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Sports

UCLA and USC reportedly taking steps to join the Big Ten from the Pac-12

UCLA and Southern California are planning to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten Conference in a seismic change that could lead to another major realignment of college sports.A person who has been briefed on the discussions between USC, UCLA and the Big Ten said the schools have taken steps to request an invitation to join the conference. The person spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday on condition of anonymity because the schools’ talks with the Big Ten have not been made public.AdvertisementThe move would come as soon as 2024, after the Pac-12′s current media rights contracts with Fox and ESPN expire, and increase the size of the Big Ten to 16 schools.The decision by the Los Angeles schools — two of the NCAA’s most decorated athletic programs — comes almost a year after Oklahoma and Texas formally accepted invitations to join the Southeastern Conference in July 2025.AdvertisementThe Big Ten would become the first conference to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and would build on previous expansion into the nation’s largest media markets.Big Ten leadership, including the council of presidents and chancellors, would still have to sign off on extending an invitation to the two schools.The Big Ten has expanded twice in recent years, with Nebraska joining in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014.USC and UCLA fit the Big Ten’s academic profile. Both schools are among the 65 members of the Association of American Universities, which is made up of top research universities. All Big Ten schools except Nebraska are members.

Sports

NBA superstar Kevin Durant wants out of Brooklyn, asks Nets for trade

The Seven-Eleven Era has come to an end.Superstar forward Kevin Durant has requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets, the Daily News has confirmed. It means Brooklyn’s championship window has come to a close. The Nets are also continuing to work to trade Kyrie Irving, The News can also confirm, which means the Durant-Irving era will end with one playoff victory and one first-round sweep in their three seasons in Brooklyn.AdvertisementDurant’s official trade request was first reported Thursday by ESPN.The News was first to report of this potential eventuality — Durant requesting a trade from Brooklyn — if the Nets chose not to give his co-star Irving a long-term deal. The Nets were “outright unwilling” to do so, as The News reported in May, and Irving ultimately opted into the final year of his contract extension worth $37 million. Durant requested a trade on Thursday after Irving and the Nets failed to reach an amicable solution.AdvertisementThe Nets will be able to recoup draft assets and young players in deals for Irving and Durant and will be able to re-tool in the coming years. But make no mistake: the Nets being unable to retain the two biggest stars in Brooklyn’s history is a massive failure for team owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks.Kevin Durant wants out of Brooklyn. (John Minchillo/AP)Developing story, check back for details.

Lifestyle

Local tribe members react to Supreme Court decision that strikes at the issue of tribal sovereignty.

Within a week’s time the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and ruled that law enforcement officers can’t be sued when they violate the rights of criminal suspects by failing to provide the familiar Miranda warning before questioning them. And on Wednesday came the ruling that Oklahoma has the authority to prosecute non-Native Americans who commit crimes against a Native person on tribal lands, giving jurisdiction to the state and local law enforcement where prior it was solely federal and tribal.This week’s 5-4 decision stems from the case of Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, where Oklahoma state prosecutors charged Victor Castro-Huerta for the malnourishment and neglect of his 5-year-old disabled stepdaughter in 2015. She was a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the abuse took place on the Cherokee Reservation, but Castro-Huerta is not a Native American. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, however he challenged the decision under 2020′s Supreme Court McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling where he can only be federally prosecuted. McGirt upheld that under the Major Crimes Act, Oklahoma cannot prosecute crimes by Native citizens on tribal lands without federal approval.AdvertisementThe U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2022, that states can prosecute crimes against Native American victims committed on Native American reservations if the defendant is non-Native. (Mandel Ngan/AFP-Getty)The latest development will have an impact on tribal sovereignty and not just in Oklahoma, according to members of local Native tribes.“Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion brazenly defies not only long-held U.S. Supreme Court precedent in regards to criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country, but also the subject-matter expertise of his own colleague, Justice Gorsuch,” said Doug Kiel, a citizen of the Oneida Nation and professor of Indian legal history at Northwestern University. “In a handful of states that are subject to Public Law 280 (1953), this kind of state criminal jurisdiction does apply, by act of U.S. Congress. Oklahoma is not a Public Law 280 state; nonetheless, Kavanaugh’s majority opinion pretends it is. The earlier McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) decision — in which Gorsuch emphatically wrote, “We hold the government to its word” — respected tribal sovereignty and mapped out a new legal future. This decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, on the other hand, has little regard for the legal significance of Indian reservation boundaries.”AdvertisementBeth Redbird, an Oglala Lakota and Oklahoma Choctaw, and co-director of Northwestern University’s Tribal Constitution Project, which is cataloging constitutions of North American Indigenous tribes and analyzing the development of tribal sovereignty in U.S. history, said there’s a significant social cost to decisions like this. She said whereas the McGirt decision was amazing, in that the Supreme Court recognized tribal sovereignty, the Castro-Huerta decision on jurisdiction — the thing promised in treaties to Indians — is yet another attempt by the federal government to take back the final acknowledgment of that promise in “all sorts of pretzel twisting ways.”“This treatment of reservations as not really government entities where we don’t provide them the legitimacy of other governments creates other tensions,” Redbird said. “What we do with the legal system in the United States, is we say that a group of people is sovereign, and then we give them no power. We tell them they’re responsible for the problems and we give them no tools for solutions. And that has consequences up to and including people who can take advantage of that. This is a prime example of the ways in which tribal sovereignty is weaponized. Sovereignty is a double-edged sword. It can help make our lives better, but when we get it, people are afraid of sovereign Indians.”Beth Redbird, a Northwestern University assistant professor of sociology and Native studies, says there’s a significant social cost to the most recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the sovereignty of tribal lands. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta dissent: “Moving forward, the Court cheerily promises, more prosecuting authorities can only “help.” Three sets of prosecutors — federal, tribal and state — are sure to prove better than two. But again, it’s not hard to imagine reasons why the Cherokee might see things differently. If more sets of prosecutors are always better, why not allow Texas to enforce its laws in California? Few sovereigns or their citizens would see that as an improvement. Yet it seems the Court cannot grasp why the Tribe may not. The real party in interest here isn’t Mr. Castro-Huerta but the Cherokee, a Tribe of 400,000 members with its own government. Yet the Cherokee have no voice as parties in these proceedings.”Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, citing states have jurisdiction over Indian lands unless it is displaced by Congress or unlawfully infringes on tribal sovereignty. He added the court’s decision would not infringe on tribal self-government.“A state prosecution of a crime committed by a non-Indian against an Indian would not deprive the tribe of any of its prosecutorial authority. That is because, with exceptions not invoked here, Indian tribes lack criminal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians such as Castro-Huerta, even when non-Indians commit crimes against Indians in Indian Country.”Matthew Fletcher, foundation professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law and visiting professor for the UC-Hastings Indigenous Law Program is a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. He said a reversal of the decision could be made one of two ways — by doing what Justice Gorsuch said at the end of his dissent, which was to urge Congress to restore what the majority had taken away. The other way is more of a local, reservation by reservation, state by state way where tribes could persuade states not to exercise the jurisdiction even if they want to, in a more negotiated kind of situation. He says both are viable.“This is not a decision that is rooted in law,” Fletcher said. “This is a decision where the Court said, the majority says: ‘over the last century and a half we’ve changed our minds on Indian law, we’ve been more deferential to states than we originally were. And so we’re just going to take that one additional step and give the state this power.’ Congress is the one that makes law in Indian Country, not the Supreme Court and today the Supreme Court decided that it makes law, too.”“Historians of federal Indian law and policy have long referred to “pendulum swings,” and the shift from McGirt to Castro-Huerta is certainly a big swing,” Kiel said. “In one moment, the federal government embraces nation-to-nation relationships, and in the next, it disrespects the notion of Indigenous governance. In this case, we learn if the respect of Indigenous sovereignty comes at the price of non-Native convenience, it cannot stand.”Advertisementdrockett@chicagotribune.com