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This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.

John Hult
South Dakota Searchlight

South Dakota officials should talk to tribal leaders more often, but lawmakers aren’t prepared to make them.

That was the message from two bills — one that passed, one that didn’t — considered Feb. 9 in Pierre by the House of Representatives’ State Affairs Committee.

The winning proposal, House Bill 1232, is a policy statement that says South Dakota “recognizes” the importance of accountability, cooperation, collaboration, and early and regular communication with tribes when its state agencies develop or administer programs “that have the potential of affecting tribal members.” The agencies should also understand and respect tribal sovereignty, the legislation says, and “the government-to-government relationship between the state and each tribe.”

The bill came from Rapid City Republican Rep. Peri Pourier, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Some of her bill’s language, such as its requirement that state agencies document their consideration of its principles, was removed before its passage on a 12-0 vote.

Initially, the bill said agencies “shall recognize” the principles.

“We wanted these to be guiding principles and not necessarily be construed as some sort of mandate that could potentially spin up litigation,” said Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids.

The committee first heard the bill earlier, but held back its vote until Monday, Feb. 9. Pourier thanked Hansen for “helping me find the language that we would hope that the state would agree to.”

A ‘no’ to mandated meetings

Shortly after passing the Pourier bill, the committee took up House Bill 1190.

Its sponsor, Rosebud tribal citizen and Democratic Rep. Eric Emery, wanted committee members to endorse the creation of a South Dakota tribal consultation commission that would meet four times each year.

The Legislature has a State-Tribal Relations Committee, Emery said, but its scope and membership are limited. Under his proposal, the new commission would include the governor or a representative of the governor, the secretary of the Department of Tribal Relations or a designee, a representative from each of the nine tribes in South Dakota and members of the state House of Representatives and Senate.

Regular meetings, Emery said, would benefit citizens on and off tribal land in South Dakota.

“When the tribes succeed, the state succeeds as well,” Emery said. “And that’s the whole intention of this piece of legislation.”

Emery’s bill had support, through testimony, from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate.

Kevin Killer, a former lawmaker and citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said similar conversations about ways to improve relations between the state and tribes through regular meetings were taking place when he was first elected as a state lawmaker in 2008.

“It’s almost 20 years where we’ve been asking for a place to have this kind of conversation,” Killer said.

Algin Young, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and current secretary for the state Department of Tribal Relations, testified against the bill. Gov. Larry Rhoden “has said publicly” that he’s willing to meet with any tribal leaders on any issue as needed, and Young said that fluid, open lines of communication are the best way to address tribal issues.

“The truth is you can’t legislate relationships,” Young said.

Emery, in his initial remarks and rebuttal, said he’s been pleased with Rhoden’s efforts to improve relations with tribes since his ascent to governor last year when former Gov. Kristi Noem left to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Even so, he said, the lack of a formal structure for consultation leaves relations open to change with each gubernatorial administration.

Rep. Marty Overweg, R-New Holland, wanted to know why the bill would mandate four meetings a year.

“That sounds very extensive, and a lot of meetings,” he said.

Emery replied that the idea was to ensure one meeting per quarter.

Rep. Leslie Heinemann, R-Flandreau, said he’s been impressed with the policies proposed this year by the State-Tribal Relations Committee and that “we should let that have a chance to work.”

The bill failed on an 8-4 vote. One of its supporters was Spearfish Rep. Scott Odenbach who, like Emery, serves on the State-Tribal Relations Committee. Odenbach referenced one of that group’s meetings last year, where citizens of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe pointed out that North Dakota has a formal, quarterly meeting structure similar to what Emery’s bill proposes. Tribal members said South Dakota could learn something from North Dakota’s approach.

Regular meetings seemed to improve relations for that state, said Odenbach, who said he’s seen little improvement here.

“My whole political career, the conversations just end with people throwing up our hands,” Odenbach said.

Information sharing approved

A third bill dealing with collaboration between state and tribal agencies, House Bill 1175, cleared the House Judiciary Committee later that morning.

That bill also came from Pourier, who called it a “cleanup” bill. It amends current statute, which directs the state Division of Criminal Investigation to furnish national criminal background check information to the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate upon request for a person applying to work for the tribe or hold positions on tribal committees or commissions.

“What I am proposing is that instead of just one tribe, we open it up to any tribe,” Pourier said.

Rep. Matt Roby, R-Watertown, wanted to know why current law only mentions one tribe.

Pourier said she’s not certain, but that new federal background check requirements came into effect in the 1990s, and that the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate have “always had a mutual benefit and great relationship with the state.” She assumed the law was meant to help the tribe with “compliance issues.”

Rep. Will Mortenson, R-Fort Pierre, said his research into the current law suggested that the tribe was engaged in setting up a commercial enterprise at the time of its passage, in 1998.

“I don’t know what sort of commerce they were trying to do, but the DCI had the ability to get background checks done for those that maybe they needed that,” Mortenson said.

Every member of the committee present on Monday morning voted to support the bill.

The post Lawmakers endorse ‘principles’ on tribal consultation but punt on required meetings, documentation appeared first on ICT.

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Beginning two summers ago in a building lacking reliable power and internet, dozens of teenagers in Bo City, Sierra Leone watched videos about climate science, then discussed opportunities to build resilience in one of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations. The Community Youth Climate Science Lab and Collaboration Hub—founded by a Cornell expert and an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State's Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders—has since helped plant 1,500 shade trees, built raised-bed gardens and cultivated a network of future leaders invested in climate adaptation in their hometown, Sierra Leone's second-largest city.

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Researchers at the University of Würzburg have shown that dung beetles suffer in canopy openings that have been deliberately created to promote biodiversity. Rising temperatures are significantly exacerbating the problem.

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Carole Allen — founder of HEART (Help Endangered Animals Ridley Turtles) and the first director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network’s Gulf of Mexico office — passed away last week at the age of 90. For decades, she was the voice of the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii), and one of the central figures responsible for bringing this species back from the brink of extinction. HEART began as an all-volunteer, grassroots organization dedicated to educating Texas schoolchildren about the mysterious and imperiled Kemp’s ridley. But Carole always insisted that education alone was not enough. People had to be inspired to care and then motivated to act. That is exactly what she did. Carole inspired not only children, but teachers, scientists, policymakers, and even fishermen who initially viewed endangered species protections as a threat to their livelihoods. She had an uncanny ability to bring people together and turn concern into action, whether through community projects like hand-sewn, heart-shaped stuffed turtles, or sea turtle cookie cutters that helped spread the message while raising funds for conservation. But Carole’s warmth was matched by her resolve. She was fearless. She did not back down in the face of intimidation from powerful politicians or threats from angry fishermen. When Kemp’s ridley turtles were being killed, Carole stood her ground. Carole Allen during the “Art of Saving Sea Turtles” event, September 29, 2019, Galveston, TX. Photo by Todd Steiner/Turtle Island Restoration Network. I first met Carole in 1990 in Mexico City, when we…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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We like to think that animals follow the crowd. If most of the group does something, surely the individual will copy. But what if the story is more complicated? What if the deciding factor isn't just what the majority is doing, but how strongly you already feel about it? That's the question we set out to test in zebra finches.

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At high densities, white-tailed deer inhibit growth of trees but increase the overall diversity of smaller plant and weed species, according to a long-term study published recently. The work is published in the journal PLOS One.

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A research team led by UAB researcher David Reverter has discovered the molecular mechanism that describes in detail the process regulating cell division in bacteria, based on the binding of the MraZ protein to the dcw gene cluster. The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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As governments and companies race to meet climate pledges, from net-zero goals to near-term emissions cuts, Cornell researchers have developed a blockchain-based platform to improve how those commitments are recorded and verified. Carbon registries serve as repositories for documenting emissions reductions, third-party verification and the issuance of carbon credits that can be bought and sold. But according to Cornell researchers, flaws in how most registries operate can lead to weak verification standards, double counting and misleading claims about how environmentally friendly a product or service is.

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The Amazon rainforest is of crucial importance to the Earth's ecosystem, given its capacity to store substantial amounts of carbon in its vegetation. In 2023, the region experienced unusually high temperatures, reaching 1.5°C above the 1991–2020 average, accompanied by unusual levels of atmospheric dryness from September to November. These conditions were caused by warmer water temperatures in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that resulted in diminished moisture transport from the Atlantic to South America, and led to drought in the second half of 2023. An international research team, led by Santiago Botia at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, studied how these extreme conditions affected the Amazon rainforest's ability to absorb and store carbon.

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Creatures that can change from one form to another are a staple of science fiction: Think werewolves and Transformers. Nature, too, has its shapeshifters, such as dimorphic fungi. While scientists have known for some time that they can reversibly transition between yeast and mycelium forms, a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications explains how.

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Last Updated on February 16, 2026 The Nicaraguan government has fast-tracked mining concessions to Chinese companies across huge swaths of indigenous and Afro-descendant territories, raising renewed legal and human rights concerns over the absence of meaningful community consultation in some of the country’s most environmentally and culturally sensitive regions. According to an investigation published Monday […]

Source

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Trappers are preparing for Anchorage’s big, annual fur auction.

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Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied how fruit flies tune their development in response to environmental changes (diapause). Studying fruit fly strains from different latitudes across Japan, they showed that the sensitivity to starting reproductive diapause varies smoothly with local conditions.

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The World in Focus

Donald Trump has his sights set on Latin America and the Caribbean and is prepared to use a heavy hand to bring them under his exclusive control. He called a presidential summit in Miami with heads of state he considers his ideological and strategic allies in Miami for March 7. The goal is to form a regional bloc aligned with Washington and strengthen strategic cooperation in security matters.

Trump announced that the group will promote shared development goals and democratic stability. The U.S. president also seeks to contain China’s growing influence in the region. So far, Presidents Javier Milei (Argentina), Santiago Peña (Paraguay), Rodrigo Paz (Bolivia), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Nasry Asfura (Honduras), and José Jerí (Peru), whose removal from office for permanent moral incapacity is being debated in Congress four months after Dina Boluarte was removed and with just two months to go before the presidential elections in April.

Also this week, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, convened a Conference of Defense Chiefs of the Western Hemisphere in Washington to coordinate regional defense and security strategies with senior military officials from 34 countries in the region. At the event, held in Washington, D.C., attendees agreed on the importance of forming strong alliances, ongoing cooperation, and joint efforts to counter transnational criminal and terrorist organizations, and external actors that undermine regional security and stability.

China’s growing presence in the region in terms of trade, investment in infrastructure, technology, and natural resources is a central concern of the U.S. government. The U.S. “National Security Strategy” published in November 2025 explicitly states that the country must play a hegemonic role in the region, for which China’s presence must be displaced.

It’s my hemisphere

The first thing Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, did after Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025, was to visit Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. On the trip, he made it clear that the United States would continue to provide assistance to nations that aligned themselves with its national interests. It was the first time in more than 100 years that a Secretary of State had visited the Central American and Caribbean region on his first official visit abroad.

Marco Rubio with Santiago Peña, President of Paraguay

Panama´s government was forced to withdraw from the Chinese initiative for the modernization and interconnection of physical and digital infrastructure known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In April 2025, military exercises carried out since 2006 under the bilateral defense cooperation agreement known as Panamax-Alpha to protect the Panama Canal against transnational threats took on strategic relevance. Not only were they prolonged, but more special forces participated than in recent years. The exercise coincided with the Pentagon’s unprecedented military deployment in the Caribbean, which included the dispatch of warships, nuclear-powered submarines, and the giant aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro and then suffocate the economy and civilian population of Cuba.

Washington has also expressed great concern over the construction of the Chancay megaport in Peru. Then-foreign minister, Elmer Schialer, and defense minister, Walter Astudillo, had to travel to Washington D.C. to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. There, Hegseth warned them about Washington’s growing concern about China: “It represents a potential threat to hemispheric peace and security. We cannot ignore its covert expansion under the guise of development (…). Beijing invests to dominate, not to cooperate.”

In early May 2025, Marco Rubio told the leaders of the Eastern Caribbean (Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada, and the Bahamas) to stay away from China because it was a “malign actor.” He claimed that China’s economic and cultural activities in the region are a threat to U.S. security and stated that the Caribbean nations must make “responsible and transparent” decisions about the suppliers and contractors they choose to build infrastructure so as not to be “vulnerable to privacy and security risks.” Rubio urged them to coordinate on security and information sharing through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, a security partnership between the United States and Caribbean nations established in 2010.

None of this prevented the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States CELAC-China Forum from moving forward in Beijing that same month, where the US government’s threats to drive China out of the continent were not an issue. With the exception of Milei in Argentina, who obsequiously aligns with the Trump administration’s interests on everything, three Latin American presidents (Lula, Petro, Boric), and some 20 foreign ministers and senior representatives from 32 member countries of the region signed the Beijing Declaration and the CELAC-China Joint Action Plan for Cooperation in Key Areas (2025-2027). The plan coordinates actions on issues of interest to the parties involved. Even the slogan under which they gathered, “Planning together for development and revitalization, jointly building a Chinese-Latin American and Caribbean community with a shared future,” was disturbing to U.S. ears.

Then head of the Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, who resigned because of his disagreement with the bombing of boats in the Caribbean Sea), warned of the risks of China’s deployment in Latin America and the Caribbean and pointed out that its presence in the region involves “potential military programs.” Holsey seems to forget that the United States has military bases in almost the entire region, the oldest of which is located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A Chinese mega-port on the American continent

In November 2024, the mega-deepwater port of Chancay was inaugurated by Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. From the outset, it raised alarms in the United States. The Trump administration cast it as part of a Chinese civil-military strategy that could house warships in a potential conflict. Located 70 kilometers north of the Peruvian capital, Chancay is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Latin America, slated to be complemented by a bi-oceanic corridor between Brazil and Peru. This is part of China’s BRI infrastructure connection strategy in the context of China’s growing trade and investment in the region.

To counteract this presence, a few days before the port’s inauguration, Peru’s National Commission for Aerospace Research and Development and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding. This memorandum seeks to promote space cooperation, including the launch of sounding rockets from Peru starting 2028. In mid-January 2026, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the supply of equipment and services worth $1.5 billion to modernize the new Callao Naval Base, very close to the mega-port. The main contractor would be the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa, another staunch ally of Washington, authorized the installation of a U.S. military base in the Galapagos archipelago in December 2024 to attempt to show his country’s intention to offset Chinese presence. The decision violated Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, which contains an explicit prohibition on the presence of foreign military forces or bases on Ecuadorian territory. The most military base in that country dates back to 1999 in the coastal city of Manta. in 2009, then-President Rafael Correa did not renew the contract to operate that base. Noboa sent a partial reform of the Constitution to Parliament in March 2025 to eliminate the article prohibiting the presence of military bases. The reform was approved in early June, but in a popular referendum held in November 2025 61% of the population rejected the reform, thus nullifying it.

In recent days, the Chancay mega-port has been the subject of heated exchanges between China and the United States because the Chinese judiciary blocked the powers of the Peruvian regulatory body (Ositrán) over the mega-port and ruled that it should refrain from exercising its powers of supervision, control, and sanction, although it will regulate the setting of tariffs for end users.

Immediately, the U.S. government, through the State Department, said it was “concerned” about the possibility that the Peruvian government would lose its powers to supervise the mega-port: “We support Peru’s sovereign right to supervise critical infrastructure in its own territory. Let this serve as a warning to the region and the world: cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty.” Minutes later, the U.S. ambassador to Peru, Bernie Navarro, echoed the message and added: “Everything has a price, and in the long run, cheap comes at a high cost. There is no higher price than losing sovereignty.”

On Feb. 12, the Chinese Embassy in Peru denounced the U.S. government’s statements on the Chancay port. It noted that Ositrán could note exercise supervision since port operations private and do not affect national sovereignty. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian spoke at a press conference and said that “China firmly opposes the false accusations and misinformation from the United States against China’s cooperation with Peru on the port of Chancay.”

The statements made by U.S. authorities constitute a clear interference in Peru’s internal affairs, especially since teh executive branch has no influence over the court rulings and much less over officials in other countries. The Peruvian regulatory body, Ositran, will appeal the ruling.

Retaking the Panama Canal

Since Donald Trump took office, he has repeatedly expressed his desire for the United States to regain control of the Panama Canal. He has pressured Panamanian authorities to withdraw from the Belt and Road Initiative and to terminate the contracts of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison, which operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal at both ends of the canal.

He succeeded. At the end of January, a Panamanian court ruled that the contract with CK Hutchison was unconstitutional, which has angered both CK Hutchison and the Chinese government. CK Hutchison has announced it will take the case to international arbitration and warned that Panama will pay the consequences.

Even though he knows that the canal is controlled by a Panamanian public entity, Trump has cynically accused China of controlling the canal. The pressure led CK Hutchison to initially propose selling the two Panamanian ports to a consortium of investors led by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. The announcement thrilled Trump, who, with his characteristic humility, linked the decision to his efforts to return control of the Panama Canal to the United States:

“My administration will take back the Panama Canal, and we have already begun to do so (…) Just today, a great American company announced that it is going to buy the two ports surrounding the Panama Canal,” he crowed. But the Chinese government opposed the deal, and CK Hutchison announced that it was considering inviting another investor, likely COSCO, the Chinese state-owned shipping giant, to participate in the operation, which revived Trump’s anger.

The US president has falsely accused Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the sea route and of overcharging U.S. ships, which is absolutely untrue. “There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for God’s sake,” said a frustrated President Mulino in December of 2024.

Trump has said that if fees fir U.S. vessels are not reduced, he will demand that the United States be given control of the canal “in its entirety, quickly and without question.” French historian David Marcilhacy and others have argued that Trump’s accusations that Panama is not respecting neutrality due to alleged Chinese influence have no legal basis.

Recent acts of interference by the U.S. government in Peru and Panama come on the heels of the interference in Brazil, in connection with the 27-year prison sentence handed down to former President Jair Bolsonaro for leading a coup attempt after being defeated at the polls in 2022 elections. On that occasion, Trump openly criticized judicial leaders and imposed tariffs of up to 50% on a significant portion of Brazilian exports to the U.S. market.

Shortly thereafter, the trial of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe for procedural fraud and witness tampering that resulted in a sentence of 12 years under house arrest sparked angry protests from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who railed against the Colombian justice system ad defended Uribe, who was also accused of having close ties to paramilitary groups. Add Trump’s blatant interference in the midterm legislative elections in Argentina last October by asserting that Argentines should vote for the ruling party’s candidates if they wanted to continue receiving loans, and in the presidential elections in Honduras on November 30, when Donald Trump threatened cutoffs in aid if Hondurans did not vote for Nasry Asfura, now president of Honduras. That election was accompanied by Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking in the United States, who belongs to the same party as Asfura–the conservative National Party.

With an interventionist government like Trump’s, and with the region in the spotlight, the right to self-determination and defense of sovereignty in the countries of the region are being seriously violated.

The World in Focus” is Ariela Ruiz Caro’s biweekly column for Mira: Feminisms and Democracies. Ruiz Caro is an economist with a master’s degree in economic integration processes and has worked as an international consultant on trade, integration, and natural resources with Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Latin American Economic System (SELA), and the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), among others. She has been an official of the Andean Community, an advisor to the Commission of Permanent Representatives of MERCOSUR, and Economic Attaché at the Embassy of Peru in Argentina.

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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat.

Nick Grube
Honolulu Civil Beat

Hawaiʻi U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz is searching for ways to protect a federal contracting program targeted by the Trump administration that brings millions of dollars into the Native Hawaiian community, including implementing reforms to buffer it from future attacks.

At issue is the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, which provides special contracting privileges to socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and groups, including tribes, Alaska Native corporations and nonprofit Native Hawaiian organizations.

Under the program, Native groups can receive large no-bid contracts, some of them worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in exchange for the promise that profits be used to support Indigenous communities.

Last year, Christopher Dawson, a Native Hawaiian defense contractor, was accused of abusing the program and stealing millions of dollars meant to help his people, spending it to instead on private jets, luxury cars and polo.

Since then, Dawson’s case has been used to attack the program. Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, who’s chair of the Small Business Committee, cited Civil Beat’s reporting on Dawson’s alleged transgressions in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling on him to pause all 8(a) sole source contracts.

Hegseth followed up by saying he planned to take a sledgehammer to the program, which he has described as a race-based handout that’s a “breeding ground for fraud.”

Both Ernst and Hegseth’s criticisms build upon SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler’s own assault on the program, including a full-scale audit and the suspension of more than 1,000 companies. Like Hegseth, she has described it as a DEI program that’s “rife with grift and fraud.”

At an Indian Affairs Committee oversight hearing Tuesday, Schatz teamed up with Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski to offer a full-throated rebuttal to those attacks, specifically as it relates to Native entities.

“8(a), in this senator’s view, is a success story,” Murkowski said. “It is not a fraud as some have mistakenly alleged. And quite honestly that’s terminology that I would just categorically reject.”

Schatz echoed Murkowski’s tone and together the committee leaders said the program, at least as it pertains to Native groups, was born out of the country’s trust responsibilities to its Indigenous people.

It is not, they stressed, something that should be classified as diversity, equity or inclusion.

”The 8(a) program does not exist because it is DEI,” Schatz said. “It is Congress recognizing our trust and treaty obligations to Native communities and understanding that small business owned by them can be an important way to support Native economies and set them up for long term success.”

Pausing Progam Is ‘Not Fair’

Several witnesses were called to testify before the committee about the 8(a) program’s importance to their communities. Those speakers described the program as a revenue engine that turned federal contracts into tangible community benefits, supporting health care, housing, education, jobs, infrastructure and cultural preservation.

Chuck Hoskins Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said the 8(a) program has been transformative for his tribe, funneling roughly $364 million in federal contracting dollars into services such as health care, housing and education over the last decade.

Cariann Ah Loo, president of the Native Hawaiian Organization Association and chair of the Nakupuna Foundation, offered a similar assessment, saying that NHOs such as hers contributed more than $120 million in community benefits to Native Hawaiians between 2018 and 2024. Some of the organizations that received that money included ʻIolani Palace, the Polynesian Voyaging Society and the Purple Maiʻa Foundation.

“That reinvestment is not optional,” Ah Loo said. “It’s a condition of participation in the NHO 8(a) program, and it’s central to how the program is designed to function.”

In Dawson’s case, both SBA and U.S. Justice Department officials say he used the program to win large contracts and then use the revenues to live an extravagant lifestyle that included purchasing multimillion-dollar homes in Florida and Hawaiʻi and investing in a beachfront polo farm. Much of that money, agency officials and prosecutors said, should have been used to uplift Native Hawaiians.

Schatz acknowledged during the hearing that more needs to be done to convey to 8(a) critics — including those within the SBA — that the program is working for Native communities.

Fraud, waste and abuse “cannot and should not be ignored,” he said, and bad actors should be thoroughly investigated and held accountable. But pausing all sole-source contracts, as has been suggested by Ernst, or ending the program because of a handful of scandals is “not fair and not effective.”

Rather, the program could use more tailored oversight and regulation, he said, particularly when it comes to reporting community benefits. The SBA’s own requirements are “rather slender,” Schatz said.

Tribes, Alaska Native corporations and NHOs are required to file annual reports with the SBA detailing how much they spent on community benefits, but those reports are considered confidential and it’s unclear what the agency does to actually vet that information. Better data collection and disclosure of community benefits could help to blunt the attacks on the program, Schatz said, and ensure that it can “grow and survive for another several generations.”

Bipartisan Effort Needed

After the hearing, Schatz reiterated his stance that the 8(a) program as a whole should not be dismantled. Dawson’s case, he argued, was an act of individual alleged criminality, not proof that the entire 8(a) program is fundamentally broken.

“Anytime you’re dealing with big federal programs, there’s always the potential for someone to misbehave,” he said. “Chris Dawson was a criminal, and he broke a bunch of existing federal laws. Had he been a different kind of federal contractor, I’m sure he would have found a way to break those laws.”

Accountability should come through existing statutes and normal oversight, including possibly tightening reporting requirements, he said, not by weaponizing individual cases as part of a broader anti-DEI crusade.

Schatz said he plans to coordinate with Murkowski on next steps and made clear that any legislative response should be crafted on a bipartisan basis.

At least two other GOP senators, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma and Steve Daines of Montana, expressed support of the 8(a) program during Tuesday’s hearing with Mullin in particular highlighting the importance of tribal investments in local communities and how those can benefit Native and non-Natives alike.

In the meantime, Schatz said it’s important for lawmakers and officials to pay attention to legitimate claims of wrongdoing, something he worries is not always happening in the current climate.

“This feels like they are objecting to Native people making money,” Schatz said. “If we’re serious about increasing precision and oversight, then SBA and DOD need to tone down their rhetoric. If there’s a federal program that they want to know more about, there are adult ways to do that. They shouldn’t act like a Twitter troll with the power of the U.S. government.”

This story was produced by Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization covering Hawaiʻi that specializes in accountability and in-depth enterprise coverage. For more stories like this, subscribe to their newsletters.

The post ‘It Is Not A Fraud’: Schatz, Murkowski Blast Attack On Native Contracting appeared first on ICT.

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Costa Rica’s highest court has ruled that government agencies and the national electricity utility failed to adequately protect wildlife from electrocution caused by power lines. The case centers on the Nosara region in northwestern Costa Rica, but conservationists say the landmark ruling could strengthen wildlife protections across the country. The lawsuit was filed with the Constitutional Court by the law firm Alta Legal on behalf of a coalition of NGOs that argued that local electricity infrastructure was not adequately secured, as required by law. “Bare electrical wiring is a widespread problem in Costa Rica especially affecting rural areas,” Francisco Sánchez Murillo, a Costa Rican veterinarian who provided information for the case, told Mongabay in an email. He cited exposed wires, poor infrastructure maintenance and inadequate insulation for cables and transformers as key hazards. “In Nosara, the issue has been especially visible due to the constant wildlife electrocutions in the area,” Murillo said. Such electrocutions primarily harm tree-dwelling species like sloths and monkeys, and the recent court case largely focused on howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata). According to Elena Kukovica with the International Animal Rescue Center, one of the NGOs involved in the lawsuit, howler monkey mothers are frequently electrocuted on power lines. “That means you get a child that’s with her that becomes orphaned or dies as well,” Kukovica told Mongabay in a video call. She added that male troop leaders are also frequently killed. “And what happens is in the hierarchy of howler monkeys, the next leading male, then, to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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With an evolutionary history of more than 200 million years, turtles and tortoises have outlived dinosaurs and persisted on the planet despite mass extinction events. But around the turn of the 21st century, chelonian numbers in Southeast Asia dropped so dramatically that it sparked what biologists called the “Asian turtle crisis.” With a growing middle class in China, turtle meat was no longer a delicacy savored on special occasions; it became a staple meal, and turtle numbers plummeted. Coupled with disappearing and polluted habitats, the demand for these aquatic reptiles threatens to wipe out more than half of the world’s tortoise and turtle species. Yet, harvest and trade continue in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is a prominent exporter, with four of its 39 species targeted for meat. The vulnerable Asiatic softshell turtle (Amyda cartilaginea), the endangered Southeast Asian box turtle (Cuora amboinensis), the Asian leaf turtle (Cyclemys dentata) and the Malayan softshell turtle (Dogania subplana) fill the country’s yearly harvest quota of nearly 50,000 turtles. This legal trade purportedly provides sustainable, reliable income for those who capture and sell them. However, wildlife trade researcher Vincent Nijman and his colleagues refute this claim in a study published in the journal Discover Animals. They compared turtle collectors’ estimated income from the legal meat trade with minimum wage work across different Indonesian provinces to see if it really provided adequate income — and to determine whether traders needed to illegally trade turtles to make it a profitable business. “We were looking for some support…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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An injured seabird sought help by pecking at the door of an emergency room at a hospital in Germany until medical staff noticed it and called firefighters to help with its rescue.

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Most bacteria, including many bacterial pathogens, are surrounded by an outer protective layer of sugar molecules, known as a capsule. This primarily protects the bacteria from environmental influences, but also serves as a kind of cloak of invisibility, enabling them to evade the phagocytes of our immune system. Structural biologists at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) have now used cryo-electron microscopy to visualize the central Wza-Wzc protein complex, with which sugar molecules pass from the interior of the bacterial cell to the outside, in three dimensions at the atomic level for the first time.

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A new national monitoring program provides, for the first time, area-representative knowledge of semi-natural grasslands in Norway. The results show that this habitat covers a larger area than previously mapped, but that most grasslands are abandoned and in the process of becoming encroached upon.

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The Doñana National Park, considered one of Europe's most valuable wetlands, is expected to lose its marshland in 61 years, according to calculations from a major water-resource monitoring study carried out by the University of Seville. The study has developed an innovative algorithm, based on machine learning, capable of detecting the presence of surface water with high precision using images from the Sentinel-2 satellite.

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Haoyu Cheng, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical informatics and data science at Yale School of Medicine, has developed a new algorithm capable of building complete human genomes using standard laboratory technology. His tool, called hifiasm (ONT), eliminates the need for costly DNA sequencing that requires 40 times more genetic material and often cannot be performed on patient samples.

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A new study published in Conservation Biology shows that geotagged social media photos can significantly improve biodiversity datasets, especially in regions underrepresented in global monitoring efforts. Led by scientists from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, and Monash University, the team integrated Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) occurrence records with public images of the tawny coster butterfly (Acraea terpsicore) from Flickr and Facebook, and saw a 35% increase in total observations.

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There aren't any native lion or tiger populations living in Japan today, but this was not always the case. Fossil evidence indicates that at least one species of large cat roamed the archipelago during the Late Pleistocene—a period lasting from approximately 129,000 to 11,700 years ago. While researchers initially thought the fossils came from ancient tigers, new DNA evidence, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the fossils actually came from an ancient species of lion.

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By 2050, offshore wind power capacity in the North Sea is set to increase more than tenfold. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center Hereon have analyzed the long-term overall impact of this large number of wind farms on the hydrodynamics of the North Sea for the first time. They found that the current pattern could change on a large scale. The study highlights approaches for minimizing potential risks to the environment at an early stage. The work was recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

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