Calls for Climate: Josh Riley for NY-9
Join us to turn voters out this election to defeat Trump and elect climate champions!
The stakes in this election couldn’t be higher. That’s why we’re supporting Kamala Harris and Congressional candidates in key races across the country who will stand up for corporate polluters and put people before profits.
Join us on Tuesdays to call voters in key congressional districts and make sure they have a plan to get out and vote for climate champions.
At 6pm ET, we’ll be joined by Josh Riley to hear his plan to fight for climate action once elected. Hear directly from Josh about his priorities then make calls to voters to them out for him!
We’ll be making calls to support these climate champions:- Josh Riley for NY-19 at 6pm ET / 3pm PT
- Kirsten Engel for AZ-06 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT
Both of these races can help Democrats take back the House. Josh and Kirsten are running in battleground districts currently held by Republicans. Join us to call voters and flip these seats.
This event is cohosted by Climate Hawks Vote, Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Friends of the Earth Action, and Third Act.
See the schedule for the rest of the month.
It All Depends on Water: Examining Efforts to Improve and Protect Central Oregon’s Water Supply
On Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. (PDT), the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hold an oversight field hearing titled “It All Depends on Water: Examining Efforts to Improve and Protect Central Oregon’s Water Supply.” The hearing will examine the importance of collaboration in the Deschutes Basin and its impact on agriculture and species recovery. This hearing will be held at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds, 3800 SW Airport Way in Redmond, Oregon.
Pro-Palestinian Protests on National Park Service Lands
On Thursday, September 26, 2024, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled “Desecrating Old Glory: Investigating How the Pro-Hamas Protests Turned National Park Service Land into a Violent Disgrace.”
Legislative Hearing on Federal Lands Amplified Security for the Homeland (FLASH) Act
On Thursday, September 26, 2024, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1334 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill:
- H.R. 9678 (Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz.), “Federal Lands Amplified Security for the Homeland (FLASH) Act”.
- Construct roads on federal lands for increased access and patrols by law enforcement and Border Patrol officers
- Ensure access for law enforcement agencies to federal land along the border
- Allow states to place temporary barriers on federal lands to secure the border
- Direct federal lands managers to develop policies and procedures to reduce the trash buildup caused by illegal immigration
- Mitigate wildfires caused by immigration and restart a Trump administration initiative to manage hazardous fuels along the southern border
- Prohibit the housing of illegal migrants on federal lands
- Eliminate cultivation of illegal cannabis on federal lands
Examining Puerto Rico’s Electrical Grid and the Need for Reliable and Resilient Energy
On Thursday, September 26, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs will hold an oversight hearing titled “Examining Puerto Rico’s Electrical Grid and the Need for Reliable and Resilient Energy.”
Witnesses:- Manuel Laboy Rivera, Executive Director, Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction, and Resiliency
- Antonio Torres Miranda, Associate Commissioner, Puerto Rico Energy Bureau
- Juan Saca, Chief Executive Officer, LUMA Energy
- Brannen McElmurray, Chief Executive Officer, Genera PR LLC
Examining the Public Health Impacts of PFAS Exposures
Subcommittee hearing.
Witnesses:- Laurel Schaider, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Environmental Chemistry and Engineering, Silent Spring Institute
- Sue Fenton, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment, Professor of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University
- Michael D. Larrañaga, Ph.D., P.E., President and Managing Principal R.E.M. Risk Consultants
What Comes After the Wilderness Act?
The Wilderness Act protects 112 million acres of land across the United States from the ravages of industrial development. But for the Indigenous Nations, bands, and tribes that harvested from, cared for, or otherwise managed these so-called “wilderness areas” before they were given this designation by the federal government, the Wilderness Act can feel like yet another instrument of settler-colonial dispossession—a means of enforcing settler law on stolen land. Not only is the legislation’s vision for a landscape “untrammeled by man” built on the racist and genocidal fantasy of terra nullius, but, codified in law, it outlaws the very practices of cultivation and care that nurtured the “wilderness” for untold generations before settler-colonialism took hold.
What’s wrong with the Wilderness Act, and what would it mean to rewrite it today? How might a revised Wilderness Act serve the movement for land rematriation? And how might it guard itself against the libertarian right, which is prepared to exploit any loophole in the law?
Bringing together historians, legal experts, and impacted community members, this Zoom roundtable conversation asks how we should understand the Wilderness Act on its 60th anniversary—a moment both of Indigenous resurgence and a rising far right.
Speakers- Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet/Métis) is an award winning writer, ethnobotanist, environmental activist and Professor of History at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She/they work within Indigenous communities to revitalize Indigenous & traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), to address environmental justice & the climate crisis, and to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages. The author of Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet (2017), she/they are a 2023-2025 Red Natural History Fellow. Rosalyn is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.
- Heather Whiteman Runs Him (Apsaalooke/Crow) is the Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic and Associate Clinical Professor at University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. Heather served as Council of Record in Arizona v. Navajo Nation and Herrera v. Wyoming for amici Tribal Nations in support of Tribal interests before the United States Supreme Court. She has worked on cases in many venues to protect Tribal relationships to lands and waters. She teaches courses on Tribal Water Law and Tribal Courts and Tribal Law.
- Christen Falcon (Amskapi Piikani/Blackfeet) is a co-owner of a Blackfeet ecotourism transportation business ‘Backpacker’s Ferry’ located on the east side of Glacier National Park. She is a community engagement research specialist working in community wellness development utilizing Blackfeet methodologies and TEK traditional ecological knowledge through the Blackfeet non-profit Piikani Lodge Health Institute.
- Karl Jacoby is Allan Nevins Professor of American History at Columbia University. He has devoted his career to understanding how the making of the United States intertwined with the unmaking of a variety of other societies—from Native American nations to the communities of northern Mexico—and the ecologies upon which they rested. His books include Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation (2003), Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (2008), and The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire (2016).
Hearing on Indian Tribe Water, Mineral Rights, Buffalo, Forest Legislation
- S. 4444, Crow Revenue Act, to take certain mineral interests into trust for the benefit of the Crow Tribe of Montana
- S. 4633, Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act of 2024
- S. 4643, Zuni Indian Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2024
- S. 4705, Yavapai Apache Nation Water Rights Settlement Act
- S. 4998, Navajo Nation Rio San José Stream System Water Rights Settlement Act of 2024
- S. 465, BADGES for Native Communities Act, to require Federal law enforcement agencies to report on cases of missing or murdered Indians
- S. 2908, Indian Buffalo Management Act, to assist Tribal governments in the management of buffalo and buffalo habitat and the reestablishment of buffalo on Indian land
- S. 4370, Tribal Forest Protection Act Amendments Act of 2024
Nominations of Carl Bentzel for Federal Maritime Commission, Thomas Chapman for NTSB, Lanhee Chen for Amtrak
U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, will convene a full committee hearing on Wednesday, September 25, 2024, at 10 A.M. EDT to consider the following Presidential nominations:
Nominees:- Carl Bentzel to serve another term as a Commissioner on the Federal Maritime Commission
- Thomas Chapman to serve another term as a Member on the National Transportation Safety Board
- Lanhee Chen to be a Director on the Amtrak Board of Directors