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A makeshift barrier built with shipping containers is being illegally erected along part of the US-Mexico border by Arizona’s Republican governor – before he has to hand over the keys of his office to his Democratic successor in January.
Doug Ducey is driving a project that is placing double-stacked old shipping containers through several miles of national forest, attempting to fill gaps in Donald Trump’s intermittent border fencing.
The rusting hulks, topped with razor wire and with bits of metal jammed into gaps, stretch for more than three miles through Coronado national forest land, south of Tucson, and the governor has announced plans to extend that up to 10 miles, at a cost of $95m.
The area, with mountain ranges rising abruptly from the desert and a diverse environment of plants and animals, is federal land maintained by the US Forest Service.
What has the reaction been like? The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Cocopah tribal nation said Ducey was violating federal law by placing the containers on federal and tribal land there. In a letter, the bureau demanded that the state remove the containers.
Has the state started taking down the barrier? No, and it has since been emboldened to embark on the larger project now proceeding apace more than 300 miles to the east.
Sanders says Sinema ‘helped sabotage’ some of Congress’s key legislations
The popular progressive US senator Bernie Sanders would consider supporting any Democrat who may mount a challenge against his chamber colleague Kyrsten Sinema after she recently left the party and declared herself an independent like him, arguing that she has “helped sabotage” some of Congress’s most important legislation.
Sanders’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union added to the chorus of detractors against the Arizona lawmaker who has undermined the agenda of the Joe Biden White House and other progressives, including by voting down raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and reforming the Senate filibuster so that voting rights legislation can pass.
The independent from Vermont who votes in line with Democratic interests told the show host, Dana Bash, that the leftwing party’s members in Arizona were “not all that enthusiastic about somebody who helped sabotage some of the most important legislation that protects the interests of working families and voting rights and so forth”.
And, Sanders added, if Arizona Democrats eventually ran someone to challenge the newly declared independent, “I will take a hard look at” supporting that candidate, though some are concerned that hopeful could unwittingly give Republicans an opening.
What has Sinema said? In a separate prerecorded interview that also aired Sunday on State of the Union, Sinema continued defending her defection from the Democrats as a stand against being beholden to party interests. “I know this is really hard for lots of folks, especially [on Capitol Hill], but what’s important to me is … to not be tethered by the partisanship that dominates politics today,” she said.
Biden pledges to boost Ukraine’s air defenses
Biden has pledged to prioritize efforts to boost Ukraine’s air defense during a call to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday.
Biden also welcomed Zelenskiy’s “stated openness to a just peace based on fundamental principles enshrined in the United Nations charter”, according to the White House.
“The US is prioritizing efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense through our security assistance, including the 9 December announcement of $275m in additional ammunition and equipment that included systems to counter the Russian use of unmanned aerial vehicles,” the White House said.
Biden also highlighted the 29 November announcement of $53m to support energy infrastructure to strengthen the stability of Ukraine’s energy grid after Russia’s targeted attacks.
Zelenskiy in turn thanked Biden for his “unprecedented defense and financial assistance”.
What else is happening? Ukraine attacked a barracks in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol over the weekend, with some Ukrainian sources claiming scores of Russian casualties. Meanwhile, emergency crews were working to ease power shortages in many parts of Ukraine after Russian attacks. Here’s what we know on day 292 of the invasion.
In other news …
The Biden administration is under growing pressure, domestically and internationally, to drop charges against Julian Assange, who has been in a UK jail since 2019 while facing prosecution in the US under the Espionage Act.
Peru’s new president, Dina Boluarte, has announced she will submit a bill to move forward the general elections after widespread protests in which two people have been killed. Boluarte said early today that she would propose bringing the general elections forward two years, to April 2024.
Brittney Griner, the American basketball player who has been released from almost 10 months of detention in Russia, is undergoing physical and mental evaluation at a Texas army facility. The national security council’s strategic communications coordinator, John Kirby, said early indications were that Griner was doing well and in good health.
China announced plans to scrap its primary Covid tracking app in the latest rollback of pandemic control measures, just days after abruptly abandoning its long-running zero-Covid policy. Over the past week, testing requirements have been greatly reduced and domestic travel restrictions lifted.
Stat of the day: Moon the humpback whale completes 5,000km journey – with a broken back
Over the course of nearly three months, navigating ocean swells and currents, vast expanses of flat water and immense pain, Moon, a humpback whale, completed a journey of 5,000km (3,100 miles) from the waters of British Columbia to Hawaii – all with a broken back. Her crossing of the Pacific – and the likelihood that she will soon die – is a stark reminder of the growing dangers for whales along Canada’s west coast, as marine traffic clashes with the gentle marine giants. “Without the use of her tail, she was literally doing the breaststroke to make that migration. It’s absolutely amazing,” said the researcher Janie Wray.
Don’t miss this: Reese Witherspoon and the boom in celebrity book clubs
Today, more than 25 years since Oprah Winfrey launched hers, celebrity book clubs are all the rage. Everyone is leading their own community of readers, from Camilla, the Queen Consort to rapper Noname. In the social media age, it is Reese Witherspoon who has actually overtaken Winfrey as publishing’s starriest powerbroker, having turned good taste in books into one arm of a media empire. Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, Celeste Ng’s earlier novel Little Fires Everywhere and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens were Reese picks before being subsequently adapted by the actor for the screen. Elle Hunt dives under the covers of the celebrity book club.
Climate check: Brazil goldminers carve illegal Road to Chaos out of Amazon reserve
The surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises, writes Tom Phillips. Its objective: a clandestine 120km road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungles of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory in recent months, in an audacious attempt to smuggle excavators into those supposedly protected lands. “I call it the Road to Chaos,” said Danicley de Aguiar, the Greenpeace environmentalist leading the reconnaissance mission over the immense Indigenous sanctuary near the Brazilian border with Venezuela.
Last thing: flurry of wolf births offers hope for California comeback
In a year of environmental ups and downs, a hopeful story of recovery is afoot in California. A grey wolf pack gave birth to eight pups this spring, it was recently confirmed, offering signs of a remarkable comeback after wolves were wiped out in the state more than a century ago. The births in the Whaleback wolf pack, based in northern California’s Siskiyou county, happened in the spring but were only confirmed by California’s department of fish and wildlife in November. They may be a sign that wolves who entered the state from Oregon several years ago are thriving.
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