August 8, 2023
Hi Folks:
Substack was down when I finished last night, and after waiting until 4:00 to see if it would come back, I gave up and went to bed. Just awake now and sending. Sorry about that— I couldn’t think of a way to let you know what the issue was. In the future, if you’re worried about me, check Facebook, where I did post this last night. Guessing that both of these sites won’t go down at the same time (although that assertion probably guaranteed they will!).
H.
As he designated the new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni–Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument today, President Biden explained that protecting the approximately 1,552 square miles—4,046 square kilometers, or almost a million acres—of land to the north and south of the Grand Canyon “is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet. It’s good for the economy. It’s good for the soul of the nation. And I believe…in my core it’s the right thing to do.”
His administration has been pursuing the promise he made when he first took office to protect 30% of all the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. He noted that the administration has protected 9 million acres in Alaska, 225,000 acres in Minnesota, 50,000 acres in Colorado, 500,000 acres in Nevada, and 6,600 acres in Texas. It has restored protections for three national monuments the previous administration had gutted: Grand Staircase–Escalante and Bears Ears in Utah and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the New England coast. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is working on creating a maritime sanctuary by protecting 770,000 square miles in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii.
The administration is also, he said, honoring his commitment “to prioritize respect for the Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, to honor the solemn promises the United States made to Tribal nations to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations.” The protected land is home to 3,000 cliff houses, cave paintings, and other Indigenous cultural sites. Biden explained that the land being protected and the land already protected as the Grand Canyon National Monument had been Indigenous homelands.
Tribes had been excluded from those lands and have worked to protect the lands and waters there from the aftershocks of development, for example, cleaning up abandoned mines. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included funding to clean up such industrial pollution in the region, including the abandoned oil wells that leak toxic gases into the air and hazardous chemicals into the water. That work is underway.
Biden suggested this designation was also part of the administration’s effort to address climate change, calling out the historic investments in that effort funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, a claim that might well resonate in a state that has seen temperatures of more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) in Phoenix for 31 straight days.
According to the White House proclamation on the establishment of the new monument: “The natural and cultural objects of the lands have historic and scientific value that is unique, rich, and well-documented.” By creating the monument, Biden said, “we’re setting aside new spaces for families to hike, bike, hunt, fish, and camp—growing the tourism economy that already accounts for 11 percent of all Arizona jobs.”
But Republican leaders and uranium mining interests opposed the designation of the new monument because it will stop the development of new mines to access the approximately 1.3% of the nation’s known uranium reserves that lie inside the monument. While the two mines already operating in the monument are grandfathered in and other reserves are elsewhere, mining interests in Arizona wanted new development. They claim the uranium in the area, which could be used in nuclear reactors, is vital to U.S. security.
Science reporter Justine Calma of The Verge explained today that past uranium mining left 500 abandoned mines on Navajo Nation land and that pollution from the mines has been linked to life-threatening illnesses among children there.
In a letter to Biden, Haaland, and the heads of the Bureau of Land Management and of the U.S. Forest Service, House Republicans Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, and committee member Paul Gosar of Arizona called the new designation “another strident abuse of the Antiquities Act” and demanded documents justifying the decision to put the area’s uranium out of developers’ reach.
In Ohio’s important election today, voters rejected the attempt of the Republican-dominated legislature to strengthen minority rule in the state by making it harder for a political majority to change the constitution. High turnout resulted in a vote whose unofficial count was about 57% against and about 43% in favor. Even key Republican districts voted against the measure.
For more than a century, Ohio voters have been able to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot so long as they get a certain number of signatures, and the amendment passes if it gets more than 50% of the vote. But the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022 sparked a strong backlash across the country. In Ohio, abortion rights activists began to collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November, and it was clear they would succeed (in July they submitted 70% more signatures than they needed).
So in May, Ohio Republican legislators set a special election in August to require more signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot and a threshold of 60% of the vote, rather than a simple majority, for the amendment to pass. That’s a very high bar, although, ironically, two amendments that tried to stop political gerrymandering—the practice that has given Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature—passed with about 75% of voters…and the Republicans ignored them.
Only last December the legislature ended most August elections because the traditionally low turnout made it easy for special interests to win by flooding the state with advertising money to energize a small base.
Although the position of secretary of state is supposed to be nonpartisan because the office oversees the state’s elections and appoints every county’s election board, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, said: “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
But the implications of making it harder for voters to change laws stretched beyond Ohio. As pro-choice ballot initiatives keep winning, Republican-dominated legislatures across the country are trying to make it harder for citizens to use ballot initiatives. Republican attempts to stop voters from challenging their policies, especially in states where gerrymandering has given them far more seats in the legislature than would accurately represent their support, will echo beyond the issue of abortion to any policy voters would like to challenge.
A former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Republican Maureen O’Connor, told Sam Levine of The Guardian that the proposed measure “absolutely is minority rule…. If you get 59.9% of a vote that says yes, 40.1% can say no. This is the way it’s gonna be. We can thwart the effort of the majority of Ohioans that vote. And that’s not American.”
Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/grand-canyon-national-monument-biden-9382960f18408dce7aec52f103404e11
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824490/joe-biden-new-national-monument-grand-canyon-uranium-mine
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/eenews/f/eenews/?id=00000189-d5db-d1b8-adff-f5dfcac90000
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/08/ohio-election-issue-1-abortion/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/politics/ohio-special-election/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/ohio-election-issue-1-results.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/ohio-referendum-constitution-abortion.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/06/ohio-issue-1-vote-democracy-future-republicans
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/08/republicans-ohio-vote-abortion-constitution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/08/ohio-referendum-abortion-republicans/
https://www.ohiosos.gov/secretary-office/duties-responsibilities/
Twitter:
senatorlujan/status/1679936383635341321?s=43&t=YGo61g9K3u7Bv_FHVCpNtA
One thing reporters have missed about Ohio Issue 1 is that it wasn't only about stopping the abortion initiative scheduled for voting in November. That's where all the attention was given, and that's what proponents and opponents of Issue 1 alike focused on. The 60% super-majority voter threshold for passing it would have effectively killed the abortion rights initiative, of course. No voter initiative has ever achieved 60% of the vote in Ohio in the 111 years Ohio has had an initiative provision.
If state officials and the legislative majority only wanted to stop the abortion rights amendment in November, the 60% vote requirement would have been sufficient. But that's not all Issue 1 would have done.
Issue 1 had an even more onerous provision, intended to prevent voter initiatives from ever being placed on the ballot in the future. Officials didn't talk about it, probably for obvious reasons, and the national media largely missed it. Issue 1 would have raised the bar for collecting signatures to an insurmountable level. Currently a voter initiative can be placed on the ballot if at least a minimum number of valid signatures from half of Ohio's counties--44--are collected. (The number of signatures required from each county is based on a percentage of the number of votes in the last governor's election, I believe.) Issue 1 would have required minimum signatures from all 88 counties. In addition, current provision allows a ten day period for proponents to collect additional signatures if the secretary of state's office determines not enough valid signatures were collected. Issue 1 would have eliminated that grace period.
Our Republican-dominated state government wanted to insure that future voter initiatives could not succeed in even making it to the ballot. They wanted to make sure a future abortion rights petition drive would fail if the November referendum fails. They are also afraid that voters might initiate a petition drive to create an independent redistricting commission, given that they refused to abide by legislature- and voter-approved changes designed to eliminate partisan gerrymandering. Or maybe voters would like to rein in the legislature's gun insanity. And so forth.
Of course, effectively eliminating voter initiative would have taken rights away from all Ohioans of all ideologies, political views, and party affiliations. We are so grateful this power-grab attempt failed, but clearly we have much more work to do to rescue Ohio government from the grip of these anti-democracy ideologues.
Crazy to want Uranium so you can build bombs to kill people even if the process kills the local children.
We already have enough bombs to destroy the world. It’s time to save the planet.