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The BulleTin • Thursday, april 21, 2022 A13 U.S. to appeal order voiding travel mask mandate BY MICHAEL BALSAMO AND ZEKE MILLER associated press The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask man- date on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said Wednesday. The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week. A notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Tampa. The CDC said in a state- ment Wednesday that it is its “continuing assessment that at this time an order requir- ing masking in the indoor transportation corridor re- mains necessary for the public health.” It remained unclear whether the Biden adminis- tration would ask the appeals court to grant an emergency stay to immediately reim- pose the mask mandate on public transit. An emergency stay of the lower court’s rul- ing would be a whiplash mo- ment for travelers and transit workers. Most airlines and airports, many public transit systems and even ride-shar- ing company Uber lifted their mask-wearing requirements in the hours following Mon- day’s ruling. A federal judge in Flor- ida struck down the national mask mandate for mass transit on Monday, leading airlines and airports to swiftly repeal their requirements that pas- sengers wear face coverings. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it would it will no longer enforce the mask requirement. The CDC had recently ex- tended the mask mandate, which was set to expire Mon- day, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omi- cron subvariant, which is now responsible for the vast major- ity of U.S. cases. But the court ruling Monday had put that decision on hold. The CDC said it will con- tinue to monitor public health conditions to determine if a mandate would remain necessary. It said it believes the mandate is “a lawful or- der, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.” Justice Department spokes- man Anthony Coley said Wednesday night that the de- partment was filing the appeal “in light of today’s assessment by the CDC that an order re- quiring masking in the trans- portation corridor remains necessary to protect the public health.” Biden’s administration has offered mixed messages in the wake of the Monday ruling. While officials said Americans should heed the CDC’s guid- ance even if it was no longer a requirement, Biden himself suggested they had more flex- ibility on masking-up during transit. “That’s up to them,” Biden declared during a Tuesday visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The White House nonetheless continues to re- quire face coverings for those traveling with him on Air Force One, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. White House press secre- tary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden still is encourag- ing Americans to wear masks when traveling and that he had been “answering the ques- tion quite literally” a day be- fore. evan Vucci/ap Passengers wait in line at the security checkpoint at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia. The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs. The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week. “People are not legally bound to wear masks,” she said, after the court order. “So, it is a point in time where it is up to people — it is their choice, in that regard. War in Ukraine Russia tightens noose on Mariupol as attacks intensify in the east NABIH BULOS, LAURA KING AND KATE LINTHICUM los angeles Times RUBIZHNE, Ukraine — Russia tightened its grip Wednesday around Ukraine’s last stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol, whose des- perate defenders, holed up in underground shelters beneath a massive steel plant, pleaded for international help, declaring that they were “probably facing our last days, if not hours.” Along hundreds of miles of a scythe-shaped battlefront in Ukraine’s east, the din of Rus- sian bombardment echoed in cities and towns, while Mos- cow’s ground forces made a series of what Ukrainian mil- itary officials described as probing attacks that did not yield any substantial new terri- torial gains. With the war about to grind into a ninth week and West- ern powers racing to supply Ukraine with heavier weap- ons, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation that nearly all of Russia’s com- bat-ready forces were “con- centrated on the territory of our state” and just outside its borders. Moscow, he said, was deploying “almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting.” Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of its smaller neighbor has triggered a refugee crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. The United Na- tions’ refugee agency Wednes- day put the the number who have fled Ukraine at 5 million. More than 7 million people are internally displaced. As the fighting’s ferocity has increased — and in the weeks since gruesome evidence began emerging of Russian atrocities against civilians in the suburbs of Kyiv, the capi- tal — diplomatic efforts have floundered. On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmi- try Peskov blamed Ukraine for the impasse, saying that Moscow had sent Zelenskyy’s government a draft document Land Act Continued from A1 Jermayne Tuckta, an archivist at the Museum at Warm Springs, finds irony in the numbers. “It’s interesting that a lot of ru- ral people would find this unfair because they are the ones who benefited from the Donation Land Act the most,” said Tuckta, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Tuckta said the difference be- tween rural and urban attitudes could come down to which side is more exposed to Native Amer- ican issues on a daily basis. Peo- ple in urban areas do not regu- larly see the impacts of the Land Donation Act on Native Ameri- cans, he said. “Those in the rural areas probably often run into tribal members who are looking for places to gather edible roots,” said Tuckta. “So people in ru- ral areas are seeing first hand alexei alexandrov/ap Damaged and burned vehicles are seen at a destroyed part of the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, as smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal during heavy fighting, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Monday. with “absolutely clear” propos- als and that Ukraine had not responded. “The ball is in their court,” Peskov told reporters. In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow of distorting what was said in negotiations.The capture of Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov that has been nearly wiped off the map by continuous Russian bombardment, would be a sig- nificant triumph for Russia. In a message recorded deep within a sprawling steelworks plant where Ukrainian forces and some frightened civil- ians are holed up, a Ukrainian commander said the defend- ers were outnumbered 10 to 1 by Russian attackers. “We are probably facing our last days, if not hours,” the officer, Serhiy Volnya of the 36th Marine Brigade, said in the video, which was posted on Facebook. He pleaded with world leaders to arrange for Ukrainian forces remaining in the steel plant and its un- derground tunnels to be evac- uated and taken “to the terri- tory of a third-party state.” leo Correa/ap Alexandra Kusminova pets her cat, named Mouse, as she sits on a bed settled in a restaurant that was transformed into a shelter in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Russia has been dropping heavy bombs on the steel complex even as it issues re- peated surrender demands, promising that holdouts who give up would be unharmed. But previous ultimatums, on Sunday and Tuesday, were ig- nored by the Ukrainian side, as was Wednesday’s. Ukraine says a Mariupol hospital where hundreds of civilians had taken shelter was also tar- geted Wednesday. the cause and effects of what the land donation act did.” Tuckta said Native Americans often ask permission from local landowners to dig for roots on private property, common sit- uations that bring the two sides in direct contact. Improving relations between Native and non-Native peoples may have changed attitudes toward his- toric events and policies, he said. Now when tribal members venture off the reservation in search of edible roots they are finding more hospitable land- owners. “When my grandmother was younger, they would try to gather the edible roots in the Shaniko area. The landowners of that generation weren’t as lenient or nice toward tribal members,” said Tuckta. “But today that has changed. This new generation of land- owners are open, as long as they know we are not out there leav- Several thousand Ukrainian troops, by the Russians’ esti- mate, remained in the plant and its labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers spread out across about 4 square miles. Zelen- skyy said about 1,000 civilians were also trapped there. All told, more than 100,000 people were believed trapped with little if any food, water, medicine or heat in Mariupol, which had a pre-war popula- tion of over 400,000. Officials have tried to ar- range the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents who remain trapped in the city un- der dire conditions, without access to drinking water, food or medical supplies. Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said that a plan to rescue civilians from Mariupol via a humani- tarian corridor “did not work as planned” Wednesday and that another attempt would be made Thursday. “Due to the lack of control over their own military at the place, the occu- piers were unable to ensure a proper cease-fire,” she said of Russia. Bio Box The Oregon Values and Beliefs Center is committed to the highest level of public opin- ion research. To help obtain that, the nonprofit is building a large research panel of Orego- nians to ensure that all voices are represented in discussions of public policy in a valid and statistically reliable way. selected panelists earn points for their participation, which can be redeemed for cash or donated to a charity. To learn more, click here. ing trash or anything and we are just out there to gather our roots.” This generational change of heart towards the needs of Na- tive Americans is reflected in the survey, said Tuckta. █ Reporter: 541-617-7818, mkohn@bendbulletin.com Mariupol, a once-thriving city of nearly half a million people, now lies in ruins, with three-quarters of its prewar population either displaced or dead. Still, it is considered a strategic prize. Capturing it would allow the creation of a land corridor linking Rus- sian-controlled parts of the Donbas — Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland — to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed eight years ago. While Russia was focusing its “main effort” on captur- ing Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said Moscow’s forces were also making repeated thrusts in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which make up the Donbas. Ten Russian ground attacks were repulsed in the previous 24 hours, the military said in an operational report early Wednesday. Since both sides declared Monday that the war had entered a new phase, Rus- sian forces have captured Kreminna, an eastern town of about 18,000 people on the front lines. Nearby, the city of Rubizhne was the site of intense artillery fusillades. Shelling had devastated wide parts of the city, turning Rubizhne into a landscape of smashed, scorched buildings and cratered boulevards. Russian forces had report- edly taken much of the city, but on Wednesday, street bat- tles were ongoing, with an especially intense skirmish around the train station. Although some Western of- ficials and analysts have ques- tioned whether the Russian offensive in the east was un- derway in earnest, British mil- itary intelligence said in a new assessment that fighting in the Donbas was growing in inten- sity, with Russian forces seek- ing to break through Ukrainian defenses and disrupt supply lines and troop redeployment on the Ukrainian side. “Russian attacks on cities Levy Continued from A1 The levy, if approved by voters in the May 17 pri- mary election, would pay for improvements, such as housing police and fire operations under the same roof, building an interview room and a holding cell, and providing covered parking for police vehicles to prevent cars from get- ting buried in snow during the winter. “Both the police facil- ities and the fire station are not up to current stan- dards, and they are not buildings that are ade- quate in the future,” said Bill Hepburn, the chair of the Sunriver Service Dis- trict. The levy would assess 47 cents per $1,000 of as- sessed property value. It is across Ukraine show their at- tempt to try and disrupt the movement of Ukrainian rein- forcements and weaponry to the east of the country,” the as- sessment said. Supply and reinforcement, combined with serious mo- rale problems, were key weak- nesses in Russia’s drive to capture Kyiv, an effort that Moscow abandoned a month ago. Analysts say those same issues could beset Moscow’s efforts in the east as well. But vast tracts of open ter- ritory and superior firepower could favor the Russian push in the east — the main rea- son that Zelenskyy has been making near-daily pleas for more heavy weaponry from the West. “If we had access to all the weapons we need, which our partners have and which are comparable to the weapons used by the Russian Federa- tion, we would have already ended this war,” he said in his address. The United States, Canada and Britain have promised Ukraine more artillery, and Norway is sending air-defense missiles. In addition to new sanctions on Russia that the White House says are in the works, President Joe Biden is expected to announce a new military aid package for Kyiv in coming days. Some allied countries, in- cluding Germany, have been name-checked by Ukrainian officials as flagging in their provision of armaments just when the need is greatest. Seemingly stung by the criti- cism, German Foreign Min- ister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday cited recent ship- ments of anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft mis- siles to Ukraine. Baerbock, speaking at the start of a visit to the three Bal- tic states, said Germany was also providing “other things that we didn’t talk about in public.” █ difficult to determine an average assessed value of a home in Sunriver, Hep- burn said — on his street alone he said it fluctuates between $290,000 and $1.4 million. Hepburn said someone who owns a home with an assessed value of $400,000 would pay $188 in the first year of the levy. The rest of the $18 mil- lion project will be covered by $3 million from ser- vice district reserves and $8 million in Deschutes County transient room tax revenue. Hepburn said it is criti- cal for the district to pass a levy now versus five years from now, because the $8 million from the county helps keep the cost low for Sunriver taxpayers. “There is absolutely no guarantee we would — Information from The Associated Press is included in this report. be able to do something like that again,” Hepburn said, referring to receiv- ing $8 million from De- schutes County. “This is a unique opportunity to have the county funding almost half the cost of the project. That opportu- nity may never come up again.” Hepburn said the ser- vice district has yet to hear any negative comments about the levy since the district began campaign- ing for it last year, and the secretary of state website does not show any orga- nized opposition groups to the levy. “We worked hard at limiting the impact on the Sunriver taxpayer, and I think we’ve done it,” he said. █ Reporter: 541-633-2160, bvisser@bendbulletin.com
