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Last December, East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland wrote a letter pleading with then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to grant his city, which is facing a lead contamination crisis, an emergency declaration to allow it to address the problem.

Pence said no, suggesting the $200,000 in assistance the state had already offered to help the city relocate affected families and administer free lead testing would suffice.

Pences successor, fellow Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, disagreed. Last week, in one of his first executive orders in office, he issued a declaration of disaster emergency that paved the way for additional state and potentially federal assistance for the struggling city and tasked Copeland with providing a written assessment of what resources the city will need to help its residents by March 5.

Deborah Chizewer, a law fellow at Northwestern Universitys Environmental Advocacy Clinic who has been assisting East Chicago residents affected by the toxic, lead-contaminated soil, said Holcombs action was a welcome change from Pences response to the crisis.

I was obviously very disappointed that Pence didnt give this situation the requisite level of attention, Chizewer told The Huffington Post. I dont think the state has done enough, but I was very pleased to see that Holcomb recognized the urgency in East Chicago that remains.

The situation in East Chicago dates back at leastto 1972, when the West Calumet housing complex was built on the site of a former lead refinery.

Concerns about lead in the soil in the area began around 1991, when the state first began testingEast Chicago children for lead exposure. It wasnt until 2009 that a 322-acre area, including the complex, was declareda Superfund site. Testing of the areas soil first confirmed to residentslast year that it was contaminated with both lead and arsenic.

Cleanup of lead-contaminated homes in the predominantly low-income, minority-populated city began last summer.Section 8 housing vouchers for residents affected by the citys plan to demolish the complex were distributed shortly thereafter, but many residents have struggled to find alternative housing using those vouchers. According to CBS Chicago, some 157 families of 332 living in the complex have yet to relocate as of this month.

The citys lead crisis was the subject of a longform HuffPost video, titled Dear Mike Pence, released last December.

In the piece, East Chicago residents living inside the Superfund sites three impacted zones express frustration that it took health officials so long to make them aware of the dangers of lead in their community.

One East Chicago resident, Mauro Jimenez, described to video producer Matthew Perkins how the EPA visited his familys house about six years earlier.

They came here and took samples out of my yard, Jimenez told Perkins. They never did say for what. They never sent it to me. They sent it to me this year, giving me the numbers of lead and arsenic too. Why did they hold that information from us?

Jimenez, along with his wife Sara, is a homeowner essentially trapped in the affected area, unable to sell his home due to the lead.

In good conscience, because they had small children, I couldnt even sell them the house because were all contaminated here, Sara told Perkins.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has saidno blood lead level in children should be considered safe. Exposure to lead has been linked with developmental delays, learning difficulties and other problems.

Credit: Joshua Lott/Getty Images

Since the HuffPost piece was filmed, advocates for the residents say the situation has gotten more serious. The Environmental Protection Agency discovered elevated lead levels in the drinking water of 40 percent of area homes that were recently tested. The EPA advised residents to use water filters.

Thats also the advice that Marc Edwards, a whistleblower in the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, offered for residents of the Indiana city. Edwards told HuffPost the city should also recommend that residents living in homes with lead pipes switch to bottled water, implement lead-corrosion control strategies and remind children to wash their hands to reduce their exposure to lead dust and soil.

A city spokesman did not respond to a request for information concerning the citys action plan on lead. An Indiana Department of Environmental Management pointed only to the text of last weeks emergency declaration in response to a request for additional comment.

For her part, Chizewer hopes the state may move to provide water filters to residents to help them reduce their exposure to lead, a problem she admits will not be an easy or cheap fix.

The ongoing crisis in Flint, to which some have likened East Chicagos troubles, is evidence, she says, of just that.

It cant be fixed overnight, Chizewer said. This is a cleanup of hundreds of properties. Its going to take years, but I hope there is a concerted effort to clean the properties up as quickly as possible.

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

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Mike Pence Ignored A Lead Contamination Crisis In His Backyard - Huffington Post

Dalia Mohamed says she doesn't go out much since President Donald Trump's inauguration because of harassment she says her friends have experienced. Annie Ropeik/Indiana Public Broadcasting hide caption

Dalia Mohamed says she doesn't go out much since President Donald Trump's inauguration because of harassment she says her friends have experienced.

In Indiana, Vice President Pence's hometown has one of the top concentrations of skilled immigrant workers in the country. In Columbus, Ind., manufacturers and residents depend on open borders to move both products and people, but continued uncertainty over the Trump administration's immigration policies is leading to some anxiety there.

The first thing to know about Columbus, about 45 miles south of Indianapolis, is that it's a company town the headquarters of Cummins, a big global engine-maker. Its local staff represents a fifth of the Bartholomew County's entire labor force.

The second thing to know is that this town has the lowest unemployment rate in Indiana. Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce president Cindy Frey that says when jobs do come open, there are only three options:

"You can develop talent, you can import workers, or you can export jobs," Frey says. "And we're not ready to export jobs."

Developing talent takes time, so for now, Frey says this city is competing for job applicants worldwide. That means Columbus is trying its best to be welcoming for thousands of skilled foreign workers and their families, like Dalia Mohamed's.

The Sudanese-American citizens who live in a big, airy house a short drive from the Cummins plant, where husband, Khalidd Eleawad, is an engineer. About 1,400 of the company's 9,500 local workers, or 15 percent, were hired on H1-B visas.

Right now, Mohamed says her family is in limbo. They usually visit Sudan in the winter,then fly their Sudanese relatives to Indiana in the summer but with so much uncertainty around President Donald Trump's now on-hold immigration order, which targets Sudan an six other countries, they don't want to risk it.

Mohamed is Muslim and wears a hijab. She says the changes she's noticed in town since Trump's inauguration are palpable.

"I don't go out that much after Jan. 20, because my friends, they have been through so many harassments, so so that's why I just kind of stay home," she says.

Her husband Eleawad says this isn't good for his employer. He notes that Cummins relies on global diversity to help sell its engines around the world.

"If you depend on just I would say, 'true American' people to do everything, you wouldn't be able to go to European market, or Middle East market or China or India, because you have no idea about their culture, no idea about how to sell the product," Eleawad says.

Without those sales, Cummins and this city likely would struggle the local economy is that dependent on exports. That could be a big problem if President Trump or Congress follow through on proposals to tighten up trade, immigration or visa requirements.

"We'd have to offset that somehow," says Dave Glass, CEO of LHP, a Columbus company that, among other things, designs control systems for self-driving cars. "I think growing would be more difficult."

Glass says that he prioritizes hiring Americans it's required before trying for a visa but that there just aren't enough unemployed American engineers to fill his jobs.

"Each year, we're doing that process hundreds of times and in my understanding, in the last few years, we've had, like, three people apply," Glass says. "So it's not an option."

So while LHP and other companies have no choice but to hire and depend on immigrants, skilled immigrants like Egyptian engineer Omar Elmarazhi do have a choice.

"I'm highly educated, I have graduate degrees," the Cummins employee says. "I know that I'm positively contributing to the economy, and I know that whatever community I'm in, I can positively contribute."

As a highly skilled engineer, Elmarazhi chose to come to the U.S. and he says he can also choose to take his skills elsewhere if Columbus, Ind., becomes an uncomfortable place for him to work and live.

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Immigration Executive Order Causes Anxiety In VP Mike Pence's Hometown - NPR

Donald Trump is not in charge. That much is clear.

The federal government is in a civil war. The establishment forces behind business friendly stability are facing off against a chaotic administration. And on the outside, the third forcea popular movement with unprecedented scope and size and swiftnesswaits to see if its demands will be met.

Its hard to know how all this will turn out. But one way it could end is with the elevation of Vice President Mike Pence to the head of the US government. Though this might pacify the establishment and bring some order to the executive branch, its frightening in its probable outcome. Pence would be the most extreme right wing politician to ever ascend to the Vice Presidency. And hes positioned himself well to take over. For this man to have risen so high in the administration may seem like a nightmare to half of the country, but for evangelicals with more faith in authority than democracy, its all part of the plan.

Pences tentacles are wormed throughout the new administration. The former Indiana governor spent six terms in Congress, making alliances and friends throughout the hard-right fringe of the GOP now ascendant in the party.

Pence was sworn into Congress in 2001. He served until 2013, when he became the Governor of Indiana. During his time in Congress, Pence developed a reputation as a hard right extremist uninterested in compromise. He was, put simply, a member of the Tea Party before the Tea Party existed.

Pences time in Indiana was filled with the type of legislation one might expect after the opening days of the Trump administration. Pence attempted to bar Syrian refugees from entering his state, severely restricted abortion, and flouted public information laws with impunity in an attempt to undercut the press. When Trump picked him as his running mate in July 2016, Pence dropped his reelection bid and joined the campaign.

On October 26, 2016, Pence told MSNBC that he was looking forward to working with his old friend House Speaker Paul Ryan and referenced a friendship of some 15 years.

We look forward to working with him, Pence said.

And work with him he has. Picking Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff is a good fit with Ryans goals.

Pence lobbied for Priebus to get the position and it was widely seen as a good choice in the Beltway press for getting things done. Priebus and Ryan are longtime friends, even longer than Pence and Ryanthe two Wisconsinites met in the late 1990s.

Ryan was slow to join the Trump movement. In May, Ryan was still cool to Trumps overtures. Trump was not ready to support Ryan either. Wilbur Ross, a big-time GOP donor, pushed Trump and Ryan to kiss and make up. Pushing the GOP agenda forward was more important to Ross than Ryans fit of principled opposition to the billionaire. Now Ross is the Commerce Secretary nomineeRyans statement when Ross was appointed was glowing.

But its more than just Ryan. Pence is Trumps inside man in Congress. He has relationships with many House GOP members, including Ryan, from a Bible Study Group he attended while representing Indiana in the House. Also in that group was Tom Price of Georgia, Trumps Health and Human Services Secretary nominee. Price talked about his longstanding friendship with Pence in August.

Pence gave out his personal cell to lawmakers after the election. A group of GOP Senators asked him to sit in on their sessions on a weekly basis. Hes keyed into the halls of power on Capitol Hill. And Pence has also reached out to members of the hard right fringe of the House.

The Freedom Caucus is being courted by Pence in the hopes of solidifying a Republican coalition for his boss. Thats going to mean some conflicting views in the highest echelons of the federal government. Even Ayn Rand devotee Ryan ran into trouble from the Freedom Caucus in February over the budget.

Further compounding the potential disputes is the nomination of Rep. Mike Mulvaney of South Carolinato head the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney is a key member of the Freedom Caucus and obsessed with cutting government spending. During Senate hearings, Mulvaney was asked repeatedly about the disconnect between his statements on the record and Trumps rhetoric. His answers were non-committal.

But its the Freedom Caucus whose philosophy is most revealing in looking at the Trump administrations first chaotic weeks in power. Only three days before the election, The Washington Post reported that the House GOP were unhappy with Ryan, due to a perception of the Speaker as a sort of deal maker with Democrats. Expecting a Clinton win and a narrowed majority, the caucus wanted even more obstruction. The Freedom Caucus has always been about ideological purity, not governance.

As Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker put it in December 2015, most of the Freedom Caucus members are accustomed to losing.

Theyre not losing anymore. Thats clear in the chaotic, seat-of-the-pants nature of the Trump administration. Trump is governing with a mix of incompetence and malice, running the country through ideological fiat.

Yet like the dog that caught the car, the Trump administration doesnt know what to do with victory. The Trump administration is creating chaos and upheaval across the country and the world.

On Capitol Hill, the GOP Congressional majorities Pence was supposed to work with are looking on in horror as the President obsesses over crowd size and media coverage instead of working to effect a Republican agenda. The gigantic federal bureaucracy has no input into Trumps executive orders. Government officials are left to figure out how to implement the new lawswhen theres even law to be implemented. So the establishment has fought back.

Meanwhile, the growing movement of resistance on the ground threatens to further destabilize and challenge this establishment. Trump achieved majority disapproval in eight daysthe last guy didnt hit that mark until 936 days. The new administration has been met with mass demonstrations in the swiftest forming national protest movement in American history.

Its possible Trump falls and Pence is elevated to the presidency. In this case, the media, political, and financial establishment will come together in peace. The people in the protest movement, bereft of a villain theyve known for decades, may go home. And Mike Pence will quietly, but effectively, take control of a federal government hes spent the last three months integrating himself into and begin to govern.

It is imperative, therefore, that Trumps fall not legitimize the political class in the eyes of the public and render Trump an aberration instead of a natural outcome of right wing politics. That will normalize and empower Pence. And that is unacceptable.

You can reach Eoin Higgins on Facebook and Twitter.

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President Pence: It Might Be Even Worse - Paste Magazine

Thanks for your interest in republishing this story.

By Shoshana Walter Reveal from The Center for Investigative ReportingFebruary 15, 2017

As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content from SoundCloud and YouTube, respectively. You may republish any story free of charge and will be fully indemnified by us from legal challenges as long as you follow these guidelines:

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By Shoshana Walter / February 15, 2017

This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.

Kids detained at Pierceton Woods Academy in Indiana received meals, beds and Bibles. What they didnt receive? An education.

Between 2013 and 2015, the juvenile detention wing of the Christian residential treatment program, owned by a nonprofit with ties to Vice President Mike Pence, failed to provide educational programs to children, according to Indiana Department of Corrections audits reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Indiana law requires juvenile detention facilities provide kids with an education. But during one visit by state auditors, several youths said they were not receiving educational services. On another visit, auditors noted, a staffing shortage was to blame. Mark Terrell, chief executive officer of parent organization Lifeline Youth and Family Services, did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite the lack of schooling, state auditors continually found Pierceton Woods in full compliance with mandatory standards for juvenile facilities. The Department of Correction does not enforce the law, and there appears to be no punishment for facilities that dont provide educational services. Chief counsel Bob Bugher said Pierceton Woods initiated access to online courses before shutting down itsdetention center last year.

Though they no longer have a locked facility, Pierceton Woods Academy still accepts court-ordered and paroled kids from around the state as part of its residential treatment program. The 52-acre facility caters to boys between 10 and 21, offers chapel services and baptisms, and has been plagued by complaints of escapes and violence. After one teenage escapee shot a reserve deputy in the chest, local officials demanded an investigation by the state. Last year, a teen sentenced to four months at the facility escaped by fleeing into the woods. The facility remains licensed.

Its the kind of faith-based programming once championed by then-Gov. Pence in his home state, where he helped expand faith-based services into the criminal justice system.

Last year, Pence and his wife, Karen, were featured speakers at the nonprofits annual fundraiser. Brenda Vincent, Lifelines vice president of development, was chief of staff to Indianas first lady and deputy finance director of Pences gubernatorial campaign. Mark Terrell, Lifelines chief executive officer, was appointed by Pence to a judicial nominating commission.

In addition to the academy, Lifeline runs other faith-based programs across Oklahoma for troubled youth and families, as well as mission trips in the Dominican Republic.

Shoshana Walter can be reached at swalter@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @shoeshine.

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Juvenile justice center with ties to Mike Pence broke Indiana law - Reveal (blog)

For nearly two full weeks, nobody told Vice President Mike Pence that he had been misled by national security adviser Michael Flynn.

After privately being assured by Flynn that he had never had any discussions about Russian sanctions with that country's ambassador, Pence went on TV in mid-January and publicly parroted Flynn's denial. But on Jan. 26, President Donald Trump and a small group of senior aides learned that the Justice Department had evidence that Flynn had, in fact, discussed sanctions and misled the vice president.

Yet it would take almost a fortnight for Pence to learn the truth - and only then because of a report in The Washington Post, according to Marc Lotter, a spokesman for the vice president.

Throughout the campaign and now in office, Pence has largely managed to avoid the infighting and warring factions of the young White House by keeping his head down and soldiering loyally forward. But the incident with Flynn reveals both the benefits and risks of his approach - he has emerged largely unharmed by the scandal that led to Flynn's resignation, but his influence within the West Wing has come increasingly into question given how little he knew about his own situation.

"Does this episode strengthen Pence or weaken Pence?" asked William Kristol, editor at large of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine and who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle. "That's what everybody is trying to figure out."

Pence's decision to try to stay out of the cliques that have plagued the White House has allowed him, so far, to maintain his standing as a neutral player committed to forwarding Trump's agenda on Capitol Hill. But it also appears to have left him at times outside the inner circle of Trump's brain trust.

Aides to both the president and vice president say the two men speak on the phone or in person multiple times a day. But despite their frequent communication, the president never told his No. 2 that he had been misled by Flynn - and that in defending him on the Sunday shows had put himself in a publicly compromising and embarrassing situation.

"The vice president became aware of incomplete information that he had received on Feb. 9, last Thursday night, based on media accounts," Lotter told reporters Tuesday. "He did an inquiry based on those media accounts."

Several people close to him were more blunt, saying he was "blindsided" and "frustrated."

But even as Flynn flailed, Pence did not urge Trump to fire him, or lash out against him. Instead, said two officials familiar with the situation, Pence was disappointed and suggested that Flynn could publicly apologize. Others within the White House, however, thought what Flynn had done was egregious and unacceptable.

"The vice president is a very forgiving man," said one White House official.

On Friday, Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and White House counsel Don McGahn held a conference call with Flynn - who had originally denied any improper communications with the Russian envoy - to go over his story again, according to two officials familiar with the call. Flynn was at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Palm Beach, Fla., during the call, while the other three men were in Washington.

Pence left the conversation troubled, as did Priebus, who expressed dismay both with Flynn's answers and the dawning reality that Flynn had deceived Pence.

By Monday, Pence was in full agreement with Priebus and others that it would be best for Flynn to go and remained involved in all top-level talks that day.

Asked how the vice president could be kept in the dark about the Flynn controversy for so long, two White House officials said it was a result of the muddled and uncertain way events unfolded rather than an intentional desire to keep him out of the loop.

On Jan. 26, when acting attorney general Sally Yates contacted McGahn about discrepancies of Flynn's account of his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, McGahn took the information directly to Trump in the Oval Office that day. Trump quickly brought in chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Priebus to join the discussion with McGahn, said two White House officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

McGahn then conferred with Yates again the following day to try to glean more information about what Yates knew and to probe the matter further.

But McGahn, who has been friends with Pence since the vice president was a House member, did not share the information beyond that group because he had already informed the president and his top two advisers, with the expectation that anyone else who needed to know would be informed by those principals.

Several other people within the White House described the situation as "unfortunate" and "unintended," saying that Trump and McGahn did not mean to exclude Pence but were reacting to Yates - whose information was initially viewed with some skepticism - and trying to keep the information about Flynn within a tight group. At that point, Flynn was still maintaining that he had discussed nothing improper with the Russian ambassador.

Nonetheless, the two-week lag between when Trump, Bannon and Priebus learned of Flynn's misdirection and when Pence himself found out through news reports has raised speculation as to Pence's true clout - or lack thereof - within the White House.

In 2010, when Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Barack Obama's military chief in Afghanistan, made disparaging remarks about some of Obama's senior civilian advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's response was swift and decisive. Within 40 hours, he called McChrystal back to Washington and fired him.

Pence is not the type to demand that sort of response. Those who know him said he is thinking ahead, believing that as vice president, he is likely to outlast advisers whose positions may be more tenuous.

"Pence is trying to play a long game, keeping his head down and keeping his powder dry, assuming some of the more flamboyant types will blow up or blow out and he will be there as a trusted counselor a year or so from now," Kristol said. But, he added, "the long game can mislead you. If you end up keeping your powder dry and never using it, you end up being just another guy in the White House."

A Republican who works closely with Hill lawmakers said that Pence has repeatedly gone to the Capitol to assuage fears, only to have his reassuring words upended by a tweet from Trump and upheaval within the West Wing.

The question that legislators are trying to figure out, that Republican said, is if Pence - like most everyone else - is simply a victim to a rash and erratic president, or if he is deliberately being shut out by senior White House advisers.

The latest incident with Flynn, he added, further undermines the vice president. "This is hurtful to Pence," he said, speaking anonymously to offer a candid insight. "It's another example of him not being totally in the loop."

Pence, however, is still well-liked by lawmakers, many of whom view him as their most direct line into the White House and their best hope for enacting a conservative, Republican agenda. And they remain hopefully optimistic that he is a pivotal West Wing player.

"I think Pence has a lot of respect by the president and by a lot of us who have known him," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "He's solid, he's measured, and he fits the job beautifully."

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said that Pence's influence within the White House was evident simply from Flynn's downfall. "As it turned out, misleading the vice president doesn't look like it was a very good thing to do."

The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson, Abby Phillip and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.

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Mike Pence's delayed knowledge of Flynn's fibs hint he is outside Trump's inner circle - Chicago Tribune