The convergence today of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and of the Senate’s unwillingness to protect voting rights causes me to remember my childhood friend and protector, whom I knew as Mickey.
I was always very short for my age, which made me an easy target for bullies. To protect myself, I got into the habit of befriending older boys who’d watch my back. One summer when I was around 8 years old I found Mickey, a kind and gentle teenager with a ready smile who made sure I stayed safe.
Years went by and I lost track of Mickey. It wasn’t until the fall of 1964, my freshman year in college, that I heard what had happened to him. Several months before, Mickey had gone to Mississippi to register Black voters during what was known as “Freedom Summer.” On August 4, Mickey – his full name was Michael Schwerner -- was found dead, along with two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. The three had been brutally tortured and murdered.
Eventually I learned what had happened. On June 21, the three were stopped near Philadelphia, Mississippi by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price, for allegedly speeding. That night, after they paid their speeding ticket and left the jail, Price followed them, stopped them again, ordered them into his car, and took them down a deserted road where he turned them over to a group of his fellow Ku Klux Klan members who beat and killed them, and buried their bodies in an earthen dam then under construction.
The state of Mississippi refused to bring murder charges against any of them. Price and Neshoba County Sheriff Laurence Rainey, also a Klan member, along with 16 others, were arraigned for the federal crime of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the murdered young men. An all-white jury convicted Price and sentenced him to six years in prison (he served four) and found Rainey not guilty.
Freedom Summer had brought together college students from northern schools to work with Black people from Mississippi to educate and register Black voters. Although about 40 percent of Mississippi’s population was Black, most of them had been frozen out of the polls through poll taxes, subjective literacy tests, and violence. It had been that way since 1877. The system was enforced by white supremacists who could commit crimes with impunity because the entire region had become a one-party state. Mickey Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman, and other civil rights workers had sought to reestablish the principle of equality before the law.
After their murders, Freedom Summer continued. Activists were emboldened rather than intimidated by the racial terror orchestrated by Mississippi officials. Almost 1,000 white volunteers bolstered the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to organize Freedom Schools, literacy and civics classes, voter registration and integrated libraries.
Then in 1965, with the intrepid leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the civil rights movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, protecting the right of Black people to vote. After that, the stranglehold of the white supremacists on the one-party South loosened.
But the regressive forces of racism and violence did not disappear. On August 3, 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign with a rally at the Neshoba County Fair (only a few miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi), where he defended state’s rights and the unwinding of civil rights advances. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, gutted the Voting Rights Act by holding that its formula for deciding which jurisdictions had to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws was outdated.
Now, in response to record voter turnout in the 2020 election, 19 states have passed over 30 new laws making it harder to vote. At the same time, Republican-dominated legislatures are gathering into their hands the power to negate popular votes. And the United States Senate, although nominally under Democratic control, is at this point unwilling to enact legislation to override these restrictions or restore the Voting Rights Act.
We seem to be headed back to the society Michael Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman fought against with their lives.
A new court filing says that Trump and two of his children were in charge when misleading financial statements were issued to lenders and the federal government.
New York Attorney General Letitia James disclosed new details Tuesday night about her civil investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business, saying the probe has uncovered evidence suggesting the company put a fraudulent value on multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit.
James, who launched her probe in 2019, also said in the court filing that the former president “had ultimate authority over a wide swath of conduct by the Trump Organization" that involved fraudulent misstatements to financial institutions, the Internal Revenue Service, and other parties.
She specifically mentioned the responsibility of two of the former president’s adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.
“Since 2017, Donald Trump, Jr. has had authority over numerous financial statements containing misleading asset valuations,” James wrote in the court filing.
Ivanka Trump, a former White House adviser, “was a primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank. In connection with this work, Ms. Trump caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government,” James wrote.
“Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit,” James said in a statement Tuesday. “The Trumps must comply with our lawful subpoenas for documents and testimony because no one in this country can pick and choose if and how the law applies to them.”
Her office added that it "has not yet reached a final decision regarding whether this evidence merits legal action."
James is conducting a civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization committed fraud in reporting the value of certain properties to banks and tax authorities.
Banks and other lenders need to know the precise financial condition of loan applicants before they make loans. If a company overstates its financial condition in order to get a loan, making its finances seem rosier than they really are, that can be considered fraud. The filing says that Trump's financial statements "were generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump’s net worth was higher than it otherwise would have appeared."
Tuesday’s filing is in response to legal efforts by the former president to quash a series of subpoenas against him, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. James is seeking an order to compel all three to appear for sworn testimony.
The filing says there have been problems with valuations in statements that have not been explained by the Trump Organization.
In financial statements, the value of the former president’s New York City apartment in Trump Tower was based on an assertion that the space was 30,000 square feet, when documents show the apartment was 10,996 square feet, the attorney general’s office said.
Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg conceded in a deposition that that resulted in an overstatement of around $200 million, the filing stated.
James’ office also said evidence indicates the value of land donations in Los Angeles and Westchester County, New York, were overstated, resulting in several million dollars in deductions.
NBC News has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment on the allegations against the company, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. Attorneys for Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and the former president did not immediately respond to overnight requests for comment.
The state attorney general is assisting a separate Manhattan district attorney criminal investigation into allegations of tax fraud schemes at Trump’s company.
Because of that, lawyers for Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and their father have opposed the subpoenas from James’ office, arguing they are improper.
The state attorney general “is engaged in a criminal investigation that has an active grand jury. It cannot issue subpoenas for testimony under the guise of a civil investigation that will immediately become available” to its own criminal investigation, the Trumps’ attorneys argued in their motion to quash the subpoenas.
Ronald Fischetti, an attorney for Trump, said last month: “They have been investigating this for three years. We are not concerned about it, because he has done nothing wrong.”
'This bill's not for Blacks, this bill was not for any other race. This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago,' said Jones. (photo: Steve Cannon/AP)
A bill pushed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel “discomfort” when they teach students or train employees about discrimination in the nation's past received its first approval Tuesday.
The Senate Education Committee approved the bill that takes aim at critical race theory — though it doesn't mention it explicitly — on party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed.
Democrats argued the bill isn't needed, would lead to frivolous lawsuits and said it would amount to censorship in schools. They asked, without success, for real-life examples of teachers or businesses telling students or employees that they are racist because of their race.
“This bill's not for Blacks, this bill was not for any other race. This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is Black. “At no point did anyone say white people should be held responsible for what happened, but what I would ask my white counterparts is, are you an enabler of what happened or are you going to say we must talk about history?”
DeSantis held a news conference last month in which he called critical race theory “crap," and said he would seek legislation that would allow parents to sue schools and employees to sue employers if they were subject to its teachings.
Critical race theory is a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism. It was developed during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what scholars viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.
Conservatives reject it, saying it is a world view derived from Marxism that divides society by defining people as oppressors and oppressed based on their race. They call it an attempt to rewrite American history and make white people believe they are inherently racist.
The bill reads in part, “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”
The bill is called “Individual Freedom." Republican Sen. Manny Diaz, its sponsor, said it is not about ignoring the “dark” parts of American history, but rather ensuring that people are not blamed for sins of the past.
“No individual is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by the virtue of his or her race or sex,” Diaz said. “No race is inherently superior to another race.”
Jones said DeSantis is playing to his conservative base by pushing the legislation, but wouldn't go so far as to say DeSantis himself is racist.
“The governor will continue to go across the country with his racist rhetoric on critical race theory ... It's a problem that doesn't exist,” Jones said. "I think the governor's policies that he continues to push are racist."
Asked for comment, the governor's spokeswoman reiterated comments DeSantis made at a news conference last month in which he referred to the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
DeSantis said at the time, “You think about what MLK stood for, ‘He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. You listen to some of these people nowadays, they don’t talk about that.’ ”
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Lawmakers from both parties are stepping up calls to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Almost 10 years ago, Congress overwhelmingly passed the STOCK Act — requiring members and their spouses to disclose when they buy or sell stocks. The rare bipartisan bill flew through both chambers after a series of national news stories raised questions about whether lawmakers were profiting from their jobs.
Now there's a bipartisan push again — this time to ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks at all. Proponents say it's important to take the step to remove all doubt or charges of conflicts of interest that could stem from members using information from classified briefings or committee meetings to make money in the market.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., doesn't personally trade stocks — her husband does and the transactions are reported regularly.
When asked earlier this month about new efforts to change the law to ban trading for members of Congress, the speaker backed the current system.
"We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that," she said.
But the current law has a mixed record. Reports filed by lawmakers exposed trades by members of both parties in 2020 that resulted in profits after briefings on the seriousness of the pandemic. The Justice Department reviewed several cases but ultimately didn't pursue any charges.
And a host of critics say too many members of Congress fail to file reports required under the rules, or file them months late, and there are no real consequences.
Kedric Payne, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said polls overwhelmingly show support for changing the law.
"Members of Congress are finally seeing that the public wants to know that they are not acting in their own personal interests when they make official decisions," Payne told NPR. His group has filed complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics and Senate ethics committee detailing violations with the current law. Payne says there are more than 50 instances in the last year of members not disclosing their stock trades in the time period required.
The push to further restrict how members can invest has united members across the political spectrum, from liberals like New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to conservative Texas Republican Chip Roy.
Bills introduced in the House and Senate would ban trading for lawmakers; others extend the ban to spouses and other family members.
Pelosi is a case in point. NPR reported recently that investors are following the trades of Pelosi's husband — even when spouses comply with disclosure rules, investors think they could have an inside track.
Top House Republican is a new voice in reform push, but GOP members split
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., thinks it's now time for lawmakers to stop buying and selling individual stocks.
"I cannot imagine being a speaker of the House with the power of what can come before committee, you name them and what can come to the floor and trading millions of dollars worth of options. I just don't think the American people think that's right," McCarthy told NPR earlier this month. He noted he doesn't currently trade individual stocks.
McCarthy is in line to be speaker if his party gains control of the chamber in November. He said he was still sorting out details on who would be covered, and whether he would advance his own bill or look at making the change to House rules if the GOP gains the majority after the midterms.
But as McCarthy adds his voice to a new push to change the law, his own members are split.
Colorado Republican Ken Buck told NPR, "I think it's a good idea" to ban members from trading stocks. He doesn't think members are abusing the system or acting inappropriately, but said it's an appearance problem.
"I don't know of anybody that has profited. But I do know that members of the public are questioning whether we get insider information," Buck said.
Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions disagrees with the need for a new law. "I don't believe it's necessary," he said. Still he did agree with Buck that it's important to demonstrate to the public there's no conflict of interest and pointed out that the current law mandates filing timely reports or facing a fine.
Sessions, however, admitted he failed to disclose a trade within the required period.
"I should have recorded it, but I didn't have the paperwork on it or something. So I think I've asked for a waiver at least once, maybe twice. But I reported it within a reasonable period of time," Sessions said.
Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon is torn about whether a new law is needed.
"I got mixed feelings. I don't have any myself. I do mutual funds. I think there's risk if you have stocks. A lot of legislation we're working on could impact it. Committee hearings, you hear stuff. So I think I think I'd be really cautious if you have stocks," he said.
Debate over rules for spouses
California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, stopped trading stocks once he got elected. "I made that decision because it made an abundance of simplicity that you have no conflicts — other than the broad conflict of I want the country to do well."
He said it's time to update the law. He added members of the judicial branch should also be covered. But he said there are some practical issues to work out to implement an "outright ban" related to when new members are sworn in and transition to any possible new rules. He pointed to some lawmakers' personal holdings they had before taking office, and the situation of many spouses.
"We have spouses that are CEOs of public companies, we have lots of them that are employees of companies that grant stock options that they then sell," Issa told NPR.
Facing pressure on the issue, Pelosi asked the panel overseeing the House last week to investigate how the current law is working and consider increasing fines.
"The Speaker believes that sunlight is the best disinfectant and has asked Committee on House Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren to examine the issue of Members' unacceptable noncompliance with the reporting requirements in the STOCK Act, including the possibility of stiffening penalties," Pelosi's spokesman Drew Hammill said. He added, "To be clear, insider trading is already a serious federal criminal and civil violation and the Speaker strongly supports robust enforcement of the relevant statutes by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission."
Pelosi does back extending the law to federal judges, but she is facing increasing calls from her own members in an election year to to go further.
Talk of making rules consistent across 3 branches of government
White House economic director Brian Deese said on CNBC last week that the idea of a ban for lawmakers to match restrictions for the executive branch was "certainly sensible."
"One of the things that we need to do across the board is restore faith in our institutions — whether that be Congress and the legislative branch or whether that be the Fed and others. And so anything we can do to try to restore that faith I think makes a lot of sense," Deese said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped a question Tuesday when asked about the president's position on whether lawmakers should be able to trade stocks. She noted President Biden didn't trade stocks when he served in the Senate.
Psaki said Biden "believes that everyone should be held to the highest standard." But she added, "He'll let members of leadership in Congress and members of Congress determine what the rules should be."
Recently, the Federal Reserve added restrictions following a controversy over two officials' investments. Fed Chair Jerome Powell was pressed last week about the appearances of conflicts by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who introduced legislation to ban trading for lawmakers and their spouses last week. Powell noted his agency's new rule will "effectively end any ability to actively trade of any senior Fed official."
"I completely agree that the public's faith that we are working to their benefits is absolutely critical," Powell said.
Breiner David Cucuñame was shot dead while on patrol with the unarmed group Indigenous Guard
A 14-year old indigenous activist has been murdered in Colombia, prompting horror and shock at the latest in a spate of killings of environmentalists and social leaders in the South American country.
Breiner David Cucuñame was shot dead on Friday while on patrol with the Indigenous Guard, an unarmed group which seeks to protect indigenous lands from incursions by the country’s many armed groups.
Cucuñame, a member of the Nasa people, was accompanying his father when he and two other Guard members were killed in an ambush, according to the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), a local indigenous organisation.
Dissident members of the now-demobilized rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), were blamed by indigenous authorities for the murder.
“The indigenous guard are protectors of the land and the environment, and Breiner represented that,” said Eduin Mauricio Capaz, the human rights coordinator for ACIN. “The murder of Breiner is the result of a phenomenon that was years in the making. In Colombia, armed groups dominate once more.”
New figures released this week showed that last year, a social leader –whether a human rights defender, community activist or environmentalist – was killed every 60 hours in Colombia.
2021’s total of 145 victims was down from the previous year’s total of 182, but the country remains one of the most dangerous in the world for activists.
“We are deeply saddened by each case, because of the impact they have on the communities,” said Carlos Camargo, human rights ombudsman, on Monday.
Many in Colombia had hoped that such violence would have been consigned to the past when the government signed a peace deal in 2016 with the Farc, which at the time was Latin America’s largest guerrilla army.
That peace deal, at least on paper, ended a decades-long low-intensity civil war that killed over 260,000 people and forced 7 million to flee their homes. Colombia’s army, state-aligned paramilitary groups, drug traffickers, and other leftist guerrillas all contributed to the bloodletting.
But since then conflict continues to plague communities across the country, with Farc dissidents and other armed factions stepping into the void. Bearing the brunt of the bloodshed are social leaders, who in many cases are viewed as the grassroots implementers of the peace deal.
“Why are social leaders a target?” asked Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for Colombia at the International Crisis Group. “Because they are often the few voices within a terrified and traumatised community who are willing to speak up against the affectations of violence, whether against their communities or the environment.
“The threats against activists are not a secret to anyone; the government has been warned repeatedly - by the community, by the military, by the state ombudsman – about the risks,” Dickinson said.
“Far too often, the response is reactive, when it is already too late, rather than doing the hard work of prevention to change the context in which these individuals work.”
Throughout the country’s decades of conflict, children have often borne the brunt, said Dickinson.
“In the area where Cucuñame was assassinated, nearly 100 minors were reportedly forcibly recruited into armed groups in 2021, often with false promises or threats,” the analyst said. “Children have lost parents to the violence, been forced to displace, and as in this case, suffered violence directly.”
Chamath Palihapitiya, a 45-year-old venture capitalist and minority owner of the Golden State Warriors, is under attack on Twitter for saying, 'Nobody cares' about the Uyghur genocide in China. (photo: Brian Ach/Getty Images)
The Golden State Warriors public relations team is distancing the franchise from minority owner, Chamath Palihapitiya, after the billionaire boldly stated "nobody cares" about the Uyghur genocide in China on Saturday.
In a statement, the NBA franchise called Palihapitiya a "limited investor" whose views don't reflect that of the team.
While discussing politics on his show, the All-In Podcast, the 45-year-old venture capitalist repeatedly told his co-hosts that "Nobody cares about the Uyghurs." Palihapitiya said he cares about many things, including inflation, American health care infrastructure and climate change, but not the genocide China is accused of carrying out against the Muslim Uyghurs.
"Nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you really care, and I think it's nice that you really care, the rest of us don't care," said Palihapitiya, who is also on the board of Virgin Galactic. "I'm just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things I care about, yes, it's below my line."
Co-host David Sacks attempted to clear the air by arguing that people care, just not as much as other issues. Palihapitiya doubled down.
"If you're asking me do I care about a segment of a class of people in another country? Not until we can take care of ourselves will I prioritize them over us," he said.
Palihapitiya said the United States should "take care of our own backyard" before pointing the finger at other countries, citing ongoing issues in criminal justice. He went on to describe human rights on a global scale as a "luxury belief."
"To talk about what we have here that we need to fix, and compare it to that ... these two things are not morally comparable, they are very far," co-host Jason Calacanis fired back.
The soundbite blew up on social media and was viewed millions of times Monday. That's when the Golden State Warriors released a statement over Twitter keeping Palihapitiya at arm's length.
Several hours later, Palihapitiya took to Twitter to try to "clarify" his remarks.
"In re-listening to this week's podcast, I recognize that I come across as lacking empathy. I acknowledge that entirely," he wrote. "As a refugee, my family fled a country with its own set of human rights issues so this is something that is very much a part of my lived experience. To be clear, my belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop."
Palihapitiya's comments reignited criticism of the NBA's relationship with China, especially from Republicans. Some say it's hypocrisy for players to kneel during the National Anthem or have social justice slogans on their uniforms while players endorse Chinese clothing lines, some made from cotton that is produced by Uyghur forced labor.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called out the NBA for failing to take a stance on issues that could affect the league's bottom line.
Boston Celtics star Enes Kanter Freedom also condemned Palihapitiya over the comments, saying people like him "sell their soul for money … business."
In October, Freedom called Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping a "dictator" while advocating for a free Tibet. As a result, the Celtics' opening game wasn't broadcast in China, which is typically viewed by millions, the NBA said.
And in 2019, then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey took to Twitter to show his support for protestors in Hong Kong. That move resulted in China temporarily taking NBA games off the air, costing the league an estimated $400 million.
In North Dakota coal country, officials rally to save a coal-fired power plant at renewable energy’s expense.
David Saggau, the chief executive of an energy cooperative, tried to explain the losing economics of running a coal-fired power plant to a North Dakota industry group more than a year ago.
Coal Creek Station had lost $170 million in 2019 as abundant natural gas and proliferating wind projects had cut revenue far below what it cost to run the plant. After four decades sending electricity over the border to Minnesota, Coal Creek would be closing in 2022, Saggau said, and nobody was clamoring to buy it.
“We made folks aware that the plant was for sale for a dollar,” Saggau, of Great River Energy, told the Lignite Energy Council during an October 2020 virtual meeting. “We’re basically giving it away.”
A renewable future was at hand. Winds come howling over the Missouri River in the heart of North Dakota — at the site where Lewis and Clark spent their first frigid winter — and Great River Energy planned to supply wind power over Coal Creek’s valuable transmission line. NextEra Energy, EDF Renewables and other powerhouse firms were racing to lock landowners into leases to harvest some of the most powerful and sustained winds in the country.
But that new clean-energy future never materialized in this part of coal country, with a landscape that has been mined for more than a century and has the scars and sinkholes to prove it. And the sale of Coal Creek Station, which received its last major permit approval earlier this month, illuminates the United States’ halting transition to renewables. Even in places such as North Dakota, where supply and demand align with clean energy, culture and politics pose major obstacles.
In these rural North Dakota counties, local officials passed ordinances that blocked wind and solar projects. State officials rallied to save Coal Creek, and a politically connected North Dakota energy firm stepped in to prolong its life, promising someday to capture its carbon emissions and store them underground.
“I’m not just looking to prop up coal,” Stacy Tschider, the president of Rainbow Energy Marketing Corp., said in July when his company announced it was buying the plant. “I’m looking to take coal to the next level.”
During the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow in the fall, conference head Alok Sharma declared that “the end of coal is in sight.” More than 40 countries pledged to phase out coal, the single-biggest source of atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide emissions. The United States did not join them. Despite its rapid decline, coal still generates about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity and has strong political backing in pockets of the country.
Charles Stroup, a local banker and land agent who supports wind power in North Dakota’s Mercer County, compared the coal industry here to a dying relative that the community is desperate to save, no matter how grim the prognosis.
“Mother doesn’t die in 10 minutes,” Stroup said. “She takes a while.”
For many here, the loss of coal remains unthinkable, and new sources of energy — no matter how promising for local residents and governments — represent a serious threat.
“If we get the word that [Coal Creek Station] is gone for sure, the best business and economic play for the lignite counties and the State is to ban any more renewables,” McLean County state’s attorney Ladd Erickson wrote in an email in 2020 to aides to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), part of a batch of documents obtained through a state public records request.
Otherwise, Erickson, an elected official who serves as prosecutor and legal adviser to the county commissioners, warned that “there will be no more coal mining because new mine areas will be all wind turbines, solar panels, and power lines.”
Homages to coal
The prospect of Coal Creek’s closing landed hard in Underwood, a city of about 800 people. The antiques shop on its barely holding-on main street is called the Coal Bin. One of its bars is the Black Nugget. And those businesses, and many more here, depend on the power plant — North Dakota’s largest — and the neighboring open-pit coal mine. Together, the two operations provide about 700 jobs.
Residents feared the plant’s closure, and some moved away because “they saw the writing on the wall,” Underwood city commissioner Paul Cabrera said.
“It felt like a pause on everything,” said Alisha Schieber, 32, who runs a small cafe and clothing shop in Underwood. “For a lot of the town, it’s the difference between having a job and being able to stay — or not.”
As pressure on coal mounted, local officials turned against wind. In March 2020, after Great River Energy announced it might close Coal Creek and invest in wind farms, McLean County, where the plant stands, passed zoning rules that effectively blocked wind-power projects from accessing Coal Creek’s valuable transmission line. In August of that year, the county added a two-year moratorium on solar projects.
Neighboring Mercer County also imposed a moratorium on new wind projects when it appeared Coal Creek would close. That decision blocked the 152-megawatt wind farm proposal known as Garrison Butte.
These types of anti-renewable laws and regulations have popped up frequently across the country, driven by local opposition to wind turbines and solar panels or as a way to extract concessions from developers. Indiana alone has laws in 18 counties — one-fifth of the state — that ban or limit renewable-energy projects, particularly wind farms, according to a report by Columbia University Law School.
North Dakota has been more welcoming to wind. It generates about 4,000 megawatts from turbines, and the state ranks fifth in the country in its share of wind-powered electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Burgum, a former Microsoft executive, has pledged that the state will be carbon neutral by 2030.
But North Dakota also has the world’s largest deposit of lignite coal, which residents have been mining since the 19th century. And coal still accounts for more than half the state’s energy generation. It ranks as North Dakota’s fifth-largest industry, according the Lignite Energy Council, and state officials estimate it has a $3 billion impact.
At local government meetings in Mercer and McLean counties in 2020, supporters of coal warned about the consequences of the plant’s closure. Erickson — the state’s attorney who led the charge to keep the coal-fired plant alive — frequented those gatherings.
Erickson warned that wind turbines would clutter the landscape, disrupt the hunting and outdoor recreation economy, and provide scant financial returns.
“What’s going on is one of the most energy-efficient, environmentally friendly lignite coal plants in the entire country is being attacked by a replacement economy that is like a penny on the dollar for North Dakota and our region,” Erickson said at a public meeting in April 2020.
In his emails, Erickson discussed how he could use his office to undercut wind energy. In one August 2020 email to an executive at Great River Energy, he wrote about the “renewable leasing frenzy” and how it would lock coal underground.
It was “possible that the state’s attorneys are going to have to step in before the session and nuke all these leases by making them worthless through our ordinance powers,” he wrote.
Sierra Club leaders, who obtained these records, say they show that Erickson manipulated local laws to block wind projects and undermine the value of wind leases. His actions also made it “ridiculously unattractive for Great River Energy to actually be able to transition to clean energy and ultimately close the plant,” said Jeremy Fisher, a senior strategy and technical adviser with the Sierra Club.
In an interview, Erickson, who also is acting state’s attorney in Mercer County, said his “nuke” comment was directed primarily at solar leasing companies he considered illegitimate. But he agreed he wanted to help “our political establishment” find “a new owner of the plant.”
Erickson described Coal Creek Station as a “critical piece of national security infrastructure,” because it provides reliable power at a time of growing strain on the electricity grid.
“There’s no substitute for it,” he said.
Erickson also described himself as a “big believer” in climate change and said these anti-renewable ordinances would be temporary. He added that he has been meeting regularly with wind-power developers and working on revised rules so they can operate in this part of North Dakota once the power plant’s sale is final. But the prospect that wind energy would replace the area’s lignite industry wasn’t acceptable, he said.
“If the wind turbines were the one to replace the plant, that wasn’t something we wanted,” he said. “Our miners are very important.”
Wind is ‘another commodity’
Art Ziemann knows coal. As a young man, he began with the “dirty, nasty job” of cleaning the tipple — sweeping the coal dust from the warehouse where the coal was stored. As he gained experience with North American Coal, he moved to operating a scraper, stripping layers of earth from the undulating fields of Mercer County. His time in Vietnam had taught him about explosives, so he advanced to blasting, detonating charges in the black seams of coal.
He also knows what it feels like to lose a coal job — after getting laid off from a mine in Montana.
“I was devastated. I had a young family,” he said. “So I have some empathy for these people who are wondering every day if they have a job or not. I understand what they’re going through.”
It helps explain why Ziemann and other landowners who want to bring wind power to this part of North Dakota rarely speak ill of coal. They recognize how central the industry has been to developing their communities. But they believe that renewable energy can operate alongside it and that local officials are blocking the energy industry’s natural evolution.
“The coal people kind of have blinders on about the possibility of coexisting,” Ziemann said. “I think we can coexist. I don’t believe for a minute that a proposed 150-megawatt wind farm in Mercer County is going to displace coal in Mercer County. It’s not going to happen. And it’s disappointing the commissioners can’t realize that.
“The nation has a mind-set for clean energy,” he added. “And that’s not going to go away anytime soon.”
Ziemann and several other Mercer County residents have signed leases that would allow wind turbines to be built on farmland they own. Ziemann’s five-year lease is controlled by the energy giant NextEra, the third wind developer to own it over the past several years. Until the project has been built, payments are small, these landowners said, but they could earn as much as $25,000 per year if NextEra or another developer places a single wind turbine on their property.
“Wind is just another commodity that we can harvest,” said Gary Scheid, a 77-year-old retired farmer in the Mercer County town of Hazen who also has signed a wind lease. “Why are we not harvesting this commodity if there’s a demand for it?”
A NextEra spokesperson declined to comment.
Supporting wind energy here is not without risk, and several people would talk only on the condition of anonymity because they were afraid they and their families would face backlash from the community. Coal industry employees hold many prominent positions in local politics.
One farmer who was happy when he heard the polluting coal plant may shut down said he did not dare discuss that publicly. “If we were to be quoted, and it got in The Washington Post, our farm would be targeted,” he said, describing the area as “Trumpian to the max.”
“They would come out there, and I think they would start shooting holes in the tires,” the farmer added. “That is how bad it is. I really believe that. We would be ostracized within our community.”
Dreams of bitcoin, and burying carbon
Rainbow Energy Marketing Corp. — a subsidiary of United Energy Corp., a Bismarck-based firm run by the oil tycoon Loren Kopseng — has never owned a coal-fired power plant. It is in the business of marketing electricity, “moving electrons throughout the United States and Mexico,” its president, Tschider, said in an interview.
Minnesota regulators last year paused the sale of Coal Creek — deferring approval of the transfer of the plant’s transmission line to one of Rainbow’s subsidiaries — as they sought more information on its ability to operate the line and decommission it in the future. They approved the transfer Jan 6.
The sale of Coal Creek was controversial even among the 28 member cooperatives that own Great River Energy, the seller. The largest one voted against it on the grounds that the ongoing coal operation would harm the environment and generate less savings than expected from the closure.
Rainbow says it plans to raise revenue in different ways to avoid ongoing losses. Cabrera said company officials told him and other Underwood commissioners that it plans to build a data center on the plant campus and use the electricity generated to mine bitcoin, the digital currency. Tschider said he “wouldn’t identify it as bitcoin” but confirmed that the company was pursuing data centers on-site.
Rainbow also wants to be a leader in carbon capture and sequestration — storing carbon dioxide in rock formations underground so it does not pollute the atmosphere — despite having no prior experience with this work. This vision was “a key reason” that Great River Energy began negotiations with Rainbow, said Jon Brekke, a vice president at Great River Energy and its chief power supply officer.
“We want to give them a chance to pursue carbon capture and sequestration and preserve these jobs and perhaps show the world a way to manage CO2 emissions while still contributing to the grid,” Brekke said. “For everyone that’s concerned about climate change, there’s also people [concerned] about reliability and affordability of electricity going forward. So we’re seeking a balance here.”
Critics of the sale say Rainbow does not have the expertise to fulfill its plan to build a $1.5 billion carbon capture and sequestration operation. No such plant exists in the United States, and one attempt — the Kemper project in Mississippi — failed after its sponsors spent more than $7 billion.
“It’s very costly, and the development of such is borne on the backs of the American taxpayer,” said Clean Up the River Environment Executive Director Duane Ninneman, whose western Minnesota group advocates for renewable energy in rural areas. “So, to me, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
In an email Kopseng sent to state and industry officials on July 4, 2021, he admitted that his team knew little about the technology.
“It sounds really good but to be totally honest all the[carbon capture sequestration] stuff is pretty much totally new to me,” he wrote to a group that included the state’s lieutenant governor, Brent Sanford (R).
Kopseng was responding to an energy company executive who had pitched him on a carbon capture technology. “Its no doubt a huge learning process for our small group which we are stepping into and appreciate your help,” Kopseng told him.
Kopseng referred questions to Tschider.
Tschider said Rainbow is committed to making carbon capture a reality at the facility. He said the formations underneath Coal Creek, and throughout the state, are favorable for storing carbon and can make North Dakota a leader in the industry. He called the several billion dollars in tax credits the federal government offers for carbon sequestration “essential” for making that happen.
“There’s a tremendous amount of money being deployed for carbon capture, and we want to be a part of that,” he said.
But it won’t be soon. Tschider said he hoped the project would start around 2025.
