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Recently I attended the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Meeting (MIACM). That meeting, which convened the elected tribal leaders of the 11 Dakota and Anishinaabe nations in Minnesota, is quarterly and is also a time when Native governments meet with state agencies within the state government. What I saw made me proud to be in Minnesota today. Thats because agencies were talking to tribal governments collectively, giving updates on programs that concern Dakota and Anishinaabe people and reporting on collaborations. Thats the way things should work. After all, we all drink the same water, breathe the same air, so we should talk.

While Gov. Tim Walzs administration is working hard to repair past relationships with tribes, some counties, particularly Mille Lacs County and pro-pipeline state representatives, are doing the opposite trying to divide us. In particular, a recent reaffirmation of Mille Lacs reservation boundaries by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison displeased some county officials in the deep north, and HF 2241 and SF 2011 would in fact criminalize water protectors, making it a felony to exercise First Amendment rights.

Its best to work together for good governance and good community. Tribal and state agencies interact all the time, from tribal licensing to natural resource management, gaming compacts and health and human services. The fact is that we are all intending to work for the collective good of the people who live here, omaa akiing, here on this land. I want to thank Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for strengthening these bonds.

At the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC), Flanagan met with the tribes, followed by representatives from every state agency, in a remarkable show of cooperation and good governance. A very regal retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page shared with the tribes his charity work; Wayzeytawin and other traditional Dakota women came to talk about land that they had been able to get returned to the Dakota people. They also asked for support from the MIAC to secure an exemption from state building codes for indigenous housing and building structures. All good work.

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council also unanimously passed a resolution opposing HF 2241 and SF 2011, which would increase penalties for protests near pipelines andcritical public service facilities. Called the anti-protest bill, this legislation mirrors similar legislation (the anti-rioting act) that South Dakotas governor signed in 2019, only to have the federal court overturn the law as unconstitutional. In a concerted effort, the fossil fuel industry put these bills into rapid circulation, often using the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Koch, Marathon Petroleum, Enbridge, and their trade associations lobbied for similar bills in Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. The Wisconsin bill passed.

In total, Enbridge, Koch, Marathon Petroleum, their subsidiaries, and their trade associations have spent a combined $17,473,500 in 2017 and 2018 to influence the Minnesota government. The 17 co-sponsors of HF 2241 and SF 2011 received a total of $25,285 in political contributions from oil, gas, electric utility, and railroad companies. Each of these industries is named in the bills definitions of critical public service facility, pipeline, or utility. The bills pose serious threats to First Amendment rights.

Its not that the Ojibwe and people of Minnesota have not tried every recourse to make Minnesota government work for the people here, not a Canadian corporation. More than 68,000 people came out and testified against the proposed Enbridge Line 3 pipeline vs. only just over 3,000 supporters for the project. Yet the Minnesota PUC in early February once again approved all the permits for Line 3, forcing the tribes and citizens of Minnesota once again to revert to the courts and hope for the best.

In the meantime, this past month two major pipeline projects did not move ahead. The New York Constitution Pipeline was canceled, and the Jordan Cove Pipeline is on the regulatory rocks. Perhaps more significant is the ongoing opposition to the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline in British Columbia, facing major opposition by tribal people, and blockades across Canada on the rails. Finally, the single largest new proposed tar sands mine project the TECK Frontier Mine died in late February; TECK Resources pulled the plug on the project, referring to climate change and economics as the justification.

In the meantime, some things change and some do not. A hundred years ago, Knute Nelsons politics ruled the state. Thats to say that Nelson was first a senator and then the l2th governor of Minnesota. Hes most well known for promoting the Nelson Act of l889, which was intended to force all the Anishinaabe to White Earth, and also to allot the lands. As former Mille Lacs Tribal DNR commissioner and historian Don Wedll explains, Knute Nelson used political power to amass fortunes, protect fortunes, and to undermine Anishinaabe people. Thats the old Minnesota politic. That politic continued for almost a century and involved economic, education, political, legal, and regulatory discrimination.

Honor the Earth

Winona LaDuke

Walz and Ellison reaffirmed the boundaries of the Mille Lacs reservation in late February, acknowledging decades of state policy and regulatory authority. In the meantime, Mille Lacs County refuses to cooperate with the Mille Lacs band on many issues, most particularly law enforcement, and the lack of coordination has frankly created a nightmare.

The countys lack of cooperation means that a number of non-Native individuals have come onto the reservation in recent years, often peddling dangerous drugs, and the Mille Lacs band has been unable to arrest those individuals, while the county has essentially stood by. As opioid deaths continue to rise in the north, it would really be time to cooperate. Instead, it appears that Mille Lacs County is digging in, with Traci LeBrun, the editor of the Mille Lacs Messenger, noting in an editorial,Without meeting with the officials of Mille Lacs County, Gov. Walz chose to support Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellisons official opinion regarding the disputed boundaries of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Reservation. Not only did Gov. Walz not meet with county officials, as they have been requesting for months, but he chose to drive right past the Mille Lacs Historic Courthouse located just blocks off of Hwy. 169 and proceed to the recent State of the Band Address.

Instead, one might note that this governor for the first time is making a clear effort to work with the tribal citizens upon whose land Minnesota is built. In the meantime, Mille Lacs County Attorney Randy Thompson (a former member of the anti-Indian organization PERM, and later an attorney for Enbridge) continues to rage against tribal laws and people, most recently, misinterpreting the decision in the Todd Thompson Gull Lake fishing case. In short, the intent is not reconciliation and cooperation, its new Indian Wars.

At the close of the day, we are all pretty closely related and we certainly drink the same water and breathe the same air. I am grateful to the Walz administration for a willingness to work with the tribal governments. The time of Knute Nelson is over; the time of Walz and Flanagan is here.

Author, speaker and First Nations leader Winona LaDuke is the co-founder and executive director of Honor The Earth, a Minnesota-based environmental justice organization led by indigenous women, dedicated to protecting indigenous homelands and resources, and empowering communities with energy independence through renewables.

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In praise of good governance and good relationships - MinnPost

While the coronavirus pandemic has shut down live musicall over the world, two acts, psychobilly's Reverend Horton Heat and Scottish punk legends the Exploited are remaining on the road.

Heat, whose given name is Jim Heath, wrote on Facebook, "Reverend Horton Heat is not cancelling any gigs because of Covid-19. Any gigs that are cancelled will be because the promoters cancelled. I encourage everyone who lives in a jurisdiction where local governments are restricting rock and roll to push back. Write emails and call your local government agencies to remind them that we have the right to assembly. They cant stop rock and roll!"

In the comments, many fans criticized his decision, calling it "dumb," "wrong" and "irresponsible." Heath has been responding to them with his justifications. "Its dumb to panic to the point of giving up your first amendment right of assembly," he wrote to one. "Dont be a sheeple to authoritarian government. A lot of younger bands and one music legend have texted me to say thanks for the post. My band and crew have mouths to feed, rent and taxes. They also have a first amendment right to assembly."

Manyother responses by Heath follow along the same line, that there are people in his organization that are financially dependent on him.

"Fuck coronavirus!" as Walter "Wattie" Buchan, the Exploited's longtime frontman, was quoted as saying on the Facebook page of DRW Entertainment. "I have had five heart attacks a quad heart bypass and a heart pace maker fitted. Cancel gigs for a virus? We aint fucking Green Day piss - We are the real deal. No danger will we be cancelling our upcoming gigs."

The 62-year-old, who suffered one of those heart attacks on stage in Portugal in 2014, then referenced the title of his band's 1981 debut album, "Punks Not Dead!"

The Exploited began their tour of New Zealand and Australia last night in Auckland. Horton Heat has a solo show tonight in Tampa, with numerous dates still scheduled between March 28 and May 7.

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The Bands Who Are Refusing to Let Coronavirus Stop Their Tours - Ultimate Classic Rock

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Austin Sarat, Amherst College

(THE CONVERSATION) What happens to the rule of law when even the top law enforcement official in the land refuses to obey it?

Thats the question raised in a stinging rebuke of Attorney General William Barr and his Justice Department that came from an unusual source earlier this year: Federal Appeals Court Judge Frank Easterbrook.

Easterbrook excoriated Barr and the department for defying an order issued by his court.

The order in question concerned the case of Jorge Baez-Sanchez, a man living in the U.S. illegally, who was convicted of aggravated battery of a police officer and scheduled to be deported. Easterbrook quoted a letter from Attorney General Barr to the Justice Departments Board of Immigration Appeals saying that the Seventh Circuit decision stopping that deportation was incorrect and need not be followed.

Responding to Barrs assertion, Easterbrook insisted that while executive branch officials are free to maintain that our decision is mistaken until the court reverses itself the Executive Branch must honor that decision. Easterbrook said the Constitution gives courts the right to make conclusive decisions, which are not subject to disapproval or revision by another branch of government.

As someone who has studied what happens when public officials violate the law, I findBarrs defiance reminiscent of other times in American history when powerful figures challenged the authority of the courts. Such challenges risk undermining the authority of the Constitution in the eyes of everyday Americans.

Challenging courts

The courts authority to interpret the law is derived from an 1803 Supreme Court decision, Marbury v. Madison, not from the Constitution itself. William Marbury, who had been appointed a justice of the peace by outgoing President John Adams, was denied the official commission for that office by James Madison, secretary of state in the incoming Jefferson administration. Marbury asked the Supreme Court to order Madison to deliver his commission. The court held that the Judiciary Act of 1789, which Marbury said gave it the power to do so, violated the Constitution. As a result, it could not provide the relief Marbury sought.

And, since that decision, from time to time political leaders have questioned the courts authority.

President Andrew Jackson mounted one of the most important of those challenges when he refused to enforce an 1832 Supreme Court ruling that the states could not regulate Native American land.

After that ruling, Jackson took a swipe at, the courts chief justice: John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

Moreover, that same year, Jackson vetoed an act of Congress granting a charter for the Second Bank of the United States on the grounds that the bank was unconstitutional. He did so despite an 1819 Supreme Court decision affirming its constitutionality.

In his veto message, Jackson invoked the separation of powers and said, The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the president is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

Jacksons effort to stop the National Bank ultimately prevailed when it was replaced by an independent federal treasury system.

Blocking Brown

A little more than a century later, in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 landmark school desegregation ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, Southern political leaders, including members of Congress, followed Jacksons example.

In 1956 they issued a Southern Manifesto, which called Brown a clear abuse of judicial power. The manifesto commended states for resisting forced integration of schools and claimed states had the right to defy federal court orders that they regarded as incorrect.

One of the most blatant examples of such resistance occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Responding to a federal district court which ordered the immediate integration of the schools, Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to stop black children from attending Central High School.

When lawyers for those black children sought help from the United States Supreme Court, the court anticipating Easterbrooks response to Barr rebuked the Arkansas governor and reaffirmed the desegregation order.

Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that Every act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law, as finally pronounced by this Court. Even this Court has the last say only for a time. Being composed of fallible men, it may err. But revision of its errors must be by orderly process of law.

And, despite his own reservations about the Brown decision, President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order.

Resisting rights

In 2015, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protected the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Opposition to the decision came quickly. Some local officials announced that, because same-sex unions violated their religious beliefs, they would not issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

One of the resisters, Katie Lang, county clerk of Hood County, Texas, said that the Supreme Court had fabricated a new constitutional right which could not diminish, overrule, or call into question the First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion that formed the first freedom in the Bill of Rights in 1791.

She was supported by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who told county clerks and judges that they did not have to issue same-sex marriage licenses or conduct wedding ceremonies if they have religious objections to doing so.

Courting contempt

Separation of powers, states rights and religious freedom each have been invoked as a justification for official noncompliance with court orders. Attorney General Barr adds his broad view of executive power to that list of reasons.

Yet no matter what the reason, any time government officials defy the courts, they undermine the Constitutions authority and send a powerful message to citizens. Today many Americans seem ready to heed that message, with a quarter of the respondents to national surveys now saying that a president should be able to disobey court decisions with which he disagrees.

While the rule of law survived Jackson, massive resistance in the South, and defiance of the Supreme Courts gay marriage decision, there is something particularly perilous when the attorney general defies the courts. As a 1980 opinion of the departments Office of Legal Counsel noted, it is his responsibility to defend and enforce both the Acts of Congress and the Constitution.

That danger is compounded at a time when the president repeatedly expresses his view that judges are really nothing more than partisans in black robes and derides them and their decisions.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis correctly observed almost a century ago that, In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/barr-isnt-the-first-powerful-official-to-defy-the-courts-and-risk-legitimizing-contempt-for-the-law-132499.

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Barr isn't the first powerful official to defy the courts and risk legitimizing contempt for the law - Shelton Herald

There are few things more intimate than a personalized license plate. Yet California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rejects tens of thousands of applications for individualized plate slogans each year for being offensive to "good taste and decency."

Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm, filed a lawsuit against state DMV director Steve Gordon alleging his department's license plate policy violates the First Amendment's free speech protections. The DMV, they are arguing, is using a dangerously expansive definition of "government speech" to unconstitutionally censor motorists' expression.

"Our lawsuit is about vague laws that give government bureaucrats unbridled discretion to regulate speech, and that inevitably leads to arbitrary results," says Wen Fa, an attorney with PLF. "It's basically at the DMV's whims what might be offensive and what isn't."

In 2018, the state DMV rejected 30,000 of the roughly 249,000 personal plate applications they received. PLF is representing five people who've similarly had their plate applications rejected.

That includes Paul Ogilvie, an army veteran, who wanted to combine his military nickname 'OG' with childhood nickname 'Woolf' to make an 'OGWOOLF' license plate. The DMV rejected this for supposedly being offensive.

They did the same thing to Amrit Kohli, a gay computer programmer and musician, whose application for a license plate saying "QUEER"a reference to Kohli's own identitywas rejected for being "insulting, degrading, or expressing contempt for a specific group or person," according to the PLF complaint.

James Blair is also suing the DMV after being told that his proposed "SLAAYRR" platea reference to the metal band Slayerwas "threatening, aggressive, or hostile" and therefore violated the department's prohibition on offensive plates.

In addition, PLF is representing English pub owner Paul Crawford, whose proposed "BO11LUX" license plate was turned down for being too sexual, and motorcycle enthusiast Andrea Campanile for a rejected "DUK N A" license plate (a reference to Ducati motorcycles and her first name).

This is not the first time California's personal plate regulations have come under attack. Last year PLF sued the department on behalf of university professor Jon Kotler who'd likewise had his application for a personalized plate rejected.

The state DMV argued in that case that because it was the one issuing the plates, it was the government speaking, and not the private citizen requesting the plates. Therefore, it was up to the discretion of the department which messages it would allow.

A judge for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California rejected this argument in denying a government motion to dismiss the case, writing that it "it strains believability to argue thatviewers perceive the government as speaking through personalized vanity plates."

That case was resolved in January 2020 when the DMV decided to issue Kotler the initially rejected plate. However, the department has kept its regulations about offensive plates on the books, prompting PLF to file a second lawsuit.

"The government speech doctrine has very wide implications for free speech in general. The government is increasingly relying on that doctrine to say individuals have no free speech rights at all, and therefore the government can ban speech it finds offensive or hateful," says Fa. "If the DMV's logic were correct, then the government could censor offensive speech in public parks, which is also government property."

Read more:
Do You Have a First Amendment Right to a Slayer-Themed License Plate? - Reason

So now President Donald Trumps re-election campaign is filing SLAPP suits against news organizations that is, libel suits with no legal merit whose goal is to intimidate rather than to expose the truth.

The lawsuits have targeted The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, all of which have the resources to defend themselves. But the Trump campaigns tactics raise a larger question: Will these suits embolden others to weaponize the courts against media outlets that lack the financial wherewithal to fight back against deep-pocketed opponents?

SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation. A typical example might involve a developer whos seeking to build a controversial strip mall and who files a frivolous libel suit against neighborhood critics or a small local newspaper in order to silence them. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 31 states, including Massachusetts, have anti-SLAPP laws aimed at discouraging such suits. There is no federal anti-SLAPP law.

For a president's political operation to sue news organizations for libel is virtually unprecedented but not surprising coming from Trump, who said during the 2016 campaign that he wanted to open up our libel laws so that it would be easier for public figures to collect damages. The lawsuits involve four opinion pieces all of which, as Jacob Gershman notes in The Wall Street Journal, contain passages implying Donald Trump sought or welcomed Russia's intervention in the 2016 presidential election or the 2020 race.

The articles in question were written by Max Frankel, former executive editor of the Times; two Post opinion journalists, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman; and CNN contributor Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

Without going into too much detail, the pieces all assert that the Trump campaign had sought help from the Russians during the 2016 campaign and that it appeared to be willing to do so again. (Noble links to an ABC News interview with Trump in which the president all but invited foreign interference in 2020.) Among other things, the Trump campaign cites the Mueller Report as evidence that there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia.

Yet the Frankel commentary was published several weeks before the mostly unredacted version of the Mueller Report was released. Moreover, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton last week lambasted Attorney General William Barr for mischaracterizing the Mueller Report in his initial summary, writing that Barr had sought to obscure ties between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as multiple episodes of possible obstruction of justice. You could almost say that it sounds like collusion.

As for 2020, the Times recently reported that Russia is attempting once again to help Trump (as well as Bernie Sanders, according to the Post). Trumps indifference and even outright hostility to efforts aimed at curbing that influence could certainly be characterized as welcoming Russian interference.

All this is by way of arguing that the lawsuits are publicity stunts aimed at stirring up the Trumpist base. Not only are they outrageous in and of themselves, but they could also pose a threat to the First Amendment.

Im not a lawyer, but the constitutional principles at issue are well understood. First, there is the fact that the articles in question are opinion pieces. Opinion is protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court put it in Gertz v. Robert Welch (1974), there is no such thing as a false idea. Of course, if you make a defamatory statement about someone that could be proven false, merely labeling it as opinion is no protection, as the court ruled in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal (1990). But the facts laid out in the Mueller Report, as well the Trump interview with ABC News cited by Noble, cut against the Trump campaign's legal argument.

More important, the three news organizations are protected by the 1964 precedent set in New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the court found that public officials would have to prove actual malice in order to win a libel suit; that standard was later extended to public figures as well. Because of the Times decision, the Trump campaign would have to show that the media outlets published the four pieces in question despite knowing or suspecting they were false. (As I wrote last year, Justice Clarence Thomas has said that he would like to weaken the Times v. Sullivan protections. But of course.)

Not only would the Trump campaign find it virtually impossible to prove that the Times, the Post and CNN knew what they were publishing was false there are mountains of evidence to suggest that what they published was true.

In other words, these are the presidential equivalent of SLAPP suits, designed solely to harass and intimidate.

So what is the solution? Judges are strongly encouraged to throw out frivolous libel suits at the earliest possible stage because of the chilling effect that they have on news organizations and others seeking to exercise their First Amendment rights. That is exactly what should happen with the Trump campaigns suits.

More broadly, the suits should serve as a wake-up call. The libel laws are intended as a way for people who have been harmed by false, defamatory statements to obtain compensation. But libel can also be used to silence critics or, in the case of the Times, the Post and CNN to discredit them in the eyes of Trumps supporters.

Not only do the courts need to throw out these suits as quickly as possible; they also must take steps to ensure that the Trump campaigns actions dont trickle down to the state and local levels, which would encourage the widespread abuse of the courts for partisan political advantage.

One possible answer: Passing anti-SLAPP laws in places that dont have them, including the federal courts. And, where necessary, strengthening them to make sure they have real teeth.

WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedys blog, Media Nation, is online at dankennedy.net.

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How The Trump Campaign Is Weaponizing Libel And Threatening The First Amendment - wgbh.org