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Emilie Surrusco, Earthjustice, eksurrusco@gmail.com, (202) 341-8787
Misha Mitchell, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, basinkeeperlegal@gmail.com, (225) 692-1133
Maia Raposo, Waterkeeper Alliance, mraposo@waterkeeper.org, (212) 747-0622 x116
Dustin Renaud, Gulf Restoration Network, dustin@healthygulf.org, (504) 525-1528 x214
Julie Rosenzweig, Sierra Club Delta Chapter, Julie.rosenzweig@sierraclub.org, (337) 577-8494
HOUSTON - A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear oral arguments Monday on the appeal of a decision made by U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick to grant a preliminary injunction to halt construction on the portion of the Bayou Bridge pipeline that crosses the Atchafalaya Basin, a National Heritage Area synonymous with Louisiana crawfish production.
Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC, a partnership between Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66, has been rushing to construct its controversial 162-mile crude oil pipeline through the Basin ever since the Fifth Circuit granted a motion for stay last month that suspended Judge Dick's February ruling.
Despite elevated water levels and the myriad issues caused by construction during high water periods, crews have been working aggressively to clear trees. In recent court filings, Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC confirmed that it mobilized crews in the Basin just two days after the stay was issued on March 13 -- 12 acres have since been cleared, and another 11 acres were planned for clearing by April 30.
"Pipeline companies typically have built their pipelines during the low water season, late summer and fall, to minimize damage to the Atchafalaya Basin wetlands," said Dean Wilson, executive director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. "Bayou Bridge has shown, once again, unethical behavior, when they decided to move forward with construction of their pipeline during the high water season that usually runs from February until late July. Their open trenches and clearing of trees has the potential to fill hundreds of acres by sending sediment deep into the Basin's swamp."
Judge Dick granted the preliminary injunction halting construction in the Atchafalaya Basin to prevent irreparable harm to ancient cypress and tupelo trees that provide habitat for migratory birds, bears, bats and numerous other wildlife. Judge Dick found that the plaintiffs - Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association - West, Gulf Restoration Network, Waterkeeper Alliance and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice - were likely to succeed on the merits of their case and that construction would irreparably damage the sensitive ecosystems of the Basin. The plaintiffs filed a legal challenge to the Bayou Bridge pipeline on January 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District.
"When Energy Transfer Partners used a similar tactic to rush construction of the Rover pipeline, they caused 2.2 million gallons in spills of drilling fluids, industrial waste and/or sediment, amassing more than 100 violations/non-compliance incidents and four stop work orders for their failure to comply with environmental regulations designed to protect streams, rivers, wetlands, drinking water and public safety," said Donna Lisenby, Clean & Safe Energy Campaign Manager of Waterkeeper Alliance. "It would appear they are rushing to clear trees in the Basin before the courts have a chance to stop them," she concluded.
"At some point in Louisiana, we need to decide that our irreplaceable natural resources are more important than an out-of-state company's profits," said Julie DesOrmeaux Rosenzweig, Sierra Club Delta Chapter Director. "We hope the appellate court agrees with the lower court, who had the benefit of hearing expert testimony first-hand, that the land being cleared for an unnecessary pipeline is a treasure worth protecting."
The proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline project would connect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline to refineries and export terminals in St. James, Louisiana, and traverse 11 parishes and more than 700 bodies of water.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460"The administration's actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful," declared Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday moved to deploy the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C., while also officially taking over the city's police department.
What's more, Trump suggested that this could be a model for other American cities.
As reported by NBC News, Trump said during his announcement on plans to deploy the National Guard in the nation's capital that "other cities are hopefully watching this" and that he hoped it would make them "self-clean up, and maybe they'll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused the problem."
Trump then named Baltimore, Oakland, New York, and Chicago as potential future targets for National Guard deployments and other measures.
Shortly after Trump made his announcement, Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb indicated that he was not taking the president's attempt to take over his city's police force lying down.
"The administration's actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful," he declared in a post on X. "There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in D.C. reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year. We are considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents."
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) was also quick to condemn the president's takeover of D.C. law enforcement as an unnecessary power grab.
"The president's attempt to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard on the streets of our nation's capital is an abuse of power," she said. "It's an egotistical, pathetic attempt to stoke fear and distract from his failures: America is less affordable, healthy, and safe under this administration."
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who last year served as the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee, chided critics who had accused him in the past of exaggerating the authoritarian threat of a second Trump term.
"The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you're overreacting," he wrote on X.
The NAACP, meanwhile, compared Trump's enthusiasm for deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C. to purportedly battle crime with the lackadaisical attitude he took toward deploying the National Guard when his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
"As a reminder: The same president who proclaims he wants to take back our capital during a historic 30-year low crime rate also couldn't find the National Guard on Jan. 6," the organization wrote.
Public Citizen co-presidents Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman issued a joint statement slamming Trump's actions and outright labeling him a "despot."
"As autocrats commonly do, Trump is seeking control over the national capital in order to intimidate and squelch dissent," they said. "Like despots around the world and throughout history, Trump is also relying on the pretextual deployment of military force to intimidate and project power, to suppress protest and undercut democracy."
As reported by Politico, Trump's seizure of the D.C. police is on borrowed time from a legal perspective. While the Home Rule Act gives Trump the power to take control of the D.C. police force for emergencies, this power only lasts for 30 days, after which he must seek authorization from Congress to maintain control.
"The only sensible thing to do is to pivot the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out—wind," argued one climate advocate.
As the United Kingdom on Monday faced the onset of its fourth heatwave of this summer, climate campaigners continued to call out BP for its decision to plow ahead with reopening the Murlach oil field in the North Sea, despite fossil fuels pushing up global temperatures and the U.K. government's efforts to limit extraction in the region.
"This is climate vandalism, pure and simple," Kate Blagojevic, Europe team lead at the group 350.org, said in a Monday statement. "BP is putting its profit margins above the survival of communities, ecosystems, and future generations. Every barrel of oil from this project pushes us closer to climate breakdown, more floods, more fires, more heatwaves."
"The era of fossil fuels is over, and BP's desperate attempts to wring out the last drops of oil from the North Sea are a reckless betrayal of the public and the planet. They should be winding down, not doubling down," she declared.
Greenpeace U.K. policy director Doug Parr was similarly critical, saying in a statement that "the North Sea is on death's door. Reserves are drying up, and what's left and untapped is barely enough to keep it on life support."
The Telegraph on Sunday noted recent research from the government's North Sea Transition Authority that found there were over 3 billion barrels of oil and gas in fields already in production, 6 billion barrels in known potential developments, and 3.5 billion barrels in identified exploration zones.
According to the newspaper, BP said the Murlach field contains 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic meters of gas, and is "expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day," due to new technologies that weren't around when it was shut down over two decades ago.
Parr said that "3 billion barrels wouldn't last more than a few years at current rates of consumption, and even that assumes it is economic to extract. Whatever the political rhetoric, the oil and gas is pretty much gone, and soon, so too will the jobs of thousands of workers."
"Unless we want to remain dependent on overseas imports and watch an entire industry collapse with no plan for workers," he added, "the only sensible thing to do is to pivot the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out—wind."
Although the U.K's current Labour Party leaders have pledged to avoid new licensing for fossil fuel projects in the North Sea, "BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month," The Telegraph explained.
A spokesperson for Ed Miliband, U.K. secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said Sunday that "we are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment to not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis."
"We are delivering a fair and orderly transition in the North Sea, with the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and two first-of-a-kind carbon capture and storage clusters," the spokesperson added.
Miliband in June announced new guidance for environmental impact assessments of proposed oil and gas projects in licensed fields, which came in response to last year's landmark U.K. Supreme Court ruling. After that decision, Judge Andrew Stewart of Scotland's Court of Session ruled in January that Equinor and Shell, which are respectively behind the Rosebank oil and gas field and the Jackdaw gas project, can't move ahead with extraction.
The June guidance means offshore developers can now submit applications for extractions in fields that are already licensed, including Rosebank and Jackdaw. In response to that development earlier this year, Mel Evans, Greenpeace U.K.'s head of climate, said that "it's only right for the government to take into account the emissions from burning oil and gas when deciding whether to approve fossil fuel projects currently pending."
"Since Rosebank and other drilling sites will pump out a lot of carbon while providing little benefit to the economy and no help to bill payers, they should fail the criteria ministers have just set out," Evans added. "Real energy security and future-proofed jobs for energy workers can only come through homegrown, cheap renewable energy, and that's what ministers should focus on."
"Is that the art of the deal, or the sort of rubbish you expect from backward authoritarian regimes?" asked one financial writer.
In a deal that is being called "unprecedented," two computer chip manufacturers have agreed to give the United States government 15% of their revenues from exports to China.
The Financial Times reported Sunday that Nvidia and AMD "agreed to the financial arrangement as a condition for obtaining export licenses for the Chinese market that were granted last week, according to people familiar with the situation, including a U.S. official."
For months, the Trump administration had been blocking these computing giants from exporting their most advanced computer chips to China, including Nvidia's coveted H2O chips, which are used to develop artificial intelligence—a move applauded by the administration's China hawks.
But that blockade was apparently broken this past Wednesday when Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, visited the White House on Wednesday to cut a deal with President Donald Trump.
It is not clear at this moment how the Trump administration intends to use the money, but experts told FT that such a "quid pro quo arrangement" lacks any peer in recorded history, as "no U.S. company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licenses."
Columnist James Thomson noted the peculiarity of the deal in Australia's Financial Review magazine, referring to it as the latest "shakedown" by the Trump administration of corporations seeking its favor:
What we've seen in the past week has been extraordinary. First, Apple chief executive Tim Cook comes to the Oval Office to kiss the ring after Trump threatened to smash iPhones sales with huge tariffs earlier this year; Cook agreed to invest $US600 billion in U.S. infrastructure and even gave Trump a 24-carat gold gift in an excruciatingly awkward exchange.
A few days later, Trump suggested the chief executive of Intel, Lip-Bu Tan, was "conflicted" because of his ties to Chinese business. With Tan reportedly set to visit the White House on Monday night, the pattern looks pretty clear: Trump threatens to hurt a business in some way, and the business does a deal to get back in his good graces.
Is that the art of the deal, or the sort of rubbish you expect from backward authoritarian regimes?
The arrangement is also potentially unconstitutional, as Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids the levying of export taxes.
But while the contours of this specific deal are unusual, the philosophy behind it is quintessential to how the Trump administration has operated over the past seven months.
Trump has applied similar tactics to his trade war with the rest of the world, stating plainly that countries have "given" the United States money in exchange for lower tariffs.
As part of the agreement made in July, Trump described in a CNBC interview receiving "a signing bonus from Japan of $550 billion—that's our money. It's our money to invest, as we like." Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick described Japan as a "financier and banker" that would pour money into projects at Trump's discretion.
His deal with the European Union has similar contours, with the E.U. agreeing to purchase $750 billion worth of American energy along with the vague promise to "invest" another $600 billion in the United States.
Bulwark and MSNBC commentator Sam Stein noted the opacity of these deals in a post on X: "Where is it going? To our Treasury? How is the [White House] saying it will account for it? Not minor details."
William Aceves, a law professor at the California Western School of Law, described Nvidia and AMD's deal as the most recent form of corporate capitulation to the Trump administration in comments to The Washington Post.
"We have already seen many situations where entities—including corporations, universities, and law firms—would rather accept hefty fines or settle lawsuits than challenge the administration in court. And, significantly, this has occurred even in cases where the administration's actions or allegations have little merit," he said. "It would appear that this is the cost of doing business with the administration."