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The National Treasury Employees Union on Thursday became the latest federal employee union to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign.

NTEU joins the American Federation of Government Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, both members of the AFL-CIO, on the list of labor groups representing federal workers to endorse Harris following her ascension to become the Democratic nominee this summer. AFGE and IFPTE had both endorsed President Biden in 2023, and then updated those endorsements after his withdrawal in July.

In a statement, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald touted Harris’ record supporting federal workers and empowering unions at federal agencies.

“When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” Greenwald said. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans. She has been a strong advocate for the issues that matter most to federal employees: fair pay, paid family leave, adequate agency funding and staffing and robust collective bargaining rights.”

Though the endorsement makes no mention of Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, his own record on workforce and labor issues likely played a large part in NTEU’s choice. While in office, the Republican nominee sought to reduce labor’s influence on the federal workplace and to strip tens of thousands of federal workers in “policy-related” positions of their civil service protection; he has vowed to revive the latter initiative if elected in November.

Greenwald also noted that Harris has cultivated a working relationship with the union throughout her political career, and values the non-partisan civil service.

“Harris has a long career in public service, which has given her a keen understanding of how the skilled civil servants who perform the day-to-day work of government are vital to our democracy,” she said. “She is a powerful voice for workers and their unions, recognizing that taxpayers are better served when the federal workforce is organized and empowered to help agencies meet their important public service missions.”

The Air Force is planning a tabletop exercise to gauge U.S. readiness to react to a wide spectrum of nuclear-related scenarios, part of a larger effort to prepare for them, a service leader said on Wednesday.

“What if, God forbid, there was a low-yield [nuclear weapon] use in Europe tomorrow?” Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said at the Air & Space Forces Association conference outside Washington, D.C. “Or what if there was a demonstration of nuclear use, or a nuclear test? What if we had to adapt the INDOPACOM regional fight because a nuclear power had a red line [that meant] we couldn’t fly in certain areas? 

“These are the kind of things that our warfighters need to understand from the beginning. It doesn’t need to be just at the presidential level with no other discussion,” Gebara said.

That represents a big change in the way the military has historically talked about the possibility of nuclear war. It used to be that intelligence or analysis about the effects of such weapons on a given conflict was held at the highest possible, “strategic” level. That was a reflection of the times, when two great powers were engaged in a largely conventional arms race with knowable “rules” or at least principles of play. That doesn’t represent the modern role of nuclear weapons in conflict, which may include far more players and means of delivery of nuclear effects. 

“When I was younger, at the end of the Cold War, the biggest threat we had was no-notice-1,000 ICBMs just coming over the North Pole, and how would you handle that?” Gebara said. “That’s horrific to even think about. But it’s actually a pretty simple tactical problem. There’s only a couple things you can do with something that bad.”

Today, ICBMs look quaint compared to new types of missiles and weapons that can deliver nuclear effects, including some that don’t even appear to be weapons at first. If the Soviet Union’s 100-megaton Tsar Bomba was the epitome of the Cold War arms race, the new race is best represented by the lower-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons that Russia has threatened to unleash on Ukraine or, possibly, in space. 

Gerbera said weapons instructors at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base are already teaching these kinds of lessons to more pilots. 

“So what does it mean if you’re flying through this area and there’s a radiological threat? What’s it mean for the airplane?” he said.

Now, Gebara said, he’s working to broaden training for such scenarios across the Air Force. 

“I think at all levels we need to build that experience, not just at the tactical level and not just at the strategic,” he said.

The results of the tabletop exercise, which is slated for later this month, will be briefed at a CORONA commanders conference.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting and with assistance from High Country News. 

The Energy Department gave the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation what seemed like very good news earlier this year: It had won a $32 million grant for a novel solar energy project in Washington state. Built over a series of old irrigation canals, the proposed solar panels would generate electricity for tribal members without removing farm acreage from cultivation. The location would preserve the kinds of culturally sensitive land that have prompted concerns about other renewables projects.

Months after announcing the grant, the same department is making it nearly impossible for the tribal nation to access the money.

“It is because literally the feds cannot get out of their own way,” said Ray Wiseman, general manager of Yakama Power, the tribally owned utility.

The bureaucratic whiplash stems from the fact that while one part of the Energy Department hands out money for clean energy projects, another part decides which projects get access to the Northwest electrical grid. The Bonneville Power Administration’s process for approving connections comes with such exorbitant costs and is mired in such long delays that the federal grant could well expire before the tribe can touch a dime.

It’s a dilemma that persists despite the Biden administration’s explicit promise last year to help tribes create new sources of renewable power affordably and quickly.

Bonneville and the Energy Department blame the holdup on a glut of renewable energy proposals that are creating a need for massive transmission upgrades across the country. In a joint statement on behalf of Bonneville and its parent agency, Energy Department spokesperson Chris Ford said the government is required to put all energy proposals through the same process with the same costs.

But Ford added that federal agencies are “exploring different options within the law to both speed the process and reduce the costs the Yakama Nation would have to pay.”

The White House Council on Environmental Quality, which brokered the agreement pledging to help tribes build renewables, said in a statement the administration is coordinating with tribes and others in “taking action to deliver a clean, reliable electric grid and make federal permitting of new transmission lines more efficient.”

But council spokesperson Justin Weiss didn’t answer questions from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica about why the Yakama project was stalled and what specific steps the White House has taken to help speed tribal energy connections.

Renewable energy supporters say the Yakama solar case shows that if the White House can’t keep the federal bureaucracy from undermining its own goals, then it’s making promises it can’t keep.

Nancy Hirsh, who’s worked since the 1990s for a coalition that advocates for clean power in the Northwest, said the situation is exactly what she feared would happen after the tribal agreement was signed.

“This is just the thing that we need to fix,” Hirsh said, “the left hand not connected with the right hand.”

An Unprecedented Promise

The Yakama reservation in Central Washington bears the scars of the federal government’s energy policies.

Transmission lines stretching across tribal properties were built a century ago without permission. The country’s largest nuclear waste cleanup site, Hanford, has poisoned parts of the tribe’s ancestral land under the Department of Energy’s watch.

Families on the reservation were displaced from their homes along the river to make way for massive reservoirs and hydroelectric dams. Those dams nearly wiped out runs of wild salmon that are vital to Indigenous cultures and that the U.S. government swore in treaties it would preserve.

Even today, the development of renewable energy often risks encroaching on land held sacred by tribes, who have argued they are cut out of the decision-making process.

President Joe Biden seemed to offer a fresh approach to tribal sovereignty, declaring it a priority for his administration shortly after taking office in 2021.

Soon, the White House began negotiations to end a decades-old lawsuit by tribes and environmental groups who want some of the Northwest’s federal dams torn down to keep local salmon populations from going extinct.

The result of the talks was what the administration called a “historic” deal. The tribes would put their lawsuit on hold. In return, the White House promised to help tribes develop up to 3 gigawatts of renewable energy. That could power all the homes in a city roughly the size of Portland, Oregon. More significantly to the tribes, it’s enough to replace the output of the four dams on the lower Snake River deemed most detrimental to salmon.

“It will take all of us committing to this partnership now and for years to come to lift the words off the page and bring this agreement to life,” White House senior adviser John Podesta said at the signing of the agreement with Northwest tribes in February. “I want you to know that President Biden and Vice President Harris and the whole administration are committed to making that happen.”

Yakama Nation Chair Gerald Lewis also voiced hope when he signed the agreement with the Biden administration. “The last time energy was developed in the Columbia Basin, it was done on the backs of tribal communities and tribal resources,” Lewis said at the time. “Now we have an opportunity to do better.”

The Yakama Nation’s proposal would seem to exactly fit the bill.

Its initial plan was to cover 10 miles of irrigation canals with solar panels and to outfit the canals themselves with small-scale hydroelectric turbines. That would generate enough electricity to power a few thousand homes on the reservation, which has a population of about 30,000.

In addition to avoiding the tribe’s culturally sensitive lands, the project wouldn’t encroach on any wildlife habitats. And covering the irrigation canals would shade the water so that less of it evaporates in the sun.

The Department of Energy awarded its $32 million grant for the project at the end of February. Soon after, the agency posted an interview about the plan with Lewis and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on its Facebook page bearing the caption, “Sometimes, the great ideas are the ones right in front of us.”

Washington’s U.S. senators, Democrats Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, each issued news releases announcing the grant and praising the project, saying the canals could boost water conservation by 20% and cut the reservation’s power bills by 15%.

But those ambitions quickly ran up against stark realities, according to the people directly involved in bringing the project to life.

“Everybody thinks that the federal government gave us 32 million bucks,” Wiseman, the general manager for Yakama Power, said. “They did not.”

Stuck in Bureaucracy

In its landmark accord with tribes, and in documents supporting the accord’s implementation, the White House promised more than money. It vowed to muster the full clout of the federal government to achieve the plan’s goals. Specifically, the agreement said the energy department, working with Indigenous leaders, would find “legal and regulatory options” for getting projects connected to the grid faster and for making them affordable for tribes.

That didn’t prevent the first tribal project to come along — the Yakama Nation’s — from getting caught in a snare of bureaucracy.

In addition to the grant from the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Yakama Power was promised a nearly $100 million rural clean energy loan from the Department of Agriculture. But it cannot access any of the federal money without first obtaining a “power purchase agreement,” which essentially offers proof that the electricity the tribal utility plans to generate has a destination.

That’s hard for the tribe to do because it can’t get a purchase agreement until its project connects to the grid, which is owned by Bonneville, itself an arm of the Energy Department. Bonneville’s earliest estimate of when it will finish studying connection requests such as the Yakama Nation’s is 2027, but the federal agency says it could be longer.

That’s just one of many steps. The tribe can’t distribute electricity from the new solar project until Bonneville completes upgrades to the section of its transmission system that serves the reservation, including the installation of a new electrical substation.

The federal agency’s estimate for what it would charge for the substation alone: $144 million. Building transmission lines to and from the new solar array would drive the cost higher still, but Bonneville hasn’t done those estimates yet. The Yakama would have to bear those costs.

The tribe had counted on some rate increases to pay for the solar array, but covering the unexpectedly high cost of the upgrade would add hundreds of dollars more to a household’s monthly utility bill, Wiseman said. That’s on a reservation where nearly 20% of residents have incomes below the poverty line.

Another financial hurdle: Inflation has driven up construction costs for the solar array itself in the two years since the project was proposed.

Even if the tribe can come up with all the extra money needed, time is working against the project. Bonneville says it will take five to seven years to build the substation after it’s paid for.

All the delays will push the tribe up against a 2031 deadline to use or lose its $32 million grant and $100 million loan. They were funded under the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, which both expire that year.

Wiseman is no longer confident of how many miles of canal, if any, the utility can cover with solar panels. He’s unsure whether Yakama Power will need to opt for a much smaller solar array that lacks the specialized hardware needed to suspend the panels above the irrigation canals.

“I have serious questions about whether or not these things will survive to go forward,” Wiseman said.

The Green Energy Traffic Jam

The Yakama Nation in many ways faces the same pressures that are holding back new wind and solar farms across the country.

The surge in such projects over the past decade has jammed up the system that grid operators like Bonneville Power Administration use when evaluating requests to connect to the grid. The onslaught of green power has also taxed a grid designed to carry much less energy. And yet the new supply is badly needed to meet soaring demand, driven in part by thearrival of energy-guzzling data centers in the past decade.

Bonneville is changing the way it studies energy proposals to streamline the process. But renewable developers, advocates and industry analysts have published a white paper with a list of more than 20 recommendations that they say can create the grid the Northwest needs and that, for the most part, they say Bonneville has not addressed.

In the meantime, despite the Biden administration’s agreement last year to help tribes, their projects have not moved to the head of the line.

Hirsh’s group, the clean and affordable energy coalition, was party to the lawsuit that the tribal deal was meant to settle. She said the government’s failure to deliver on its clean energy promises “could jeopardize the agreement.”

Yakama Nation leaders say because of the long history of energy development violating tribal rights, and because reservations were set up with marginal infrastructure, the federal government should not treat tribes the way it does any other energy developer.

The Department of Energy, however, says its lawyers have yet to find a way through federal energy regulations or treaty law to let the agency deal with tribal projects differently.

Wiseman continues to incur costs on behalf of Yakama Power, planning for the solar project while doubts linger over whether all the pieces will come together in time.

“If I can’t get the transmission access that we need — whether intentional, unintentional, whatever you want to call it — Bonneville will have single-handedly killed these projects,” Wiseman said. “And that’s why at this point, I feel incredibly frustrated, because beating them up doesn’t do me any good.”

The rollout of new location identification tools will help connect more retired servicemembers in crisis with nearby emergency services, even as responders work to maintain their privacy, a Department of Veterans Affairs official said on Wednesday. 

Testifying before the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health, Matthew Miller — executive director of VA’s office of suicide prevention — said the department’s Veterans Crisis Line has provided significant help to veterans contemplating suicide since its launch in 2007, particularly after VA adopted the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in July 2022.

As of the two-year anniversary of VA’s implementation of the “988 then press 1” streamlined call option, Miller said the Veterans Crisis Line “has successfully adapted to a 22% increase in calls per day, a 77% increase in texts per day and a 27.5% increase in chats per day.”

The crisis line provides veterans with 24/7 access to responders — psychologists, nurse practitioners and others — through calls, texts or chat. Veterans often receive referrals to suicide prevention coordinators in VA medical facilities across the country, with Miller saying that more than 80% of callers accept referrals for additional care after reaching out to the line. 

The agency is using or adopting additional tools to locate callers in extreme crises, although Miller noted that “the fine line that we walk is veterans and service members call us because they believe we’re safe.” 

Earlier this week, he noted that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — which funds the 988 Lifeline — “announced the pilot implementation of geo-routing, geolocation services” to help responders identify and then direct calls to local services. 

“It’s going to help 988 to link callers to more localized and the most localized crisis call centers and, in turn, resources to address their needs within the VA,” Miller said, noting that roughly 5% to 6% of current calls responders receive result in the need for an emergency dispatch.

In serious “last resort” situations, he also said VA already has “options that we can engage to try to locate that veteran based upon a number of variables.”

Miller said the use of these enhanced location services, however, comes with the acknowledgement that the crisis line “is allowing veterans to interact with us anonymously, if they so choose.”

“We want to be very careful how much we pursue information from the veteran, unless it’s absolutely necessary to provide them with the highest quality care,” he said, adding that “in an emergency dispatch, we may need the veterans location.”

Miller also noted that the crisis line’s documentation system “is separate from the VA health record” to maintain confidentiality, although “it has interoperability and linkages through the suicide prevention coordinators.”

While VA has launched a number of programs to help veterans in crisis — including looking at ways of using artificial intelligence to identify retired servicemembers in need — suicide rates have continued to rise. 

The department’s 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, which was based on data from 2021, found that the rate of veteran suicide had increased by 11.6% from 2020. This has resulted in approximately 17 veterans taking their own lives each day. 

Facing a potential disruption of benefits for approximately 7 million veterans, the Senate moved quickly Thursday to pass a $2.89 billion supplemental bill for the Veterans Affairs Department. 

The voice vote for the Veterans Benefits Continuity and Accountability Supplemental Appropriations Act came one day after the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee held a hearing with VA leaders to understand how the department could end up approximately $15 billion short of its budget projections for fiscal 2024 and 2025. 

The shortfall was driven, in part, by the expansion of veteran benefits eligibility from the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, as well as VA outreach efforts to make veterans aware of what benefits they may be eligible for. 

“The reason we find ourselves in this situation is, frankly, our workforce has over-delivered on what were already aggressive projections,” said Josh Jacobs, VA undersecretary for benefits, at the hearing. “For the last year, we delivered more benefits to more veterans at any other time in our history.”

Jacobs told the committee that when officials at the Veteran Benefits Administration conducted its midsession review at the end of June, they found there was potential for the VA to deliver 2.5 million claims decisions, well above its projections of 2.2 million decisions. 

Officials notified Congress of the $3 billion shortfall in July — as well as projected $11.97 billion shortfall in fiscal 2025 due to rising hiring and pharmaceutical costs within the Veterans Health Administration — leading lawmakers to scramble to draft supplemental funding legislation to ensure the VA could cover its benefits processing by a Friday deadline. 

A House bill, cosponsored by Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., emerged on Sept. 6 to provide the funding and passed the chamber on Tuesday, giving the Senate three days to take up the legislation. 

“Funding veterans benefits is key to living up to the promises we made to the men and women who stepped up to serve,” said Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., in a statement. “This shortfall exists because the PACT Act is working for toxic-exposed veterans and survivors in Montana and across the country, and as a result, more veterans and their loved ones are receiving benefits than ever before. This is what paying the true cost of war looks like, and I’m proud the Senate was able to act quickly today to ensure that seven million veterans and their families receive their benefit checks on time in 12 days.”

The legislation, which now heads to the president’s desk, requires the VA to provide a report to relevant House and Senate committees on the status of the requested funding for fiscal 2024, 2025 and 2026 within 60 days of enactment and update them every 90 days until Sept. 30, 2026. 

The VA inspector general would also examine the underlying cause of both the VBA and VHA shortfalls and report to the relevant committees within 180 days under provisions in the bill.