2 CHARGED IN ASSAULT ON CAPITOL OFFICER
She becomes first Native American to lead Cabinet agency
Two men were charged with assaulting Officer Brian Sicknick of the Capitol Police and other officers with a chemical spray during the Jan. 6 riot, the Justice Department said on Monday, but prosecutors stopped short of linking the attack to Sicknick’s death the next day.
The FBI arrested George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, W.Va., and Julian Elie Khater, 32, of State College, Pa., on Sunday. Tanios was arrested at home and Khater as he stepped off a plane in Newark, N.J., the department said.
They were charged with conspiracy to injure an officer, assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon, civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding and other crimes related to violent conduct on the grounds of the Capitol, the Justice Department said.
Both appeared via video before federal magistrate judges on Monday. Tanios, who joined his hearing dressed in orange, will appear in court again on Thursday to determine whether he will remain detained while awaiting trial. In a separate hearing, a lawyer for Khater indicated that his client intended to plead not guilty.
Among other charges, they face up to 20 years for assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
Sicknick and two other police officers were injured “as a result of being sprayed in the face” with an unidentified substance by Khater and Tanios, the FBI said in search warrant applications filed in court. The officers were temporarily blinded and had to stop working to get medical attention, the bureau said.
Sicknick was one of five people left dead by the attack, and his death was a major focus for law enforcement officials conducting the sprawling inquiry into the riot. The Justice Department has said in court filings that the investigation is most likely “one of the largest in American history,” with more than 900 search warrants executed in nearly every state.
The Capitol Police thanked federal prosecutors in a statement for charging the two men.
Law enforcement officials described the suspects brief ly plotting before the attack.
The men, who were among the thousands who traveled to the Capitol to protest Congress’ certification of the election results on Jan. 6, spoke to each other animatedly, surveillance video showed, and worked together “to assault law enforcement officers with an unknown chemical substance by spraying officers directly in the face and eyes,” an FBI agent said in a court document.
YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar’s ruling junta has declared martial law in a wide area of the country’s largest city, as security forces killed dozens of protesters over the weekend in an increasingly lethal crackdown on resistance to last month’s military coup.
The United Nations said at least 138 peaceful protesters have been killed in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 military coup, including at least 56 killed over the weekend.
The developments were the latest setback to hopes of resolving the crisis that started with the military’s seizure of power that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
A grassroots movement has sprung up across the country to challenge the takeover with almost daily protests that the army has tried to crush with increasingly deadly violence.
State broadcaster MRTV said Monday that the Yangon townships of North Dagon, South Dagon, Dagon Seikkan and North Okkalapa have been put under martial law.
That was in addition to two others — Hlaing Thar Yar and neighboring Shwepyitha — announced late Sunday.
More violence was reported around the country on Monday, with at least eight protesters in four cities or towns killed, according to the independent broadcaster and news service Democratic Voice of Burma.
Photos and videos posted on social media showed long convoys of trucks entering Yangon.
At least 38 people were killed Sunday, the majority in the Hlaing Thar Yar area of Yangon, and 18 were killed on Saturday, U.N. spokesman said.
The total includes women and children, according to the figures from the U.N. human rights office.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “strongly condemns this ongoing violence against peaceful protesters and the continuing violation of the fundamental human rights of the people of Myanmar,” Dujarric said.
Stephane
Dujarric
Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history Monday when the Senate confirmed her as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency.
Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to the House. But her new position is particularly redolent of history because the department she now leads has spent much of its history abusing or neglecting America’s Indigenous people.
Beyond the Interior Department’s responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public land, federal waters off the U.S. coastline, a huge system of dams and reservoirs across the Western U.S. and the protection of thousands of endangered species.
“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” she wrote on Twitter before the vote. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”
Republican opposition to her confirmation centered on Haaland’s history of fighting against oil and gas exploration, and the deliberations around her nomination highlighted her emerging role in the public debates
on climate change, energy policy and racial equity. She was confirmed on a 51-40 vote. Only four Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voted for Haaland’s confirmation.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said supporting her confirmation “would be voting to raise gas prices for families who are already struggling, to raise fuel and heating bills
for seniors on a fixed income, to take the tough times we’ve been going through and make them even tougher.”
The new interior secretary will be charged with essentially reversing the agency’s mission over the past four years. The Interior Department, led by David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, played a central role in the Trump administration’s systematic rollback of environmental regulations and the opening up of the nation’s
lands and waters to drilling and mining.
Haaland is expected to quickly halt new drilling, reinstate wildlife conservation rules, rapidly expand wind and solar power on public lands and waters, and place the Interior Department at the center of Biden’s climate agenda.
At the same time, Haaland will quite likely assume a central role in realizing Biden’s promise to make racial equity a theme in his administration. Haaland, a
member of the Laguna Pueblo who identifies herself as a 35th-generation New Mexican, will assume control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, where she can address the needs of a population that has suffered from abuse and dislocation at the hands of the United States government for generations, and that has been disproportionately devastated by the coronavirus.
“You’ve heard the Earth referred to as Mother Earth,” Haaland said at her Senate confirmation hearing. “It’s difficult to not feel obligated to protect this land. And I feel every Indigenous person in the country understands that.”
As the agency takes on a newly muscular role in addressing climate change, she added, the department “will have to deal with new strategies for managing more intense wildfires on public land and chronic drought in the West. It’s hard to overstate the challenges with water.”
Among the first and most contentious items on Haaland’s to-do list will be enacting Biden’s campaign pledge to ban new permits for oil and gas projects on public lands.
The historic moment is being celebrated by American Indians throughout the country, especially in California, which is home to 109 federally recognized tribes.
“It’s a big deal to me, it’s a big deal to my nieces, it’s a big deal to us American Indians to see not only an American Indian, but a woman in this position,” said Erica Pinto, tribal chair of Jamul Indian Village.
“I feel like she’s part of a shift. There’s been a change in the way people are thinking. Here in San Diego County, we have 18 federally recognized tribes. Even at the county level, they’re being more inclusive of all people, no matter who you are. It feels really good. I know the tribal people are feeling it too. It sets the stage for good discussions, good respectful discussions,” she said.
President Joe Biden said Monday that his administration was on pace to achieve two goals by March 25: 100 million shots of COVID-19 vaccines since his inauguration and 100 million direct payments under his economic relief bill.
The announcement was the first event that Biden and administration officials are set to stage this week as they promote the $1.9 trillion package that the president signed into law last week.
“Shots in arms and money in pockets. That’s important,” Biden said in a brief address from the White House. “The American Rescue Plan is already doing what it was designed to do: make a difference in people’s everyday lives.”
Over the weekend, the
Treasury Department began issuing direct electronic payments of $1,400 per person, as authorized by the law, to low- and middle-income Americans. The United States has administered 92.6 million vaccine doses since Jan. 20, when Biden took office, according to data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the current pace of vaccinations, the country will pass 100 million doses before the end of the week, a week before the president’s promise of March 25.
Biden had set the goal of 100 million doses before taking office, and he has repeatedly heralded the country being on pace to meet it, though many public health experts say it is relatively easily attainable.
The relief plan also includes dozens of other provisions that have yet to be carried out, such as new monthly checks for parents, $350 billion for state and local governments and additional relief for the unemployed.
With so much money at stake and Republicans criticizing the package as wasteful, Biden vowed to bring “fastidious oversight” to the relief bill in order to ensure that it is distributed quickly and equitably.
He introduced Gene Sperling, a longtime Democratic policy aide who advised Biden’s presidential campaign last year, as his pick to oversee spending from the relief package. Sperling will be a senior adviser to the president and a White House employee, operating independently from an oversight commission established by Congress during the pandemic that consists of inspectors general from various agencies.
“We have to prove to the American people that their government can deliver for them, and do it without waste or fraud,” Biden said.
His remarks came as his team prepared to fan out across the country for a week of sales pitches for a bill that has proved very popular with voters but garnered zero Republican votes.
Biden will visit Delaware County, Pa., today and appear with Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday in Atlanta, which helped deliver Democrats the Senate majority that made the relief plan possible.
A group of administration officials, including the first lady, Jill Biden, and Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, will make their own trips. Harris and her husband landed in Las Vegas for an event on Monday afternoon, while Jill Biden finished an event in New Jersey.
The road show is an effort to avoid the messaging mistakes of President Barack Obama’s administration. Democrats believe it failed to continue vocally building support for his $780 billion stimulus act after it passed in 2009. The challenge for the Biden administration will be to highlight less obvious provisions, including the largest federal infusion in generations of aid to the poor, a substantial expansion of the child tax credit and increased subsidies for health insurance.
Sperling’s challenge will be to meet Joe Biden’s promises of transparency and accountability for those programs.
The president and White House officials called Sperling well qualified for the task. He was the director of the National Economic Council under Obama and President Bill Clinton. In the Obama administration, where he first served as a counselor in the Treasury Department, Sperling helped to coordinate a bailout of Detroit automakers and other parts of the administration’s response to the 2008 financial crisis.
He advised Biden’s campaign informally in 2020, helping to hone the campaign’s “Build Back Better” policy agenda.