Play audio
1XChange playback rate from 1 to 1
Mute audio
Republican lawmakers have largely stood by the president during his turbulent White House term. Since losing his re-election bid in November, Trump has lashed out at them for not fully backing his unsupported claims of voting fraud, rejecting his demand for bigger COVID-19 relief checks and for moving toward the veto override.
The Republican-led Senate reconvened midday to take up the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which determines everything from how many ships are bought to soldiers pay and how to address geopolitical threats.
Trump refused to sign it into law because it does not repeal certain legal protections for tech companies. He also objects to a provision stripping the names of Confederate generals from military bases.
OJ Semans, a
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Haaland, 60, is a member of the
Laguna Pueblo and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico. The role as interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that not only has tremendous sway over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.
The pick breaks a 245-year record of non-Native officials, mostly male, serving as the very top federal official over American Indian affairs. The federal government often worked to dispossess them of their land and, until recently, to assimilate them into white culture.