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12 February 21
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Bess Levin | One of Trump's Impeachment Lawyers Is a Personal Injury Attorney Who Sued Trump Last Year
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Michael T. van der Veen specializes in dog bites, among other things."
onald Trump went into the first day of his second impeachment trial reportedly feeling about as good as someone who’s set a record for presidential impeachments can feel. Not only was he not worried about the stain of inciting a violent insurrection, but he and his lawyers reportedly viewed the proceedings as a positive because they would “cement” his “influence over the Republican party.” Fast-forward a day and Trump is apparently feeling a lot less hot, thanks to the opening statement delivered by his defense team, which could best be described as, “What the f--k was that?”
Unlike his first impeachment trial, the ex-president is unable to tweet his way through it, but he nevertheless made his feelings known. According to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Trump was “basically screaming” as Bruce Castor Jr. gave his meandering, incomprehensible argument over the course of nearly 50 interminable minutes, each one worse than the last. Attempting to quantify his rage, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times that on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the angriest, Trump “was an eight,” which we assume is similar to his anger level when, after being frisked on the way out of the White House on January 20, he was told that no, he couldn’t take the flatware with him.
Of course, it’s not entirely surprising that Trump’s defense gave a less than inspiring opening statement—one that was so bad that it got Republican senator Bill Cassidy to make a last-minute change and vote with Democrats. After being charged with inciting an insurrection, Trump found that not one of the lawyers originally expected to represent him would. Days before his trial kicked off, the legal team Lindsey Graham helped set Trump up with quit, reportedly over the ex-president’s insistence that they argue the 2020 election was stolen from him, which obviously would have been a lie. That left Trump basically scraping the bottom of the barrel of the legal profession, which explains how he ended up with Castor—who, earlier in his career, fought to keep Bill Cosby out of prison—and David Schoen, who said he had considered defending Jeffrey Epstein before the notorious pedophile died in prison. (Schoen has also worked with “accused rapists, capital murderers, and international narcotics dealers,” per the Atlanta Jewish Times. He told the outlet that he had “represented all sorts of reputed mobster figures: alleged head of Russian mafia in this country, Israeli mafia, and two Italian bosses, as well a guy the government claimed was the biggest mafioso in the world.”) Oh, and this guy! Per The Washington Post:
Last year, Philadelphia lawyer Michael T. van der Veen filed a lawsuit against then president Donald Trump accusing him of making repeated claims that mail voting is “ripe with fraud” despite having “no evidence in support of these claims.” This week, van der Veen is adopting a different posture as part of the team of attorneys defending Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in his Senate impeachment trial.… Van der Veen’s route to Trump’s legal team began when the firm he founded—van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn, and Levin—hired Bruce Castor in December. Castor, a former prosecutor from suburban Philadelphia, in turn was recommended to Trump aides and hired last month.
Now, van der Veen’s name and signature appear in Trump’s impeachment filings alongside Castor’s, as well as those of David Schoen, an Atlanta-based lawyer Trump brought on last week. In a 78-page defense brief filed Monday, the lawyers argued that Trump was entitled to express his belief that “voting irregularities” he attributed to illegal changes to election laws had tainted the election.
According to The Washington Post, van der Veen is best known as a personal injury lawyer whose local radio ads “are reminiscent of East Coast electronics chain Crazy Eddie’s high-octane TV pitches” that aired in the 1980s. “Whether you’re walking down Chestnut or Market, Frankurt or Aramingo, be careful and watch your step,” an announcer shots in one representative ad spot. “But if the walkway isn’t clear, and you fall and get hurt due to snow and ice, call 215-546-1000 for van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn, and Levin—trial lawyers excelling in the area of the law most critical to your family. The ‘V’ is for ‘Victory.’” In copy that, to be fair, sounds exactly like how Trump would describe himself if he were a lawyer, van der Veen’s website boasts of the “relentless, savvy defense” it provides not just for people who slip and fall and want to sue the city but for those accused of “corporate embezzlement, internet-based offenses, or violent crime,” the Post writes. (The firm also has a detailed page regarding its work on behalf of dog-bite victims, writing: “With decades of experience navigating Pennsylvania’s dog bite laws, our team of Philadelphia dog bite attorneys are driven to enforce clients’ rights to facilitate comprehensive recovery.”) And while Trump was probably hoping for a lawyer who was not the Philadelphia equivalent of Cellino and Barnes, and whose speciality brings to mind lawyers who make their clients show up to court wearing fake neck braces, others believe van der Veen and Trump are perfect for one another:
Van der Veen drew local media attention in 2018 for the elaborate renovation of his small firm’s offices in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood. The 25-employee firm occupies a 19th-century rowhouse featuring a Delftware fireplace and ornate mantel carvings of Zeus and Apollo.
For some in Pennsylvania, van der Veen’s representation of Trump is a natural fit, given his career path as a personal injury lawyer who broadcasts ads on local talk radio and touts glowing magazine cover stories on his law firm’s website.
“It probably speaks more to the gadfly culture of Philadelphia trial attorneys than anything else,” a Pennsylvania strategist told the Post. “It’s a showman’s culture.”
Border wall. (photo: Reuters)
Biden Terminates Trump Emergency Order Used to Construct Border Wall
BBC
Excerpt: "US President Joe Biden has rescinded the national emergency order used to fund Donald Trump's border wall."
In a letter to Congress on Thursday, Mr Biden wrote that the order was "unwarranted" and said that no further tax dollars will be spent on the wall.
Mr Trump declared a state of emergency over the southern border in 2019, which allowed him to bypass Congress and use military funds for its construction.
When Mr Trump left office, about $25bn (£18bn) had been spent on the project.
The announcement from President Biden is the latest in a series of executive orders that have rolled back key parts of the former president's agenda.
Last week, Mr Biden signed orders seeking to reunite migrant families split up by Trump-era policies, and ordered a probe of his predecessor's immigration agenda.
In a letter on Thursday, Mr Biden wrote that he would also seek a review of "all resources appropriated or redirected" to the construction of the wall.
Building a border wall was a signature pledge of Mr Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
But the project faced strong opposition in the Democratic-controlled House, and the Republican president announced he would use emergency powers to fund its construction.
An emergency declaration allows US presidents to circumvent the usual political process and to access military funding.
Various types of fencing totalling 654 miles (just over 1,000 km) were already in place before Mr Trump became president in 2017.
During his his time in office, 80 miles of new barriers were built where there were none before, and almost 400 miles replaced existing parts of the structure.
"Trump's national emergency was never about security," wrote Arizona Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva on Twitter following Mr Biden's announcement. "Now we must cancel the contracts and ensure that not another foot of the border wall is constructed."
Former Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller also took to Twitter to comment on the decision, writing "Biden loves illegal immigration".
But some parts of the Trump administration's immigration policy will be left in place.
At a press conference on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared to confirm the new administration would keep a Trump-era policy that allowed border officials to summarily expel undocumented immigrants amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"Due to the pandemic and the fact that we have not had the time, as an administration, to put in place a humane, comprehensive process for processing individuals who are coming to the border," she said. "Now is not the time to come, and the vast majority of people will be turned away".
YouTube. (photo: iStock)
YouTube Still Pushing White Supremacist Videos: Anti-Defamation League
Rebecca Klar, The Hill
Klar writes: "YouTube continues to push extremist videos, including white supremacist content, and other clips that could end up being a gateway to extremist content for users already susceptible to racial hatred, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League."
YouTube says it has removed thousands of extremist videos, but such content is still circulating among a subset of highly engaged users encountering the videos through recommended content, the ADL said in the report released Friday.
Nine percent of YouTube users who participated in the ADL's nationwide survey said they had viewed at least one video from an extremist channel during the course of the study.
Additionally, 22 percent said they had viewed at least one video from an “alternative channel,” which the ADL identified in its report as possibly serving as a “gateway to extremist content.”
The study identified a list of 322 “alternative” channels, including channels from conservative commentators, and 290 “extremist or white supremacist channels.”
Of the channels between the two lists, 515 were still active as of Jan. 21. Among the 97 channels no longer active, six were encountered by participants during the study and 91 were taken down either before the start of the study or before Jan. 21.
YouTube defended its handling of extremist content in a statement responding to the report.
“We have clear policies that prohibit hate speech and harassment on YouTube, and terminated over 235,000 channels in the last quarter for violating those policies,” the company said in a statement.
“Beyond removing content, since 2019 we’ve also limited the reach of content that does not violate our policies but brushes up against the line, by making sure our systems are not widely recommending it to those not seeking it. We welcome more research on this front, but views this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 70% in the US, and as other researchers have noted, our systems often point to authoritative content."
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said YouTube has not done enough to tackle the widespread extremist content.
“It is far too easy for individuals interested in extremist content to find what they are looking for on YouTube over and over again,” Greenblatt said in a statement.
“Tech platforms including YouTube must take further action to ensure that extremist content is scrubbed from their platforms, and if they do not, then they should be held accountable when their systems, built to engage users, actually amplify dangerous content that leads to violence,” he added.
The study found that almost all of the 9 percent of users who watched a video from an extremist channel watched videos from alternative channels as well. Those numbers were driven by a “small but highly engaged subset” of users with high consumption levels, the report stated.
The audience for videos from the identified channels is “dominated by people who already have high levels of racial resentment,” making up more than 90 percent of views for both types, according to the report.
While the recommendations to potentially harmful videos from other types are videos are “rare,” the recommendations of such content are “frequently” shown alongside videos from alternative or extremist channels, the ADL said.
The report analyzed data from a sample of 915 survey respondents between July and October and included browser history dating back to April.
Democrats have been pushing for tech giants to ramp up efforts to remove extremist content, especially after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) led dozens of House Democrats in a letter to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki last month urging the platform, along with Twitter and Facebook, to change their algorithm that facilitates the spread of extremist content.
Eshoo said the ADL report further shows that YouTube needs to change its algorithm and pushed for Congress to pass a bill she introduced with Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) designed to hold social media platforms more accountable.
“The ADL released a well-researched and troubling report showing that white supremacy and extremist content is proliferating on YouTube and that YouTube’s recommendation algorithms are pushing users to more extreme content. These findings are damning. They make a crystal-clear case for why YouTube needs to rethink the core design of its product,” Eshoo said in a statement.
The CEO of the New Georgia Project, founded by Stacey Abrams, above, says these investigations force it to allocate resources to lawyers instead of voter registration. (photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)
'Intimidation Tactic': Georgia Officials Investigate Groups That Mobilized Black Voters
Sam Levine, Guardian UK
Levine writes: "The Georgia state election board referred two cases to prosecutors on Wednesday connected to organizations that helped mobilize a record number of voters in the state during the 2020 election, a move critics say is an intimidation effort."
Stacey Abrams’ New Georgia Project accused of not handing documents in on time in Republicans’ latest targeting of the group
One case involves the New Georgia Project (NGP), the group founded by Stacey Abrams in 2014, that helps mobilize voters of color. In 2019, investigators allege, the group violated state law by not handing in 1,268 voter registration applications within the 10 days required under state rules. The named respondent in the matter is Senator Raphael Warnock, who the group says was serving as the chairman of its board at the time, but was incorrectly listed on documents as the group’s CEO, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The February 10th State Election Board meeting was the first time NGP heard about the allegations regarding NGP’s important voter registration work from 2019,” Nse Ufot, who has served as the group’s CEO since 2014, said in a statement. “We have not received any information on this matter from the secretary or any other Georgia official so we will have no further comment on the investigation.”
The episode marks the latest example of Republicans targeting the group. In 2014, Brian Kemp, then the state’s top election official, announced an investigation into allegations of forged registration materials but found no widespread wrongdoing. Late last year, the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, accused the group of soliciting people from outside Georgia to register in the state – which the group denied.
Those investigations force the organization to allocate resources towards lawyers it says could otherwise be invested in voter registration.
“Every dollar that we have to spend to defend ourselves against the nuisance and partisan investigations is a dollar that we aren’t able to put into the field to register new voters and have high-quality conversations about the power of their vote and the importance of this moment,” Ufot told the Guardian last year.
The second case the state board referred dealt with a canvasser for the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, another group that played an instrumental role in registering new voters. The canvasser allegedly submitted 70 false voter registrations while working on behalf of the group.
Helen Butler, the executive director of the group, said the group caught the forged voter registration applications in 2019 and that she was the one who reported the canvasser to the secretary of state’s office for investigation. That fact was unmentioned in a Thursday press release from Raffensperger’s office announcing the referrals.
“We have a whole process to ensure that we have legitimate forms,” Butler said in an interview. “We want people to vote. We’re not spending our time out there trying to get fraudulent forms.”
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter organization, said it wasn’t uncommon to have isolated instances of mistakes or forms handed in late during campaigns. But the effort to prosecute voter registration groups, he said, was “an intimidation tactic”.
“The state of Georgia is just trying to reassert that even though they didn’t go along with Trump’s attempted coup that they still want to make it clear that they’re still the voter-suppressors-in-chief,” he said.
Georgia has quickly emerged as the center of the fight over voting rights in America. Joe Biden won the presidential race there, the first Democrat to do so in nearly 30 years, by just 12,670 votes. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats, also won stunning upsets in two Senate runoff races in January. Georgia Republicans are already weighing a suite of measures that would make it harder to vote, including requiring people to show their ID twice during the vote-by-mail process and getting rid of no-excuse absentee voting.
The cases were among 35 election violations the board referred for prosecution, Raffensperger’s office said in a statement. The cases were referred to the state attorney general and some to local prosecutors , who can decide whether to further pursue the cases. The vast majority involved civil offenses, but some involved criminal charges.
“Election fraud is not tolerated in Georgia. When there is evidence of it, the people responsible face prosecution,” he said. “Georgia has multiple safeguards in place that allow our team of investigators to discover fraudulent voting. They worked to catch the wrongdoing in these cases, and they maintain the security of Georgia elections.”
Pictures of detainees in orange jumpsuits at the camp remain among the defining images of the 'war on terror.' (photo: Chris Hondros/Getty)
Biden Administration to Consider Closing Guantanamo Prison
Matt Spetalnick, Trevor Hunnicutt and Phil Stewart, Reuters
Excerpt: "The Biden administration has launched a formal review of the future of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reviving the Obama-era goal of closing the controversial facility, a White House official said on Friday."
Aides involved in internal discussions are considering an executive action to be signed by President Joe Biden in coming weeks or months, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, signaling a new effort to remove what human rights advocates have called a stain on America’s global image.
Such an initiative, however, is unlikely to bring down the curtain anytime soon on the high-security prison located at the Guantanamo Naval Station, due largely to the steep political and legal obstacles that the new administration faces.
Set up to house foreign suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the offshore jail came to symbolize the excesses of the U.S. “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics say amounted to torture.
“We are undertaking an NSC process to assess the current state of play that the Biden administration has inherited from the previous administration, in line with our broader goal of closing Guantanamo,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne told Reuters.
“The NSC will work closely with the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice to make progress toward closing the GTMO facility, and also in close consultation with Congress,” she added.
The immediate impact of a new approach could be to reinstate, in some form, the Guantanamo closure policy of Biden’s old boss, former President Barack Obama, which was reversed by Donald Trump as soon as he took office in 2017.
Trump kept the prison open during his four years in the White House. Now, 40 prisoners remain, most held for nearly two decades without being charged or tried.
Biden’s campaign said during the 2020 race that he continued to support closing the detention center but did not say how he would do it.
It is also unclear how specific Biden’s coming executive action might be about his plans for the prison, which holds suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks among its detainee population.
“This is an encouraging and much welcome development,” said Scott Roehm, Washington director of advocacy group The Center for Victims of Torture. “The process needs to move quickly.”
FILLING OUT BIDEN’S GUANTANAMO TEAM
Signaling that deliberations are still at an early stage, Horne said “a number of key policy roles still need to be filled,” including ones at the Defense, State and Justice Departments. “We need to have the right people seated to do this important work,” she said.
Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, can expect to face many of the same hurdles that frustrated his former boss.
Opened under President George W. Bush, the prison’s population grew to a peak of about 800 inmates before it started to shrink. Obama whittled down the number further but his effort to close the prison was stymied largely by Republican opposition in Congress.
The federal government is still barred by law from transferring any inmates to prisons on the U.S. mainland. Even with his own Democratic party now controlling Congress, their majorities are so slim that Biden would face a tough challenge securing legislative changes because some Democrats might also oppose them.
A revived Guantanamo strategy is expected to focus initially on further decreasing the number of prisoners by repatriating them or finding other countries to accept them, according to the people familiar with the matter.
This could also mean re-establishing a State Department post of Guantanamo closure envoy, created by Obama but eliminated by Trump, to resume negotiations with other governments on detainee transfers, the sources said.
In addition, the Pentagon could restart a parole-style review process of prisoners’ cases to determine whether they still posed a threat, the sources said.
Still, any closure plan could initially be hampered by the coronavirus pandemic, making moving prisoners unlikely for now.
Just over three weeks after taking office, the Biden administration has not made Guantanamo one of its top early priorities as it grapples with the pandemic and its economic fallout. Obama made closing Guantanamo one of his first executive orders in 2009 but failed to do so by the end of his second term.
“While I’m glad to hear that the new administration will be reviewing policy with an eye towards closing Guantanamo, it’s concerning that it is coming so late in the game,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch.
Shutting the facility has been a demand of progressive Democrats whose support helped Biden win the White House.
The prison’s continued existence, critics say, is a reminder of detention practices that opened the United States to accusations of torture.
More than a hundred human rights organizations signed a Feb. 2 letter to Biden calling on him to close the prison and end indefinite detention of suspects there, saying it was past time for “a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused.”
Privately administration officials express skepticism about getting the support they will need from Congress.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s statement during his January confirmation hearing that the new administration would seek Guantanamo’s closure drew a letter of rebuke signed by seven Republican House members, all military veterans.
“If we release these GITMO detainees, they’ll become rockstars in the Islamist Extremist world, posing an even greater threat to America and the world,” tweeted U.S. Representative Mike Waltz, one of the signatories.
Of the prisoners who remain, nine have been charged or convicted by military commissions. The most notorious is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused Sept. 11 mastermind. About two dozen have not been charged but have been deemed too dangerous to release.
Six inmates have previously been cleared for release by a government panel yet remain jailed with no arrangements for transfer.
Joe Biden on February 26, 2020. (photo: Logan Cyrus/Getty)
Antiwar Activists Have Scored an Apparent Victory on Yemen. It's Time to Keep Pushing.
Shireen Al-Adeimi and Sarah Lazare, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Joe Biden is sounding the right notes about halting US participation in the Saudis' catastrophic war in Yemen. But now, more than ever, it is vital to hold a firm line about what ending support for the war means: an end to all US assistance, no exceptions, before one more Yemeni dies."
he February 4 announcement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that President Biden would end US support for “offensive operations” in Yemen was understandably met with celebration by those opposed to the war. Almost six years of the US-Saudi‑UAE war on Yemen have left the country devastated by humanitarian disaster and famine. Anti-war activists have spent these years — first during the Obama-Biden administration, then the Trump-Pence administration, and now the Biden-Harris administration — agitating to end US participation in the onslaught. It has been an organizing effort that often seemed like shouting into the wind, as the bombings of hospitals, factories, and weddings piled up. The countless people who have been toiling in obscurity to end this war, and those in Yemen who have joined in this effort while surrounded by hardship and death, certainly deserve praise and gratitude for the fact we’ve gotten this far.
But Biden’s foreign policy speech, delivered just hours after Sullivan’s teaser, unfortunately underscored that we must not celebrate the end of the war until we verify that it has actually, materially ended. That is because Biden’s remarks leave just enough room for the president to gesture toward ending the war without actually halting all US participation in it.
Biden first noted that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will reach Yemeni civilians who have suffered “unendurable devastation” (the Trump administration suspended aid to much of Yemen in 2020) and declared “this war has to end.” He then added, “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen including relevant arms sales.” Biden said he is appointing career-long diplomat Timothy Lenderking as a special envoy to Yemen. But the president continued, “At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks and UAV strikes and other threats from Iranian supplied forces in multiple countries. We are going to continue to help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.”
Unfortunately, qualifiers like “offensive” and “relevant” do not signal a clear commitment to ending all forms of support for the US war in Yemen, which includes targeting assistance, weapons sales (the United States is the largest supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia), logistics, training, and intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led coalition. Labeling Yemen’s Houthis as “Iranian supplied forces,” and making a commitment to defending Saudi Arabia’s “sovereignty,” echoes President Obama’s initial pretense for entering the war on Yemen in 2015. The White House statement that signaled Obama’s illegal entry declared, “In response to the deteriorating security situation, Saudi Arabia, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, and others will undertake military action to defend Saudi Arabia’s border and to protect Yemen’s legitimate government.” In other words, from the outset, this onslaught was framed by the United States as defensive.
Importantly, Sullivan noted that ending the war in Yemen “does not extend to actions against AQAP,” or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While sanctioned by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), it’s important to oppose this parallel US-led war in Yemen that has also led to the killing of civilians.
One day after these February 4 declarations, Biden announced that he is removing the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a positive move, given that this designation is being used to cut off critical aid to northern Yemen and significantly escalate the crisis of mass starvation. Also, on February 5, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said at a press conference, “As a result of the President’s order yesterday, DOD had been providing some limited non-combat assistance for coalition operations, and that would include intelligence and — and some advice and best practices, and that all has been terminated. But Saudi Arabia remains a — a partner in terms of combating terror in the region.” Kirby’s statement vastly understates the role of the United States, which has played an important part in the war effort, and it’s not immediately clear what “noncombat” intelligence sharing and “advice” he is referring to. We must ensure these steps culminate in a full and permanent withdrawal from complicity in the war on Yemen.
Now, more than ever, it is vital to hold a firm line about what a real end to US participation in the Yemen war means: an end to all US assistance, including all forms of intelligence sharing, logistical help, training, providing spare parts transfers for warplanes, bomb targeting, weapons sales, and support for the naval blockade (we still don’t know the full extent of US support for the latter). It is critical to keep up the pressure until we verify, perhaps through a congressional hearing or other means, the war has really ended. As much as we might welcome positive messaging — no doubt a result of the pressure exerted by dogged organizers — we must not rest until we have won actual material relief.
Ending the incredible harm being unleashed on Yemen should only be the beginning. Real justice demands accountability for the US role in the mass killing and starvation in Yemen through — at the very least — reparations to the people of Yemen.
This is not to sow nihilism: it is significant that President Biden, whose own Obama-Biden administration first initiated US involvement in the war, feels that he has to answer to anti-war activists. A global day of action to end the war on January 25 saw people mobilize from streets to online forums demanding an immediate halt to the war, reflecting the growing power of an international movement to end the onslaught.
And the Biden administration has taken some steps before the February 4 announcements. In the twenty-four hours before leaving office, Trump’s final act of war on Yemeni civilians involved signing a $23 billion arms sale to the UAE, in addition to the designation of the Houthis as an FTO. Two days after taking office, Biden’s State Department launched a review of the FTO designation, citing “deep concern about the designation that was made is that at least on its surface it seems to achieve nothing particularly practical in advancing the efforts against the Houthis and to bring them back to the negotiating table, while making it even more difficult than it already is to provide humanitarian assistance to people who desperately need it.” And one week after taking office, Biden temporarily froze the sale of F-35s included in the Trump deal, as well as precision-guided munitions destined for Saudi Arabia.
But arms sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE. have not been canceled. Indeed, a celebrated Wall Street Journal report from January 27 about the Biden administration “pausing” arms sales to Saudi Arabia subtly noted in paragraph three that the pause “isn’t unusual for a new administration” and “many of the [arms] transactions are likely to ultimately go forward.” Still, these steps could indicate a willingness by the Biden administration to end US involvement in the war on Yemen.
But rhetoric and positive signals are not enough. We need a material end to all US assistance now, before one more Yemeni dies, and we need to verify that this assistance has ended before we declare victory. The Trump administration claimed, at various points, that it was working toward the end of the war via a “political solution.” Of course, the Trump administration horrifically escalated the war — rhetoric to the contrary did not shield Yemenis from US-manufactured bombs, or the assault on the port city of Hodeidah.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑CA), in his January 25 address at the World Says No to War on Yemen global online rally, noted his commitment to ending the war in Yemen by reintroducing the War Powers Resolution that Trump previously vetoed. “Senator Sanders and I will be advocating and introducing again a War Powers Resolution to stop any logistical support . . . any intelligence support, any military support to the Saudis in their campaign in Yemen,” he said. Congressional oversight through another War Powers Resolution with these provisions would provide additional and significant pressure on the Biden administration.
The Obama-Biden administration made numerous announcements in 2012 and 2013 that it would end the US war in Afghanistan by 2014. But we saw that declarations do not, in themselves, end US aggression. This principle especially applies when declarations are loaded with red-flag-raising qualifiers like “offensive operations” and “relevant weapons systems.” We should know in a matter of weeks what the details of Biden’s plans for Yemen are. The job in the meantime is to maintain pressure, to ensure the Biden administration brings about a real end to the war that the president helped start — and says he wants to bring to a close.
Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline near Oyen in Alberta, Canada. (photo: Government of Alberta)
The Keystone XL Pipeline Is Dead. Now What?
Alec Jacobson, National Geographic
Jacobson writes: "Within hours of his inauguration on January 20, President Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office, pulled his chair up to the Resolute Desk, and signed a broad executive order to tackle the climate crisis, including a clause that revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline's construction in the United States."
The Keystone XL may never move any oil, but its impact will still linger in the form of the pipes, worker camps, and other assets stranded along its 1,200-mile path.
ithin hours of his inauguration on January 20, President Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office, pulled his chair up to the Resolute Desk, and signed a broad executive order to tackle the climate crisis, including a clause that revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction in the United States.
On paper, at least, the controversial project was dead. TC Energy, the pipeline’s owner, suspended operations on Keystone that day; opponents made celebratory announcements.
The Keystone XL, which is designed to deliver 830,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the Alberta oil sands to refineries in the U.S., has been declared dead before. In 2015 President Barack Obama rejected the initial permit application—but President Donald Trump reversed that decision. Along the way the pipeline has been repeatedly stalled by legal challenges.
In the face of Biden’s order, TC Energy has not yet announced whether it plans to concede and scrap the project, though it does seem likely. Conceivably it could decide to wait for more favorable political conditions that would allow it to resume construction. Its best option might be to seek compensation for its losses from the U.S. government. (The company did not respond to requests to comment on this story.)
If the pipeline were ever completed, its impact would resonate for generations, environmentalists have long argued, in the form of added carbon emissions from all the oil it would carry to market. But even if, as now seems more likely, the Keystone XL never carries any oil, its impact will still linger—in the form of assets stranded along its 1,200-mile path.
The result of a decade of stop-and-go progress is a patchwork of infrastructure strung over almost that entire route, from the starting point in Hardisty, Alberta, where a pumping station was completed in December, to the junction in Steele City, Nebraska, where the XL is supposed to join the existing Keystone pipeline that already runs to Texas. There are now more than 90 miles of Keystone XL pipe in the ground, a string of temporary work camps under construction, and roughly 48,000 tons of pipe sitting in yards all along the route. There is also a less material but still valuable asset: a chain of perpetual land easements, laboriously assembled by TC Energy lawyers, stretching nearly the entire length of the route.
After Biden’s order, all of that effort is in a state of suspension. What will become of it?
Pipelines are forever
One of the first sections of the Keystone XL pipeline was laid across Carol Hern’s ranch by the Red Deer River near Bindloss, Alberta, about 150 miles south of Hardisty. In summer 2020, cutting across rolling hills of prairie grass under wide-open skies, the pipe was put in well away from her house. “On our place, it’s in the perfect place,” she said.
“It’s just like when you have a cut on your arm and then when it heals you get a bit of a scar and it doesn’t really hurt your arm or anything. It’s just sort of an appearance thing. It’s sort of the same way on prairie land. It’s just that it was disturbed and put back,” Hern said, describing the project.
TC Energy’s pipe is laid mostly to the north of that start point in Alberta, though a short piece is in place on the border between Montana and Saskatchewan. There’s also an extra 27 miles of land that has been prepared for the next stretch of pipe. About a third of the pipes have been fully buried, leaving long stretches of open trench.
For some people, like horse breeder Arnold McKee in Oyen, Alberta, Keystone XL construction has been catastrophic from the start.
“Twelve years ago, most of us didn’t have a clue what was involved in the big pipes,” McKee remembered. He agreed to let both the Keystone and the Keystone XL cross his land, expecting minimal disruption, like the many small pipelines that string oil wells together in the area.
“When the construction started, it was totally unbelievable. It was a shock to our system,” McKee said, explaining his surprise at the destruction during installation of the original Keystone pipeline. Construction spooked three colts, who became tangled in new fences along the pipeline and died. The deep trench wafted dust for years before it healed, engulfing the ranch in dirt that filtered into hay bales and, McKee believes, caused fatal respiratory failure in seven of his mares. “When they announced they were going through with the XL line, I panicked,” said McKee, and he asked TC Energy to wait until the fall, when there would be less dust. But more pipe was laid, kicking up the soil again.
The property still has not been remediated, McKee said. Now, he wishes the company would remove the pipe and try to return the earth to its natural state. “This was all native prairie grass that they tore,” he said. “You can never rebuild that once it’s torn up, especially putting a pipe in the ground.”
Whether or not oil ever flows through any of that pipe, though, it will likely stay in the ground forever.
The United States and Canada are covered in a fine mesh of pipelines, some 3 million miles of them, that carry oil, gas, water, and waste from tanks and wells to homes and refineries every day. When their need fades, the lines are sometimes removed but are more often cleaned out, sealed at their ends, and left in place, out of sight and mind.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’ve only actually ever come across a situation once where a company removed a pipeline,” said Iain Colquhoun, Chief Engineer at the Canada Energy Regulator. The process of abandoning pipelines in situ is environmentally safe, he said, though the old lines need to be monitored for erosion as the steel steadily rots; there have been some cases of leaks from improperly abandoned lines.
Leaving the pipe in place avoids disrupting the soil and landowners in its path a second time, and also saves companies the cost of cleanup and the liability of the long dig to take out the pipes.
However, such inaction can also create headaches for new construction projects. “You go to dig a pond or build a building on top of that and you’re in trouble,” explained David Howell, whose company, Pipeline Equities, salvages some pipeline.
He lives in Houston, where the quickly expanding city often gets tangled in nets of old oil infrastructure. “No one says anything about what happens in 40 years when the pipeline is no longer useful,” Howell said. “You just learn to live with it.”
Dismantling man camps and pump stations
In the online video, yellow sodium lights glinted off the cracked windshield as Oscar High Elk and Tiffanie Pieper drove their truck through prairie grass in South Dakota toward a construction site. As they slowly cruised the fence line, they filmed bucket loaders, piles of dirt, and temporary bunkhouses. As soon as they pulled up to the entrance, workers closed the gate.
The only pipe in U.S. soil is a short stretch at the border crossing between Monchy, Sasketchewan, and Malta, Montana. But TC Energy has reported site preparation and construction in the U.S. at 10 pump station sites and 11 “man camps” to house the 10,400 temporary workers that the company expects to employ.
High Elk and Pieper have been monitoring the construction as they protest it, driving by sites in South Dakota. Though the Keystone XL does not cut across any Indigenous reservation land, it skirts the edge of the Fort Peck, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud reservations, crossing their water sources—and intersecting with the muddied history of ignored land treaties. That has sparked strong resistance.
“My ancestors used these rivers as their main roads, their interstates,” High Elk said, explaining why he felt a calling to protest the threat he sees to waterways like the Cheyenne River.
Angeline Cheek, who lives on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana, is an Indigenous justice organizer for the ACLU. She’s worried about the possibility of Keystone starting back up again; she vividly remembers Montana Department of Justice data from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota and Montana. Driven by the proliferation of man camps, serious violent crime increased 38 percent between 2006 and 2012 in communities near oil production. There were also reports of increased human trafficking and drug use.
The risk increases on Indigenous reservations, where crimes often fall through jurisdictional cracks. The Bakken oil boom drove a 75 percent increase in sexual assaults on women on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.
And now, there are three Keystone XL man camps for 3,800 workers planned within 55 miles of her reservation in Montana, Cheek says. That's more than a third of the Fort Peck Reservation's population within a short drive in the sparsely populated region. Even though Keystone has been shut down, the close proximity makes her nervous.
During a peaceful march against the Keystone XL in 2020, Cheek’s life was threatened by counter protesters. “I had a knife that was held to my neck,” she recalled. “They said, ‘Let’s kill these Indians. Scalp them. Yeehaw.’” She believes the pipeline will have left an indelible mark on her area even if it never gets finished.
If TC Energy decides to give up on the project, the company will cart away the work camps and salvage what scrap they can. TC Energy engineers have raised concerns about the safety of some of the pieces of pipe that have been prepositioned in yards along the route, sitting out in the elements for a decade now. However, there is likely still some value in the roughly 48,000 tons of steel.
But some pieces of the pump houses could remain in place. Enbridge is now in the process of abandoning the Line 3 pipeline that has carried crude oil from Alberta to Wisconsin since the 1960s, and the company plans to leave pump houses where they stand to use them as maintenance and storage depots. TC Energy could make a similar decision.
The company has not yet taken any action, however. “It doesn’t look like they’ve made an effort to shut down anything yet,” Tiffanie said after driving to visit some of the sites a week after Biden’s executive order. “To us, they could start back up working at any moment.”
The long arm of the land law
As much as a pipeline is made up of steel welded together by hundreds of skilled workers, it is also a feat of legal wizardry. Before the first shovelful of dirt can be dug, lawyers have to forge a path of easements that stretches from end to end, negotiating with every landowner along the way to establish a price and any extra terms in exchange for the right to use a strip of their property forever.
“That is a very valuable asset,” explained Brian Jorde, a lawyer representing farmers and ranchers in Nebraska who have resisted the Keystone XL pipeline so far. “Even if the pipeline was half constructed, that’s their property. They own it forever.”
To build this pathway, companies try to work quickly and quietly, offering landowners up front the carrot of a sum, sometimes a tidy one— as much as six figures, but also as little as a few hundred dollars—and the stick of eminent domain if they resist. So, many sign away a perpetual right of way without seeking legal counsel, worried that they’ll miss out on a deal and find themselves in court.
Jorde got involved in Keystone XL cases eleven years ago when he was approached by worried farmers and ranchers who wondered if there was another option. He filed lawsuits on their behalf, which are still in active negotiation. Jorde does not expect that to change. TC Energy’s string of easements is almost unbroken for the entire Keystone XL route, and they are unlikely to relinquish it.
On the East Coast, Dominion Energy and its partners are sitting on a similar asset along the route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The project was aborted last summer as the financial viability crumbled after numerous legal delays, and many landowners expected that their land would be released from the easements. The company has made plans to dismantle roads it had constructed and to abandon the partially constructed pipeline in place, but it is so far holding onto the easements.
That has set expectations for the Keystone XL agreements.
“Listen, you don’t understand how powerful these easements are,” Jorde said. The company could sit on them for decades to wait for the right political and economic moment, and it could even sell the easements to another company.
“They’ve got billions in the project,” Jorde said, adding that he didn’t expect them to give up easily. “How old am I? Forty-four. Twenty years from now, am I going to be fighting this for the children and grandchildren of these landowners? Sure.”
A week into his presidency, President Biden signed a second executive order meant to catalyze action against “the existential threat of climate change.” He singled out the need to clean up abandoned oil and gas infrastructure.
“We're going to start to properly manage lands and waterways in ways that allow us to protect, preserve them—the full value that they provide for us for future generations,” the president said in a press briefing.
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