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Waniya Locke and Cherri Foytlin were arrested in Dallas on Thursday after disrupting Energy Transfer Partners' shareholder meeting to protest the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. (Photo: Indigenous Rising Media/Facebook)
Admired by fellow activists for "making sacrifices for all of us," two Indigenous water protectors were arrested in Dallas on Thursday for demonstrating at a shareholder meeting of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which is responsible for several contentious fossil fuel projects including the Dakota Access, Bayou Bridge, and Mariner East 2 pipelines.
Waniya Locke and Cherri Foytlin are reportedly facing charges of disorderly conduct for disrupting the meeting to protest the 163-mile Bayou Bridge Pipeline--which, if completed, would haul 480,000 barrels of crude oil daily through Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the country. Alarmed by the threat to water resources, wildlife, and local communities, landowners and water protectors are battling construction efforts in court and on the ground.
After disrupting the meeting, Locke and Foytlin were detained by police and brought out a back exit. While handcuffed, the pair led a crowd of supporters in a call-and-response chant--"What do you do when your water is under attack? Stand up, fight back!"--before they were forced into the back of a police car.
Watch (footage of the arrests begins at 32:00):
"They've shackled grandmothers, used attack dogs on people, lied, stole, bribed, maimed, and poisoned, all over the lands," Foytlin of the L'eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp in south Louisiana said about the company's behavior and tactics . "From my perspective, [CEO Kelcy] Warren and ETP have well-earned every bit of bad karma that the universe can muster."
Opponents of the Bayou Bridge project have decried the actions of ETP's private security, alleging that in Louisiana, they have "abducted" water protectors to unlawfully deliver them to local police--so they can be charged under a newly enacted state law that criminalizes peaceful protests that interfere with energy infrastructure--and even intentionally sunk boats carrying activists and journalists.
"This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
--Waniya Locke, water protector
In addition to his company's hostile response to anti-pipeline activists and contributions to the global climate crisis, Warren has been sharply criticized for his own behavior, including his suggestion at an industry conference earlier this year that anyone who damaged the Dakota Access Pipeline "needs to be removed from the gene pool."
Denouncing the company's dirty energy construction on Indigenous lands, Locke, who also participated in the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline charged, "This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
"I saw first hand the devastating impact that the Alaskan pipeline had on my Dene side with the Valdez oil spill and the cancer that affected the bodies of my loved ones in Alaska," she said. "Then at Standing Rock, my HuNGkpapha relatives and I saw first hand the violence of ETP as they forced their pipeline on us."
While Ellen Sue Gerhart, whose land was seized by ETP for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania, was not arrested on Thursday, she was sentenced earlier this year to serve two months behind bars for peacefully protesting on her own property. Gerhart was forced to leave the shareholder meeting after attempting to discuss her arrest and imprisonment--she and her family say ETP fabricated allegations--as well as the conduct of company security at other pipeline construction sites.
\u201cBREAKING: grandmother & retired teacher Ellen Sue Gerhart disrupts @ETPfacts shareholder mtg. She was just jailed for 2 mos for peacefully opposing pipeline construction on her own property #stopETP\u201d— Ethan Buckner (@Ethan Buckner) 1539876707
"Unitholders are culpable for the damage and destruction perpetrated by ETP," Gerhart added in a statement. "ETP routinely and blatantly ignores local zoning ordinances, permit requirements, and privacy laws. Any agency who grants permits, any judge who grants eminent domain, any individual or institution that provides financial backing to this company is responsible for ETP's water contamination, destruction of wetlands, and violations of human rights."
The disruptions of ETP's meeting came as Greenpeace released an addendum to a report published in June detailing the company's efforts to "silence opposition."
Despite demands from nonprofits and financial institutions, "the company has not made significant public moves regarding its policies, decision making, or personnel, to show positive changes to its corporate behavior," the new report concluded. Furthermore, its "dismissal of Indigenous rights, aggressive approach to pipeline opponents, and its use of litigation as a means of intimidation, threaten the very fabric of democracy."
\u201c#Breaking: New report details the hundreds of spills, hundreds of millions in property damage & abuses on human rights tied to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. >> https://t.co/CQRfhogyJ4 #StopPipelines\u201d— Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA) 1539873303
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Admired by fellow activists for "making sacrifices for all of us," two Indigenous water protectors were arrested in Dallas on Thursday for demonstrating at a shareholder meeting of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which is responsible for several contentious fossil fuel projects including the Dakota Access, Bayou Bridge, and Mariner East 2 pipelines.
Waniya Locke and Cherri Foytlin are reportedly facing charges of disorderly conduct for disrupting the meeting to protest the 163-mile Bayou Bridge Pipeline--which, if completed, would haul 480,000 barrels of crude oil daily through Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the country. Alarmed by the threat to water resources, wildlife, and local communities, landowners and water protectors are battling construction efforts in court and on the ground.
After disrupting the meeting, Locke and Foytlin were detained by police and brought out a back exit. While handcuffed, the pair led a crowd of supporters in a call-and-response chant--"What do you do when your water is under attack? Stand up, fight back!"--before they were forced into the back of a police car.
Watch (footage of the arrests begins at 32:00):
"They've shackled grandmothers, used attack dogs on people, lied, stole, bribed, maimed, and poisoned, all over the lands," Foytlin of the L'eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp in south Louisiana said about the company's behavior and tactics . "From my perspective, [CEO Kelcy] Warren and ETP have well-earned every bit of bad karma that the universe can muster."
Opponents of the Bayou Bridge project have decried the actions of ETP's private security, alleging that in Louisiana, they have "abducted" water protectors to unlawfully deliver them to local police--so they can be charged under a newly enacted state law that criminalizes peaceful protests that interfere with energy infrastructure--and even intentionally sunk boats carrying activists and journalists.
"This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
--Waniya Locke, water protector
In addition to his company's hostile response to anti-pipeline activists and contributions to the global climate crisis, Warren has been sharply criticized for his own behavior, including his suggestion at an industry conference earlier this year that anyone who damaged the Dakota Access Pipeline "needs to be removed from the gene pool."
Denouncing the company's dirty energy construction on Indigenous lands, Locke, who also participated in the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline charged, "This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
"I saw first hand the devastating impact that the Alaskan pipeline had on my Dene side with the Valdez oil spill and the cancer that affected the bodies of my loved ones in Alaska," she said. "Then at Standing Rock, my HuNGkpapha relatives and I saw first hand the violence of ETP as they forced their pipeline on us."
While Ellen Sue Gerhart, whose land was seized by ETP for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania, was not arrested on Thursday, she was sentenced earlier this year to serve two months behind bars for peacefully protesting on her own property. Gerhart was forced to leave the shareholder meeting after attempting to discuss her arrest and imprisonment--she and her family say ETP fabricated allegations--as well as the conduct of company security at other pipeline construction sites.
\u201cBREAKING: grandmother & retired teacher Ellen Sue Gerhart disrupts @ETPfacts shareholder mtg. She was just jailed for 2 mos for peacefully opposing pipeline construction on her own property #stopETP\u201d— Ethan Buckner (@Ethan Buckner) 1539876707
"Unitholders are culpable for the damage and destruction perpetrated by ETP," Gerhart added in a statement. "ETP routinely and blatantly ignores local zoning ordinances, permit requirements, and privacy laws. Any agency who grants permits, any judge who grants eminent domain, any individual or institution that provides financial backing to this company is responsible for ETP's water contamination, destruction of wetlands, and violations of human rights."
The disruptions of ETP's meeting came as Greenpeace released an addendum to a report published in June detailing the company's efforts to "silence opposition."
Despite demands from nonprofits and financial institutions, "the company has not made significant public moves regarding its policies, decision making, or personnel, to show positive changes to its corporate behavior," the new report concluded. Furthermore, its "dismissal of Indigenous rights, aggressive approach to pipeline opponents, and its use of litigation as a means of intimidation, threaten the very fabric of democracy."
\u201c#Breaking: New report details the hundreds of spills, hundreds of millions in property damage & abuses on human rights tied to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. >> https://t.co/CQRfhogyJ4 #StopPipelines\u201d— Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA) 1539873303
Admired by fellow activists for "making sacrifices for all of us," two Indigenous water protectors were arrested in Dallas on Thursday for demonstrating at a shareholder meeting of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which is responsible for several contentious fossil fuel projects including the Dakota Access, Bayou Bridge, and Mariner East 2 pipelines.
Waniya Locke and Cherri Foytlin are reportedly facing charges of disorderly conduct for disrupting the meeting to protest the 163-mile Bayou Bridge Pipeline--which, if completed, would haul 480,000 barrels of crude oil daily through Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the country. Alarmed by the threat to water resources, wildlife, and local communities, landowners and water protectors are battling construction efforts in court and on the ground.
After disrupting the meeting, Locke and Foytlin were detained by police and brought out a back exit. While handcuffed, the pair led a crowd of supporters in a call-and-response chant--"What do you do when your water is under attack? Stand up, fight back!"--before they were forced into the back of a police car.
Watch (footage of the arrests begins at 32:00):
"They've shackled grandmothers, used attack dogs on people, lied, stole, bribed, maimed, and poisoned, all over the lands," Foytlin of the L'eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp in south Louisiana said about the company's behavior and tactics . "From my perspective, [CEO Kelcy] Warren and ETP have well-earned every bit of bad karma that the universe can muster."
Opponents of the Bayou Bridge project have decried the actions of ETP's private security, alleging that in Louisiana, they have "abducted" water protectors to unlawfully deliver them to local police--so they can be charged under a newly enacted state law that criminalizes peaceful protests that interfere with energy infrastructure--and even intentionally sunk boats carrying activists and journalists.
"This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
--Waniya Locke, water protector
In addition to his company's hostile response to anti-pipeline activists and contributions to the global climate crisis, Warren has been sharply criticized for his own behavior, including his suggestion at an industry conference earlier this year that anyone who damaged the Dakota Access Pipeline "needs to be removed from the gene pool."
Denouncing the company's dirty energy construction on Indigenous lands, Locke, who also participated in the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline charged, "This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples--destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life."
"I saw first hand the devastating impact that the Alaskan pipeline had on my Dene side with the Valdez oil spill and the cancer that affected the bodies of my loved ones in Alaska," she said. "Then at Standing Rock, my HuNGkpapha relatives and I saw first hand the violence of ETP as they forced their pipeline on us."
While Ellen Sue Gerhart, whose land was seized by ETP for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Pennsylvania, was not arrested on Thursday, she was sentenced earlier this year to serve two months behind bars for peacefully protesting on her own property. Gerhart was forced to leave the shareholder meeting after attempting to discuss her arrest and imprisonment--she and her family say ETP fabricated allegations--as well as the conduct of company security at other pipeline construction sites.
\u201cBREAKING: grandmother & retired teacher Ellen Sue Gerhart disrupts @ETPfacts shareholder mtg. She was just jailed for 2 mos for peacefully opposing pipeline construction on her own property #stopETP\u201d— Ethan Buckner (@Ethan Buckner) 1539876707
"Unitholders are culpable for the damage and destruction perpetrated by ETP," Gerhart added in a statement. "ETP routinely and blatantly ignores local zoning ordinances, permit requirements, and privacy laws. Any agency who grants permits, any judge who grants eminent domain, any individual or institution that provides financial backing to this company is responsible for ETP's water contamination, destruction of wetlands, and violations of human rights."
The disruptions of ETP's meeting came as Greenpeace released an addendum to a report published in June detailing the company's efforts to "silence opposition."
Despite demands from nonprofits and financial institutions, "the company has not made significant public moves regarding its policies, decision making, or personnel, to show positive changes to its corporate behavior," the new report concluded. Furthermore, its "dismissal of Indigenous rights, aggressive approach to pipeline opponents, and its use of litigation as a means of intimidation, threaten the very fabric of democracy."
\u201c#Breaking: New report details the hundreds of spills, hundreds of millions in property damage & abuses on human rights tied to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. >> https://t.co/CQRfhogyJ4 #StopPipelines\u201d— Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA) 1539873303
"If the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
U.S. President Donald Trump late Sunday openly embraced the global chaos sparked by his sweeping tariffs, careening headlong into a potentially catastrophic trade war as worldwide financial markets plummeted and American retirees began to panic.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump declared that his tariffs are "already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold."
"Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!" Trump wrote as recent retirees and people near retirement expressed fear and astonishment at the swift damage the president's policy decisions have done to their investment accounts.
One retiree, a 68-year-old former occupational health worker in New Jersey, told NBC News that she is "just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover."
"What we've been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last," the retiree, identified as Paula, said on Friday. "I have no confidence here."
Trump's post doubling down on his tariff regime came as Asian markets cratered and U.S. stock futures opened bright red, signaling that Monday will bring another broad sell-off in equities. One of Trump's top economic advisers claimed in a Sunday interview that the president is not intentionally crashing the stock market, even as Trump—returning from a weekend golf outing in Florida—characterized the tariffs as "medicine."
"I don't want anything to go down," the president said. "But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Bloomberg's John Authers wrote early Sunday that "if the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Though the stock market and the economy are not synonymous, economist Josh Bivens recently noted that they are currently "mirroring each other: Stock market weakness is reflecting broader economic weakness."
"While the stock market isn't the economy, the stock market declines we have seen in recent weeks are genuinely worrying," wrote Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "They are a symptom of much larger dysfunctional macroeconomic policy that will likely soon start showing up in higher unemployment and slower wage growth for the vast majority."
"This was an illegal act," said U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis.
A federal court judge on Sunday declared the Trump administration's refusal to return a man they sent to an El Salvadoran prison in "error" as "totally lawless" behavior and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, within 24 hours.
In a 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday, which Department of Justice lawyers representing the administration said was an affront to his executive authority.
"This was an illegal act," Xinis said of DHS Secretary Krisi Noem's attack on Abrego Garcia's rights, including his deportation and imprisonment.
"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]," the decision states.
Once imprisoned in El Salvador, the order continues, "U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."
Trump's DOJ appealed Friday's order to 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, but that court has not yet ruled on the request to stay the order from Xinis, which says Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States no later than Monday.
"You'd be a fool to think Trump won't go after others he dislikes," warned Sen. Ron Wyden, "including American citizens."
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon slammed the Trump administration over the weekend in response to fresh reporting that the Department of Homeland Security has intensified its push for access to confidential data held by the Internal Revenue Service—part of a sweeping effort to target immigrant workers who pay into the U.S. tax system yet get little or nothing in return.
Wyden denounced the effort, which had the fingerprints of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, all over it.
"What Trump and Musk's henchmen are doing by weaponizing taxpayer data is illegal, this abuse of the immigrant community is a moral atrocity, and you'd be a fool to think Trump won't go after others he dislikes, including American citizens," said Wyden, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, on Saturday.
Last week, the White House admitted one of the men it has sent to a prison in El Salvador was detained and deported in schackles in "error." Despite the admitted mistake, and facing a lawsuit for his immediate return, the Trump administration says a federal court has no authority over the president to make such an order.
"Even though the Trump administration claims it's focused on undocumented immigrants, it's obvious that they do not care when they make mistakes and ruin the lives of legal residents and American citizens in the process," Wyden continued. "A repressive scheme on the scale of what they're talking about at the IRS would lead to hundreds if not thousands of those horrific mistakes, and the people who are disappeared as a result may never be returned to their families."
According to the Washington Post reporting on Saturday:
Federal immigration officials are seeking to locate up to 7 million people suspected of being in the United States unlawfully by accessing confidential tax data at the Internal Revenue Service, according to six people familiar with the request, a dramatic escalation in how the Trump administration aims to use the tax system to detain and deport immigrants.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security had previously sought the IRS’s help in finding 700,000 people who are subject to final removal orders, and they had asked the IRS to use closely guarded taxpayer data systems to provide names and addresses.
As the Post notes, it would be highly unusual, and quite possibly unlawful, for the IRS to share such confidential data. "Normally," the newspaper reports, "personal tax information—even an individual's name and address—is considered confidential and closely guarded within the IRS."
Wyden warned that those who violate the law by disclosing personal tax data face the risk of civil sanction or even prosecution.
"While Trump's sycophants and the DOGE boys may be a lost cause," Wyden said, "IRS personnel need to think long and hard about whether they want to be a part of an effort to round up innocent people and send them to be locked away in foreign torture prisons."
"I'm sure Trump has promised pardons to the people who will commit crimes in the process of abusing legally-protected taxpayer data, but violations of taxpayer privacy laws carry hefty civil penalties too, and Trump cannot pardon anybody out from under those," he said. "I'm going to demand answers from the acting IRS commissioner immediately about this outrageous abuse of the agency.”