Leigh Richards has been a writer since 1980. Her work has been published in "Entrepreneur," "Complete Woman" and "Toastmaster," among many other trade and professional publications. She has a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Arts in organizational management from the University of Phoenix.

Native American tribes that rely on fossil fuel production across the nation reiterated their demand that the Biden administration allow them to develop the resources on their lands.

Tribal leaders and energy experts contacted by Fox News Digital criticized efforts to restrict oil, gas and coal production even as those resources sustain thousands of Native Americans's way of life. The Department of the Interior has repeatedly expressed support for boosting tribal sovereignty for Indigenous tribes, but has also pursued a climate agenda limiting fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters.

"Air, water and energy are so foundational to our economy. I believe in the right that all property owners have to develop what belongs to them in any way that they want," Daniel Cardenas, the chairman of the National Tribal Energy Association and a member of the Pit River Tribe, told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

"That's why it's important to fight for. To make sure it doesn't get taken away."

BIDEN ADMIN SIDES AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS IN CRACKDOWN ON OIL LEASING NEAR INDIGENOUS SITE

Roughly 20% of the nation's total oil and natural gas reserves, 30% of domestic coal reserves west of the Mississippi River and additional natural minerals — altogether worth about $1.5 trillion — are on Native American lands, according to a 2014 study from think tank Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). 

However, about 86% of Indigenous land with energy and mineral resource potential remain undeveloped and just 3% of domestic oil production comes from tribal land.

"Resource tribes depend on the development of their resources to create better tomorrows for our children," Conrad Stewart, the director of energy and water for the Crow Nation of Montana, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It was basically a mandate in Indian policy to establish and develop our resources."

BIDEN DEPT. OF INTERIOR RELEASES NEW NAMES OF FEDERAL LANDS DEEMED ‘RACIST AND DEROGATORY’

The Crow Nation's coal and resource assets are worth an estimated $27 billion, likely making it among the largest coal owners worldwide, according to PERC. Still, the tribe's unemployment rate is far higher than the national average and its annual return on coal is less than 1%.

But last year, the Biden administration let the Department of Energy National Coal Council charter lapse, effectively ending the 40-year-old coal production advisory panel which Stewart had served on. The administration has also pursued emissions standards and restrictions targeting the coal industry which tribes like the Crow Nation are dependent on.

"A war on coal is a war on Crow," Stewart added, criticizing the Biden administration's energy policies.

In addition, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, Osage Nation, Southern Ute Tribe and Navajo Nation are among several tribes nationwide that actively rely on oil and gas revenues to meet their budgets. 

Land belonging to the MHA Nation — which is known also as the Three Affiliated Tribes — sits atop the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, a massive deposit of oil and natural gas resources. The tribe produces about 23% of the state's 1.1 million barrels of daily oil production.

BIDEN LOOKS EVERYWHERE TO LOWER GAS PRICES — EXCEPT BOOSTING OIL PRODUCTION

MHA Nation Chairman Mark Fox said in June 2021 that it was his tribe's right to develop energy resources "so our children and grandchildren for the next 100 years have somewhere to live."

"The MHA nation has benefited tremendously from the oil and gas activity on reservation, primarily with employment," Ron Ness, the president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "This is a reservation with a very low unemployment rate." 

"It's created a tremendous amount of wealth and opportunity for the enrolled members of the tribe," he added. "And they've been building schools and building facilities for the benefit of their members, whether it be law enforcement facilities, drug and alcohol treatment facilities, rehabilitation facilities."

The Navajo Nation, a tribe with land in the southwest, has oil and gas revenues that are estimated to be upwards of $75 million per year, more than half of the tribe's annual budget, according to Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Company CEO James McClure, who said fossil fuel development is "very important" for the tribe.

"The current administration has worked to support the Navajo Nation on most clean energy initiatives," McClure told Fox News Digital. "The same cannot be said of oil and gas development."

The DOI is soon expected to finalize a 20-year ban on oil and gas leasing near the Chaco Canyon historical site on Navajo land in northwestern New Mexico. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and the Navajo Nation Council have fiercely opposed the proposed rule.

BIDEN ADMIN OFFICIAL HIT WITH ETHICS COMPLAINT FOR ROLE IN FEDERAL OIL LEASING PAUSE

There are currently 53 Indian allotments in the zone around Chaco Canyon that would be impacted by the ban that generate $6.2 million per year in royalties for an estimated 5,462 allottees, according to the Navajo Nation. There are an additional 418 unleased allotments in the zone that are associated with more than 16,000 allottees.

And earlier this year the Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation (KIC), a business group founded to serve the Inupiat people, joined a lawsuit challenging the administration's oil and gas leasing pause in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Native shareholders of the KIC represent the only village and private landowners in ANWR, according to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

"We can’t allow the federal government to arbitrarily shut down good-paying jobs for Alaska Native families and cut off revenue streams for local and state governments," AIDEA Board Chair Dana Pruhs said in March.

DOI spokesperson Melissa Schwartz, though, told Fox News Digital that the administration supports Native tribes in the "exercise of their sovereign powers" to manage their lands.

"Tribes should have the ability to determine whether, when and how to develop energy resources on their lands," DOI Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said during his confirmation hearing last year.

NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES REACH $590M SETTLEMENT OVER OPIOIDS

Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order pausing all new federal oil and gas leasing. After facing intense criticism from tribes including Ute Tribe in Utah, the DOI clarified that the policy wouldn't impact fossil fuel development on Indigenous land.

Still, experts said the Biden administration could do more to incentivize energy production and increase compensation for resources on tribal lands.

"Overall, oil and gas, like casinos, is important where those revenue sources can be tapped," said Terry Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who authored the 2014 PERC report laying out energy resources on Indigenous lands.

"Federal policy for the last 180 years is — Justice John Marshall said the relationship between Indians to the United States is ‘like that of a ward to his guardian.’ Under that relationship, the federal government says, 'we need to make sure you don't make mistakes and therefore constrain you on what you do,'" he continued. 

"All climate change has done is add to the trusteeship constraints and regulations that make it far more difficult for tribes to tap their resources," Anderson said.

Since the early 1800s, the federal government has made itself the trustee of lands and natural resources on Indian reservations, according to the Native American Rights Fund. Under the arrangement, the government largely oversees resource development.

Shawn Regan, the vice president of research at PERC and a co-author on the 2014 paper with Anderson, said many of the hurdles facing tribes that seek to boost energy development come via the permitting process with the DOI's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"Tribes now find themselves in this place, in this position, where some of them are interested in tapping those resources, but face a whole bunch of regulatory challenges to doing that," Regan told Fox News Digital. 

"When tribes have tried to develop resources, they've often encountered this really complex federal bureaucracy that makes it difficult to fully capitalize on those resources"

FEMA DESIGNATES $50 MILLION TO NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

He noted the trustee arrangement, adding that tribes have the right to use their land, but only with the approval of the federal government.

Because the federal process for approving every lease and agreement on Native American lands is notoriously slow, energy companies have actively tried to avoid projects on such properties, according to Regan.

Cardenas, from the National Tribal Energy Association and who supports all energy production on native lands, said the Biden administration has failed to explain to tribes how traditional energy jobs would be replaced by promised clean energy jobs.

"When the administration says, 'we're going to create all these millions of jobs if we just switched over [to renewable energy] today,' they haven't shown us the fine print that says where those jobs are coming, which region, doing what," he said. "When you start questioning them there, then they start getting defensive."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

And Stewart, from the Crow Tribe, lambasted the administration for relying on foreign sources of energy over Native American-produced energy.

"What I don't understand is why they bring in foreign oil and gas resources from someplace else that has regulation that we would not stand for here in the United States," Stewart said. "Then, they turn around and point fingers at the Native Americans and they say, ‘your resources are too dirty.’"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

To President Joe Biden’s administration , men are men, and women are women — at least in one instance.

While Biden may be a part of the political party that thinks gender is limitless and people are whatever they say they are at any given moment, the administration doesn't allow woke gender ideology to interfere with one thing: the military draft.

TRANS WOMEN MUST SIGN UP FOR THE MILITARY DRAFT

The official Selective Service Twitter account reminded the public of its policy via Twitter last week.

"Parents, if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS,” the account tweeted . “Learn more about who needs to register at https://www.sss.gov/register/who-needs-to-register/ .”

The strangeness of the tweet aside, the link said, among other things, that men who say they are women between ages 18 and 25 must register for the draft.

"US citizens or immigrants who are born male and changed their gender to female are still required to register,” the site reads . “Individuals who are born female and changed their gender to male are not required to register."

Whether or not the United States should have Selective Service and whether or not individuals suffering from gender dysphoria should serve in the military are subjects worthy of debate. However, this one policy, at least, is consistent.

The country’s Selective Service policy recognizes biological reality. If someone has XX chromosomes and female genitalia, she is a woman, and if someone has XY chromosomes and male genitalia, he is a man.

If someone calls himself a transgender woman, that doesn’t make him a woman. It makes him a man, likely with gender dysphoria, who wishes he was a woman. Yet a man cannot become a woman, and vice versa. No matter what cosmetic surgeries one undergoes or what hormones one takes, one cannot change biology.

Sometimes, government entities pretend that people can change their gender, and this causes societal problems. It is how men end up using women-only spaces such as locker rooms and dominating women’s sports .

However, Selective Service isn’t one of those instances in which the government ignores biology. For once, the government embraces it.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Tom Joyce ( @TomJoyceSports ) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.

Welcome to Creamer Media’s Resources Watch, a weekly video round-up of the events and people making and shaping the news in the mining industry.

This week:

Advertisement

PGMs hotter than ever amid upcoming SAIMM greener world collaboration event

Pan African effectively building new underground gold mine at Evander

Advertisement

And, Menar says anthracite prospects looking very good

PGMs hotter than ever amid upcoming SAIMM greener world collaboration event

Platinum group metals as global decarbonisation and environmental, social and governance enablers have arguably never been a hotter subject globally, which will be highlighted at the upcoming in-person conference of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy at Sun City on November 2 and 3.

SAIMM’s Gary Lane:

Pan African effectively building new underground gold mine at Evander

Midtier Africa-focused gold producer Pan African Resources is effectively building a new internally-funded underground gold mine on two levels of the Evander underground gold mine in Mpumalanga.

Pan African CEO Cobus Loots:

Menar says anthracite prospects looking very good

The prospects for anthracite are looking very good, especially in terms of market value and having demand coming from different parts of the world.

Menar MD Vuslat Bayoglu:

For mining news as it breaks, stay logged onto Mining Weekly.com and register for our free daily newsletter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Thursday that the COVID-19 public health emergency will continue through Jan. 11 as officials brace for a spike in cases this winter.

The decision comes as the pandemic has faded from the forefront of many people's minds. Daily deaths and infections are dropping and people — many of them maskless — are returning to schools, work and grocery stores as normal.

The public health emergency, first declared in January 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, has dramatically changed how health services are delivered.

The declaration enabled the emergency authorization of COVID vaccines, testing and treatments for free. It expanded Medicaid coverage to millions of people, many of whom who will risk losing that coverage once the emergency ends. It temporarily opened up telehealth access for Medicare recipients, enabling doctors to collect the same rates for those visits and encouraging health networks to adopt telehealth technology.

Since the beginning of this year, Republicans have pressed the administration to end the public health emergency. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has urged Congress to provide billions more in aid to pay for COVID-19 vaccines and testing. The federal government ceased sending free COVID-19 tests in the mail last month, saying it had run out of money.

Public health officials are urging people age 5 and older to get an updated COVID-19 booster alongside a flu vaccine this fall before a predicted winter coronavirus surge and a nasty flu season. As of last weekend, about 13 million people had gotten the updated booster, which targets the omicron variant, according to White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.

The administration has said it would provide 60 days notice before it ends the public health emergency.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Boostrix for immunization during the third trimester of pregnancy to prevent pertussis in infants younger than 2 months of age.

The Boostrix vaccine (Tetanus Toxoid, Reduced Diphtheria Toxoid, and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine, Adsorbed [Tdap]) was initially approved by the FDA in 2005 as a single dose for booster immunization against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis in individuals 10 through 18 years of age and then was subsequently expanded to include individuals older than 19 years of age and to include use of an additional dose nine years or more after the initial dose of a Tdap vaccine.

The approval was based on a reanalysis of data from an observational case-control study of Tdap vaccine effectiveness of Boostrix administered during the third trimester. The analysis revealed 108 cases of pertussis in infants younger than 2 months of age (four cases whose mothers received Boostrix during the third trimester) and 183 control infants who did not have pertussis (18 cases whose mothers received Boostrix during the third trimester), resulting in an estimated 78 percent effectiveness in preventing pertussis among infants younger than 2 months of age when administered during the third trimester of pregnancy.

"While vaccination is the best method for providing protection, infants younger than 2 months of age are too young to be protected by the childhood pertussis vaccine series," Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. "This is the first vaccine approved specifically for use during pregnancy to prevent a disease in young infants whose mothers are vaccinated during pregnancy."

Approval of Boostrix was granted to GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

The Biden administration is pulling back on its student debt relief program amid numerous legal challenges, including six new lawsuits filed by Republican-led states.

In a reversal from Biden’s original sweeping proposal in August to cancel federal student loans up to $20,000, the US Department of Education announced Thursday that it would not forgive debt from borrowers whose student loans are owned by private entities.

The White House faced its first legal challenges to the controversial program this week, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated Monday would cost taxpayers $400 billion.

In the latest lawsuit filed in federal court in Missouri on Thursday, Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina requested that the relief program be shut down, arguing that it’s unconstitutional and is “not remotely tailored to address the effects of the pandemic on federal student loan borrowers.”

While the federal student loans tied up with private entities account for just a small percentage of the potentially 42 million Americans affected by the program, there are significant business interests — including banks, guaranty agencies, loan servicers and investors — that pose a legal threat to the program, according to Politico.

Many businesses and companies would lose money lent to borrowers who converted their federal guaranteed loans into consolidated new loans made to the Department of Education.

As of June 30, federal data show there were 4.1 million federal borrowers with $108.8 billion worth of loans owned by private lenders, Politico reported.

Under Biden’s plan unveiled on Aug. 24, borrowers are eligible for forgiveness of up to $10,000 in federally owned student debt if they have an annual income under $125,000. Pell Grant recipients are eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness.

The DOE said Thursday that those who have already applied for consolidated loan forgiveness by Sept. 29 would still receive it, buy debt relief for those loans will no longer be available.

“As of Sept. 29, 2022, borrowers with federal student loans not held by ED cannot obtain one-time debt relief by consolidating those loans into Direct Loans,” the DOE said in an update on its website.

“Borrowers with [Federal Family Education Loan] FFEL Program loans and Perkins Loans not held by ED who have applied to consolidate into the Direct Loan program prior to Sept. 29, 2022, are eligible for one-time debt relief through the Direct Loan program.”

“Our goal is to provide relief to as many eligible borrowers as quickly and easily as possible, and this will allow us to achieve that goal while we continue to explore additional legally available options to provide relief to borrowers with privately owned FFEL loans and Perkins loans, including whether FFEL borrowers could receive one-time debt relief without needing to consolidate,” an Education Department spokesperson told Politico in a statement.

In their lawsuit, the six attorneys general claimed they would face economic hardship if loans owned by private lenders were forgiven. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said his state’s pension fund is partly invested in securities backed by guaranteed federal loans. Others argued that the entire program would negatively impact their states’ economies.

The Department of Education said on its website it is “assessing whether there are alternative pathways to provide relief to borrowers with federal student loans not held by ED, including FFEL Program loans and Perkins Loans, and is discussing this with private lenders.”

Biden invoked emergency powers to authorize the loan forgiveness following a campaign by progressive Democrats — saying the COVID-19 pandemic meant he had a right to waive the debt. The administration has used a post-9/11 law meant to help members of the military as legal justification to reduce or erase student loan debt during a national emergency. 

Republicans have argued in their suit that the administration is misinterpreting the law because, in part, the pandemic is no longer a national emergency, as Biden claimed in a latest “60 Minutes” interview.

With Post wires

Rochester, N.Y.-based Trillium Health was awarded two badges from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration for the health organization's work on advancing health IT and addressing social risk factors, according to Oct. 7 reporting in News10NBC.

"As a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike, our goal is to provide extraordinary care to our patients, regardless of ability to pay," Trillium President and CEO Andrea Demeo said. "We're proud of our commitment to promoting health equity by addressing the social determinants of health, and we're dedicated to using technology to increase access to care."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Thursday that the COVID-19 public health emergency will continue through Jan. 11 as officials brace for a spike in cases this winter.

The decision comes as the pandemic has faded from the forefront of many people's minds. Daily deaths and infections are dropping and people — many of them maskless — are returning to schools, work and grocery stores as normal.

The public health emergency, first declared in January 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, has dramatically changed how health services are delivered.

The declaration enabled the emergency authorization of COVID vaccines, testing and treatments for free. It expanded Medicaid coverage to millions of people, many of whom who will risk losing that coverage once the emergency ends. It temporarily opened up telehealth access for Medicare recipients, enabling doctors to collect the same rates for those visits and encouraging health networks to adopt telehealth technology.

Since the beginning of this year, Republicans have pressed the administration to end the public health emergency. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has urged Congress to provide billions more in aid to pay for COVID-19 vaccines and testing. The federal government ceased sending free COVID-19 tests in the mail last month, saying it had run out of money.

Public health officials are urging people age 5 and older to get an updated COVID-19 booster alongside a flu vaccine this fall before a predicted winter coronavirus surge and a nasty flu season. As of last weekend, about 13 million people had gotten the updated booster, which targets the omicron variant, according to White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.

The administration has said it would provide 60 days notice before it ends the public health emergency.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic