Biden hails ‘stunning progress’ on Covid but warns Americans: ‘Do not let up now’ – live

The US Interior Department has reversed Trump-era policies governing Native American tribes’ ability to establish and consolidate land trusts.

The department restored jurisdiction to the regional Bureau of Indian Affairs directors to review and approve the transfer of private land into federal trust for tribes. The Trump administration had moved the oversight of the process to the department headquarters.

“Qe have an obligation to work with Tribes to protect their lands and ensure that each Tribe has a homeland where its citizens can live together and lead safe and fulfilling lives,” said Deb Haaland, the first Native American woman to lead the department. “Our actions today will help us meet that obligation and will help empower Tribes to determine how their lands are used – from conservation to economic development projects.”

The agency also reversed several Trump admin rules that hindered or complicated the process for putting land into trust.

The AP explains:

Whether land is in trust has broad implications for whether tribal police can exercise their authority, for tribal economic development projects to attract financing and for the creation of homelands and government offices for tribes that don’t have dedicated land.

The Trump administration put 75,000 acre (30,300 hectares) into trust over four years, versus more than 560,000 acres (226,600 hectares) in the eight years of the Obama administration, Interior officials said.

The trust land system was adopted in 1934, when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in response to more than 90 million acres (36.4 million hectares) of tribal homelands that had been converted into private land under the 1887 Allotment Act.

Approximately 56 million acres (22.7 million hectares) are currently in trust. Combined that’s an area bigger than Minnesota and makes up just over 2 percent of the U.S.

The blog will hand over from the US east coast to the west coast now, where our colleague Maanvi Singh is ready to take you through the next few hours of developing politics news. There’s plenty of it, so please stay tuned.

Main items so far today:

• Joe Biden a little earlier signed an executive order raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour.
• The US president plans to nominate Ed Gonzalez – a Texas sheriff who vocally opposed Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their families – to become the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
• Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to handle the investigation into the police shooting of Andrew Brown, a 42-year-old Black man, in the state last week.
• Earlier this afternoon, Biden spoke outside the White House to hail progress towards ending the coronavirus pandemic, while warning that there was a long way to go. He said people in the US should not “let up” and should definitely get vaccinated ASAP as a patriotic duty.
• This followed new advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully vaccinated people in US can go without masks outdoors except in crowded settings.

Joe Biden a little earlier signed an executive order raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour.

The tweet and the sentiment didn’t go down terribly well with everyone.

The $15 minimum is likely to take effect next year and increase the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers, according to a White House document.

The New York Times has a lot more on this, here, including this:

White House economists believe that the increase will not lead to significant job losses — a finding in line with recent research on the minimum wage — and that it is unlikely to cost taxpayers more money, two administration officials said in a call with reporters. They argued that the higher wage would lead to greater productivity and lower turnover.

And although the number of workers directly affected by the increase is small as a share of the economy, the administration contends that the executive order will indirectly raise wages beyond federal contractors by forcing other employers to bid up pay as they compete for workers.

Paul Light, an expert on the federal work force at New York University, recently estimated that about five million people are working on federal contracts, on which the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to handle the investigation into the police shooting of Andrew Brown, a 42-year-old Black man, in the state last week.

Cooper, a Democrat, put out a statement saying such an appointment would be “in the interest of justice and confidence in the judicial system”.

He said that: “This would help assure the community and Mr Brown’s family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias.”

Demonstrators called this morning for p0lice officers to be arrested, after an independent autopsy arranged by the family concluded that Brown was killed with a bullet that entered the back of his head.

Attorneys for Brown’s family, who were shown only a 20-second clip of police body camera footage yesterday, said in a press conference in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, that the man’s hands were clearly placed on the steering wheel of his car, where police could see him, when they fired at him, and that he was driving away, presenting no threat.

The local North State Journal adds that:

Should the district attorney request a special prosecutor, the potential appointment could come from the North Carolina Attorney General’s Special Prosecution Division, the Administrative Office of the Courts, or the Conference of District Attorneys.

Cooper’s call follows the announcement of an FBI civil rights investigation into the shooting.

There will be a protest march tomorrow over the fatal shooting.

Joe Biden plans to nominate Ed Gonzalez – a Texas sheriff who vocally opposed Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their families – to a key post as the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), the White House has announced.

Gonzalez is a Houston native and a veteran law enforcement officer and Democrat who has served since 2017 as sheriff of Harris county, the most populous county in Texas, Reuters reports.

In a July 2019 Facebook post, Gonzalez said he opposed sweeping immigration raids after Republican former president Donald Trump, a month earlier tweeted hyperbolically that ICE would begin deporting “millions of illegal aliens”.

“I do not support ICE raids that threaten to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom do not represent a threat to the US,” Gonzalez wrote. “The focus should always be on clear & immediate safety threats.”

The nomination would need to be approved by the US Senate, divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties.

Biden campaigned on a pledge to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies. After Biden took office on January 20, his administration placed a 100-day pause on many deportations and greatly limited who can be arrested and deported by ICE.

Biden’s deportation moratorium drew fierce pushback from Republicans and was blocked by a federal judge in Texas days after it went into effect.

Biden announced on April 12 that he would tap Chris Magnus, an Arizona police chief, to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Magnus had criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to force so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

Gonzalez similarly sought to limit ties between local police and federal immigration enforcement. In 2017, he ended Harris County’s participation in a program that increased cooperation between county law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

Here’s another view: