United States | News & Politics

Opinion - Lydia Polgreen
Jan. 19, 2026

https://archive.ph/A01JF

Like many Americans, I had watched the video of the killing of Good by an ICE officer on a residential street in Minneapolis with horror and sorrow. From afar, this tragic and possibly criminal act of violence could plausibly be seen as incidental to President Trump’s mission to deport undocumented people from the country. But when I landed in Minneapolis on Monday and saw the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught unfolding here, I understood that Good’s killing was emblematic of its true mission: to stage a spectacle of cruelty upon a city that stands in stark defiance against Trump’s dark vision of America.

This should come as no real surprise; ICE has continued using chemical agents to punish people for documenting their crimes.

Access options:

• Gift link — depends on utm_source which some privacy extensions strip off the URL
• archive.today — archived copy won't be updated

Archived copies of the article

• web.archive.org
• archive.today
• ghostarchive.org

The Grand Avenue mainstay was served with an order to produce documents proving their employees are legal citizens

Jan 16, 2026

The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car’s windows and dragged out both O’Keefe and her friend.

O’Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, “You guys got to stop obstructing us, that’s why this lesbian removed is dead,” an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.

Although the US government intended the tariffs to target foreign businesses, the policy actually harms the domestic economy. "The tariffs are an own goal," says Julian Hinz, Research Director at the Kiel Institute and one of the authors of the study. "The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth. The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill." The tariffs act like a consumption tax on imported goods. At the same time, both the variety and volume of available products decrease.

Mon 19 Jan 2026 13.00 EST

On Tuesday, she plans to introduce a bill in the House of Representatives urging the US to end the political and economic dominance of billionaire oligarchs, halt the corporate subsidies and tax advantages that fortify their power and reinvest in the American people to defend democracy from authoritarianism.

The legislation is supported by Our Revolution, a political organisation that spun out of the senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run, which is launching a “Defund the Oligarchy” campaign with research showing that individuals and corporations who funded Trump’s election received a staggering return on their investment.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/61965851

On Saturday in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, a pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and anti-Muslim hate rally organized by racist Jake Lang was abruptly aborted after Lang was swarmed by local residents and counterprotesters. The robust community response to the rally underscores the unpopularity of Trump’s “mass deportation” policies and attacks on immigrants.

footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AuLhDJnaEk

Archived copy of the article

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/sustainability/p/957928/u-s-public-invited-to-weigh-in-on-major-offshore-drilling-proposal

The only investigation is going to come from the county DA, and be done without federal cooperation

United States Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not be investigating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good, while also confirming reports that it is looking into charges against top Minnesota officials for encouraging protests.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday night, Blanche said the civil rights unit of the Justice Department would not bow to pressure to investigate the shooting death of Minneapolis resident and mother Good, 37, earlier this month.

• “In Donald Trump, we have a frightening Venn diagram consisting of three circles: the first is extreme present hedonism; the second, narcissism; and the third, bullying behavior. These three circles overlap in the middle to create an impulsive, immature, incompetent person who, when in the position of ultimate power, easily slides into the role of tyrant, complete with family members sitting at his proverbial “ruling table.” Like a fledgling dictator, he plants psychological seeds of treachery in sections of our population that reinforce already negative attitudes.” ― Bandy X Lee, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. October 3, 2017. Page 44.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45785014

...

Why is China running such huge trade surpluses and why is the US abandoning the relatively liberal trade policies of the past eight decades? The answer is the revival of mercantilism.

Mercantilism dominated European thinking on international economic policy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Mercantilists’ underlying belief was that international economic policy is primarily a tool of state power. Since power, unlike prosperity, is relative, mercantilists think of international economic engagement as “zero sum”: you win, I lose. Mercantilists also treasure domestic production and love trade surpluses and protection against imports. Adam Smith, wrote The Wealth of Nations in the 18th century as an argument in favour of free trade, against just such mercantilism.

Mercantilism goes back at least to the 16th century. So, given that we are in the 21st, we should call today’s version “neo-mercantilism”, replacing “neoliberalism” which took a more Smithian view of trade a few decades ago. Yet as the Canadian economist, Eric Helleiner argues, such contemporary neo-mercantilism partly revives earlier neo-mercantilist ideas, notably those of two figures whose ideas were influential in the 19th century — the first US secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton and the German political theorist Friedrich List, both of whom argued for infant industry protection.

...

Neo-mercantilism is thriving in China, which has not only embraced infant-industry promotion, but created huge trade surpluses. Trump’s US is no less neo-mercantilist: he is obsessed with the evils of external deficits and the need to protect domestic markets.

Arvind Subramanian, former chief economic adviser to India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, recently argued that “Trump’s long-standing tariff obsession derives from his fury-fuelled conviction that trade surpluses abroad have damaged the US economy, especially its manufacturing sector. In that world view, China, with its consistently large trade surpluses, was the provocateur-in-chief.”

...

The perspective [of China wanting to dominate global manufacturing by not importing anything manufactured elsewhere] is consistent with the revealed preferences of Chinese policymakers over decades. Certainly, China has never addressed its long-standing structural problem of excess savings.

True, immediately after the financial crisis of 2007-09, its temporary “solution” was to promote a huge domestic property boom. But this has now (inevitably) blown up. More recently, the favoured solution has been enormous investment in advanced manufacturing, which generates excess capacity and even higher exports: China’s mercantilism is embedded, economically and politically.

Trump’s tariffs will now divert China’s exports towards other markets, both other high-income economies and emerging and developing ones. Thus, Subramanian notes that “China’s exports of low-value-added goods to developing countries have been rising sharply, undermining the competitiveness of these countries’ own domestic industries.” The beggar-our-neighbours interaction of China’s mercantilism with US protectionism will spread damage across the world.

...

Mercantilism’s zero-sum and state-oriented perspective also tends to create international conflict. Mercantilist powers fought one another constantly: England and France, two of Europe’s great powers, were at war, on and off, from 1689 to 1815. The apparently economically-motivated US decapitation of Venezuela is a classically imperialist resource-grab. Maybe, the fear of nuclear weapons will continue to constrain war. But it is not easy to separate intense economic friction from outright conflict.

...

The triumph of neo-mercantilism then raises two fundamental issues.

The first is where it will lead. Some argue that the world will fracture. This seems likely. But it is unlikely to be a neat fracturing, because the interests of great powers overlap. It seems unlikely, for example, that the US will just abandon south and east Asia to China ... The second question is whether the fracturing can be managed. There is, in fact, an answer that is rational, albeit optimistic. It is to build a new system around the notion of a peace treaty among mercantilists. Surprisingly, perhaps, that would not be a new idea: just such a peace treaty was an important element in the post-second-world-war liberal settlement that China and Trump’s US are jointly destroying.

...

Web archive link

When they told the agents they were U.S. citizens, the couple said, one responded, “It doesn’t matter.” Another offered, “What you’re doing is illegal. This is like Germany 1938,” the court papers said.

“One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos,” said another attorney who asked not to be named. “And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did."

Mind you, the 6th amendment guarantees the right to an attorney:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Any "trial" where you can get kept in jail until your court date, can be kicked out of the country for life, where you can't get a jury, where you get a "judge" who is an executive branch employee who gets fired if they rule in your favor, and where your don't get any chance meet with your lawyer is something that shouldn't be allowed by the constitution.

On Monday, January 5, APD officers responded to a disturbance call at 4:35 a.m. in the 6100 block of Blue Stem Trail, a West Oak Hill Austin neighborhood, according to a statement from police. Although they found no ongoing disturbance, officers identified a woman with an Administrative Warrant issued by ICE.

APD officers notified ICE, under its Detainer Request policy, GO 318.3.4, and federal authorities arrived and took custody of the woman and her child. The incident caused many Austin community members to question APD's involvement in ICE cases as fears of heightened federal immigration operations continue to ramp up across Texas and the U.S.

"Given APD's role in the separation of Génesis and her family, the Austin community deserves immediate transparency from the Austin Police Department," the group said.

As protests in Minnesota continue amid ongoing tension between demonstrators and federal agents in the area, Gov. Tim Walz and local safety officials announced Jan. 17 that the Minnesota National Guard has been "mobilized" and is on standby if needed.

In a Facebook post Jan. 17, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said that at "Gov. Walz's direction," the Minnesota National Guard was mobilized and was "staging to support local law enforcement and emergency management agencies."

The department further clarified in the post that troops had not been deployed.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said officers had not used pepper spray and similar measures limited by a judge’s order, then was confronted with a video that showed chemical agents deployed.

I'm of hearing multiple examples of legal observers being sprayed, as well as being shown their home address and threatened with arrest for merely bearing witness.

The number of House Democrats signed up to impeach her was 97 as of Friday evening

The EPA just closed a loophole that allowed hyperscalers to quickly deploy power generators without requiring a permit.

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

On Tuesday night, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cut $2 billion in mental health and addiction services.

“Let me make myself clear when I say that politics should never impact the work that we’re doing with our kids, and that’s what it did,” said Mitchelle Mitchell, director of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ education department.

Mental and behavioral health programs that primarily serve Indigenous people, from across the country, received emails stating that their grant funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration had been rescinded.

A handful of tribal nations received federal grant funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for the 2025 fiscal year.

Nearly half a million was awarded to Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Government in Wisconsin, Two Feathers Native American Family Services in California was awarded $3.6 million, Chinle Unified School District on the Navajo Nation in Arizona was awarded just over $3.5 million, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Michigan was awarded a little over a $1 million, and the Pueblo of San Felipe in New Mexico was awarded $1.5 million.

This sent a shockwave through the Confederation Salish and Kootenai Tribes in western Montana and St. Francis Indian School in South Dakota who rely on these grants to provide mental health services to their nations’ children and teens.

On Thursday morning, they received an email that their grant funding had been restored, but staff remain worried about the future.

Mitchell described the whole experience as “traumatic.” Her department was informed by email that two grants, amounting to $2.75 million, had been rescinded.

“It was one of the hardest days of my career,” Mitchell, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said. “To get the termination notice late at night without any warning. It was so unexpected. And then to have to come in (the next day) and tell staff that not only do we not have the funding, they don’t have jobs.”

The tribes’ Project Aware and Partnership for Success programs rely on federal grant funding. Project Aware contracts with tribal knowledge keepers, and has partnerships with three local public school districts. The Partnership for Success collaborates with the Boys and Girls Club of the Flathead Reservation.

Mitchell spent Jan. 14, personally calling all the program partners and contractors to tell them they would no longer be able to work with them or provide services to students.

“It broke a little piece of me doing that,” she said.

Five years ago, Mitchell wrote the grant proposal for Project Aware. It was a way to bring her three-tiered system of support rooted in Salish, Kootenai and Kalispel language and culture to the children in her community. Prior to Project Aware, she had applied for two other federal grants but wasn’t selected.

“This idea is putting culture into the school system,” Mitchell said. “It’s not to add beads and feathers to something. It’s to make sure that our tribal kids are thinking of other content areas (like math and science) through a tribal lens.”

The project is in its fifth year and has met every annual goal since it started, a point of pride for Mitchell.

“Our goal is to help our kids strengthen their sense of who they are, so that they’re healthy, well and resilient,” she said. “Then we just pull the rug out from underneath them, when we take that away. If I sound a little angry, it’s because I am. But, I’m so cognizant of the impact that we’re making, and this work is so important. We can’t let it stop.”

She has spent a lot of time creating strong partnerships with the local school districts and traditional knowledge keepers. The project is in a unique position to bring hands-on cultural learning to three different school districts in rural, western Montana.

Students who were at-risk of not graduating high school participate daily in cultural activities through their immersion school. Some of the students said it was one of the only reasons they came to school. They looked forward to tanning hide, learning how to sew ribbon skirts, beading, going outside to learn about traditional plants, and speaking their language.

Every year, they have Culture Camp on Flathead Lake. Last year over 600 students and their family members participated. Every day, there are up to 30 different cultural activities participants can choose to do. There’s no time limit and the curriculum is self-directed.

“We were right, when we help our kids strengthen that sense of who they are as tribal people, then they’re more likely to choose things that cause less harm for themselves or help encourage their friends to,” Mitchell said. “When they learn how to do something that’s culturally or tribally-related, then they can lean into that in times of trouble.”

The St. Francis Indian School in rural, southern South Dakota also received funding to create a Project Aware. The school’s population is 98 percent American Indian or Alaska Native. The project serves more than 600 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. They receive a little over $1 million a year to provide culturally relevant programming and mental health services.

Nearly six years ago, a student at St. Francis Indian School died by suicide, and since the school has been working diligently on suicide prevention. One of the main aspects of the school’s Project Aware is suicide prevention.

Over the last three years, the project has been able to create a strong mental health response team.

“They are able to connect with students and make sure that each student is able to explain and express the needs that they have, whether it’s in the classroom or at home,” Beckey Eddie-Moosman, director of the school’s mental health department, said.

On Jan. 14, Eddie-Moosman and Maria Valandra, one of the school’s counselors, were trying to figure out what grants could pay for at least the rest of the school year. These services are vital for the health of students.

“Still having kids that need to come to you while you’re trying not to literally panic,” Valandra said. “(On Wednesday) we had school and we had kids who still, we’re like, ‘Hey, I come to school because this is my safe place. This is where I get my routine and structure. These are the people who usually are right here for me,'”

After a stressful day, Valandra was doomscrolling on social media when she came across an article that said mental health grant funding would be restored. This led to another restless night worrying about whether it was true.

On Thursday morning, Eddie-Moosman and Valandra waited for an email stating their grant money had been restored. At 10 a.m., they got the “good news.” It was a relief.

The school administration had affirmed they were committed to keeping the mental health services available to students.

This is not the case for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. If their federal grant funding gets rescinded, those programs will no longer be available. This has caused a lot of stress for staff who are worried about having stable employment.

“We’re on guard now. Could this happen again? Could they figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t have to be rescinded?” Mitchell said. “That is a scary way to do your work every day, because of it I actually have one of my employees who works on Project Aware that has an interview for a different job on Friday. They can’t live like this and I don’t blame them.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7364528

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20619

Alabama is among the states that have seen a significant drop in the number of obstetrician-gynecologists working there since Roe v. Wade was overturned and cleared the way for states to ban abortion, resulting in doctors being unable to provide standard care and in a number of cases, placing patients in serious and even deadly danger.

On Friday, at a White House roundtable on healthcare in rural areas—some of the hardest-hit by the lack of OB-GYN care in states with abortion bans—one of President Donald Trump's top health officials suggested the exodus of doctors from Alabama and other crises in healthcare access have resulted in positive innovations as care is outsourced to "robots."

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said that since Alabama "has no OB-GYNs in many of their counties," the state is "doing something pretty cool."

"They're actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms," said Oz.

Dr Oz: "Alabama has no OBGYNs in many of their counties, so they're doing something pretty cool. They're actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms." pic.twitter.com/sEwd4OJss9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2026

CMS, which oversees the new Office of Rural Health Transformation, recently highlighted in a report about rural healthcare Alabama's Maternal and Fetal Health Initiative, which it said "provides digital maternity care by using telerobotic ultrasound devices and labor and delivery carts to rural hospitals."

Oz asserted that robotic ultrasounds will help to reduce Alabama's maternal mortality rate, which is the highest in the United States, as medical centers will be able to detect health issues and abnormalities.

But observers said that praising an outcome of the dearth of maternal healthcare in the state—which has been at least partially caused by Trump's push to overturn Roe and Republicans' efforts to ban abortion—was "horrific."

"The severe lack of OB-GYNs," said the labor-focused media group More Perfect Union, "is a crisis, especially in rural America."

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, added: "It’s not safe to be an OB-GYN in red states, so they are turning to robots to care for pregnant woman. This is not an innovation success story. It’s a dystopian horror story."

A 2024 analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that in the year following the US Supreme Court'sDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, applicants for OB-GYN residency programs plummeted 21.2%.

The ruling allowed Alabama's near-total abortion ban—which has only one ostensible "exception" for cases in which a pregnant person faces a serious health risk—to go into effect. Rights groups said that the law, one of the most extreme bans in the US, had been passed by the state's Republican legislature as part of an effort to force the court to reconsider Roe.

Robin Marty, executive director of WAWC Healthcare in the state, told the Alabama Reflector in 2024 that "when it comes to, especially, OB-GYN residencies, nobody wants to come out here because we can’t fulfill all of the requirements, which include being able to do abortions and manage miscarriage."

There had also been a 13.1% drop in applicants for OB-GYN programs in 2019-20 after the approval of the state's Sanctity of Life Act, which recognized “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life."

“Legislative interference that imposes restrictions on full-scope reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, discourages medical students from pursuing residency training in states with restrictions, directly hurting patients by reducing the physician workforce in the communities that often need clinicians the most,” AnnaMarie Connolly, chief of education and academic affairs of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), told the Alabama Reflector.

In addition to the state's abortion ban, the worsening lack of prenatal care in rural Alabama has also driven the state's decision to turn to robotics to provide some aspects of healthcare.

Since 2020, more than 100 rural hospitals across the nation have stopped delivering babies; at least three of them have been in Alabama, where just 30% of rural health centers have labor and delivery units. Hospitals have cited staffing shortages and low Medicaid reimbursement payments—which were worsened by the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act—as reasons for closing obstetric care units. Closures have left many families traveling an hour or more to receive prenatal care, and can worsen maternal mortality rates.

Regarding the robotic ultrasounds heralded by Oz, political analyst Drew Savicki said: "That is interesting but it represents a very small fraction of what an OB-GYN does. What is an ultrasound robot going to do for a woman who is coming in for her post-childbirth examination?"

In his comments, Oz unwittingly described the crisis the Trump administration has helped to make worse: "We have the best healthcare, if you can get to it."

One observer suggested Trump's healthcare officials "explain why no OB-GYNs want to work in Alabama, rather than bragging about robots."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7372022

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20650

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado's gifting of her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump raised eyebrows around the world Friday—but it wasn't the first time that the winner of the prestigious award gave it away.

Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to the 58-year-old opposition leader "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

Machado joined a notorious group of Nobel Peace laureates who either waged or advocated for war, as she backed Trump's aggression against her country. This has included a massive troop deployment, military and CIA airstrikes, bombing of boats allegedly transporting drugs, and the abduction earlier this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Trump has ordered the bombing of nine other countries during his two terms, more than any other president in history. US forces acting on his orders have killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. While running for president in 2016, Trump vowed to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State militants and "take out their families," and then followed through on his promise.

Despite being passed over by Trump for installation in any leadership role in Venezuela so far, Machado presented Trump with her framed Nobel medal along with a certificate of gratitude during a Thursday meeting at the White House. Trump subsequently posted on his Truth Social network that “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”

In 1943!!!“Nobel Literature laureate Knut Hamsun famously gave his Nobel medal and diploma to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as a gesture of admiration for the Nazi regime, following his support for the occupation….”

[image or embed]
— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 10:56 AM

That gesture prompted the Norwegian Nobel Committee to issue a statement noting that the prize cannot be given away.

"Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize," the committee said. "A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time."

The committee's statement was extraordinary—but this is not the first time that a Nobel winner gave away their prize. In 1943, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun gifted his 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature—awarded for his novel Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil)—to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after a trip to Germany. Other Nobel laureates have donated or sold their medals.

The progressive media outlet Occupy Democrats said on social media: "Clearly, the similarities between Trump and Goebbels extend beyond just a mutual admiration for fascism. Both men possess(ed) the kind of spiritually sick, egotistical temperament that allows one to accept a prize that someone else has earned."

"Obviously, Donald Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize," the outlet continued. "He has bombed Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, innocent fishing boats in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and is in the process of turning the United States into a war zone. That said, Machado doesn't deserve it either."

"Anyone spineless enough to surrender the prize to an evil man like Trump in the hopes of obtaining power is not someone we should be celebrating," Occupy Democrats added.

Last month, Wikileaks founder and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee Julian Assange sued the Nobel Foundation—the Swedish organization that manages administration of the approximately $1.2 million-per-winner prize—in a bid to prevent Machado from receiving the money.

Machado's win also sparked protests outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7373507

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20476

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

On Tuesday night, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cut $2 billion in mental health and addiction services.

“Let me make myself clear when I say that politics should never impact the work that we’re doing with our kids, and that’s what it did,” said Mitchelle Mitchell, director of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ education department.

Mental and behavioral health programs that primarily serve Indigenous people, from across the country, received emails stating that their grant funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration had been rescinded.

A handful of tribal nations received federal grant funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for the 2025 fiscal year.

Nearly half a million was awarded to Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Government in Wisconsin, Two Feathers Native American Family Services in California was awarded $3.6 million, Chinle Unified School District on the Navajo Nation in Arizona was awarded just over $3.5 million, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Michigan was awarded a little over a $1 million, and the Pueblo of San Felipe in New Mexico was awarded $1.5 million.

This sent a shockwave through the Confederation Salish and Kootenai Tribes in western Montana and St. Francis Indian School in South Dakota who rely on these grants to provide mental health services to their nations’ children and teens.

On Thursday morning, they received an email that their grant funding had been restored, but staff remain worried about the future.

Mitchell described the whole experience as “traumatic.” Her department was informed by email that two grants, amounting to $2.75 million, had been rescinded.

“It was one of the hardest days of my career,” Mitchell, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said. “To get the termination notice late at night without any warning. It was so unexpected. And then to have to come in (the next day) and tell staff that not only do we not have the funding, they don’t have jobs.”

The tribes’ Project Aware and Partnership for Success programs rely on federal grant funding. Project Aware contracts with tribal knowledge keepers, and has partnerships with three local public school districts. The Partnership for Success collaborates with the Boys and Girls Club of the Flathead Reservation.

Mitchell spent Jan. 14, personally calling all the program partners and contractors to tell them they would no longer be able to work with them or provide services to students.

“It broke a little piece of me doing that,” she said.

Five years ago, Mitchell wrote the grant proposal for Project Aware. It was a way to bring her three-tiered system of support rooted in Salish, Kootenai and Kalispel language and culture to the children in her community. Prior to Project Aware, she had applied for two other federal grants but wasn’t selected.

“This idea is putting culture into the school system,” Mitchell said. “It’s not to add beads and feathers to something. It’s to make sure that our tribal kids are thinking of other content areas (like math and science) through a tribal lens.”

The project is in its fifth year and has met every annual goal since it started, a point of pride for Mitchell.

“Our goal is to help our kids strengthen their sense of who they are, so that they’re healthy, well and resilient,” she said. “Then we just pull the rug out from underneath them, when we take that away. If I sound a little angry, it’s because I am. But, I’m so cognizant of the impact that we’re making, and this work is so important. We can’t let it stop.”

She has spent a lot of time creating strong partnerships with the local school districts and traditional knowledge keepers. The project is in a unique position to bring hands-on cultural learning to three different school districts in rural, western Montana.

Students who were at-risk of not graduating high school participate daily in cultural activities through their immersion school. Some of the students said it was one of the only reasons they came to school. They looked forward to tanning hide, learning how to sew ribbon skirts, beading, going outside to learn about traditional plants, and speaking their language.

Every year, they have Culture Camp on Flathead Lake. Last year over 600 students and their family members participated. Every day, there are up to 30 different cultural activities participants can choose to do. There’s no time limit and the curriculum is self-directed.

“We were right, when we help our kids strengthen that sense of who they are as tribal people, then they’re more likely to choose things that cause less harm for themselves or help encourage their friends to,” Mitchell said. “When they learn how to do something that’s culturally or tribally-related, then they can lean into that in times of trouble.”

The St. Francis Indian School in rural, southern South Dakota also received funding to create a Project Aware. The school’s population is 98 percent American Indian or Alaska Native. The project serves more than 600 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. They receive a little over $1 million a year to provide culturally relevant programming and mental health services.

Nearly six years ago, a student at St. Francis Indian School died by suicide, and since the school has been working diligently on suicide prevention. One of the main aspects of the school’s Project Aware is suicide prevention.

Over the last three years, the project has been able to create a strong mental health response team.

“They are able to connect with students and make sure that each student is able to explain and express the needs that they have, whether it’s in the classroom or at home,” Beckey Eddie-Moosman, director of the school’s mental health department, said.

On Jan. 14, Eddie-Moosman and Maria Valandra, one of the school’s counselors, were trying to figure out what grants could pay for at least the rest of the school year. These services are vital for the health of students.

“Still having kids that need to come to you while you’re trying not to literally panic,” Valandra said. “(On Wednesday) we had school and we had kids who still, we’re like, ‘Hey, I come to school because this is my safe place. This is where I get my routine and structure. These are the people who usually are right here for me,'”

After a stressful day, Valandra was doomscrolling on social media when she came across an article that said mental health grant funding would be restored. This led to another restless night worrying about whether it was true.

On Thursday morning, Eddie-Moosman and Valandra waited for an email stating their grant money had been restored. At 10 a.m., they got the “good news.” It was a relief.

The school administration had affirmed they were committed to keeping the mental health services available to students.

This is not the case for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. If their federal grant funding gets rescinded, those programs will no longer be available. This has caused a lot of stress for staff who are worried about having stable employment.

“We’re on guard now. Could this happen again? Could they figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t have to be rescinded?” Mitchell said. “That is a scary way to do your work every day, because of it I actually have one of my employees who works on Project Aware that has an interview for a different job on Friday. They can’t live like this and I don’t blame them.”

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