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    Tribes and Students Sue Trump Administration Over Firings at Native Schools

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    A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education.The firings, part of the series of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut thousands of federal jobs since January, included nearly one quarter of the staff members at the only two federally run colleges for Native people in the country: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.Instructors, a basketball coach, and security and maintenance workers were among those who were fired or forced to resign in February. Although the total number of layoffs was not clear on Sunday, the reductions also included employees at the central and regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency. Some staff members, but not all, have been rehired, according to a statement from the Native American Rights Fund, which filed the suit on Friday in federal court in Washington. About 45,000 children are enrolled in bureau-funded schools in 23 states.As a result of the cuts, dozens of courses at the two colleges lost instructors, according to the lawsuit. And because of the loss of support staff and maintenance workers, school dorms were quickly overrun with garbage, students reported undrinkable brown water, dining halls failed to adequately feed students, and widespread power outages hampered students’ ability to study.“Unfortunately, these firings were done without preparation and without regard to the health and safety of the students, and that is a continuation of a history of neglect and disrespect,” Jacqueline De León, a lawyer for the tribes and students, said. “We are here to fight to make sure that it doesn’t continue.”Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit against the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hundreds in Park Service Have Opted to Quit, Agency Memo Says

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      More than 700 National Park Service employees have submitted resignations as part of Elon Musk’s “fork in the road” offer, according to an internal agency memo that critics of the plan said would diminish staffing ahead of the busy summer tourism season.The news of the resignations comes after a decision earlier this month at the Department of Interior to fire more than 1,000 full-time national park employees. According to the new memo sent on Tuesday and viewed by The New York Times, the additional 700 workers who agreed to the resignation plan would not be permitted to work after March 7.The staffing cuts have sparked a public outcry. Conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts and park rangers have warned that the reductions threaten to leave hundreds of national parks understaffed during the busy summer season, and already are causing some parks to reduce hours, cancel tours and close visitor centers.The national park job losses are part of a chaotic effort by President Trump to delete thousands of federal jobs. Adding to the confusion, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said the park service also plans to rehire thousands of workers — albeit as temporary, summer positions.“The National Park Service is hiring seasonal workers to continue enhancing the visitor experience as we embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation in work force management,” Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said in a statement.“We are focused on ensuring that every visitor has the chance to explore and connect with the incredible, iconic spaces of our national parks,” she said.Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group, has said the temporary positions are not a substitute for the employees with years of full-time experience now lost to the park system.She also noted that about 2,000 prospective seasonal employees had their job offers rescinded when Mr. Trump, during his first days in office, imposed a hiring freeze across the government. That freeze compromised the ability to accelerate the process of rehiring those people.During the warm-weather months, as many as 325 million people visit the nation’s 63 national parks and hundreds of historic sites and other attractions managed by the park service.Federal workers received the Trump administration’s resignation offer in an email last month entitled “A Fork in the Road.” Under the offer, employees who accepted it would leave their jobs, but continue getting paid through September — and those who did not accept it risked being fired. According to the Office of Personnel Management, about 75,000 workers across the government have accepted the offer. More

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      Biden Administration Restricts Development in West to Protect Sage Grouse

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      Limits on building energy projects on at least 34.5 million acres could strongly protect the iconic Western bird. But the incoming Trump administration may reverse the rule.The Biden administration on Friday issued final regulations designed to protect the greater sage grouse, a speckled brown bird with a sprawling habitat across 10 Western states.The move to safeguard the iconic species would limit drilling and mining on federal lands as well as the development of clean energy such as solar and wind power.But the plan could soon be upended: President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to increase oil and gas development on public lands, and he sought to weaken sage grouse habitat restrictions in his first term.The conservation effort is part of a long tug of war between environmentalists and the drilling and mining industries over wildlife habitat across the Western states. The habitat of the grouse has shrunk in recent years due to mining and other industrial activity, along with wildfire and drought linked to climate change. Once abundant, the greater sage grouse, a bulbous bird with a fan of tail feathers that nests on the ground, is teetering toward endangered status.The sage grouse population has declined about 80 percent since 1965, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.“For too long, a false choice has been presented for land management that aims to pit development against conservation,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “This administration’s collaborative work has demonstrated that we can do both successfully.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died at Boarding Schools, Interior Dept. Finds

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      An investigative report, which also documents widespread sexual and physical abuse in a program of forced assimilation, calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.”Nearly 1,000 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died while attending boarding schools that were set up by the U.S. government for the purpose of erasing their tribal ties and cultural practices, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Interior Department.“For the first time in the history of the country, the U.S. government is accounting for its role in operating Indian boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indian children, and working to set us on a path to heal from the wounds inflicted by those schools,” Bryan Newland, the department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, wrote this month in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that was included in the report.The report calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.” Its recommendations include creating a national memorial to commemorate the children’s deaths and educate the public; investing in research and helping Native communities heal from intergenerational stress and trauma; and revitalizing Native languages.From the early 1800s to the late 1960s, the U.S. government removed Native children from their families and homes and sent them to boarding schools, where they were forcibly assimilated.It spent nearly $25 billion in today’s dollars on the comprehensive effort, according to the investigative report released on Tuesday, including operating 417 schools across 37 states and territories where children were physically and sexually abused. They were also forcibly converted to Christianity and punished for speaking their Native languages.The report identified by name almost 19,000 children who attended a federal school between 1819 and 1969, though the Interior Department acknowledges there were more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wildlife Protections Take a Back Seat to Elon Musk’s Ambitions

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      As Elon Musk’s Starship — the largest rocket ever manufactured — successfully blasted toward the sky last month, the launch was hailed as a giant leap for SpaceX and the United States’ civilian space program.Two hours later, once conditions were deemed safe, a team from SpaceX, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a conservation group began canvassing the fragile migratory bird habitat surrounding the launch site.The impact was obvious.The launch had unleashed an enormous burst of mud, stones and fiery debris across the public lands encircling Mr. Musk’s $3 billion space compound. Chunks of sheet metal and insulation were strewn across the sand flats on one side of a state park. Elsewhere, a small fire had ignited, leaving a charred patch of park grasslands — remnants from the blastoff that burned 7.5 million pounds of fuel.Most disturbing to one member of the entourage was the yellow smear on the soil in the same spot that a bird’s nest lay the day before. None of the nine nests recorded by the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program before the launch had survived intact.Egg yolk now stained the ground.“The nests have all been messed up or have eggs missing,” Justin LeClaire, a Coastal Bend wildlife biologist, told a Fish and Wildlife inspector as a New York Times reporter observed nearby.The outcome was part of a well-documented pattern.On at least 19 occasions since 2019, SpaceX operations have caused fires, leaks, explosions or other problems associated with the rapid growth of Mr. Musk’s complex in Boca Chica. These incidents have caused environmental damage and reflect a broader debate over how to balance technological and economic progress against protections of delicate ecosystems and local communities. More

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      Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules

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      The American Museum of Natural History is closing two major halls as museums around the nation respond to updated policies from the Biden administration.The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month.Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago covered some display cases, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.But the action by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which draws 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a powerful message to the field. The museum’s anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States, known for doing pioneering work under a long line of curators including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures will leave nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space off-limits to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.“Some objects may never come back on display as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is underway.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Zinke Is Accused of Misleading Interior Dept. Investigators in Casino Inquiry

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      Ryan Zinke, a former interior secretary during the Trump administration, intentionally misled investigators looking into his department’s decision not to act on two Native American tribes’ requests to open a new casino in Connecticut, the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded in a report released on Wednesday.Mr. Zinke, who served as interior secretary from 2017 to 2019, is now the Republican nominee for a congressional seat in Montana. He is widely expected to win the general election this November.The 44-page report on Wednesday focused not on the casino decision itself — litigation over that was resolved separately — but on whether Mr. Zinke and his former chief of staff had been honest about it.Extensive efforts by unnamed lobbyists to persuade Mr. Zinke not to approve the tribes’ applications, as well as conversations between Mr. Zinke and an unnamed senator, are described in the report. It says that, in interviews with investigators, Mr. Zinke denied having significant conversations with the lobbyists and stated repeatedly that he had decided not to approve the tribes’ applications based on advice from the Interior Department’s Office of the Solicitor. But lawyers in that office told the investigators that they had never spoken directly with Mr. Zinke.A lawyer for Mr. Zinke, Danny C. Onorato, said in a statement that Mr. Zinke had “cooperated fully in a politically motivated investigation.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 23 Primaries: The Democratic establishment in Florida and New York had a good night. Here are some key takeaways and a rundown of who won and who lost.The Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Challenging DeSantis: Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist, a former Republican, to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis, setting up a contest between a centrist and a hard-right G.O.P. incumbent.“Secretary Zinke repeatedly told the inspector general that he was not subject to any influence in that matter because he lacked jurisdiction to act on the application,” Mr. Onorato said. “That should have ended the inquiry. Instead, on the eve of an election, the I.G. has released a misleading and inaccurate report that suggested Secretary Zinke lacked candor in his interview with I.G. agents. That is wrong.”The report said it would be “a fair reading of Secretary Zinke’s statements” to conclude that he had based his decision about the casino request on the advice of lawyers for the Office of the Solicitor and that “he was not influenced by the considerations or recommendations of third parties.”“Given the number and extent of communications with these outside personnel, combined with the absence of information that anyone — counsel or otherwise — within the agency advised this course of action, we find that Secretary Zinke’s description of events was not accurate,” the report continued. It characterized Mr. Zinke and his chief of staff as not complying “with their duty of candor when questioned.”Mr. Zinke’s former chief of staff was not named in the report. A person who held that position did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent through the organization he currently works for.“Lack of candor” is defined in the report as “a broader and more flexible concept” than falsification, emphasizing that it does not necessarily require intent to deceive. Rather, it requires proof that a person “gave incorrect or incomplete information” and “did so knowingly.”Wednesday’s report is a final, revised version of a draft report that Mr. Zinke was given an opportunity to respond to; his response was included in the final version. The Office of Inspector General submitted its initial findings in 2018 to the Justice Department, which declined to file charges in 2021. The office said in the final report that it would provide it to the current interior secretary, Deb Haaland, “for any action deemed appropriate.”Mr. Zinke has been the subject of multiple ethics investigations related to his actions as interior secretary. Earlier this year, the Office of Inspector General found that he had improperly participated in negotiations about a real estate project in Whitefish, Mont., and then lied to investigators about his involvement.Before becoming interior secretary, Mr. Zinke represented Montana’s at-large congressional district from 2015 to 2017. He is now running in the First District, newly drawn after Montana gained a seat in the 2020 census. Three major election forecasters — the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball — all rate the race as “likely Republican,” and a fourth, FiveThirtyEight, rates it as “solid Republican.” More