• U.S. Reps. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) and Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) issued a statement regarding allegations of the rape and sexual harassment of students at the U.S. Merchant and Marine Academy (USMMA) aboard training vessels. Investigations began after a 19-year-old female academy cadet filed to a whistleblower website an anonymous report claiming she was sexually assaulted during her sea year training. The website works to expose problems of sexual harassment and assault aboard U.S. commercial vessels. The USMMA is one of five federal service academies where cadets train to serve as officers in both public and private sectors and must complete more than 300 days at sea working aboard commercial, passenger, or military vessels around the world, and is administered by the Department of Transportation. “We must have zero tolerance when it comes to assault,” DeFazio and Carbajal said in the statement. “This pattern of abuse in the maritime industry and the sea year program in particular has gone on far too long—we must reform the toxic culture that has allowed this problem to fester and not stop until our seas are safe for everyone.”
• Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California secured Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) federal funds to assist California in combating the Alisal Fire burning in Santa Barbara County. California submitted a request for a Fire Management Assistance Grant for the Alisal Fire, which threatened 200 residential structures, commercial properties, state beaches, a landfill, Highway 101, railways, and power transmission lines. This funding enables local, state, and tribal agencies to apply for 75 percent reimbursement of their eligible fire suppression costs and provides rapid financial assistance to communities impacted by fires. Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in counties impacted by the Cache, Caldor, McFarland and Monument, Dixie, Fly, and Tamarack Fires. As of Oct. 17, the Alisal Fire is 78 percent contained, the 101 reopened, and evacuation orders lifted.
• U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla (D-California), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), and Dianne Feinstein (D-California) wrote a letter to President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to keep the comprehensive housing investments in Biden’s Build Back Better plan. If included in the plan, these investments would have a large impact on the California housing crisis, according to the letter. The vouchers in the House package would result in housing 259,000 people in California alone, including 87,000 children. “The Build Back Better plan is a rare opportunity to deliver critical investments that we have failed to make for far too long,” the senators wrote in a letter. The senators noted that housing is the most expensive item in most families’ budgets, and that more than 10 million families spend more than half their income on housing each month. “Housing challenges are different in every community, and we need different tools to address the growing problems they face. But with comprehensive investments, we can create, preserve, and improve millions of homes so that we bring down the cost of housing and improve its condition,” the letter continued.
This article appears in Oct 21-28, 2021.
