Battle for Standing Rock Update

The federal government announced Friday that it was dispatching Bureau of Indian Affairs agents to help clear Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

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Corps officials have said that the extended protests have contributed to soil erosion that could make any potential spring flooding worse.

  WaPo

Now that's a chicken-shit argument if I ever heard one.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had already passed a tribal resolution asking protesters to leave and requesting federal aid in closing the camp.

“In these past few weeks at camp, I see no reflection of our earlier unity, and without unity we lose,” the tribe’s chairman, David Archambault II, said in a statement.

But it's not just a Standing Rock issue, Dave.

The Army Corps has made a decision on the pipeline once before; less than two months ago, it denied the permit, resolving instead to prepare an environmental-impact statement (E.I.S.) evaluating alternative pipeline routes, potential spill risk, and the tribe’s historical treaty rights. On January 18th, the Corps formally announced the E.I.S. in the Federal Register, beginning a public-comment period that will remain open for another three weeks—unless the Corps reverses itself, as it is pressured to do by the Presidential directive, which states that it should “withdraw” the E.I.S. and consider modifying or rescinding the December 4th decision. “The writing on the wall is that it’s likely to happen,” Hasselman said. If it does, according to a statement released by the tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux will “vigorously pursue legal action” against what they characterize as “corporate interest superseding government procedure and the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans.”

Trump’s support for the Dakota Access Pipeline is of a piece with the G.O.P. platform and his “America First Energy Plan,” with its promise to “embrace the shale oil and gas revolution.” It also may be motivated by his own energy portfolio. As of last summer, according to financial-disclosure records, Trump owned between fifteen and fifty thousand dollars of stock in Energy Transfer Partners. While Trump’s campaign spokeswoman said this fall that he had sold all of his E.T.P. shares, he has provided no documentation of the sale. And whether or not he remains personally financially tied to the company, it has substantial connections to his Administration. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, owned more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in partnership units in E.T.P. in 2015, and until the end of last year sat on the company’s board of directors.Kelcy Warren, the billionaire C.E.O. of E.T.P., donated more than a hundred thousand dollars to Trump’s campaign after he won the Republican primary.

  New Yorker