When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the eastern half of Oklahoma could be considered Native American territory, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz voiced alarm.

Neil Gorsuch & the four liberal Justices just gave away half of Oklahoma, literally, he tweeted. Manhattan is next.

Thats absurd.

What the court did was to force state and federal officials to finally deal with a promise they made to Native Americans almost 200 years ago.

The case before the court involved Jimcy McGirt, an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who was convicted in 1997 of sex crimes against a child on Native American land. McGirt argued the state lacked jurisdiction in the case and he should be retried in federal court.

The Supreme Court agreed.

Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law, Justice Neal Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.

Thats a statement Native Americans all over the country had been waiting to hear for a long time.

Jason Salsman, press secretary for the Muscogee nation, described his reaction in an interview with the New York Times.

It made me cry, he said. It was a powerful moment, one I wasnt ready for. It brought out emotions you didnt know would be there. It was just a promise kept. We know the history of promises that have been broken. I still get chills thinking about it.

For those unfamiliar with the history, members of the Muscogee, Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations were forced from their traditional lands in the Southeastern United States under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. When all was said and done, some 60,000 Native Americans had marched westward along what became known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died.

Surviving members of the Muscogee nation settled on land they had been promised in Oklahoma, and that is what the Supreme Court recognized in its ruling.

We do not pretend to foretell the future, Gorsuch wrote, and we proceed well aware of the potential for cost and conflict around jurisdictional boundaries, especially ones that have gone unappreciated for so long. But it is unclear why pessimism should rule the day. With the passage of time, Oklahoma and its Tribes have proven they can work successfully together as partners.

The federal government had promised a reservation in perpetuity, Gorsuch wrote, and even though Congress might have diminished that sanctuary over time, it had never actually withdrawn the promise.

Salsman said the Muscogee nation wasnt surprised by reactions like the one shared by Cruz.

There were a lot of scare tactics: Were going to turn the prisoners loose, give us your tax dollars, your land is our land, he said. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Within hours of the ruling, the state and all five Native American nations issued a joint statement.

The nations and the state are committed to implementing a framework of shared jurisdiction that will preserve sovereign interests and rights to self-government while affirming jurisdictional understandings, procedures, laws and regulations that support public safety, our economy and private property rights, the statement read. We will continue our work, confident that we can accomplish more together than any of us could alone.

The ruling will have an impact not just in Oklahoma but in other parts of the country. At least 10 states have similar jurisdictional disputes.

The decision in this case wont resolve those fights, but its a good first step, a step that was long overdue.

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Kelly Hawes column: Supreme Court holds government to its word - The Herald Bulletin

In this time of pandemic, our authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective.

Im one of those fortunate people for whom the direct experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has thus far been felt only through isolation from close friends and family and away from the pleasant routines of campus. Indirectly, however, it has been felt as a deep ultimatum from the earth about the interactions of its inhabitants.

Books are both solace and provocation at such a time. Reading Rachel Cusks latest collection, Coventry, prompted me to read her entire oeuvre in sequence, as I also did as I reread Richard Ford, and as I will now pursue with Patrick Modiano.

Why this urge to read a writers corpus in strict order? Was this my subconscious desire to restore order to a disordered world? Or just the depressing signs of a tidy mind? A linear imagination? Whatever the case, it has been satisfying.

Fords prize-winning trilogy of Frank Bascombe novels The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995) and The Lay of the Land (2006) are a landmark in recent American literature, but it is his follow-up Let Me Be Frank With You (2014) that I have most relished returning to. The four interwoven long stories (Fords term) are his poignant, often hilarious, reckoning with environmental catastrophe and mortality.

Frank is now 68 and retired eight years from the real estate business he had run along the New Jersey Shore. He has moved inland to comfortable, white, asininely Tea Party Haddam with second wife Sally Caldwell. He travels to Newark weekly to greet weary, puzzled troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and reads to the blind on his local radio station. His current choice for them is V.S. Naipauls The Enigma of Arrival: theyre pissed off about the same things hes pissed off about.

Frank is dealing with his ageing body: he is recovering from prostate cancer and Sally keeps telling him to lift up his feet when he walks to avoid the gramps shuffle. Frank now listens to Aaron Copland and is trying to read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Frank deals routinely, if mostly affectionately, in ethnic and racist labels. He still calls black Americans Negroes but plainly prefers them to others of his compatriots: Its no wonder they hate us, Id hate us, too. Frank is a Democrat; hes gratified that Obama likes Coplands Fanfare.

The four interwoven stories unfold across the fortnight before Christmas 2012 in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which had hit the Jersey Shore on 29 October, shattering coastal buildings and killing scores of locals.

The presidential election has just been held: an Obama-Biden sign has been repurposed to read WERE BACK. SO FUCK YOU, SANDY. Other signs along the Shore warn LOOTERS BEWARE!. One, notes Frank, merely says NOTHING BESIDES REMAINS (for victims with a liberal arts degree). His own former house on the shore has disintegrated.

Frank is awe-struck: Theres something to be said for a good no-nonsense hurricane, to bully life back into perspective but admits his fear that something bad is closing in like the advance of a shadow across a square of playground grass where I happen to be standing.

The people of the Jersey Shore have various explanations for the hurricane: his ex-wife believes it was a bedrock agent, others think it was somehow Obamas doing to prevent people voting for Mitt Romney. No-one refers to climate change.

Richard Ford interprets and survives a world undone by calamity and death through the encounters Frank has with four individuals: a former client to whom Frank had sold his own house eight years earlier; a reserved, sad and gracious black woman who visits Franks new house where 40 years earlier her father had killed her mother, brother and himself; his ex-wife Ann, who has Parkinsons and has moved to an aged-care facility determined to rebrand ageing as a to-be-looked forward-to phenomenon; and an old friend Eddie.

This novel is Ford at his finest. Sharp satire is captured in barbed turns of phrase. Unforgettable, somehow rootless, characters stud the stories. Ford combines the meticulous attention to domestic detail of contemporaries Philip Roth and John Updike with the dirty realism of Raymond Carver. His precise, gritty tone is perfect and strangely consoling.

Fords ultimate consolation offered to us is expressed through a brief final encounter, an epiphany of decency through environmental calamity and personal despair. After all, love isnt a thing, he notes, but an endless series of single acts.

Link:

Art for trying times: reading Richard Ford on a world undone by calamity - The Conversation AU

A gnome and a guy dressed like Zorro met for a virtual happy hour Tuesday, hours after the College Council at San Antonio College voted unanimously to expel the Ranger mascot.

Sitting in his home office, the Zorro-like figure peered into his computers camera and adjusted his flat-topped, flat-brimmed sombrero cordobs. He didnt wear his Lone Ranger mask.

I wore it for a while, but then some people thought it hinted at the image of a lawless, masked bandido, so it was decided I should ditch it, the guy formerly known as San Antonio Colleges mascot explained. I thought the look was rakish, maybe a bit naughty but certainly not offensive.

The Gnome Ranger, Zooming from the backyard, nodded knowingly while pointing at his tan vest and pointy cowboy hat, a summer cocktail in his hand.

Its not the look. Its the Ranger part thats the problem, the gnome said, taking a swig and swatting away a fly with the phone.

MORE FROM ANGLIN:A soundtrack breakdown running down his dream

You could have been dressed like a park ranger. Or an Army Ranger. Or even Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Back in the 1920s, when San Antonio College chose a Ranger in cowboy gear as its mascot, the Texas Rangers enjoyed the ultimate good guy image even though as a group they were known and feared for doing terrible things in what we now know as South Texas. In the spirit of seeing history clearly instead of selectively, the image of the Ranger is not one that fits a South Texas community college anymore.

Yes, that means you and I are out, Antonio said. And its not Zorro cancel culture.

Its not, the gnome said. This isnt about you. Its not even about present-day Texas Rangers. Its about a place of higher education recognizing a history that people along the border have spoken of for generations. Its not as if the survivors of violence at the hands of the early Texas Rangers didnt pass down those stories they did. The Rangers were created to take care of one group of people by taking care of other groups, if you know what I mean.

History can be uncomfortable, Antonio said, reading from his smartphone. The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum websites brief history of the Rangers tells us that when this land was still Mexico, Stephen F. Austin was told if he could get these parts populated with Americans and Europeans willing to become Spanish-speaking Mexican Catholics, hed be rewarded with land, titles and power.

Yeah, that didnt go over too well with the people who were already living the dream here, the gnome said, clinking the ice cubes in his drink.

On ExpressNews.com: Look around diverse show is America today

Cowboy lore and the storied Old West might have painted the taming of this untamed land in nostalgic sepia, but the people who were killed and whose lives were upended have a different view of history. And because we expect more from colleges and universities than we do from old radio shows and cowboy novels, it makes sense to recognize the whole story.

You know, Antonio said, sipping his second glass of wine, what if I said this feels like another lefty indoctrination move on the part of liberal academia? Or a knee-jerk consequence of the tear-down-the-statue zeitgeist?

Then Id have to replace that sombrero with a dunce cap. Just because one side of the story has gotten more run doesnt mean that seeing the entire story amounts to revisionism, the gnome said, taking off his conical hat and wiping his brow.

Colleges and universities need to lead the way when it comes to righting social wrongs. If you ask me, suiting the two of us up as mascots was just a way to soften the word Ranger. It is long past time for a change.

Telling the whole story is important, Antonio said, raising his glass and clinking the screen in agreement.

Even when its embarrassing, the Gnome Ranger said to the Masked Ranger.

mariaanglinwrites@gmail.com

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Anglin: History illuminated as the sun sets on Ranger - San Antonio Express-News

At a time when the Indian government looks to boost home-grown manufacturing and self-reliance, drones are a key focus area. While India imports sophisticated drones that are meant for the Armed Forces, there are various purposes for which home-grown options have proven their mettle. Indigenously designed and developed drones have displayed their capability in spraying disinfectants across crowded, inaccessible areas in Covid-19 hotspots and also recently in the fight against locusts.

Experts who work in the field also believe that the scaling up indigenous drone manufacturing could not only boost the local industry but also generate lakhs of jobs across sectors.

Shortly after the Covid-19 outbreak in Indias major cities in March, drones took to the skies, spraying disinfectant over vast, congested urban spaces. Drones were aiding the civic authorities efforts in fighting against the deadly pandemic. Drones from educational institutions, private companies were widely being used for disinfection of areas in a quick and efficient manner. Whats more, some of these drone models are also fulled by petrol, hence can operate for longer durations without the worry of longer charging hours.

Recently, Indias Ministry of Civil Aviation had also permitted the Agriculture Ministry to utilize engine-powered drones (with a fully-loaded weight below 50kgs) to fly night operations, sparing pesticides against locusts in Certain North-Western and Central states. So far, only the drones operated by Indias defence forces had the clearances to fly during day and night. This permission is being viewed as a major boost to the home-grown manufacturers of this technology. This could mean more opportunities for drone-makers, engineers and various others involved in the supply chain to contribute in a larger way.

Drones built by Chennais Abdul Kalam Advanced UAV Research Center in Anna University have been among the ones fighting locusts in Rajasthan. Three drones and eight pilots have been camping in the state and assisting the authorities who are also employing traditional methods to avert the locust threat.

Dr K Senthilkumar, Director, Abdul Kalam Advanced UAV Research Centre at Chennais Anna University points out that the petrol-operated drones are the future and that their applications are wide-ranging as the petrol-powered variants had several advantages over their battery-operated counterparts.

Our petrol-powered drones can fly for 40 minutes non-stop and just need maintenance after every 50 hours of operation. Battery-powered drones require the battery pack to be disposed of after every 100 flights. Our drones have a 40-minute endurance using 3.5 litres of fuel, whereas battery models fly about 10 minutes before they need to land and charge. The model being flown in Rajasthan has a tank capacity to hold 18 litres of liquid (disinfectant or insecticide) and uses an ultra-low volume atomizer spray which is highly efficient and reduces wastage. Just one of our drones can spray 5000sq meters in a single 40-minute flight, Senthilkumar told WION.

With wide-ranging applications and enhanced emphasis on indigenisation, it is needless to say that in the coming times, the sky is the limit for Indias domestic drone manufacturers. Favourable policy and liberal regulations in the relevant sectors too play a major role in generating interest from the industry.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation(MoCA) supports the use of drone-tech in agriculture. In addition to aerial surveillance and spraying, it can do wonders in crop analytics and farm yield improvement. As demand rises and prices fall, we foresee many Indian villages having their own rented drones, much like tractors and harvester combines. This will help create local entrepreneurs, jobs and higher farm earnings, Amber Dubey, Joint Secretary and Head of Drones Division at MoCA told WION.

Dr Senthilkumar adds that better engineering and modifications to drones can help allay the fears about misuse and mishaps involving these flying machines. He talks about programming the drones and limiting range in such a way that they wont fly above 20 metres in height and 300 metres in distance.

He adds that there are also methods to avoid crashes and fires that may result from them. Our drones have battery backup and can land in case of primary engine failure and we have programmed it in such a way that it will land at the take-off location. Even our petrol engine isnt a direct drive model, it works like a generator and the power is transferred to the motor. We have done several crash tests from a 100m height and observed that only the landing gear gets affected, we are also considering using a fire-resistant material for the petrol tank henceforth, Senthilkumar says.

Dr MK Surappa, the Vice Chancellor of Anna University says that drones have become widely popular in a matter of a few years and that they have unlimited potential.

After military use, it used to be a toy for some, and also meant for photographers, but there is the option of using them in swarms, as coordinated drones and what not. Its not just abut building drones, but about equipping them for Internet-of-things(IoT)and fitting more advanced sensors and cameras, thus allowing them to have software-driven functionalities. The potential here is enormous, he told WION.

Senthilkumar envisions that drones can bring about the next manufacturing revolution, like automobiles had done over the years. He estimates that India alone would need over 5 lakh engine-operated drones for civilian needs in the coming years.

This would in turn mean employment for lakhs of people ranging from engineers to drone operators, manufacturers, suppliers, service technicians and a whole lot of others, he says.

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From fighting Covid-19 to locusts, drones showcase their potential and wide user-applications - DNA India

You could say its all Donald Trumps fault. His bad qualities his carelessness about facts, his obstinance about admitting error, his contempt for others views have turned out to be contagious, to the point that you could argue theyre more damaging to his opponents than to him.

This started early on, during the 2016 campaign. I will look at it at the time, Trump replied when asked during the final fall debate whether he would concede if he lost. Thats horrifying, Hillary Clinton replied, quite reasonably.

But maybe not so horrifying. Clinton, Obama administration intelligence, law enforcement appointees and Democrats generally spent more than two years advancing, without serious evidence, their Russian-collusion theory. Delegitimizing an election result, previously seen as horrifying, suddenly became OK.

Or perhaps this was a case of projection, the psychological term for assuming your adversary would do what you would do if you were in his or her shoes.

Projection may also be at work when Trumps political opponents emulate his habit of refusing to admit error and apologize for mistakes.

A prime example is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, like the president, grew up in one of the more verdant neighborhoods of Queens, the son of a man who rose from humble beginnings to considerable renown.

Cuomo has been hailed, not least by himself, as a hero for his response to COVID-19. But his judgment, as even CNNs Jake Tapper has argued, has not been flawless. His health commissioners March 25 order requiring nursing homes to admit patients infected with the virus clearly resulted in the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of elderly residents whose vulnerability was apparent early on.

As I argued in a mid-May column, this order (and similar ones in New Jersey and Michigan) may have been issued to keep hospital ICUs from being overwhelmed which seemed a possibility at the time but didnt happen.

But Cuomo, who defends lockdowns as worthwhile if they save just one life, insists he made no mistake. A better defense is to admit that no policy can prevent every virus death and that balancing risks of unknowable magnitude will always be subject to error.

Trumps carelessness with facts, his frequent criticisms of fake news and his cavalier remarks about making it easier for public figures to sue for libel made many of his opponents fear he would clamp down on freedom of speech.

Some liberals began describing themselves as The Resistance, summoning up visions of French resistance to the Nazis. Democracy dies in darkness, The Washington Post started proclaiming on its front page.

Perhaps projection was at work here as well, for the unhappy fact is that the parts of our society that are most firmly controlled and almost entirely peopled by those on the left half of the political spectrum are also the places where freedom of speech is most under attack: academia and journalism.

Speech codes and restrictions, as readers of my columns know, have become standard operating procedures in many, perhaps most, colleges and universities. They are justified on the theory that certain speech labeled, plausibly or not, as bigotry or racism is tantamount to violence.

Newsroom pressure resulted in the resignation of New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet last month and the resignation of editor Bari Weiss this week. As she wrote in a stinging resignation letter to publisher A. G. Sulzberger, A new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isnt a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times, she went on. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. No coincidence, perhaps, that its also the favorite medium of expression of Donald Trump.

A more notable journalist is resigning this week, Andrew Sullivan from New York Magazine. He is full of contempt for Trump, but he has been writing about the crudeness and certainty of the new orthodoxy that America is systematically racist, and a white-supremacist project, from the start, which is the central thesis of The New York Times 1619 Project.

This unorthodoxy surely hasnt gone unnoticed in the New York Magazine newsroom, though Sullivan will surely land on his feet. And hell go down in history with Jonathan Rauch as the pioneering advocates who literally changed a nations mind on same-sex marriage.

Rauch and Weiss are among the 150 signers of the Harpers Magazine letter endorsing the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society. The letter starts with a rote description of Donald Trump as a real threat to democracy, but its clear thrust is that the real threat to free exchange today is not Trump but his perhaps-projecting opponents.

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Trump opponents' worst traits are Trump's fault | News, Sports, Jobs - Minot Daily News

Women in the U.S. earn 81 cents for every dollar men make in 2020.

That's the raw gender pay gap, "which looks at the median salary for all men and women regardless of job type or worker seniority," Payscale explains in a 2020 report on the state of the pay gap.

The gap forms early and continues to grow: As data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, men earn more from the start. And women not only earn less, but their peak earning age is lower than that of the average man.

Here's the median income American men are earning, broken down by age group, as of the second quarter of 2020.

And here's how much women earn at various ages:

Women could be disadvantaged even more due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Women have a higher risk of suffering greater penalties in earnings," Payscale notes in its report, since they make up a larger percentage of occupations in fields like social services, education and office and administrative support, which are positions that are more likely to be suspended or asked to work reduced hours.

"Women are also more likely to have to take time off work, or even resign their positions, in order to care for children who are no longer in school as well as other family members," Payscale adds.

Women overall in the U.S. earn less than men, but the disparity in pay widens for minorities. Black women, for example, earn 61 cents for every dollar that their White male counterparts are paid, according to the National Women's Law Center's analysis of 2018 Census Bureau data. That could amount to $946,120 in lost wages over a 40-year career.

Here's the median income of American White men broken down by age group, according to Q2 2020 data from the BLS:

Here's the median income of American Black men broken down by age group:

Here's the median income of American White women broken down by age group:

Here's the median income of American Black women broken down by age group:

Pay transparency, or openly sharing employee salaries, could be the top solution to closing the gap, 2020 data from PayScale shows. When companies are open about the salaries they give employees, the wage gap in most industries and at all job levels disappears, the report finds.

Another way women are able to close the gender gap, though time-consuming and oftentimes expensive, is by getting one more degree.

A 2018 wage gap report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce found that in order to earn the same salary as men, women essentially need to get one more degree. "A woman with a bachelor's degree earns $61,000 per year on average, roughly equivalent to that of a man with an associate's degree," the Georgetown CEW reports. "The same rule holds true for women with master's degrees compared to men with bachelor's degrees and for each successive level of educational attainment."

To help narrow the gap, there are a few things women can do besides getting another degree, the report notes. For starters, pick a college major that pays well: "Women majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields earn $840,000 more from the base year to retirement than women who major in the liberal arts, regardless of the occupations they choose."

And when you land your first job, negotiate your starting pay well. As the Georgetown CEW report finds, "The first salary is a very important leverage point for upward mobility and can result in a slower trajectory if women aim lower to begin with."

If you're well past day one on the job and think you're being paid less than you should be, you can still negotiate for a fair salary. First, do your research on comparable salaries. A salary calculator can help you gauge your market value.

Before initiating a conversation with your manager, document a list of achievements, such as new projects you've taken on or any measurable goals you've achieved since you started.

Read up on more negotiation strategies and remember: Although only half of job seekers negotiate, the majority of those who dosucceedin getting a raise.

Don't miss:Millennials who tripled their salaries in 10 years share their best advice for getting a raise

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Here's how much men and women earn at every age - CNBC