Here.
Stephen Pevar: “Oil and Water Don’t Mix: Why the ACLU Is Standing Up for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe”
Here.
NoDAPL
NYTs Video: “A Standing Rock Camp is Burned”
Here.
Moyers & Co.: “Why We Must Respect the Sacred at Standing Rock”
Here.
Human Shields at Standing Rock
Here.
NYTs Profile of One Mind Youth Movement
Lowering the Bar: “Bill Would Provide Immunity for Accidentally Running Over Protesters”
Here.
An excerpt:
Seems doubtful this would be constitutional if it were to pass (and no one else quoted in the report seemed too enthused about it). By his own admission, the bill is a response to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and so (although the language itself is neutral) it is arguably a content- or even viewpoint-based restriction because the intent is to deter a certain kind of speech. If so, it would be subject to strict scrutiny and almost certainly struck down. (Note that it doesn’t require the “obstructing” to be illegal, so far as I can tell.) Even if you consider it content-neutral, it would still have to pass the rational-basis test. And it’s hard to see what the rational basis for this would be, or at least I can think of reasons it’s irrational.
ACLU: “President Trump Says the Dakota Access Pipeline ‘Serves the National Interest,’ Yet It Threatens Indian Rights and the Drinking Water of 18 Million People”
Here.
The Atlantic on the Presidential Memorandum on DAPL and KXL
Here.
“It’s the flip-side of the question everyone was asking last year, ‘Why doesn’t Obama just put the kibosh on Dakota Access?’” said Sarah Krakoff, a professor of tribal and resources law at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Well, it’s not really his role. It’s the Army Corps’s role, and that’s still true today.”
“Trump can’t, with the stroke of a pen, just make the Dakota Access pipeline happen. He just can’t. He doesn’t have that authority. It’s his agency’s authority, and he can’t revoke the laws that the agency just found that it has to comply with,” she added.
She added too that the executive orders seemed to be written in a typical way. Instead of commanding agencies to ignore congressionally passed law, the orders request that they expedite or reconsider previous judgments. “Executive orders are legal orders—they’re law—but they can’t contravene legislative enactments. So an executive order can’t say, ‘Ignore the [National Environmental Policy Act] and give me a pipeline,’” she told me.
“If the federal law gives decision-making authority to a particular official, that official has to make the decision,” said John Leshy, a professor of real property law and a former general counsel to the U.S. Department of the Interior. “But there’s some murkiness about what the president can do. The decision maker can say no, and then the president can fire them and replace them with someone who would. But that takes time.”
Krakoff added that it would attract judicial suspicion if the Army Corps of Engineers suddenly decided that it didn’t have to make an environmental-impact statement for the Dakota Access pipeline after saying that it did just weeks ago.
“It would be hard for them to turn around on a dime and say, ‘We got this piece of paper from the president and now we don’t think that’s necessary,’” she said. “If the agency were to take a different route, legally, now, I would strongly suspect that that would be subject to litigation.”
Presidential Memorandum on the Dakota Access Pipeline
We spend a lot of time waiting for official documents to post to make sure the information out there about them is correct. Sarah and I were waiting all afternoon for an “official” link to this memorandum, and then I realized the link would be to the website of the White House Press Office. So. For the record, I personally saw the actual document first on Twitter from Lael Echo-Hawk (@laeleh), and then on Facebook from Bryan Newland, who had it from Nicole Willis. It does appear from the text that it will eventually be published in the Federal Record, probably tomorrow or the next day.
Here is the Memorandum (technically not an Executive Order. For the quick and easy explanation of the difference you can look here, but probably should know that President Obama’s actions in Bristol Bay, for example, were also a memorandums).
This Memorandum does not itself try to eliminate the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for DAPL, but asks the U.S. Corps of Engineers to expedite it and to consider rescinding or modifying the December 4th Memorandum posted here.
Standing Rock’s press release in response is here.
Order from North Dakota Supreme Court Regarding Out of State Lawyers
Here. This order is issued after receiving more than 16,000 comments on the proposed temporary rule, which was in response to the large number of arrests during the DAPL protests late last year (and which are ongoing–law enforcement clashed with water protectors over the MLK weekend). The full order is worth reading, but here are the requirements:
In criminal cases pending in the South Central Judicial District arising from arrests made during the protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline between August 1, 2016 and until further order of this Court, a lawyer authorized to practice law in another state, and not disbarred, suspended or otherwise restricted from practice in any jurisdiction, may provide legal services in North Dakota on a temporary basis. The legal services must be provided on a pro bono basis, without payment or the expectation of payment of a fee. This Order does not prohibit a lawyer providing legal services under authority of this Order from being reimbursed from nongovernmental funds for actual expenses incurred while rendering services under this Order. The following requirements, processes and procedures shall apply:
1) The lawyer seeking pro hac vice admission must complete a form available through the Clerk of the Supreme Court and file it with the North Dakota State Board of Law Examiners;
2) The lawyer seeking pro hac vice admission must file the above referenced form with a certificate from his or her resident state licensing authority certifying the lawyer is admitted, currently licensed, eligible to practice and in good standing;
3) The lawyer seeking pro hac vice admission must associate with a licensed North Dakota lawyer as required under N.D. Admission Prac. R. 3. We excuse the requirement that the North Dakota associate lawyer appear in-person and remain in court for all proceedings unless the district judge presiding in the case enters an order, based on a case-specific reason, requiring the presence of the North Dakota associate lawyer;
4) The pro hac vice filing fee is waived;
5) Upon receipt of the completed form and required materials, the North Dakota State Board of Law Examiners will provide the lawyer seeking pro hac vice admission an identification number that must be included on all pleadings filed with any court regarding these matters;
6) Each business day the Clerk of the Supreme Court shall provide the Court Administrator for the South Central Judicial District with a listing of all lawyers who have been granted pro hac vice admission as provided in this Order;
7) Lawyers admitted pro hac vice must access the North Dakota Odyssey electronic case management system through the associate lawyer unless the associate lawyer does not subscribe to North Dakota’s Odyssey case management system. If the associate lawyer does not subscribe to Odyssey case management system, the lawyer admitted pro hac vice may email filings to the clerk of court;
8) The lawyer admitted pro hac vice under this Order is not by virtue of that admission limited in the number of appearances or representations he or she can make regarding these matters;
9) The lawyer admitted pro hac vice under this Order must remain licensed and in good standing in the lawyer’s state of licensure, and must verify in writing to the North Dakota State Board of Law Examiners no later than January 5, 2018, their licensure status and provide a listing of pending cases for which they are acting under this Order; and
10) Any allegations of misconduct by a lawyer admitted pro hac vice under this Order that is reported to the Disciplinary Board of North Dakota will be provided to the lawyer’s state of licensure, and may be grounds for revocation of pro hac vice admission under this Order.
Turtle Talk 
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