Cmd+Click to follow link\">process that has been wrought with conflict of interest and insufficient science. Next week's action is the first of a number of civil disobedience actions the groups are planning throughout the summer to show the president they are serious about the pledge. So far, over 62,000 people have signed the group's Pledge of Resistance to risk arrest in peaceful, dignified civil disobedience if President Obama's administration issues a draft National Interest Determination in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. The decision is expected in the late fall. \"Many of President Obama's best supporters have pledged to risk arrest to stop Keystone XL and next week's action in Chicago is a preview of what's to come if his State Department recommends approval of the pipeline,\" said Becky Bond, CREDO's Political Director. \"The people who knocked on doors, donated to his campaign and helped put him in the White House are watching to see if President Obama will side with a foreign oil company or keep his promise and take real action to fight climate change, starting with rejecting Keystone XL. The president said in his State of the Union speech 'If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will.' We're taking action to hold him to that promise.\" \"The science is irrefutable, the Keystone XL pipeline, if built, poses an extreme risk to the climate and to public health,\" said Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network's Energy and Finance Program Director. \"People from all walks of life will be taking a bold and dignified action to send President Obama a clear message: stand on the right side of history and say no to this dangerous and dirty energy pipeline.\" \"Keystone XL and the moral urgency of climate change will determine this President's place in history more than anything else,\" said John Sellers, Executive Director of The Other 98%. \"President Obama can be the FDR of this moment and say no to dirty fossil fuels, or he can lock us and our children into a future of climate chaos. His legacy is his choice, and his alone.\" At the heart of the Pledge of Resistance are hundreds of volunteer-led, grassroots civil disobedience actions ready to be deployed at strategic targets around the country. It will take hundreds of activist leaders across the country to plan, lead and train others to participate in local civil disobedience actions. In order to train these local action leaders, the groups announced today that they will run regional weekend trainings in 25 cities nationwide throughout July. The groups also launched \u003Ca href=\"https://nokxl.org/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https://nokxl.org/\u003Cbr /> Cmd+Click to follow link\">NoKXL.org as the online hub where they will provide resources to activists who have signed the pledge, along with other ways activists can get involved to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Read the Pledge of Resistance here: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/kxl_pledge","author":{"@type":"Person","description":"Newswire Editor is a Common Dreams staff position.","identifier":"25413159","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8zMjg5OTM0MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTcyNTcwNzc4NH0.B2sMj2mrq_bYNDOVvkbjPD9EexfPD6IWhyUoT3mRaqA/image.png?width=210"},"name":"newswireeditor","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/author/newswireeditor"},"dateModified":"2022-12-22T04:27:19Z","datePublished":"2013-06-12T15:09:43Z","description":"Groups Launch NoKXL.org as Hub for Planning Tactics to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline","headline":"CREDO, RAN & Other 98% Announce First Planned Act of Civil Disobedience to Stop Keystone XL","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"600","representativeOfPage":"True","url":"","width":"1200"},"isAccessibleForFree":"True","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/06/12/credo-ran-other-98-announce-first-planned-act-civil-disobedience-stop-keystone","publisher":{"@id":"https://www.commondreams.org/","@type":"Organization","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"511","url":"https://assets.rbl.ms/32373543/origin.png","width":"1501"},"name":"Common Dreams","sameAs":["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Dreams","https://www.facebook.com/commondreams.org","https://twitter.com/commondreams"],"url":"https://www.commondreams.org/"},"speakable":{"@type":"SpeakableSpecification","cssSelector":["h1",".widget__subheadline",".social-author",".body-description"]}},{"@id":"https://www.commondreams.org/","@type":"Organization","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressCountry":"USA","addressLocality":"Portland","addressRegion":"Maine","postalCode":"04112","streetAddress":"PO Box 443"},"alternateName":"CommonDreams.org","contactPoint":{"@type":"ContactPoint","availableLanguage":"English","email":"info@commondreams.org","telephone":"+1-207-775-0488","url":"https://www.commondreams.org"},"ethicsPolicy":"https://www.commondreams.org/ethics-policy","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","height":"511","representativeOfPage":"True","url":"https://assets.rbl.ms/32373543/origin.png","width":"1501"},"name":"Common Dreams","nonprofitStatus":"Nonprofit501c3","publishingPrinciples":"https://www.commondreams.org/publishing-principles","sameAs":["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Dreams","https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010146/","https://www.facebook.com/commondreams.org","https://twitter.com/commondreams","https://www.instagram.com/commondreams/"],"telephone":"207-775-0488","url":"https://www.commondreams.org/"}]}
RAN & Other 98% plan civil disobedience to halt Keystone XL | Common Dreams
The climate emergency. Fascism at the door. Billionaires buying elections. Wars without end. Oligarchs attacking the working class. Biodiversity under threat. Common Dreams covers news in a way the corporate media never will. But we only survive with your help.
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CREDO, RAN & Other 98% Announce First Planned Act of Civil Disobedience to Stop Keystone XL
Groups Launch NoKXL.org as Hub for Planning Tactics to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline
WASHINGTON
CREDO, Rainforest Action Network and the Other 98% announced today their first planned act of civil disobedience as part of the Pledge of Resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline. The organizations have begun recruiting activists to participate in a sit in and risk arrest on Monday, June 17th at the State Department office in Downtown Chicago, IL. The location of the sit in is notable not just because it's President Obama's hometown, but because the State Department is the agency currently engaged in finalizing the review of Keystone XL, a process that has been wrought with conflict of interest and insufficient science.
Next week's action is the first of a number of civil disobedience actions the groups are planning throughout the summer to show the president they are serious about the pledge. So far, over 62,000 people have signed the group's Pledge of Resistance to risk arrest in peaceful, dignified civil disobedience if President Obama's administration issues a draft National Interest Determination in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. The decision is expected in the late fall.
"Many of President Obama's best supporters have pledged to risk arrest to stop Keystone XL and next week's action in Chicago is a preview of what's to come if his State Department recommends approval of the pipeline," said Becky Bond, CREDO's Political Director. "The people who knocked on doors, donated to his campaign and helped put him in the White House are watching to see if President Obama will side with a foreign oil company or keep his promise and take real action to fight climate change, starting with rejecting Keystone XL. The president said in his State of the Union speech 'If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will.' We're taking action to hold him to that promise."
"The science is irrefutable, the Keystone XL pipeline, if built, poses an extreme risk to the climate and to public health," said Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network's Energy and Finance Program Director. "People from all walks of life will be taking a bold and dignified action to send President Obama a clear message: stand on the right side of history and say no to this dangerous and dirty energy pipeline."
"Keystone XL and the moral urgency of climate change will determine this President's place in history more than anything else," said John Sellers, Executive Director of The Other 98%. "President Obama can be the FDR of this moment and say no to dirty fossil fuels, or he can lock us and our children into a future of climate chaos. His legacy is his choice, and his alone."
At the heart of the Pledge of Resistance are hundreds of volunteer-led, grassroots civil disobedience actions ready to be deployed at strategic targets around the country. It will take hundreds of activist leaders across the country to plan, lead and train others to participate in local civil disobedience actions. In order to train these local action leaders, the groups announced today that they will run regional weekend trainings in 25 cities nationwide throughout July. The groups also launched NoKXL.org as the online hub where they will provide resources to activists who have signed the pledge, along with other ways activists can get involved to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.
Read the Pledge of Resistance here: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/kxl_pledge
"This is the 23rd pending emergency application—and the third different EPA rule that applicants are currently asking the justices to block on the shadow docket," noted one legal expert.
Two dozen Republican-led states on Tuesday asked the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court to pause the Biden administration's rule intended to slash methane emissions by nearly 80% over the next decade through new requirements for the oil and gas industry.
Arizona's GOP-controlled legislature and 23 state attorneys general—led by Gentner Drummond, who attended the Oklahoma Gas Association's annual conference on Tuesday—filed the request for emergency action by the nation's highest court after launching the legal battle in March.
The Republican filers claimed in their application that their states "will suffer irreparable harm if this court does not grant a stay" halting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule, and the policy's "devastating consequences are contrary to the public interest."
Meanwhile, green groups have welcomed the rule but also pushed the Biden administration to go much further, arguing, as Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in March, that "the best way to eliminate methane pollution... is to stop fossil fuel drilling, period. In the midst of a climate emergency, we need to take the actions necessary to stop pollution once and for all."
The GOP states' application details the long process that led to the EPA's latest rule on methane, which is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide for its first two decades in the atmosphere. As Courthouse New Servicesummarized Tuesday:
The EPA began regulating new oil and gas producers in 2016, but the Trump administration rescinded the regulations in 2020. President Joe Biden's EPA repealed the 2020 rules and proposed new standards that would not only reimpose the 2016 standards but also apply those regulations to existing oil and gas sources for the first time.
Biden's standards prohibit all flaring for certain wells, forcing any gas to be recovered, collected, and used for a beneficial purpose. Natural gas pumps will have a zero-emissions standard.
As CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck noted, "This is the 23rd pending emergency application—and the third different EPA rule that applicants are currently asking the justices to block on the shadow docket."
"In all three of these cases, the *only* ruling by a lower court was a summary ruling by the D.C. Circuit denying emergency relief; there's been no other litigation," Vladeck explained on social media. "And in all three of those cases, those rulings came from unanimous *and* ideologically diverse D.C. Circuit panels."
In addition to Arizona and Oklahoma, the states behind the request are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
— (@)
The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority has a history of being hostile toward environmental regulations, including with its June ruling in Ohio v. EPA, which was about a policy designed to protect people downwind from smog-forming pollution.
Earthjustice senior vice president Sam Sankar warned at the time that "the court's order puts thousands of lives at risk, forces downwind states to regulate their industries more tightly, and tells big polluters that it's open season on our environmental laws."
"Congratulations to Donald Trump on being the historic first-ever major party presidential nominee to be indicted after the convention," quipped one observer.
This is a breaking news story... Please check back for possible updates.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit Tuesday with yet another federal indictment for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a
superseding indictment that revises earlier felony charges against Trump in the election subversion case. The revised indictment comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's July Trump v. United States ruling, which affirmed presidents' "absolute immunity" for "official acts" taken while in office.
— (@)
None of the four charges against Trump—conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights—have been dropped.
However, parts of Smith's initial indictment—like Trump's conversations with officials at the Department of Justice after the 2020 election—are no longer admissible under the high court's ruling.
"Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority in the decision.
To secure the new indictment, Smith presented his evidence to an entirely new grand jury.
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"So, a new group of American citizens, doing their civic duty, sat and heard this evidence and returned 'a true bill' against Trump for the four charges in this superseding indictment," observedMSNBC's Katie Phang.
Reacting to the new indictment on his Truth social network, Trump fumed with his usual overcapitalization that "no Presidential Candidate, or Candidate for any Office, has ever had to put up with all of this Lawfare and Weaponization directly out of the Office of a Political Opponent."
"The whole case should be thrown out and dismissed on Presidential Immunity grounds, as already ruled unequivocally by the U.S. Supreme Court," Trump said. "What they are doing now is the single greatest sabotage of our Democracy in History."
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Grant Stern, the executive editor of Occupy Democrats, quipped on social media, "Congratulations to Donald Trump on being the historic first-ever major party presidential nominee to be indicted after the convention."
Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, including for inciting the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by believers of the then-president's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential contest was "rigged" by Democrats. He was not convicted by the Senate in either case.
In May, a New York state jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts related to the falsification of business records regarding hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 presidential election. It was the first time in U.S. history that a former president was convicted of felony crimes.
In Georgia, the state Court of Appeals last month paused proceedings in a separate election interference case against Trump and other defendants until an appellate panel determines whether the prosecuting district attorney should be disqualified for an alleged conflict of interest. Trump faces 10 felony charges in the case, including violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, false statements and writing, and filing false documents.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon—a Trump appointee—dismissed 40 felony charges against the former president over his alleged mishandling of classified government documents after he left office. On Monday, Smith urged an appeals court to reverse Cannon's dismissal.
"Tribal consultation must be treated as a requirement—not an option—when the federal government is making decisions that could irrevocably affect tribal communities," said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Indigenous tribes and conservation groups applauded the Biden administration on Tuesday for listening to the demands of Alaska Natives, who have called on the federal government to protect 28 million acres of land in the state from mining—warning that failing to do so would threaten food security and cultural identity for tens of thousands of people.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's announcement that the land would be protected from mining interests—reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee—"is a big deal for the communities and wildlife who call Alaska home," said Dan Ritzman of the Sierra Club.
"These lands and waters are unparalleled not only for their natural beauty, but for the habitat they provide imperiled wildlife, and the recreation opportunities they offer us," said Ritzman, who heads the group's Conservation Campaign. "These 28 million acres are some of the last truly intact wildlands in the United States. Secretary Haaland deserves credit for listening to those who have called for their protection for generations to come."
The Bureau of Land Managament (BLM) said Trump made an "unlawful decision" when his administration ended longstanding protections for the lands "without sufficient analysis of the potential impacts of such a decision on subsistence and other important resources, appropriate tribal consultation, and without compliance with other legal requirements," opening the lands to oil and gas extraction.
"Tribal consultation must be treated as a requirement—not an option—when the federal government is making decisions that could irrevocably affect tribal communities," said Haaland. "Continuing these essential protections, which have been in place for decades, will ensure continued access and use of these public lands now and in the future."
"These 28 million acres are some of the last truly intact wildlands in the United States."
The Wild Salmon Center noted that the lands in question contain some of the largest remaining intact ecosystems in the country, "from high alpine tundra to the pristine estuaries and wetlands in places like Bristol Bay, home to the world's most abundant wild sockeye salmon runs."
Alaska Native tribes have also called for the public lands to be protected because they serve as a habitat for caribou.
"Secretary Haaland's decision today is an important step toward a future full of healthy lands, waters, and people who thrive on wild salmon, waterfowl, other migratory animals, and seasonal plant life," said Anaan'arar Sophie Swope, executive director of Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition. "Our Yukon-Kuskokwim region's wetlands are vital to our people's way of life."
Swope said the coalition is pushing for further action from the BLM to stop the "dangerous and destructive" 315-mile pipeline proposed by Donlin Gold.
"These actions would ensure future generations' ability to safely live on the land while carrying our customary and traditional knowledge," said Swope.
Haaland's announcement comes two months after the Biden administration blocked the construction of an industrial road that would have opened access for mining in Alaska, and weeks after the BLM proposed expanded protections for the Western Arctic—but President Joe Biden's approval of the Willow oil extraction project has been condemned as an "oil stain" on his climate record.
Drew McConville, senior fellow for the Center for American Progress, said the restored protections announced Tuesday are an "historic victory for public lands and the result of unwavering advocacy from Alaska Native communities."
"The Trump administration's attempt to open them up to industrial development was both shortsighted and reckless," said McConville, "especially when Alaska is warming at more than two times the pace of the rest of the planet."