which it does not.

For years, we have known that evangelical Christians tend to do poorly on quizzes of scientific knowledge, not because they're ignorant per se, but because when they're asked questions about the Big Bang theory or evolution or even continental drift, they get those answers wrong because of ideology. Not because they don't know what the answer is, but because they intentionally say, "That isn't the way it went down." We find the same thing with Christian nationalism: It inclines Americans to affirm answers that paint Christianity as central to American history. Part of that is ideology, but another part is the misinformation put out by agencies like Barton's WallBuilders that contribute to the narrative that America has been evangelical throughout history.

We see the effort to try to control American history in Trump's 1776 Commission, which was led by executives at Hillsdale College, none of whom are professional historians. They threw together this document that is supposed to be a counter to "The 1619 Project," talking about American exceptionalism and slavery as an aberration, but all in all, America is great and here are the reasons why. That is an effort to control the narrative about who we are as a people.

We have always seen this and it's often tied to race. A great recent book, "The Bible Told Them So" by J. Russell Hawkins, argues that there was a segregation theology that motivated white evangelicals in the South. It wasn't just explicit racism, but this interpretation of the Bible that said segregation is good and God wants it that way. Over time, as it became clear they were losing, they developed separate institutions, and separate schools were among them. So in the late '70s, segregation theology started to morph into this "family values" conservatism that was ostensibly about protecting children.

The Christian right has always wanted to control education. How do you scare enough parents? By saying that nefarious elements are infiltrating the schools, and they're going to infect your children.

So you have always seen this move on the Christian right to control education and raise fear about what children are being taught. How do you scare enough parents to be mobilized? By saying that nefarious elements are infiltrating the schools and they're going to infect your children. Within that, you have this push for homeschooling, for vouchers to defund public schools and support privatized education in which parents on the right can raise kids who are white, Christian conservatives, and you can maybe stave off the forces of secularization and diversity.

Toward the end of the book, you write about how other camps on the right, like Catholic integrationists and post-liberals, are also advancing ideologies complementary to white Christian nationalism. Can you talk about that coming together?

What we've seen in the political and religious realignment over the last few decades is the concern that the Christian right is no longer strong enough by themselves to win victories politically. That required them to relax the bounds of who is part of their team. So you see Christian conservatives on the right uniting groups that formerly did not like one another, like Catholics, evangelicals, Mormons and even "pro-Christian" secularists. Increasingly, we can't talk about a Christian right so much as a "pro-Christian right," because Christian identity isn't really necessary anymore. You can be a secular pro-Christian American and think "Christian" is an ethno-cultural category that supports traditional values. All of these identities are on the same team, since what you want is an institutionalization of white Christian ethno-culture and victories for the political right.

Over on the Democratic side, they have nothing close to that. This is why Republicans are a lot stronger as a group than many realize, because they're united around ideology and ethno-religious belief in a way that Democrats are constantly fractured.

Even though we see demographic decline among white Christians, the unity on the right belies the demographic numbers. We also know that Christian nationalist ideology ebbs and flows in response to threats: When you tell white Christians about their imminent demographic decline, they respond with greater Christian nationalism. If you are a savvy politician, you can stoke a Christian nationalist response that mobilizes people in your target audience to collective action.

You also talk about the need for a popular front that could counter white Christian nationalism. What would that look like and what would it require?

I think it will take everybody from never-Trump evangelicals all the way to the secular left. It's going to take concentrated effort to not only name this, but to make sure it can't be institutionalized any further in the name of religious liberty, and that political candidates can't continue to deploy the language of Christian threat without it being called out as dog-whistle language that just means white Christian ethno-culture. It's going to take organizations like the Baptist Joint Committee and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who are already trying to do this, and coalitions of Americans from all kinds of backgrounds to say this is what we're against.

That is difficult. Evangelical Christians, say, are understandably reticent to sign a document alongside people they fundamentally disagree with. Abortion is always going to be a sticking point. But we are confronted with a situation where the stakes may be high enough.

I'll say it this way: COVID should have been the asteroid that united us, but it just polarized us further. But if an asteroid was headed towards Earth, I wouldn't ask the neighbor next to me who they voted for in the last election. We would recognize that the threat is great enough to just focus on defeating this thing. For many Americans, it's going to take a recognition that the threat is that great.

One of the reasons we wanted to write the book is to say: This is the asteroid. This is the thing that is coming for democracy. And we've got to unite to overcome that.

Read more from Kathryn Joyce on religion and the far right:

Marjorie Taylor Greene to right-wing Catholic site: How come "God hasn't destroyed" America?

What is "social emotional learning" — and how did it become the right's new CRT panic?

Kayleigh McEnany wants more "Christian babies": It's an overt call-out to racist paranoia

KATHRYN JOYCE  is an investigative reporter at Salon, and the author of two books: "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption" and "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement."MORE FROM KAT