KSJD Local Newscast - June 5, 2023

Last month, Navajo Nation officials launched Operation Rainbow Bridge, a program designed to help Navajo citizens caught up in fraudulent rehab centers that cheated Arizona’s Medicaid program millions of dollars by preying on and scamming Indigenous people. Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch says that in Navajo culture, a rainbow is used to indicate movement from place to place, hence the operation’s name. Governor Katie Hobbs announced in May that the state would take action against over 100 of these predatory sober living homes, which have sent recruiters to tribal communities across the western United States, targeting the unhoused and those struggling with substance abuse, and taking them to facilities in the Phoenix area. And the Colorado Board of Education informally chose the state’s new education commissioner last week.