projects

Buried in the language of Proposition 45, the initiative that would overhaul California’s powerful law on environmental review, are provisions that would mean government agencies have to consult only with certain tribes in the state, and not others when they develop major projects.

Tribes that are federally recognized would be consulted; those without recognition would not.

This effort mirrors similar ones supported by tribes that have federal recognition to limit the say of tribes without it in recent years. Non-recognized tribes see it as another move by economically powerful tribes to protect their own interests and avoid having to negotiate with other local tribes over territorial disputes and how to best protect important sites.

“Our concern is that wealthy casino interests and political influence are being allowed to outweigh ancestral connections,” Andrew Salas, chairperson of the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians — Kizh Nation, said in a statement to The Times.

Proposition 45 on the Nov. 3 California ballot would create a streamlined environmental review process for projects deemed “essential” — including most housing, transportation, water, health, wildfire mitigation, education, internet access and clean energy projects. The streamlining would mean stricter deadlines for review and court challenges, would bar local governments from requesting repeated analyses and allow developers to propose a single alternative with less environmental impact rather than several.

One of the largest contributors to the Yes on Prop 45 committee is a federally recognized tribe, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, which contributed $750,000.

“Federal recognition is the legal and constitutional foundation of tribal sovereignty and establishes a government-to-government framework for consultation,” Amelia Matier, spokesperson for Yes on Prop 45, said, noting tribes without recognition still can still meaningfully participate alongside members of the public.

The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation reaffirmed its support for the measure in a statement to The Times but did not respond to specific questions.

Critics, meanwhile, say moves such as this would give federally recognized tribes the power to consult on development projects hundreds of miles outside their homelands, overriding local tribes.

“Proposition 45 is part of a much longer struggle over whose voices California chooses to hear,” Salas said. “For decades, non-federally recognized ancestral tribes in Southern California have fought to protect our homelands while facing pressure to accept a ‘lesser role’ than federally recognized tribes.”

“Our rivers, habitats, and the animals that depend on them lose their protection when the people who know these places are removed from the table,” he said.

None of the Gabrieleno and Tataviam tribes within the greater L.A. area have federal recognition.

Last year, three tribes with federal recognition championed a bill that would have significantly limited how tribes without it could participate in the consultation process for all projects — not just the ones deemed “essential” ones under Proposition 45. A few months later, the small state agency that maintains the official list of tribal contacts unveiled a proposal that some non-recognized tribes argued would effectively exclude them. Multiple federally recognized tribes supported the effort.

The environmental review process under the California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA, is one of the primary ways that tribes have a say over how the state and local governments develop land within their ancestral territories. It allows tribes to comment on how a proposed housing or infrastructure project might harm graves, ceremonial grounds or ancient villages. A separate law lets tribes comment on general plans that outline where developers can propose housing, and commercial and industrial facilities.

Tribal consultation differs from general public comment. It allows Indigenous leaders to discuss the location and details of sensitive information — such as burial sites — confidentially, before draft environmental reviews are published.

The Kizh Nation has used the CEQA process to consult on hundreds of land development projects a year around the Los Angeles Basin. In one instance, the process generated extra protections for one of the oldest living plants in the world, a more-than 13,000 year-old oak tree in the Inland Empire, that Indigenous people have taken care of for millennia. It also resulted in the Kizh Nation winning one of the largest land returns in Southern California history for a tribe without federal recognition — while still creating a development of nearly 1,700 homes and industrial and business parks.

There are over 100 tribes in the state with federal recognition, a status that brings protections, funds and services from the federal government, including funding for Indigenous elementary and secondary schools, access to healthcare and the potential for a reservation. Yet dozens more remain unrecognized.

Federal agents negotiated treaties in the 1850s with more than 130 Indigenous communities in the new state of California, setting aside roughly 7% of the state for reservations. But Congress refused to ratify the very treaties it had ordered and failed to notify tribes of its decision.

The federal recognition process today is long and grueling. Only 18 tribes have successfully achieved recognition through it since it was created in 1978. Only one was in California — Death Valley’s Timbisha Shoshone Tribe.

Tribes along the coast who were coerced into building the missions, including the Gabrielino, have had an especially hard time gaining recognition. They endured three waves of settlers: the Spanish, Mexican, and American. With these came death, forced displacement and cultural suppression. When the federal government sent agents to create reservations for California’s mission-affected tribes in the 1890s following reports of dire circumstance, the agents inexplicably overlooked the Gabrieleno.

At least one-third of tribal cultural resources protected under CEQA are in the homelands of tribes without federal recognition, Jonathan Cordero, executive director of the Assn. of Ramaytush Ohlone, estimates.

If Proposition 45 passes, “that means that hundreds of sacred sites and thousands of invaluable and irreplaceable tribal cultural resources would be destroyed in subsequent years,” he said in a statement.

Mérida, October 20, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela held its second National Popular Consultation of the year on Sunday, October 18, as voters chose local projects to receive state funding.

Organized by communes and communal circuits within the Ministry for Communes and supported by the National Electoral Council (CNE), the vote took place at over 11,400 voting centers nationwide.

More than 37,000 proposals, debated and prioritized in local assemblies under the Seven Transformations (7T) framework, were put to a vote in 5,418 communes and communal circuits. Most options focused on infrastructure and basic service repairs, including addressing water supply and electricity issues.

In this event, and for the first time, over 400 condominium boards took part as well. Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez announced the expansion of the electoral exercise to residential instances outside the traditional popular power organizations.

“I want to congratulate all the Venezuelan citizens who have participated in this consultation, because it reflects a genuine belief in a democracy that is growing stronger,” Rodríguez said on state broadcaster VTV on Sunday night. “The funds for these projects are now ready to be allocated for their execution.”

Each winning initiative is slated to receive the equivalent of US $10,000, with local organized communities charged with executing the works and rendering accounts. This was the sixth consultation held since President Nicolás Maduro launched them in 2024.

Two days before the vote, Minister of Communes Ángel Prado, during a meeting with communes in Lara State, explained that the resources would be transferred in stages: an initial disbursement to begin project execution, followed by subsequent disbursements contingent upon the progress of the work. This includes monitoring the projects and ensuring accountability to the communities.

Communities voted on a range of initiatives tailored to local needs. The selected projects included extending the electrical grid, equipping school canteens, expanding irrigation and sewage systems, replacing gas cylinders, maintaining public roads, and developing livestock-related initiatives.

In Cojedes State, the winning project in Los Vencedores Hijos de Chávez Communal Circuit was the extension of the high- and low-voltage electricity network. Meanwhile, in the 5 de Marzo Comandante Eterno Commune in Caracas, the winning project focused on rehabilitating walkways and stairs in a section of the area.

Alongside the popular consultation, activists in Simón Planas, Lara State, also set up a signature drive to oppose mining exploitation in the local Cerro La Vieja. Local organizer José Luis Sifontes told Venezuelanalysis that more than 6,000 people signed the document calling on the government to declare Cerro La Vieja a natural park.

Grassroots resistance has stopped previous efforts to drill for limestone in the area, with communal organizations denouncing that mining will contaminate the soil and water sources.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

When a county judge put the brakes on what would be the largest data center in California, ruling the whole project needed extensive environmental review, Kristian Salgado was relieved.

The community organizer lives in Imperial County, where the nearly one-million-square-foot facility was proposed. The rural county near the Mexico border struggles with bad air pollution and has one the state’s highest rates of asthma hospitalization for kids, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. One of Salgado’s nephews lives right next to the site and struggles with the respiratory disease.

“It just seemed very unusual that a project of this scale, with that many backup generators could be permitted without requiring any further [analysis] of what that would mean for residents,” she said.

Now, Salgado and others who share her concern believe Proposition 45 on the November ballot could roll back their wins. The initiative changes the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, a law intended to inform decision makers and the public about a project’s possible environmental impacts — and mitigate them to the extent possible.

Supporters say Prop 45 will speed up environmental review for essential housing, transportation, water, health, education and other projects, cutting costly delays and passing the savings on to consumers. Opponents say it not only weakens environmental protections for many developments, but will cover potentially polluting ones — including data centers. The Yes on 45 campaign forcefully rejects the data center claim, but independent legal experts are divided.

At the heart of the debate is the definition of one of the categories covered by Prop 45: “broadband internet access projects” or “mass-market retail service … that provides the capability to transmit data to, and receive data from, all or substantially all internet endpoints.”

Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., which supports the proposition, was adamant: “We specifically excluded data centers” when crafting the measure.

Yet the proposition expressly names certain excluded projects: nuclear energy, high-speed rail, jails and Delta conveyance facilities. Data centers aren’t among them.

Dunmoyer maintains that even if they’re not explicitly listed, data centers just don’t fit the measure’s definition.

In a Daily Journal op-ed, Rachelle Chong, a former Federal Communications Commission member, similarly argues that the definition refers to internet access bought from a provider like AT&T or Comcast. “A conventional data center ordinarily performs an entirely different function,” she wrote, arguing data centers aren’t in play.

But land use attorneys Matthew McKerley and Richard Frank, in another op-ed, say many modern data centers fit the bill because they house equipment used to transmit consumer data to and from the internet.

They also highlight conspicuous campaign finance contributions, including $250,000 from Prologis, which developed two data centers in San Jose.

Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley Law, said data centers will argue they fit the definition — and then it will be up to the courts to decide.

“Anyone telling you that it’s definitely not going to be data centers, they cannot read the future,” he said. “The way they’ve written the language, they can’t provide 100% assurance.”

Eric Biber, a UC Berkeley law school professor with expertise in environmental law, pointed to language in the measure requiring it to be interpreted broadly “to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and realization of, essential projects.” In a blog post, he called it “a thumb on the scale” that could lead courts to conclude that projects should be covered when their eligibility is in doubt.

But Ryan Thomason and J. Scott Miller, partners at the law firm Mitchell Chadwick with CEQA expertise, think it’s likely courts would rule otherwise. In an article, they note that the definition used in the measure hews closely to another section of California law, which distinguishes providing internet services from offering content, services and applications online. “Courts generally interpret identical language in related statutes to have the same meaning,” they write.

Dunmoyer, of the California Building Industry Ass., stressed that the measure doesn’t overthrow local zoning rules.

Opponents are “making it sound like in your backyard will be a data center,” he said. “Well, that doesn’t happen at all by this initiative. That has to happen by a county board of supervisors voting to put a data center in your backyard. And if they decide to do that, this initiative does nothing to expedite that CEQA review.”

But what if local officials run afoul of their constituents? In the case of the Imperial Valley Data Center Campus, the roughly 75 acres of unincorporated land where it would go had already been zoned for data centers. As a result, county officials said they had the power to move forward with the facility for artificial intelligence computing infrastructure without city approval.

They granted the project an exemption from the state environmental review.

Then came the backlash. Residents spoke out at public meetings, rallied on the streets, circulated a petition and formed a community organization. The city of Imperial and the Sierra Club sued. In the wake of the outrage, the county walked back its decision, declaring a moratorium on data centers. (The developer sued the county over the ban, and the county recently rescinded it following a court order.)

If Prop 45 passes — and data centers are covered by it — Eric Biber, of UC Berkeley Law, told The Times that such a moratorium wouldn’t be possible. That’s because the measure prevents state and local officials from changing the rules for a project once its application is submitted, he said. So if a community didn’t have a moratorium in place and its zoning laws allow a data center, “They’re done,” said. Existing bans aren’t expected to be affected.

Attorneys for the No on Prop 45 campaign argue that it could have real-world impacts for the Imperial Valley facility, saying the developer could claim the new rules apply. For instance, the measure would prevent courts from overturning approvals of qualifying projects because of CEQA violations. Courts would only be able to halt the affected portion of the project while the issue is fixed.

Sebastian Rucci, principal developer of the Imperial Valley data center, said he will fight for his project to move forward and that there’s an environmentally sound way to do it. He said he’s willing to negotiate and mitigate where necessary — but will not go through the CEQA process. If push comes to shove, he said he’ll move the project elsewhere. California could “get in the game” or be left in the dust, he said.

Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, the company behind the project, says it will create at least 100 permanent jobs and generate $28.7 million in annual property tax revenue.

CEQA requirements “are not about the environment,” Rucci said. “They may be for some, but they’re not for many. For many, they are about killing things.”

Tehran municipality has launched a series of welfare initiatives to help residents cope with soaring living costs, but the measures have raised questions about their financing and effectiveness, as well as whether the local authority is taking on responsibilities better handled by Iran’s national government.

The local authority has launched four projects it says are aimed at protecting citizens, including a housing project, freezes on the prices of 12 basic goods, and a maternity package.

Questions have been raised about how they will be funded and whether the municipality is overstepping its traditional functions.

In Iran, municipalities are responsible for local services and urban management, while the national government oversees broader economic policy, including efforts to control inflation.

Iranian law does give municipalities some responsibilites beyond conventional urban services, but Article 55 of Iran’s Municipal Law does call for municipalities to provide for public food markets, make certain essential goods more affordable, and provide social welfare facilities and low-cost housing.

The dispute is therefore less about whether Tehran municipality can provide the services, and more about their scale and financing.

The municipality’s price-freezing initiative, dubbed the “Zero Inflation” project, has been the most controversial. It comes as year-on-year inflation reached nearly 90 percent last month, while annual food inflation hit 108.8 percent.

Doubts have been raised about how the project will be funded and its effectiveness. Others believe that the measures could fuel inequality between the capital and other cities.

They are viewed as steps to address the huge economic challenges faced by Tehran residents, worsened since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28.

Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani said the municipality had recently guaranteed prices ranging between 5 percent and 50 percent below market rates for the next six months.

Yousef Akandeh, a political activist, told Al Jazeera that freezing the prices of some goods or providing free services will not reduce inflation to zero alone.

“Even if we assume that the Tehran municipality succeeded in stabilising the prices of 12 basic goods, what about the rise in rents, medicines, transportation prices, and the rest of living expenses,” Akandeh asked.

Real steps to tackle inflation, Akandeh said, would have to begin with controlling liquidity growth and monetary discipline, which he said are nearly impossible amid the ongoing war.

The municipality has also introduced a maternity support programme offering mothers of children born this year monthly credits worth up to 40 million rials ($15) for two years for each newborn.

Akandeh raised the issue of institutional overlap, noting that a similar national scheme already exists.

“The government implements a similar package and provides monthly financial amounts for all newborns across the country and not just in Tehran, and if the municipality’s package is independent of it, the Tehrani family may benefit from the national and municipal programme simultaneously,” Akandeh said.

Receiving support from both programmes would not, in itself, indicate wrongdoing. But critics are instead raising the question of whether it is an appropriate use of Tehran’s municipal resources, particularly when the city faces competing spending demands.

Amir Dabiri Mehr, a former adviser in the Tehran municipality, told Al Jazeera that although supporting the homeless falls under the municipality’s social responsibilities, the problem lies in a lack of transparency. The municipality is funded by taxes and building density licences.

“The people have the right to know what the municipality spends within the framework of its original tasks, and in tasks it has chosen for itself, and where it gets its resources from?” Dabiri Mehr said.

The municipality-affiliated Hamshahri newspaper said that the “Zero Inflation” project is not funded by municipal budget subsidies, but through direct purchases from producers and reducing commercial profit margins in council-run stores.

The biggest crisis facing Tehran’s residents is housing, which is the national government’s responsibility, Mehr said. Food and living expenses are the national government’s responsibility.

“If the goal is to solve the people’s problems, it seems that the biggest problem facing the residents of Tehran today is the housing crisis, and this dilemma cannot be solved by building an apartment building consisting of a few residential units,” he said.

Al Jazeera attempted to contact the Tehran municipality for comment but received no response.

Tehran Mayor Zakani has, however, defended the financing arrangements, telling a local newspaper, Hamshahri, that the Zero Inflation initiative would not rely on direct subsidies from the municipal budget, but instead on purchasing goods directly from producers and reducing commercial profit margins in city-run stores.

Zakani also said that the programme would draw on municipal resources, bank financing, and partnerships.