President Biden and top administration officials touted actions this week that they argued protect tribal interests, just months after moving to block oil drilling that sustains Native American communities.

On Tuesday, Biden designated the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, blocking off a million acres of public lands for a wide range of uses. The president, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack attended a ceremony later in the day where they remarked the action protects Native American culture.

‘I made a commitment as president to prioritize respect for the tribal sovereignty and self-determination, to honor the solemn promises the United States made to tribal nations to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations,’ Biden remarked. 

‘I’ve pledged to keep using all that available authority to protect sacred tribal lands,’ he continued. ‘My administration has worked alongside tribal leaders, including many of you who are here today, to keep that promise.’

Biden also argued that establishing the Grand Canyon as a national park years ago was a means to ensure Native Americans were denied access to their own land.  

Haaland added that the move to designate the lands as a national monument demonstrates the importance of ‘recognizing the original stewards of our public land.’

‘Feeling seen means being appreciated for who we are — the original stewards of our shared lands and waters. It means investing in our people and recognizing the power of Indigenous Knowledge as a key part of collaborative conservation,’ she posted on X following the ceremony. 

‘And it means making sure that Indigenous wisdom and perspective informs our decisions, so that together we will usher in a future that our grandchildren deserve to inherit.’

However, in early June, Haaland finalized a ban on fossil fuel leasing within 10 miles of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park located near San Juan County, New Mexico. While she said the move would protect the sacred and culturally significant site, leaders of the nearby Navajo Nation argued it will wreak economic devastation on tribal members who rely on leasing the land for income.

Navajo leaders also warned that the federal government failed to properly consult them on the action. They said Haaland never seriously considered their compromise solution and potentially neglected her legal duty to protect rights of Navajo allottees.

‘I really am emotionally distraught for our constituents that have been impacted by this,’ Brenda Jesus, who chairs Navajo Nation Council’s Resources & Development Committee, told Fox News Digital at the time. ‘The proper government-to-government tribal consultation has never really taken place at all. We’re just really advocating on behalf of our constituents. That wasn’t really considered – tribal sovereignty.’

And Buu Nygren, the president of the Navajo Nation, a federally recognized tribe in the U.S. southwest, said days later that the Navajo Justice Department was considering pursuing litigation against the federal government in response to the move. He lamented the impact it would have on low-income Navajo citizens who depend on revenue from leasing their allotments within ten miles of Chaco Canyon.

Overall, there are currently 53 Indian allotments located in the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Canyon, generating $6.2 million per year in royalties for an estimated 5,462 allottees, according to Navajo Nation data. In addition, there are 418 unleased allotments in the zone that are associated with 16,615 allottees. 

According to the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group that represents oil and gas producers in the area, Navajo members will lose an estimated $194 million as a result of Haaland’s actions.

The allotments date back to the 1900s, when the federal government awarded them to Navajo citizens as a consolation when the tribe’s territory was downsized.

‘To totally disregard those local communities — it’s unfair,’ Nygren told Fox News Digital. ‘There’s no need to celebrate putting people into poverty, to celebrate undermining the Navajo Nation’s sovereignty, undermining everything that comes into working with tribes, in this case, Navajo Nation.’

In addition, other tribes dependent on oil, gas and coal production have taken aim at the Biden administration for its policies targeting fossil fuel production broadly.

Roughly 20% of the nation’s total oil and natural gas reserves, 30% of domestic coal reserves west of the Mississippi River and additional natural minerals — altogether worth about $1.5 trillion — are on Native American lands, according to a study from think tank Property and Environment Research Center. Still, the vast majority of those resources remain undeveloped.

‘Air, water and energy are so foundational to our economy. I believe in the right that all property owners have to develop what belongs to them in any way that they want,’ Daniel Cardenas, the chairman of the National Tribal Energy Association and a member of the Pit River Tribe, previously told Fox News Digital. ‘That’s why it’s important to fight for. To make sure it doesn’t get taken away.’

‘A war on coal is a war on Crow,’ added Conrad Stewart, the director of energy and water for the Crow Nation of Montana.

Rep. Cori Bush, a member of the progressive ‘Squad’ group in the House, was widely panned by conservatives this week after posting a tribute to Michael Brown that blamed racism and White supremacy for his death.

‘Today is the 9th anniversary of Mike Brown’s killing,’ Bush tweeted on Wednesday. ‘He would be alive today if the institutions of racism and white supremacy were eradicated. He should be alive today. We will never forget. We will continue to fight for justice and accountability.’

The tweet was immediately blasted on social media by those pointing out more details of the incident, including the fact that Brown robbed a convenience store, physically assaulted a police officer and tried to grab his gun before ultimately being killed by that officer.

‘This only goes to show how the Left plays the long game,’ political commentator Matt Walsh tweeted. ‘The whole Michael Brown narrative has been definitively exposed as a hoax but they will keep repeating it year after year after year until we get tired of correcting it and the truth is forgotten by history.’

‘He choked a bodega owner in the act of shoplifting and attempted to assault the responding police officer while grabbing his firearm,’ the Spectator’s Stephen L. Miller tweeted. ‘Eric Holder’s justice department cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.’

Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, nine years ago in a shooting that sparked nationwide outrage and riots over what activists said was an example of police brutality. Brown’s death sparked major civil unrest in Ferguson, where many protesters chanted ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ in reference to discredited witnesses who said Brown’s hands were up when the fatal shots were fired.

An investigation by former President Obama’s Justice Department found in March 2015 that the police officer, Darren Wilson, had been acting in self-defense and cleared the officer, and it found that the officer’s actions ‘do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal rights statute.’

‘Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson,’ the Obama DOJ’s investigative report read.

‘As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time,’ it continued.

Fox News Digital’s Houston Keene contributed to this report.

A Wisconsin socialist Democrat former lawmaker said that police officers ‘have neither dignity nor value’ in recent Facebook comments.

Wisconsin Democrat former state Rep. Ryan Clancy, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and now a Milwaukee supervisor, went after police in the Facebook comments section responding to a user.

‘All work had dignity and value, Lis Marie* Even trolling (sic),’ Clancy said ‘What is it that you do?’

‘*Not cops, though,’ he added.

‘So for the record you just state a Police Officer’s job has NO VALUE OR DIGNITY,’ the user replied. ‘Just want you to verify that before I pass that along to some who might enjoy hearing it.’

Clancy said the user was ‘entirely correct’ and that police officers ‘may be perfectly fine individuals, but their jobs have neither dignity nor value.’

‘I’m not sure how you’ve been obsessed about my social media for as long as you have and seem surprised by this,’ Clancy wrote. ‘[And] once more, what is it you do again? Or is trolling your full-time volunteer position?’

Clancy was arrested in 2020 during the George Floyd riots and filed a suit with the Milwaukee circuit court about the charges, claiming police brutality.

‘That’s not how quotation marks work. I did not attack individual police officers as having neither dignity nor value,’ Clancy told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

‘Policing as an institution, as a legacy of ‘slave catching’ and union busting, has neither dignity nor value,’ he continued. ‘It is inherently racist, classist and cannot be reformed.’

The comments come as crime in the U.S. continues to rise.

A teenage girl was arrested on assault charges after footage of her attack on a Nevada family riding the New York City subway while on vacation went viral last week, police said.

The 16-year-old, whom the New York Police Department has not named due to her age, turned herself in around 9:45 a.m. Tuesday to the 6th Precinct in Manhattan, close to the scene of Thursday’s West 4th Street station beatdown.

The teen was charged with two felony counts of assault, the NYPD told Fox News Digital. 

Video captured the teen battering 51-year-old Sue Young in front of her husband and 11-year-old twin daughters and hurling racial epithets at the unsuspecting Asian tourists, according to PIX 11. 

Fox News Digital Christina Coulter’s contributed reporting.

FIRST ON FOX: More than 20 House Republican lawmakers filed amicus brief in support of Texas against a Justice Department lawsuit over its construction of a floating border barrier along the Rio Grande.

The 22 lawmakers, led by Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, filed the brief in response to the Justice Department’s lawsuit which alleges that the floating border barrier is in violation of federal law.

The border barrier was launched last month as part of an effort by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stop migrants crossing along the Rio Grande. Texas says it is designed to save lives by preventing people from entering the river, but humanitarian groups and the DOJ argue that the barrier poses a safety risk.

‘The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,’ the DOJ said in a letter to Abbott before the suit was filed.

The DOJ lawsuit argues that the buoy barrier is in violation of the Rivers and Harbors Act, which protects navigable waters from obstructions and outlines authorities for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The lawmakers argue that the federal government’s claim that the Rio Grande is ‘navigable’ is flimsy and based on a finding from 1947. They argue instead that the river has changed substantially since then and therefore cannot be classed as such now.

‘When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act it carefully chose language designed to balance its desire to protect our rivers and harbors for commercial navigation with the limitations placed on its authority under the Commerce Clause,’ they say. ‘It did not intend to grant federal agencies unchecked power to regulate every ditch and stream that once upon a time could have carried a boat.’

It calls on the court to make the government produce evidence that the waters it wants to regulate are navigable, arguing that otherwise, that act could turn into a ‘one-way ratchet’ in which federal authority expands but never shrinks. The lawmakers include Reps. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, August Pfluger, R-Texas, Brian Babin, R-Texas and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Arrington said that states ‘do not have to be passive victims of Biden’s border crisis and a failed federal government’ and that the barrier is within Abbott’s power and authority.

‘Biden’s DOJ is stretching far and wide; this time, by using obscure laws and regulations to impede the Governor of Texas from protecting his citizens against the ‘imminent danger’ and ‘invasion’ of drugs and crime pouring into our state by terrorist drug cartels,’ he said. ‘I’m proud to lead this Amicus Brief in support of the Governor as he stands his ground on the firm foundation of the US Constitution and his sovereign right to secure the southern border and keep Texans safe.’

The amicus brief marks the latest twist in the debate over the barrier, which is one of a number of initiatives Texas has taken to secure its border amid a historic migrant crisis on which it has been on the front lines.

Mexico has also complained about the border and tied the death of at least one migrant to the barrier.

‘We reiterate the position of the Government of Mexico that the placement of wire buoys by the Texas authorities is a violation of our sovereignty,’ the foreign ministry said in a statement. ‘We express our concern about the impact on the human rights and personal safety of migrants that these state policies will have, which run counter to the close collaboration between our country and the federal government of the United States.

Texas pushed back, calling Mexico’s claim ‘flat-out wrong’ and said that information indicating the death occurred further upstream.

‘This is a result of the reckless open border policies of President Biden and President López Obrador. In fact, before Texas deployed barriers, the United Nations declared the U.S.-Mexico border the deadliest land crossing in the world,’ an Abbott spokesperson said. ‘If President Biden and President López Obrador truly cared about human life, they would do their jobs and secure the border.’

FBI agents have killed a man who allegedly made threats against President Biden on social media.

Federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that Craig Robertson was killed while FBI agents attempted to serve an arrest and search warrant at a house in Provo, Utah, on Wednesday at around 6:15 a.m.

Prosecutors allege that Robertson posted the following on social media: ‘I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old ghille suit and cleaning the dust off the m24 sniper rifle. welcom, buffoon-in-chief!’

A spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News the agency is investigating the incident.

‘The FBI is reviewing an agent-involved shooting which occurred around 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 in Provo, Utah. The incident began when special agents attempted to serve arrest and search warrants at a residence. The subject is deceased. The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously. In accordance with FBI policy, the shooting incident is under review by the FBI’s Inspection Division. As this is an ongoing matter, we have no further details to provide,’ the spokesperson said.

A complaint filed by prosecutors on Monday in U.S. District Court, Utah district, states that Robertson was being charged with interstate threats, influencing, impeding and retaliating against federal law enforcement officers by threat, and threats against the president.

Federal prosecutors allege that Robertson threatened on social media to kill Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Other posts allegedly made by Robertson, according to prosecutors, show his ‘intent to kill, at a minimum, D.A. Bragg and President Joe Biden.’ His social media posts included alleged threats against other politicians, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In a court filing, an FBI agent said Robertson appeared to ‘own a sniper rifle and a ghillie suit’ in addition to numerous other firearms.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Secret Service addressed the incident on X, formerly known as Twitter.

‘We are aware of the FBI investigation involving an individual in Utah who has exhibited threats towards a Secret Service protectee. While we always remain in close coordination with the Bureau, this is an FBI-led effort and we refer any related questions to the FBI and DOJ,’ the spokesperson wrote.