Interior rejected staff advice when scuttling tribes' casino
Source: Politico
Trump administration officials rejected recommendations from federal experts on Indian gaming policy when they blocked two American Indian tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut last year, documents obtained by POLITICO indicate.
The heavily blacked-out documents add to questions about whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his political appointees buckled to lobbying pressure from MGM Resorts International, a gambling industry giant that is planning its own casino just 12 miles from the project proposed by the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes.
Interior’s inspector general is investigating the department’s handling of the tribes’ casino application, a spokeswoman told POLITICO, after Connecticut lawmakers asked the internal watchdog to look into the matter.
The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, don’t reveal the contents of the internal deliberations by the staff of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Indian Gaming. But they show that the career staffers were circulating what they labeled “approval” letters just 48 hours before their political bosses reversed course and refused to either OK or reject the tribes’ application — a nondecision that left the Indians’ East Windsor project in legal limbo.
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Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/22/tribes-casino-approval-trump-zinke-494541
Lots more to this long Politico article, and it's well worth the read.
Now, for background...
From a 2016 WaPo article on "Donald Trump’s long history of clashes with Native Americans":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/donald-trumps-long-history-of-clashes-with-native-americans/2016/07/25/80ea91ca-3d77-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html
“I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations,” Trump said during a 1993 radio interview with shock jock Don Imus.
Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Native Americans was part of his aggressive war on the expanding Native American casino industry during the 1990s, which posed a threat to his gambling empire. The racially tinged remarks and broad-brush characterizations that Trump employed against Indian tribes for over a decade provided an early glimpse of the kind of incendiary language that he would use about racial and ethnic groups in the 2016 presidential campaign.
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Another long article, also well worth reading for what it says about Trump, and Roger Stone.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Native Americans, women, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Muslim Americans, LBGT, etc....everyone except white males.
It's as if to him the rest of America shouldn't exist.
Chilling.
Gotta exorcise old white men from running things, ASAP.
Gee, ya think?
