That sounds familiar. The MAGAs love masks as long as the aren’t being used to prevent disease.

Tucson News 4: Tohono O’odham Nation files emergency injunction to save sacred saguaros.

Federal contractors plan to uproot thousands of saguaros and other desert plants from Tohono O’odham land as part of border wall construction efforts.

According to tribe leaders, U.S. Customs and Border Protection notified the Tohono O’odham Nation that removal of the protected plants will begin Monday, Oct. 12. The timing coincides with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which officials say is disrespectful to all tribal nations.

Paul Newman

The Tohono O’odham Nation filed an emergency injunction with the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week to stop the Department of Homeland Security from removing the sacred saguaros. Nation leaders argue the work has already caused permanent damage to their environment and cultural heritage for what they describe as an expensive and ineffective barrier.

The saguaros, called ha:ṣañ in the O’odham language, hold deep spiritual meaning for the tribe. According to the Nation, they represent shared faith and serve as spiritual monuments to tribal customs and values.

“Trespassing on our land to remove the sacred saguaros is like having masked men break into your house and take away your children,” Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose said. “The ha:ṣañ are our family, as much a part of us as any blood relative. To destroy them by the thousands carves a wound in our hearts that will not heal. We call on all people for solidarity as we work to protect our culture and our land from this useless, destructive wall.”

The saguaro provides shelter and food for desert wildlife while holding cultural importance for both the O’odham people and the broader American Southwest. In Tohono O’odham tradition, the saguaro is considered equivalent to a person, making any harmful action against one comparable to harming tribal members, officials said. The Tohono O’odham Legislative Council formalized this belief in Resolution 21-137.

“This is a violation of our sovereignty, of our religious liberty, and of our land,” Jose said. “The Nation will continue to fight to prevent this senseless devastation from going forward and we are grateful for the overwhelming community support we have received.”

There’s much more to read at the link above.

An important article about t his issue by Ryan Devereaux at ProPublica: As Trump’s Wall Closes in, DHS Intimidates a Border Tribe With Surveillance, Masked Agents and Drones.

Reporting Highlights

• Promising Cooperation: The Tohono O’odham Nation sued to stop a wall from being built on their land. In court, DHS gave assurances that the government would engage with the tribe in good faith.
• Intimidation Tactics: ProPublica found that DHS has surveilled an ongoing border prayer ceremony and questioned tribal members outside the reservation.
• Border Security: Despite steep declines in border crossings, officials describe the tribe’s land in Southern Arizona as “one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors.”

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

At 4:59 a.m. on Aug. 25, Verlon Jose, the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Southern Arizona, received an email from the head of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector. Government contractors were en route to conduct soil tests for construction of a 62-mile wall along the Nation’s southern boundary, wrote acting chief patrol agent Henry N. Laxdal.

If the tribe wished to have cultural monitors observe the work, they were welcome to, but they could not interfere with the government’s operations.

The work would begin in exactly one minute.

Jose, 59, was already aware of the contractors’ arrival. An hour earlier, a tribal member had called to report a caravan heading south through the reservation, and Facebook was lighting up with similar accounts. The convoy included not only work trucks and drilling rigs, but Border Patrol vehicles as well.

Elizabeth Taylor

For months, the O’odham had maneuvered to avoid such a scene, taking their case to federal court. Their homeland straddles the border, and thousands of tribal members live in Mexico. A wall would disrupt routine border crossings for ceremonies and family visits and destroy landscapes they consider their duty to protect, members and leaders say. Their lawsuit argued that the Trump administration’s efforts to build it despite their opposition constituted an historic attack on tribal sovereignty.

But administration attorneys gave assurances that the government was engaging with the O’odham in good faith, and a judge in Washington, D.C., denied the tribe’s request for a preliminary injunction. In his Aug. 25 email providing Jose a 60-second heads up, the Border Patrol chief said his agency’s willingness to accommodate cultural monitors underscored its “commitment to ongoing coordination” with the Nation.

As daylight broke, Jose learned the contractors were guarded by federal agents in masks and tactical gear, drawn from a special operations cadre that participated in citywide sweeps in Minneapolis and Chicago the previous year, which left three people dead, including two U.S. citizens. When the tribe’s chief of police tried to reach the worksite, he was stopped at a roadblock set up by the agents.

Jose issued a statement on the Nation’s website declaring the incursion illegal and revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had deployed a surveillance blimp and enlisted Mexican security forces to help protect the work crews.

For a quarter-century, Tohono O’odham leaders have staved off a border wall by allowing DHS to use the reservation as a testing ground for some of the government’s most aggressive homeland security measures — from vehicle barriers on the reservation’s southern boundary, to state-of-the-art surveillance towers, to law enforcement partnerships with the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Despite the collaborations, and assurances from the Trump administration, ProPublica found that DHS has turned its vast apparatus on tribal members, with 24-hour surveillance directed at an ongoing border prayer ceremony and tribal members being questioned outside the reservation about their ceremonial activities. ProPublica’s account is based on photos, videos, court filings, interviews with tribal leadership, firsthand observations and more than 1,000 contemporaneously written observations compiled by tribal members.

If this issue interests you, you can read the whole article at the link.

One more on this topic by Katya Mendoza at Arizona public radio: Rep. Grijalva calls on federal government to stop border wall construction on tribal lands.

Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva is calling on the federal government to suspend construction of its border infrastructure projects until it has meaningfully engaged with the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“This is not just a border construction project. This is about tribal sovereignty,” Grijalva said during a visit to Quitobaquito Springs, a sacred cultural site for the Tohono O’odham and Hia-Ced O’odham at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on Monday.

The Hia-Ced O’odham is a tribe related to the Tohono O’odham. It is also the only indigenous tribe in Arizona that is not federally recognized.

The spring feeds into a pond that supports endemic species like the Quitobaquito spring snail and the Sonoyta mud turtle as well as the endangered Quitobaquito pupfish.

John Cassevetes

“I want to be very clear, I 100% support the Tohono O’odham Nation and its decision to challenge this construction in court,” Grijalva said.

In June, the Tohono O’odham Nation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prevent the federal government from taking reservation land and water to construct a border wall on tribal lands.

“For decades, the nation has actively supported the federal government’s border security measures,” tribal leaders said in a press release. “Throughout this time, the nation has consistently made it clear that it was supporting these measures to ensure that a static border wall would not be constructed on its lands.”

Grijalva also announced on Monday that she is working on legislation to rescind the Department of Homeland Security’s sweeping authority to waive federal laws.

“We should not be pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into a second unnecessary wall – that does nothing to actually enhance security – simply for political symbolism,” Grijalva said.

If anyone still wondered if Trump is a Russian asset, he removed all doubt yesterday when he made a deal with his pal Putin to buy diesel from Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky has condemned Donald Trump’s announcement of a deal to import Russian diesel into the US.

Zelensky called it a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin that amounts to “an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged”, a position quickly backed by Ukraine’s European allies.

Trump said Putin had agreed to release 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately “to the American and global marketplace” followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and another million after that.

It is understood the US Treasury is suspending sanctions on Russian diesel exports until 7 April as part of the deal, but other assets like those in American banks are still frozen.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that a further three million tonnes of Russian diesel would be delivered “within a short period”, dependent on the condition of its refineries, which have been attacked by Ukraine.

Putin later said Russia, which introduced a ban on diesel exports earlier this year, was willing to supply both the US and global markets with oil and petroleum products,but his statement did not specify amounts.

Zelensky said Russia would repay the diesel with “further terror”….

Analysts have questioned whether Russia is capable of providing that quantity of diesel and the extent to which doing so will ease prices for American consumers.

Alex Veiga at AP: Boosting US oil supplies with Russian diesel unlikely to have much impact on prices, experts say.

A new pact that calls for Russia to boost the U.S. supply of diesel over the next few months is unlikely to make a dent in painfully high prices at the pump or elsewhere, energy policy experts say.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he had struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to immediately supply the U.S. more than 300,000 tons of diesel. That would be followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November, then 4 million more tons at some point after that.

Vivien Leigh

The deal marks a stark reversal of policy by the U.S., which from the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine had banned imports of Russian oil, and comes at a time when the U.S. economy and consumers are being squeezed by a global rise in oil prices due to the eight-month-long U.S. war with Iran.

The price of diesel has shattered records in recent weeks, ratcheting up inflation for a broad swath of consumer goods.

The national average for a gallon of diesel in the U.S. hit a record high of $6.53 on Sept. 22, according to motor club AAA. It averaged nearly $6.28 a gallon on Friday, up from almost $3.68 this time last year. Diesel prices have hit records in Europe, too.

Higher diesel prices mean more expensive transportation for a long list of everyday goods. That’s because diesel is used for many freight and delivery networks. And some businesses have already passed along steeper costs to consumers in the form of added fees on online orders and packages in the mail….

Energy policy experts on Friday expressed doubts that a boost in diesel supply from Russia will have a significant impact on oil prices, whether in the U.S. or globally.

“It’s kind of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Michael Lynch, distinguished fellow at Energy Policy Research Foundation, a nonpartisan research institution focused on energy and economics.

“If we get diesel from Russia, basically it means that their existing customers are not going to get it and they’ll have to go somewhere else, and that will keep the price basically where it is now,” Lynch said.

Phillips O’Brien at Substack: This Is About Much More Than Just Diesel.

With the major story breaking yesterday of the US announcing the purchase of diesel fuel from Russia, followed by a Treasury Department announcement of sanctions relief on Russia (see details below), I am sending out this overview. This development is not only important but it is also indicative of a truth that many (most) people have been unwilling to admit for the last 21 months. The narrow story is the decision by the Trump administration to purchase Russian diesel, which was proclaimed by the American president as a great triumph for the US consumer (when, of course, it is nothing of the sort).

However, the real story here is not about diesel, it is about the US increasingly emerging as a supporter of Russia in this war. Since Trump became president for the second time, the USA has moved steadily to support Putin in his war to wipe out Ukraine. For most of the time that has been through limiting Ukraine and leaving Ukraine defenseless—so that Russia can bombard Ukraine mercilessly (which we are now seeing).

However, that has not been all. The US aid for Russia has extended to outright diplomatic support (all those UN votes, the Putin red-carpet visit, etc.), to spreading Russian disinformation (most recently by Marco Rubio this week), to even manipulating Ukraine and Ukrainian allies into doing what Russia wants (hopes and dreams in the USA). Yes, there have been limited crumbs thrown Ukraine’s way, but these have been to keep leverage over the Ukrainians, to see if they can be bullied into doing what Putin wants because of some deeply misguided hope and belief in the USA.

The truth of US behavior has been that the US has been helping Russia, but until now more by hobbling Ukraine and its partners. Now, the US is coming out as a more direct supporter of Russia—and in the process it is blaming the Ukrainians for that. The diesel issue is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. Understand that, and you understand it all.

Read more at the link. Phillips O’Brien is an American historian, currently a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth’s plan to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad and livestreaming the event for public consumption. Here are some press reactions to the story.

Haley Britzky at CNN: Army caught off guard by Hegseth’s order to make firing squad execution public.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s announcement that the execution of the convicted Fort Hood mass shooter would be shown in public caught people across the Pentagon and the Army off guard, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Hegseth made the announcement in an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, which he’d visited to give a speech to the crew welcoming them home from their deployment to the Middle East.

Vincent Price

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said during the interview.

That comment was the first time many in the Army and Pentagon heard about the idea of a firing squad’s execution of Nidal Hasan in Texas being made public, and there were immediately questions about what “public” would mean. There are Army regulations about who can watch a military execution, including family of the prisoner and of the victims, media representatives and a chaplain.

But it was decided by Hegseth, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle, and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and his staff that “public” would mean it would be livestreamed, one source familiar said. The Pentagon then confirmed as much to the media, saying in a statement, “The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow.” [….]

The idea has shocked many service members and veterans and provoked a bipartisan backlash. Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday that the livestream could ultimately go forward, saying he didn’t know “if that’s actually going to happen,” but said if it was, “I’m not going to be watching it.”

“It takes away everything America stands for when we do public executions,” one Army officer with multiple deployments to the Middle East told CNN. “The generational harm caused by allowing troops in uniform to stand in front of a man in a wheelchair and watch him get shot to death is irreparable.” [….]

Many of the details around the livestream have yet to be finalized, and multiple sources told CNN that officials have been working to find answers since it was announced. A second source familiar told CNN that great care is being taken to determine which soldiers would fire on Hasan, taking into consideration the potential psychological impacts of doing so. A specific unit has been selected to carry out the execution, the source said.

Maegan Vazquez, Natalie Allison, and Ian Duncan at The Washington Post: Trump, asked if he approved live-streaming execution, says ‘absolutely.’

Asked Friday whether he had personally authorized or approved the live–streaming of the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, President Donald Trump responded, “Did I approve? Absolutely.”

Trump was asked multiple times while leaving the White House on Friday about his involvement in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that Hasan’s execution by firing squad would be live-streamed.

Ava Gardner

Asked initially whether he wanted the execution to be live-streamed and if he worried it could be used as propaganda, Trump told reporters, “I’m going to make a determination about that, but he will be killed. He will be through firing squad. … I really don’t care how he goes as long as he goes. And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”

But when asked again whether he personally authorized the live stream of the execution, he responded in the affirmative. He did not directly answer whether he planned to watch the live stream….

Trump earlier this week approved the firing squad execution of Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist who in 2009 shot dozens of people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, Texas.

The Pentagon said Thursday that the execution by firing squad would be live-streamed for the public to watch. It would be the first time the U.S. military broadcasts an execution live on the internet. The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3.

Earlier Friday,Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch the planned live-streamed execution of theFort Hood shooter and expressed skepticism over whether it will be broadcast.

Vance, a Catholic who previously has said he supports the death penalty, was asked by reporters aboard Air Force Two how he reconciled his faith with the Pentagon’s decision to live-stream the killing. He underscored that Hasan “brutally murdered” innocent people but added, “If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”