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MONDAY, APRIL 28- MAY 04, 2025
VOL. 11,
Reports: Interior may open Chuckwalla, other public land for mining, drilling
The Trump administration’s war on children By Eli Hager, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
By Joe Taglieri joet@beaconmedianews.com
T
he Trump administration is considering reducing the boundaries of six national monuments for possible mining and drilling for energy resources, including the recently designated Chuckwalla preserve in Riverside County, according to published reports Thursday. According to the Washington Post citing insiders and a leaked draft of an Interior Department document that SF Gate also obtained, federal officials discussed plans for “land swaps/exchanges” to bolster coal, oil and natural gas production, along with the intention to open “Alaska and other federal lands for mineral extraction.” The six targeted monuments cover about 5.4 million acres of land throughout the American Southwest and receive over 6.6 million visitors each year. The Interior Department report does not mention specific monuments, but anonymous sources told the
T
he clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children. Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely. The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed
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See Chuckwalla Page 28
Stagecoach Country Music Festival goes live in Indio By City News Service
Photo by Aaron Kittredge via Pexels
billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety. These stark reductions have been centered in littleknown children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked. “Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency
that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs. The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children See War on children Page 03
S
ome of the country music industry’s top-tier talent, along with chart-toppers from the past and specialty acts, performed Friday and throughout the weekend for the Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, where thousands of fans arrived in anticipation of the entertainment. “Traffic conditions for early-arriving campers today were steady, with no significant issues to report,” according to an Indio Police Department statement released Thursday. “Operations are continuing smoothly.” The fest comes less than a week after the conclusion of the second and final weekend of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival at the same venue — the Empire Polo Club. See Stagecoach Page 02
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