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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday. President Biden says it delivers on the administration’s promise to meet the climate crisis and help working families.
The Inflation Reduction Act tackles climate issues with a focus on clean energy, bringing down energy costs, and reducing pollution. Additionally, it seeks to lower health care costs and tax high-income people and large corporations.
President Biden says it’s one of the most significant laws in history.
“We are in a season of substance. This administration began in a dark time in America, a once in a century pandemic devastating joblessness, clear and present threats to democracy and rule of law, doubts about America’s future itself and yet we’ve not wavered. We’ve not flinched and not given in, instead we’re giving results for the American people. We didn’t teardown, we build up.”
During a tribal broadband announcement last week, Vice President Kamala Harris talked about the Inflation Reduction Act investing in tribal communities.
“We will fund climate resilience and adaptation programs help tribal communities, address the climate crisis. We will provide emergency drought relief to tribal communities across the west. We will electrify homes across Indian Country and we will help tribes build wind and solar projects to lower the cost for Native families.”
Harris says while they tackle climate issues, the administration will rely on Indigenous knowledge in protecting the earth. Democrats are praising the law as Republicans are strongly opposing it. Not one Republican voted for the bill.
Unofficial results in Alaska’s special election Tuesday night for U.S. House show Democrat Mary Peltola (Yup’ik) in the lead.
Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich are coming in second and third.
Results will not be known until later this month when the last ballots are counted.
The winner will serve out the rest of Rep. Don Young (R-AK)’s term until January. Young died unexpectedly in March.
All three candidates are also running for the seat in the general election and are expected to advance.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held last weekend in western New Mexico for the National Code Talker Museum on the Navajo Nation.
As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the creation of the group who used their Native language to help win World War II.
The ceremony near the Navajo Nation capital of Window Rock was attended by Code Talker and former tribal chairman Peter McDonald. He’s one of three members of the elite group of soldiers who are still alive.
Navajo President Jonathan Nez and other military and elected officials also attended the event that took place on National Navajo Code Talkers Day.
The state of New Mexico in 2019 provided $1 million to the Navajo Nation for the construction of the National Code Talker Museum.
The U.S. recruited more than 400 Navajos to become Code Talkers during World War II. They used their then-unwritten Native language to create an unbreakable code for military communications, confounding the Japanese.
The Code Talkers participated in all battles led by the U.S. Marines in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945 including Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal and are credited with helping turn the tide of the war.
For more than two decades, the Code Talkers’ role was classified, but they’ve since become revered heroes both on the reservation and elsewhere.
A separate event was also held in Phoenix to mark the 80th anniversary of the creation of the Code Talkers.
Thomas H. Begay, another one of three surviving Navajo Code Talkers, spoke at the event.
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