The Biden administration is backing the Trump administration’s approval of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. On Wednesday, the Justice Department argued in a legal filing that an Army Corps of Engineers permitting process followed its legal obligations to consider the pipeline’s environmental impacts. If completed, Line 3 would carry more than 750,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil a day across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems.

Anishinaabe activist Winona LaDuke responded in a statement, “This is a racist pipeline project forced down the throats of our people, an ecological time bomb and a giveaway to a Canadian multinational oil interest. If the president is genuine in his pledge to take climate justice and tribal rights seriously, his administration must stop defending the Trump administration’s decision and undertake a genuine analysis of Line 3’s environmental and human impacts.” Click here to see our full interview with her.

Meanwhile, protests and direct actions against Line 3 continue in northern Minnesota. This week, water protectors locked themselves to a horizontal drill Enbridge is using to bore under the Straight River. One water protector barricaded themselves inside the drill operating vehicle.