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Judge Denies TransCanada Request for Pre-Construction Work on Keystone XL Pipeline
Ruling Deals Yet Another Setback to Proposed Dirty Fossil Fuel Project
GREAT FALLS, MT
Today, a federal judge reaffirmed that TransCanada cannot conduct any pre-construction field activities on its proposed Keystone XL pipeline. This ruling means that construction on the controversial tar sands pipeline will continue to be delayed.
Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana ruled that the Trump administration violated bedrock U.S. environmental laws when approving a federal permit for the pipeline. The ruling blocked any construction while the government revises its environmental review.
The court today clarified that the company can continue planning activities and surveys necessary to revise the environmental review documents and maintain security efforts, but rejected TransCanada's request to continue pre-construction activities.
"Farmers and ranchers thank the judge for seeing through TransCanada's transparent power grab. Not an ounce of steel should be moved, given this foreign company does not possess a federal permit," said Jane Kleeb, Bold Alliance president. "The Trump administration keeps thumbing their noses at the concerns of rural communities. We want our property rights and water protected, yet all the Trump administration cares about is aiding a foreign oil corporation."
"Somehow TransCanada still hasn't gotten the message that Keystone XL is a lost cause," said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Doug Hayes. "We've held off construction of this dirty tar sands pipeline for a decade because it would be a bad deal for the American people, and today's ruling is yet another reminder that it will never be built."
"This ruling ensures TransCanada cannot threaten communities and habitat along the pipeline route while further environmental reviews are conducted," said Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "If the Trump administration takes an honest look at Keystone XL's impacts, it won't be able to justify this horrible climate-killing project."
"Keystone XL cannot be built unless and until the Trump administration complies with the law. So far, we've seen no indication that it plans to do so," said Jackie Prange, a senior attorney at Natural Resource Defense Council. "Today's decision is one more victory for the rule of law over this reckless and risky project."
"It's simple. If the court says 'no construction', you don't get to start digging. TransCanada's attempt to skirt the law is corporate bullying at its worst," said Marcie Keever, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth. "TransCanada's willingness to push the rules in a rush to build this dirty pipeline is deeply concerning and speaks directly to the corporation's effort to bypass environmental safeguards. As the company continues to push the law, we will to do everything we can to stop this climate-destroying, water-polluting, likely oil-spilling mess of a project."
"We strongly support the enjoinder by Judge Morris prohibiting any further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline until an adequate and thorough Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is conducted and the permit is approved," said Dena Hoff, farmer and member of Northern Plains Resource Council. "Implicit in the ruling by Judge Morris is the notion that the KXL pipeline has not proven to be safe or beneficial. As a result, allowing TransCanada to continue efforts towards construction, such as by constructing 'man camps' or pipeyards, is not in the public interest. The only activities that should be permitted are those that allow the State Department to conduct a thorough and adequate environmental impact statement."
Bold Alliance is a non-profit organization fighting fossil fuel projects, protecting landowners against eminent domain abuse, and working for clean energy solutions while building an engaged base of citizens who care about the land, water and climate change.
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Trump's Indiana Redistricting Scheme Crashes and Burns in Overwhelming Defeat
The vote came after an emotional debate in which some Republican lawmakers detailed threats and harassment they'd received for opposing the president's redistricting scheme.
Dec 11, 2025
President Donald Trump's push to get Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections went down in overwhelming defeat in the Indiana state Senate on Thursday.
As reported by Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, the proposal to support a mid-decade gerrymander in Indiana was rejected by a vote of 19 in favor to 31 opposed, with 21 Republican state senators crossing the aisle to vote with all 10 Democrats to torpedo the measure, which would have changed the projected balance of Indiana's current congressional makeup from seven Republicans and two Democrats to a 9-0 map in favor of the GOP.
The Senate vote came after the state House's approval of the bill and an emotional debate in which some Indiana Republicans opposed to the president's plan detailed violent threats they'd received from his supporters.
According to a report published in the Atlantic on Thursday, Republican Indiana state Sen. Greg Walker (41) this week detailed having heavily armed police come to his home as the result of a false emergency call, a practice commonly known as swatting.
Walker said that he refused to be intimated by such tactics, and added that "I fear for all states if we allow threats and intimidation to become the norm."
Indiana's rejection of the effort is a major blow to Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.
Christina Harvey, executive director for Stand Up America, said that the Indiana state Senate's rejection of the Trump plan was an "important victory for democracy."
"For weeks, Indiana residents have been pleading with their state leaders to stop mid-decade redistricting and the Senate listened," Harvey said. “Despite threats to themselves and their families, a majority of Indiana senators were steadfast in rejecting this gerrymandered map."
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, praised the Republicans who rejected the president's scheme despite enduring threats and harassment.
"Threats of violence are never acceptable, and no lawmakers should face violent threats for simply standing up for their constituents," Bisognano said. "Republicans in other states who are facing a similar choice—whether to listen to their constituents or follow orders from Washington—should follow Indiana’s lead in rejecting this charade and finally put an end to the national gerrymandering crisis."
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Senators Demand Trump Admin Come Clean on Plan to 'Quietly Kill' Social Security Offices
The lawmakers accused the Social Security Administration of "a slash-first, think-later approach," for which "beneficiaries will pay the price."
Dec 11, 2025
Leading Senate Democrats and Independent US Sen. Bernie Sanders this week pressed the Trump administration for answers following reports that the Social Security Administration is planning to dramatically reduce visits to its field offices.
"We write with concerns regarding recent reports that the Social Security Administration is reorganizing its field office operations, and has established a goal of cutting the number of field office visits in half—amounting to 15 million fewer visits annually," Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano.
"Given that beneficiaries are already waiting months for field office appointments, and the agency has not shared with Congress or the public on how it plans to achieve this goal, we are concerned that these efforts are in fact part of a plan to 'quietly kill field offices,' implementing a backdoor cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need," the senators said.
"The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security."
Earlier this month, Nextgov/FCW revealed that the Social Security Administration said in internal documents that it wants “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to its field offices in fiscal year 2026—or about half the current number of such visits. An anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that senior agency officials are aiming for “fewer people in the front door" and for "all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”
As Warren's office noted Thursday:
The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Commissioner Bisignano, the administration has implemented policy changes that make it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including by implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions more beneficiaries to visit field offices each year—at the same time they are slashing SSA’s workforce by around 7,000 and closing regional offices.
Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help—only to be told they will need to call to schedule an appointment.
"We are concerned that your plan is to force beneficiaries onto SSA’s bug-prone website or push them into customer service phone tree 'doom-loops'—which will almost certainly result in delayed or missed benefits for some individuals," the letter adds. "Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to 'modernizing' SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price."
The senators are asking Bisignano if the reports of proposed SSA office visit reductions are accurate, and if so, how and when the plan will be implemented, how the agency will "provide services to beneficiaries that would otherwise go to field offices," and how the reductions will affect already lengthy wait times and service online users and callers to the agency's 1-800 number.
The lawmakers' letter comes as Republican senators on Thursday voted down a proposed three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, a move that is expected to result, on average, in a doubling of health insurance premiums for around 22 million people. Critics said the vote underscores the need for single-payer healthcare legislation like the Medicare for All Act reintroduced by Sanders and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) earlier this year.
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Trump's North American Trade Deal 'Created More Problems Than It Fixed': Analysis
The trade deficit has grown and the US has lost manufacturing jobs during the first nine months of Trump's second term.
Dec 11, 2025
A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute claims that the signature trade deal from President Donald Trump's first term has actually "created more problems than it fixed."
The report, published Thursday, notes that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), signed into law by Trump in 2020, has completely failed to fulfill Trump's stated goal of lowering the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, which has grown from a combined $125 billion in 2020 to $263 billion in 2025.
This increased trade deficit was particularly notable when it comes to the auto industry, says the report, written by EPI senior economist Adam S. Hersh.
"In the critical automotive industry that Trump said he wanted to reshore, imports of motor vehicles and parts from Mexico nearly doubled following USMCA, rising to $274 billion in 2024, up from $196 billion in 2019," the report explains. "Light-duty vehicles imports from Mexico rose 36% while imports of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles increased a whopping 256%."
The report also finds that the trade deal "left a gaping loophole for Chinese manufacturers to exploit duty-free access to North American markets without reciprocal market access for US manufacturers," the result of which was "Chinese firms expanded their direct investment footprint in Mexico by as much as 288% through 2023."
The bottom line, says the report, is "Trump’s USMCA created more problems than it fixed," and that "today the pressure on manufacturing jobs and deterioration in the trade balance with Mexico are worse than before USMCA."
However, the report also says that the US, Canada, and Mexico have an opportunity to significantly improve on USMCA given that the deal is up for review next year.
Among other things, the report recommends closing the loopholes that have allowed Chinese manufacturers to rapidly expand their footprint in Mexico; expanding the the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism that "has helped improve wages and working conditions in a number of specific workplaces"; and slashing intellectual property rights provisions that "currently allow companies to preempt local laws addressing negative externalities from digital service provision."
The EPI report came on the same day that American Economic Liberties Project's Rethink Trade program released an analysis showing that Trump so far has failed to live up to his pledge to reduce the US trade deficit and revive domestic manufacturing.
In all, Rethink Trade found that the US trade deficit increased more during the first nine months of 2025 than it did during the first nine months of 2024. Additionally, the group found that the US has actually lost 49,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of Trump's second term.
Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program, said that "the nine-month data show outcomes that are the opposite of President Trump’s promises to cut the trade deficit and create more American manufacturing jobs."
She noted that Trump's trade deals so far "seem to prioritize the demands of Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and other usual beneficiaries of decades of failed US trade policy instead of fixing the root causes of our huge trade deficit to help American manufacturing workers and firms as he promised."
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