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Group Asks Compromised Board Members to Step Down from NEB Panel Reviewing Energy East
National Energy Board (NEB) panel members must recuse themselves to ensure Energy East pipeline review is impartial, group says.
"The NEB is charged with conducting a fair and unbiased assessment process for TransCanada's Energy East pipeline," Charles Hatt, Ecojustice lawyer. "Canadians cannot trust in that mission when panel members hold closed-door meetings about Energy East with interested stakeholders, including with Jean Charest, a TransCanada consultant. The perception of bias here is real, and it is troubling."
National Energy Board (NEB) panel members must recuse themselves to ensure Energy East pipeline review is impartial, group says.
"The NEB is charged with conducting a fair and unbiased assessment process for TransCanada's Energy East pipeline," Charles Hatt, Ecojustice lawyer. "Canadians cannot trust in that mission when panel members hold closed-door meetings about Energy East with interested stakeholders, including with Jean Charest, a TransCanada consultant. The perception of bias here is real, and it is troubling."
In January 2015, two members of the Energy East review panel met privately and discussed Energy East with interested stakeholders, including Jean Charest who was then a consultant for TransCanada. When questioned about the meetings in July 2016, a Board spokesman claimed that Energy East was not discussed. But this claim was false. An access to information request filed by the National Observer uncovered emails and notes showing that one of the Energy East panel members actually set up the meeting and invited discussion of Energy East. In fact, the meetings featured discussion of communication strategies to promote pipelines in Quebec, the panel's pending completeness decision, and even the potential to "carve out" a chapter of the panel's eventual report for an unclear purpose.
Ecojustice lawyers, on behalf of Transition Initiative Kenora (TIK), have requested the two NEB panel members involved in the meetings recuse themselves from the Energy East review panel.
"Communities and grassroots folks like us that will be impacted by the Energy East pipeline are depending on a NEB review process that is unbiased," said Teika Newton, Transition Initiative Kenora. "The NEB's panel members should step down, plain and simple."
The NEB is charged with conducting the review process for TransCanada's Energy East pipeline. Its job is to make a final and independent recommendation to the federal Cabinet on whether the pipeline should go ahead.
Ecojustice lawyers are representing TIK in the Energy East pipeline hearings.
As Canada's only national environmental law charity, Ecojustice is building the case for a better earth.
LATEST NEWS
Democrats Aim to Make GOP Pay as 'Angry' Voters See Health Insurance Premiums Soar
"Republican politicians who cut healthcare to pay for more billionaire tax cuts, or to increase profits for their corporate donors, are selling out working families," said Rep. Greg Casar.
Jan 02, 2026
The enhanced subsidies for people who buy their health insurance through exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act have officially expired, and Democratic lawmakers are ready to make sure voters know whom to blame going into the midterm elections.
Politico reported Friday that while Democrats in Congress are still pushing their Republican colleagues to allow a vote on renewing the enhanced subsidies, they have mostly settled on a political strategy of going scorched-earth on the GOP for letting them expire in the first place.
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) told Politico that Americans who see their monthly premiums skyrocket in the wake of the subsidies' expiration will take out their anger on the GOP.
"I think the public’s angry," Bera said. "So I think they will blame the party in charge."
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) emphasized that the huge spikes Americans will see in their monthly premiums will help Democrats make the case that President Donald Trump and Republicans have failed to tackle the affordability crisis in the US.
“It’s part of the top issue, which is cost of living—whether it’s groceries, gas, housing, energy costs,” said Deluzio. “Healthcare seems to be top of mind as something that Congress can actually do to bring down the costs."
In a Friday social media post, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) also piled on and hammered the GOP for inaction on healthcare.
"Healthcare is a human right, not a bargaining chip," he wrote. "Republican politicians who cut healthcare to pay for more billionaire tax cuts, or to increase profits for their corporate donors, are selling out working families."
And its not just Democrats raising alarms about the expired subsidies, as Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said in an interview with BBC that was "pissed for the American people" about his party not holding a vote on renewing them.
"Everybody has a responsibility to serve their district, to their constituents," said Lawler. "You know what is funny? Three-quarters of people on Obamacare are in states Donald Trump won."
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Trump DHS Post Calling for ‘100 Million Deportations’ Suggests Intent to Kick Out Nonwhite Citizens
One journalist called it "absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government."
Jan 02, 2026
The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.
On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words "America after 100 million deportations."
The post was captioned by the agency: "The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world."
Social media users later discovered that DHS had, ironically, stolen the image from the Japanese pop artist Hiroshi Nagai without giving credit.
It is hardly the first time the administration has used edgy and inflammatory social media posts to promote its agenda. But DHS has come under particular scrutiny for its style of communication, which often overtly evokes white nationalist rhetoric and symbolism.
Posts by the agency have cheered "remigration," a term that far-right parties in Europe have often used to describe the forced repatriation of nonwhite populations, including citizens. Other posts have referred to President Donald Trump's "mass deportation" campaign as part of an effort to defend American "heritage" and "culture."
The agency frequently evokes images of the American frontier and references "Manifest Destiny," at times explicitly posting artwork glorifying the forced displacement of Native American populations.
An image by the agency, featuring a chiseled Uncle Sam calling on Americans to "REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS," was even directly sourced from an overt neo-Nazi account.
The agency has only continued to double down in the face of criticism this week. On Friday, it posted that "2026 will be the year of American Supremacy" over an image of then-Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which was emblazoned with the words "Return this Land," a possible reference to a recently-founded "whites-only" town in rural Arkansas known as "Return to the Land."
But Wednesday's post calling for "100 million deportations" specifically was perhaps the most overt nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. As social media users were quick to point out, only about 47 million people living in America are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau.
Even if the administration kicked out every single immigrant—including legal residents and naturalized citizens—meeting such a goal would mean deporting 53 million people who were born in the US and are legally entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
If the use of the phrase "third world" did not make it obvious enough, the specific number—100 million—seems to betray the racial motivation behind the message.
Citing 2020 census data on the Wikipedia page for "Demographics of the United States," one social media user pointed out that approximately 100 million people in the US identified as nonwhite.
The DHS post drew comparisons to one made earlier this year by the close Trump ally and unofficial White House operative Laura Loomer, who suggested that thanks to "Alligator Alcatraz," the massive internment camp in Florida for those arrested by immigration agents, "the alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals," which referenced the total number of Hispanic people in the United States.
While it's almost certainly not possible for the administration to conduct a deportation campaign of such a staggering scale within Trump's term of office, the administration's latest post was frightening to many observers, even as they acknowledged that it was a "troll post" meant to rile people up.
It is still reflective of the Trump administration's ideology with respect to immigration. Leaders of Trump's deportation effort have acknowledged that they target people based on their appearance, and many nonwhite US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. Meanwhile, its refugee policy has welcomed only white South Africans, as Trump has enacted what he says is a "permanent pause on migration from all Third World Countries."
During 2026, the administration has said it plans to target hundreds of US citizens each month for "denaturalization," and Trump has called for it to be used against his most prominent critics, including the Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York's first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
"This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government," said Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report of DHS's call for "100 million deportations."
"It makes it clear that the Trump administration's mass deportation drive is not actually about 'illegal immigration.' There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people," Norton continued. "This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with 'third world' heritage."
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Calls for Legal Consequences Grow After Musk AI Bot Makes Suggestive Images of Children
"Musk is not cloaked in some federal immunity just because he's off-again/on-again buddies with Trump."
Jan 02, 2026
Elon Musk is facing calls for legal ramifications after Grok, the AI chatbot used on his X social media platform, produced sexually suggestive images of children.
Politico reported on Friday that the Paris prosecutor's office in France is opening an investigation into X after Grok, following prompts from users, created deepfake photographs of both adult women and underage girls that removed their clothes and replaced them with bikinis.
Politico added that the investigation into X over the images will "bolster" an ongoing investigation launched by French prosecutors last year into Grok's dissemination of Holocaust denial propaganda.
France is not the only government putting pressure on Musk, as TechCrunch reported on Friday that India's information technology ministry has given X 72 hours to restrict users' ability to generate content deemed "obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law."
Failure to comply with this order, the ministry warned, could lead to the government ending X's legal immunity from being sued over user-generated content.
In an interview with Indian cable news network CNBC TV18, cybersecurity expert Ritesh Bhatia argued that legal liability for the images generated by Grok should not just lie with the users whose prompts generated them, but with the creators of the chatbot itself.
"When a platform like Grok even allows such prompts to be executed, the responsibility squarely lies with the intermediary," said Bhatia. "Technology is not neutral when it follows harmful commands. If a system can be instructed to violate dignity, the failure is not human behavior alone—it is design, governance, and ethical neglect. Creators of Grok need to take immediate action."
Corey Rayburn Yung, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, argued on Bluesky that it was "unprecedented" for a digital platform to give "users a tool to actively create" child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
"There are no other instances of a major company affirmatively facilitating the production of child pornography," Yung emphasized. "Treating this as the inevitable result of generative AI and social media is a harrowing mistake."
Andy Craig, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, said that US states should use their powers to investigate X over Grok's generation of CSAM, given that it is unlikely the federal government under President Donald Trump will do so.
"Every state has its equivalent laws about this stuff," Craig explained. "Musk is not cloaked in some federal immunity just because he's off-again/on-again buddies with Trump."
Grok first gained the ability to generate sexual content this past summer when Musk introduced a new "spicy mode" for the chatbot that was immediately used to generate deepfake nude photos of celebrities.
Weeks before this, Grok began calling itself "MechaHitler" after Musk ordered his team to make tweaks to the chatbot to make it more "politically incorrect."
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