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For Immediate Release
January, 02 2017, 11:30am EDT
Contact:
US Bank Action: Nina Roberson, nina.l.roberson@gmail.com
LaDonna Allard (SSC), ladonna@sacredstonecamp.org
Tara Houska (HTE), tara@honorearth.org
Water Protectors Drop Banner in US Bank Stadium As #DefundDAPL Divestment Campaign Reaches $40 Million
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.
On January 1st, 2017, during the Vikings/Bears football game at US Bank Stadium, two water protectors rappelled from the rafters to display a large banner urging US Bank to divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline. This follows the recent month of #NoDAPL action which had events planned for every single day of December, including the unveiling of this 'Water is Life' billboard in Times Square. According to a counter on DefundDAPL.org, individuals have pulled over $40.5 million from the various banks that back the project.
US Bank has $1.75 million in credit lines to Energy Transfer Partners, a parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Two major Norwegian investors have already sold their assets in the project while others have promised to divest if DAPL fails to "respect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's demand to not lay the pipeline near their reservation".
Several cities are joining the movement to divest from banks funding DAPL and fossil fuels at large. Seattle recently introduced legislation that would end the city's $3 billion contract with Wells Fargo while Boulder, Portland, and Minneapolis have publicly announced similar considerations.
About one thousand water protectors remain in the Standing Rock encampments and continue to face brutality at the hands of local law enforcement as they pray and monitor pipeline construction. On Friday, a SWAT team fired nonlethal ammunition at a crowd of more than 100 people assembled on the blockaded bridge of Highway 1806. Five were arrested.
According to a study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, every additional month of construction costs Energy Transfers US$4.5 million, and now that it has passed the January 1 deadline for completion, they may lose an extra US$913 million. As the pipeline remains incomplete, ETP has violated the terms of their business contract and the companies that agreed to ship oil through DAPL now have the right to withdraw from the project.
Ladonna Bravebull Allard said, "We can not back down now because there is a great healing happening among the people- there is a great rising among the people. We must stand for the water."
Tara Houska of Honor the Earth said, "Last Wednesday, several of us held space in a Wells Fargo bank to educate people on how and where their money is being invested. This follows numerous shut downs, lock downs, etc. that have occurred all over the country. As we head towards a Donald Trump presidency and overt corporate control of the federal government, we must focus on local governance and grassroots organizing. Dakota Access is feeling the pressure -- without our money funding the investors, this destructive project dies. Together, we will not be defeated."
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'A Serious Violation': FBI Searches Home of Washington Post Journalist for Classified Documents
"This is a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press," said one First Amendment advocate.
Jan 14, 2026
A press freedom group on Wednesday accused the Trump administration of a "disturbing escalation" in its "war on the First Amendment" after the FBI executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post journalist who has extensively covered President Donald Trump's attempts to gut the federal workforce.
FBI agents reportedly conducted a search early Wednesday morning at the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a federal contractor who is accused of illegally retaining classified documents.
"If true, this would be a serious violation of press freedom," said the Freedom of the Press Foundation in a social media post.
The Post reported that the agents seized Natanson's cellphone, Garmin watch, a personal laptop, and a laptop issued by the newspaper.
The warrant stated that the FBI was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator with top secret security clearance who has been accused of taking classified intelligence reports to his home in Maryland. The documents were found in his lunch box and basement, an FBI affidavit said.
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney noted that the criminal complaint regarding Perez-Lugones' case does not mention allegations that he gave any classified documents to a reporter.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the New York Times that the FBI search at Natanson's home was "intensely concerning" and could chill "legitimate journalistic activity."
“There are important limits on the government’s authority to carry out searches that implicate First Amendment activity,” Jaffer said.
As the Committee to Protect Journalists notes in a guide to reporters' legal rights, the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 established high standards for searches and seizures of journalists' materials that are "reasonably believed to be related to media intended for dissemination to the public—including 'work product materials' (e.g., notes or voice memos containing mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, etc. of the person who prepared such materials) and 'documentary materials' (e.g., video tapes, audio tapes, photographs, and anything else physically documenting an event)."
"These materials generally cannot be searched or seized unless they are reasonably believed to relate to a crime committed by the person possessing the materials," reads the guide. "They may, however, be held for custodial storage incident to an arrest of the journalist possessing the materials, so long as the material is not searched and is returned to the arrestee intact."
Last year, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) ended a Biden-era policy that limited its ability to search or subpoena a reporter's data as part of investigations into leaks.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ "will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”
Before becoming FBI director, Kash Patel said in 2023 that should Trump return to the White House, his administration would "come after people in the media" in efforts to target the president's enemies.
The Post reported Wednesday that "while it is not unusual for FBI agents to conduct leak investigations around reporters who publish sensitive government information, it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home."
Natanson has spent much of Trump's second term thus far covering his efforts to fire federal employees, tens of thousands of whom have been dismissed as the president seeks to ensure the entire government workforce is pushing forward his right-wing agenda.
She wrote an essay last month for the Post in which she described being inundated with messages over the past year from more than 1,000 federal employees who wanted to tell her "how President Donald Trump was rewriting their workplace policies, firing their colleagues, or transforming their agency’s missions." She has written about the toll the mass firings have had on workers' mental health.
Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement that "physical searches of reporters’ devices, homes, and belongings are some of the most invasive investigative steps law enforcement can take."
"There are specific federal laws and policies at the Department of Justice that are meant to limit searches to the most extreme cases because they endanger confidential sources far beyond just one investigation and impair public interest reporting in general," said Brown. "While we won’t know the government’s arguments about overcoming these very steep hurdles until the affidavit is made public, this is a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”
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Slotkin Says She’s Under Federal Investigation After ‘Don’t Follow Unlawful Orders’ Video
"DOJ policy forbids investigations based solely on First Amendment protected activity," said one legal expert.
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The Democratic senator who organized a video warning members of the military against obeying illegal orders given by President Donald Trump said that she is being investigated by federal prosecutors.
In an interview with the New York Times published Tuesday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said that the office of Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, had sent an email to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms requesting to speak with either Slotkin or her private counsel.
Slotkin called the investigation being conducted by Pirro's office an attempt at intimidating her from speaking out against the Trump administration.
"Facts matter little, but the threat matters quite a bit," said Slotkin, a former CIA intelligence analyst and official at the US Department of Defense. "The threat of legal action; the threat to your family; the threat to your staff; the threat to you."
The Times report noted that it's unclear what potential crime Slotkin is being investigated for, and a spokesperson for Pirro's office declined to confirm the existence of the probe.
However, Slotkin has been under fire from Trump and his allies for several weeks after she organized a video with fellow Democratic lawmakers in which they reminded US military service members that they should not obey any illegal orders given by the president.
"We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community," Slotkin wrote in a November social media post promoting the Democrats' video. "The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship."
Trump reacted to the video with rage, accusing Slotkin and other Democrats who appeared in the video of engaging in "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"
In a social media post Thursday, Michigan Law School professor Barb McQuade argued that any investigation into Slotkin centering on the video about unlawful orders would be flatly unlawful.
"DOJ policy forbids investigations based solely on First Amendment protected activity," McQuade explained.
Slotkin is not the only Trump nemesis facing legal pressure, as it was revealed on Sunday that Pirro's office has also opened a criminal probe into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who has been frequently targeted by Trump for his refusal to obey the president's demands to more aggressively cut US interest rates.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Trump last week berated dozens of US attorneys, including Pirro, and accused them of being "weak" and too slow in launching criminal probes of his political enemies.
"Among his grievances with prosecutors, Trump complained that the Justice Department hadn’t yet brought a case against one of his most prominent Democratic adversaries, Sen. Adam Schiff of California," the Journal reported.
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Just 4% of Americans Support Trump Seizing Greenland by Military Force
“Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States," said the territory's prime minister. "Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”
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A survey released Wednesday shows that just 4% of US voters think it would be a "good idea" for President Donald Trump to seize Greenland by military force, data that came ahead of a closely watched White House meeting between Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark.
More broadly, according to the new Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 17% of Americans approve of Trump's push for the US to acquire Greenland by any means.
The White House has said it is considering a "range of options" to seize Denmark, from buying the mineral-rich island to acquiring it through military force. Just one in 10 Republican voters and virtually no Democrats said they believe it's a good idea for the Trump administration to forcibly take Greenland, which is currently an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Greenland residents have overwhelmingly voiced opposition to US control.
In an early morning Truth Social post ahead of Wednesday's White House meeting, Trump declared that the US "needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security"—a view that military experts have rejected.
"It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building," Trump added, referring to his proposed missile defense boondoggle. "NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!"
Trump's latest Greenland rant came a day after the territory's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said during a press conference that "we are now facing a geopolitical crisis, and if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark."
"One thing must be clear to everyone,” said Nielsen. “Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States. Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”
Wednesday's White House meeting was scheduled at the request of Danish and Greenlandic officials, who said they are seeking to head off a potential disaster spurred by Trump's increasingly belligerent rhetoric.
In the face of Trump's threats, Denmark has reportedly begun mobilizing military equipment and advanced troops to Greenland.
"Our reason for seeking the meeting we have now been given was to move this whole discussion into a meeting room where we can look each other in the eye and talk about these things," Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark's foreign minister, said Tuesday.
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