The stakes of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline's demise

Ben Geman, author of Generate  AXIOS


Climate activist groups protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court heard cases on Dominion Energy's proposed $7.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline crossing the Appalachian Trail. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images


Duke Energy and Dominion Energy threw in the towel Sunday on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a proposed 600-mile natural gas line from West Virginia to North Carolina.

Why it matters: It ends one of the highest profile battles over fossil fuel infrastructure in recent years, and its demise is a win for the environmental groups that spent years fighting it.
It also underscores hurdles facing big pipelines and other projects, despite White House efforts to speed up approvals and scale back environmental reviews.

Catch up fast: Despite a favorable Supreme Court ruling last month, the project faced ongoing legal and permitting battles.
The price tag had reached $8 billion — far above initial estimates — and the project had become "too uncertain to justify investing more shareholder capital," the companies said.
The cancelation came the same day that Dominion announced sale of its gas transmission and storage assets to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in a $10 billion deal.

Between the lines: Here are a few takeaways from the project's demise...
Paperwork matters: Reuters' David Gaffen yesterday re-upped his outlet's October 2019 story, which found that administration efforts to speed up permitting for pipelines had "backfired," because they created new legal vulnerabilities for projects already facing activist litigation.
States matter: A note from the research firm ClearView Energy Partners says that some states including Virginia — which is on the pipeline route — push policies that favor renewables. They called the cancellation a sign of "subnational greening" that makes it harder to build projects already facing opposition from environmentalists.
The 2020 election matters: This project may be dead, but the outcome of November's election will affect the trajectory of others. The Trump administration backed the project in the courts and politically, while Joe Biden would be less favorable to fossil fuel projects (the campaign did not provide comment on this decision).

Natural gas pipeline project canceled after Supreme Court victory

Rashaan Ayesh


Photo: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images


Dominion Energy announced Sunday it has agreed to sell its natural gas transmission and storage network to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in a deal valued at $10 billion, including the assumption of debt.

Why it matters: The deal comes as Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy announced they are canceling their plans for the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline following a Supreme Court ruling. The ruling removed major hurdles for the companies, but "recent developments have created an unacceptable layer of uncertainty and anticipated delays" for the project.

Between the lines per Axios' Ben Geman: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project has been among the high-profile battles over fossil fuel infrastructure that have been intensifying in recent years.
Its demise is a win for environmental groups and shows how energy companies face continued hurdles to building big pipelines and other projects, despite White House efforts to speed up approvals and ease environmental reviews.
Delays of the project pushed costs to increase, CNBC reports.

The state of play: This is Berkshire Hathaway's first major deal since the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S., per CNBC.
Buffett is spending $4 billion to buy Dominion Energy's national gas transmission and storage assets.
Berkshire Hathaway previously carried 8% of all natural gas transmission in the U.S., but will now carry 18%.

Court orders temporary shutdown of Dakota Access Pipeline
Ben Geman, author of Generate JULY 6,2020 AXIOS


Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline in San Francisco in 2017. Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A federal judge ordered Monday the shutdown of the Dakota Access Pipeline — a project at the heart of battles over oil-and-gas infrastructure — while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new environmental analysis.

Why it matters: The latest twist in the years-long fight over the pipeline is a defeat for the White House agenda of advancing fossil fuel projects and a win for Native Americans and environmentalists who oppose the project
The pipeline, which runs from North Dakota to an oil storage terminal in Illinois, began operating in 2017 with the backing of the Trump administration after several years of regulatory and legal jostling and major protests.

What happened: Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit vacated a critical easement while the Army Corps of Engineers prepares a previously ordered study called an environmental impact statement.
The judge wrote that he's "mindful of the disruption such a shutdown will cause."
But he adds that precedent and prior problems with the Corps' review "outweighs the negative effects of halting the oil flow for the thirteen months that the Corps believes the creation of an EIS will take."

The intrigue: It's the second big defeat or setback for a high-profile pipeline in as many days.
Dominion Energy and Duke Energy yesterday canceled the long-proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a major natural gas project also backed by the Trump administration, citing legal and permitting uncertainties.

Read the ruling.

In Egypt a murdered woman means nothing but a policeman means everything

In 2008 Mohsen Al-Sukkari held up a card which identified him as block management and stepped inside the apartment of Lebanese pop sensation Suzanne Tamim. The next morning, she was found sprawled out across the floor of her home with multiple stab wounds to her face and throat.

Just a few months later, an Egyptian court watched the CCTV recordings of Al-Sukkari, an Egyptian policeman, entering and leaving Suzanne’s apartment in Dubai and listened to phone recordings of another man urging him to carry out the killing. The voice belonged to the business tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa, one of Egypt’s most high-profile real estate developers.

At the time the story captured hearts and minds across the Arab world, despite the fact that there was a media ban on reporting details of the case. As the story unfolded, it was revealed that Hisham and Suzanne had become lovers after she asked him for help divorcing her husband.

When Hisham later asked Suzanne to become his second wife she refused and pursued a relationship with Iraqi kickboxing world champion Riyad Al-Azzawi instead. Jilted and vengeful, Hisham urged Al-Sukkari to murder Suzanne and offered him $2 million in return.

READ: Female prisoners in Sisi’s jails

When the court’s initial ruling sentenced Hisham and Al-Sukkari to death, spectators let out a collective gasp. Hisham was a friend of then President Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, and a member of the ruling National Democratic Party. Things like this didn’t happen to people like that.

As the retrial approached in 2010, a comment from the former deputy chief of the appeals court Mohammed El-Khodiry seems laughable knowing what we do today about Egypt’s justice system, complete with its mass trials and revolving door pretrial detentions:

“This can be a dangerous ruling. And if people completely lose faith in the judiciary, they lose faith in everything. I mean, our lives will be hell. It will be the law of the jungle.”

The verdict was back: neither man would hang. Hisham would serve 15 years and Al-Sukkari life imprisonment.

Seven years later, with General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi at the helm, Hisham was released under a presidential pardon. Finally, the story was becoming familiar. That same year Mubarak himself was acquitted of killing protesters. His interior minister Habib Al-Adly and the business tycoon Hussein Salem are among other elites who have been given a free ticket, rather than being forced to serve time.

READ: Human rights organisations: ‘Denying prisoners of conscience pardon reflects coup government’s intention to persecute oppositionists’

An added insult was that Hisham’s pardon was for health reasons, on account of his diabetes, despite the fact that the regime has shown little regard for prisoners’ health, time and time again. Deliberate medical neglect has killed hundreds of political prisoners in Egypt, manifested at the highest levels.

For years former President Mohamed Morsi’s family along with international politicians begged authorities to release him as his diabetes, which was not being treated, made him blind in one eye. Their failure to do so led to his protracted death.

Late former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi can be seen with this hands clasped together – a sign of praying to God – during his trail on 21 March 2016 [Stranger/ApaImages]
Now Al-Sukkari has been released under this year’s Eid presidential pardon. It’s a clear message that abuse against women is ok, made all the more poignant by the fact that it comes at a time when violence against women is reaching new heights due to the lockdown.

It also comes at a time that the Egyptian regime is pursuing a number of women on charges of debauchery and offending public morals, including TikTok influencers Haneen Hassan and Mawada Eladhm and singer and dancer Sama El-Masry.

Yesterday, a young Egyptian woman appeared battered and bruised on TikTok to announce that her friend Mazen Ibrahim had raped her, but instead of listening to her, authorities arrested her.

Egyptian lawmakers are calling for stricter surveillance of women on video sharing apps for “violating public morals and Egypt’s customs and traditions” yet releasing Al-Sukkari puts a clear lie to their claims they are doing so for women’s own protection.

WATCH: In Lebanon, women are being killed in their homes because of the lockdown

The Egyptian regime has no interest whatsoever in safeguarding women. It has systematically failed to tackle harassment in the street and not only overlooked but encouraged sexual violence in prisons as a way to deter politically outspoken women.

Earlier this month a TV advert for a luxury residential complex aired during Ramadan was slated by social media users as propaganda to gloss over deepening class divisions when many Egyptians can’t even afford to eat. In Egypt two thirds of people live below the breadline and this is being exacerbated by COVID-19 and the preventative measures put in place to mitigate the virus.

In the video for Madinaty, located in the east of Cairo, people boast that everything they could possibly want is there. “We don’t even have to leave,” they say. It’s a slice of heaven on earth, populated only by “people like us.”

Madinaty is owned by Hisham, who said he had been surprised by the criticism: “My project has added real value to the country,” he said in a televised interview. “My company has not laid off any employees or workers in light of the current economic crisis resulting from the spread of coronavirus.”

Classic denial and lack of empathy, all from a man who has walked free whilst thousands of political prisoners remain incarcerated. Hisham Talaat Moustafa and Mohsen Al-Sukkari represent everything that is wrong with Egyptian politics.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

UK protesters denounce Yemen war

Protestors in the UK hit the streets

 to oppose the Yemen war

Displaced Yazidis head back to Sinjar as coronavirus lockdown bites

July 6, 2020

An elderly woman and children stand outside a tent internally displaced persons of Iraq's Yazidi minority in Iraqi Kurdistan region on 30 August, 2019 [ZAID AL-OBEIDI/AFP via Getty Images]

July 6, 2020

Hundreds of Yazidi families driven from their hometown of Sinjar in northern Iraq years ago are now returning as the impact of coronavirus lockdown measures makes their lives in exile even harder.

Many have lost their jobs and aid from donors in Sharya, where they have been living since they fled Sinjar in 2014.

Mahma Khalil, the mayor of Sinjar but now in exile in Dohuk in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said more than 1,200 displaced families have returned from their temporary homes to Sinjar since June. Most had relatives there who serve in the military or police, he said.

Overrun by Islamic State in 2014 and liberated by an array of forces the following year, little has been rebuilt in Sinjar.

READ: UN Commission investigates Daesh crimes in Iraq, makes progress thanks to telephone data

Water is scarce and power intermittent in the city, whose former occupiers killed thousands of Yazidis and forced many women in sexual slavery.

Despite the devastation that makes the city still largely unfit for habitation, members of this ancient minority feel they have no other choice.

“The situation has become really bad,” Yazidi community leader Jameel Elias Hassan al-Hamo said outside his makeshift home in Sharya, just south of Dohuk.

Young men from his community who used to earn up to $17 a day working at restaurants and factories can no longer find work because of the lockdown’s impact on the economy, al-Hamo said.

As he spoke, men carried pieces of furniture, blankets, and bags of food out of his home and piled them onto the back of a pickup truck.

The coronavirus outbreak has worsened Iraq’s economic crisis, pushing oil prices down in a country that depends on crude export for more than 90% of its revenue. Restrictions on travel and curfews have driven many out of work.

Al-Hamo’s daughter-in-law Gole Zeblo Ismaeel said that the monthly aid packages they used to depend on became scarcer as the crisis impacted the work of humanitarian organizations.

Another reason for their return was the restriction on internal travel between semi-autonomous Kurdistan and neighbouring Iraqi regions, imposed since March to curb the spread of the virus.

INTERVIEW: Rape, torture and capture, the doctor helping Yazidi victims of Daesh rebuild their lives

Al-Hamo said that most Yazidi families in Sharya have a son enrolled in armed forces stationed in Sinjar, who have been unable to visit for weeks.

“Some haven’t seen their families for over three months now,” he said.

Although their hometown is destroyed, al-Hamo said they have been promised support by local aid organisations upon their return and he believed soon he will be reunited with the rest of his family soon.

“I registered over 400 names and phone numbers of relatives, members of the tribe, and of the community. They said that once we, the sheikhs and tribal leaders, go back, they will follow us,” he added.

Khalil said he has been pleading for funds from the central government to step up reconstruction efforts in Sinjar but he believed it would not happen any time soon.

World’s largest drug haul was shipped by Assad regime, not Daesh

July 6, 2020

Over 127 plastic bags filled with an addictive drug called Captagon lie ready for destruction after being seized by US and Coalition partners in Southern Syria, May 31, 2018. [US Army/ WIkipedia]

July 6, 2020

The world’s largest drug haul of amphetamine pills, which was seized by Italian police last week, has been revealed to have been packaged and shipped by Syrian businessmen tied to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. Earlier reports had claimed that the Daesh terror group was responsible.

The captagon amphetamine pills, with a street value worth €1 billion, were seized by Italian police on Friday last week after they received intelligence of the shipment by tracking the mobile devices of known gang members who were set to receive and distribute the drugs.

The shipment had a record number of at least 84 million pills hidden in paper cylinders within agricultural machinery. It was thought at first to have been produced, packaged and shipped by Daesh from Syria.

This story was spread by media outlets that laid responsibility on the terror group. However, it was suspected by many of being false due to the shipment coming from the port of Latakia which is fully under the control of the Syrian regime and to which Daesh has no access.

In fact, it was produced and sent by the regime itself, as businessmen affiliated with Assad own facilities within the territory under his control that are able to produce amphetamine pills. Furthermore, numerous drug smuggling operations run by the regime’s business elite have been seized several times throughout the Syrian civil war. In April, for example, a shipment was seized in Egypt on the way to Libya, and another was in Saudi Arabian when the authorities seized over 44 million of the pills.

The suspicions of Assad’s involvement were confirmed in a report by Britain’s Sunday Times yesterday, which cited an unnamed Syrian businessman with knowledge of the paper industry in which the rolls that hid the pills were produced. He revealed that the cylinder rolls were produced in a new factory within an area of Aleppo which is owned by a businessman tied to the regime.

“They said it was Isis [Daesh],” he said. “It’s so funny because logistically they can’t have access to the port and they can’t have the machines that put the drugs inside the paper rolls. It’s impossible: when I saw the photos it is impossible that you could do such a thing without having machines for paper manufacture.”

Germany’s Der Spiegel said that the pills were manufactured in a village south of Latakia, an area deep within regime-held territory.

Throughout the ongoing conflict, Syria has become a major hub for the illegal international narcotics trade. The Assad regime’s smuggling operations have been particularly active under the economic sanctions imposed by the US and EU, making them a primary source of revenue which enable the regime to continue to fund its war efforts.

239 scientists call on WHO to recognize coronavirus as airborne

Fadel Allassan AXIOS


People walk at the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Photo: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images

A group of 239 scientists in 32 countries is calling for the World Health Organization to revise its recommendations to account for airborne transmission as a significant factor in how the coronavirus spreads, the New York Times reports.

The big picture: The WHO has said the virus mainly spreads via large respiratory droplets that fall to the ground once they've been discharged in coughs and sneezes. But the scientists say evidence shows the virus can spread from smaller particles that linger in air indoors.

Why it matters: If airborne transmission is indeed a significant factor, it would call for major adjustments in efforts to contain the virus, according to the Times.
Masks would be needed indoors, even if people are socially distancing.
Health care workers may need N95 masks that filter out the smallest droplets as they care for coronavirus patients.
Air ventilation systems in public spaces would need powerful new filters.
It would likely call for ultraviolet lights to kill viral particles floating indoors.

The other side: Benedetta Allegranzi, the WHO's technical lead on infection control, called the evidence for the coronavirus being airborne unconvincing.
“Especially in the last couple of months, we have been stating several times that we consider airborne transmission as possible but certainly not supported by solid or even clear evidence,” she said, per the Times. “There is a strong debate on this.”

Yes, There Really Could Be Life In The Cloud Tops Of Venus

Ethan SiegelSenior Contributor
Starts With A Bang
Contributor Group
Science
The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

The Mariner 10 spacecraft captured this image of Venus, which has been processed to appear in... [+] 2005 MATTIAS MALMER, FROM NASA/JPL DATA

From afar, Venus seems like the most uninhabitable planet of all.


NASA's Magellan mission conducted radar mapping of the entire surface of Venus, penetrating its... [+] NASA / JPL-CALTECH / MAGELLAN

Beneath its carbon dioxide/nitrogen atmosphere, 90 times thicker than Earth's, a hellscape of a surface awaits.



The surface of Venus, one of the Soviet Union's old Venera landers: the only set of spacecraft to... [+] VENERA LANDERS / USSR

Day or night, Venus's surface is constantly 880 °F (470 °C): the hottest planet of all.

Venus' surface, as seen by the Venera 14 lander. Humanity has not been back to the Venusian surface... [+]
Although we've successfully sent numerous landers, they've all failed after mere hours.



An infrared view of Venus' night side, by the Akatsuki spacecraft. The features revealed here... [+] ISAS, JAXA
Most Popular In: Science

When Is The Next ‘Blood Moon’ Total Lunar Eclipse In North America?

Exactly When To See A ‘Buck Moon’ Form A ‘Summer Triangle’ With Our Giant Planets Sunday And Monday

‘Buck Moon’ Wanes As Bright Planets Peak: What You Can See In The Night Sky This Week

The reason? A layer of sulfuric acid clouds enshrouds Venus at high altitudes.


Multiple layers of clouds on Venus are responsible for different signatures in different wavelength... [+] VENUS EXPRESS; PLANETARY SCIENCE GROUP AT HTTP://WWW.AJAX.EHU.ES/These radiation-reflecting clouds create a runaway greenhouse effect: responsible for Venus's incredible temperatures.


Before we had explicit measurements of the temperature of Venus's atmosphere at various altitudes... [+] ESA, SPICAV/SOIR TEAMS

Above the cloud-tops, however, conditions become far more hospitable.

This false-color image of Venus, in the ultraviolet, shows the full view of the southern hemisphere... [+] ESA © 2007 MPS/DLR-PF/IDA

At 60 kilometers (36 miles) in altitude, temperatures and atmospheric pressures are similar to Earth's.

Using data from the ESA's Venus Express mission, both daytime and nighttime temperatures, as a... [+] ESA, VERA TEAM, (M. PÄTZOLD ET AL.)

The right ingredients for life, including carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen-rich molecules, are all abundant.



With a majority CO2 atmosphere alongside nitrogen gas, the presence of sulfur dioxide, water, and... [+] JUNKCHARTS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Ultraviolet photos of Venus display "dark patches," which Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan suggested could indicate microorganisms.

Ultraviolet image of Venus' clouds as seen by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. The dark regions are still... [+] NASA

A zeppelin filled with breathable air would "float" at this altitude, making investigative missions feasible.



NASA's hypothetical HAVOC mission, the High-Altitude Venus Operational Concept, would look for life... [+] NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER

Above the cloud-tops, Venus has been called a "paradise planet."

This composite image of Venus's night side (left, from Venus Express) and night side (right, from... [+] JAXA / ESA / J. PERALTA, JAXA / R. HUESO, UPV/EHU

NASA has proposed a mission devoted to human settlements there, HAVOC: the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept.


There is a detailed plan for the deployment and entry of a HAVOC airship destined for Venus, which... [+] ADVANCED CONCEPTS LAB AT NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER

For life beyond Earth, the heavens of hell-planet Venus might, quite surprisingly, be "just right."
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words. Talk less; smile more

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Ethan Siegel
I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous awards for science writing…

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The More Military Equipment Cops Have, They More They Kill
WARTIME FOOTING

Militarization of police doesn’t reduce crime or improve officer safety. It does make civilians less trusting of the police, with good reason.

Casey Delehanty, The Conversation
Published Jul. 06, 2020


Tasos Katopodis/Getty



Police departments that get more equipment from the military kill more civilians than departments that get less military gear. That’s the finding from research on a federal program that has operated since 1997 that I have helped conduct as a scholar of police militarization.

That finding was recently confirmed and expanded by Edward Lawson Jr. at the University of South Carolina.

This federal effort is called the “1033 Program.” It’s named after the section of the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act that allows the U.S. Defense Department to give police agencies around the country equipment, including weapons and ammunition, that the military no longer needs.

Much of the equipment is brand new and some is innocuous—like file cabinets and fax machines. But the program has also equipped local police with armored vehicles and helicopters, as well as weapons meant to be used against people, like bayonets, automatic rifles and grenade launchers used to deploy tear gas.

The seeds of this program came in 1988 as the Cold War was ending. The military was shrinking, while police were feeling overwhelmed fighting the drug war. A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act allowed military surplus to be distributed to state and federal agencies combating drugs. In 1997, the program was expanded to include all law enforcement agencies—including school districts. That additional eligibility led to a dramatic expansion in the program, and over the past 23 years police all across America received billions of dollars in military-grade hardware often designed specifically to fight in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.



And yet, all that equipment has done more harm than good. Militarization of police doesn’t reduce crime or improve officer safety—but it does make civilians less trusting of the police, with good reason.

In our study, my coauthors and I found that the police agencies who received the most military gear had, in the year after getting the equipment, a rate of civilian killings more than double that of police departments that had received the least amount of military equipment through the 1033 Program. While data limitations limited our analysis to four states, our findings were replicated with nationwide data.

A police armored vehicle is seen near a home in a suburb of Philadelphia in 2014.
Brad Larrison/Reuters

Federal records of how much military gear has actually been given to local police are inconsistent, poorly maintained and sometimes missing altogether. But between 2006 and 2014, the available records reveal that more than $1.4 billion worth of equipment was distributed. While the 1033 Program is the most significant source of military gear for police in general, it is not the only source of military equipment for police: There are other similar federal and state grant programs, and many big-city police departments have massive equipment budgets of their own with which they can purchase military-grade hardware.

The 1033 Program often requires receiving agencies to use the equipment within the first year after getting it, according to research done by the American Civil Liberties Union, even if a situation may not truly need it. That requirement exists alongside the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams and other military-style units in U.S. police departments, officers’ veneration of the revenge-killing comic-book character “The Punisher” and adoption of its logo, as well as militaristic training programs such as “killology.”

Together, research has shown, those influences lead police to emphasize the use of force to solve problems they encounter in the community. The equipment comes at no cost to the departments, but they have to pay to maintain it, which can be very expensive. To justify the costs, and help defray them, police often use the gear to serve search warrants targeting drug crimes. That can make the departments eligible for additional federal grants – and for a share of the value of any property and money seized during drug raids.

As a result, supposedly free weapons and vehicles can lead some police to use aggressive deployment strategies that make civilian casualties more likely. Other departments may already have a military-style mindset and are taking advantage of an opportunity to stockpile more equipment.

These increasingly aggressive deployment strategies of militarized police disproportionately harm communities of color, for instance in Maryland, where SWAT raids consistently target majority-Black neighborhoods.

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

SPORTS
3 Washington Redskins Co-Owners Want Out, But Daniel Snyder Remains All-In

BY SCOTT MCDONALD ON 7/5/20

Former NFL Player Burgess Owens Wins Utah’s Fourth Congressional District Primary

Things are changing quickly with the NFL's Washington Redskins and their mascot of the last 88 years. Just days after two major sponsors threatened to pull their millions of dollars, three co-owners now want out of their shares.

And none of them are named Daniel Snyder.

The three minority owners in the team—Robert Rothman, Dwight Schar and Frederick W. Smith—hold a collective 40 percent ownership, and they have reportedly hired an investment firm to help them sell their shares of the club, the Washington Post reported.

Snyder owns the majority of the team, and the other three co-owners are "not happy being a partner." The Washington Redskins are worth about $3.4 billion, according to Forbes' latest calculations. That ranks seventh in the National Football League.
 

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder sits next to his franchise's three Super Bowl trophies during a press conference in Ashburn, Virginia. Snyder now has three co-owners who want out of their ownership.PHOTO BY LARRY FRENCH /GETTY IMAGES

The latest news comes after a sequence of events over the last week that has forced the team to reexamine the name "Redskins" and whether it should be changed.

A group of investors on Wednesday sent letters to the team's top three sponsors—FedEx, Nike and Pepsi—urging them to pull their sponsorships if the team did not change their name from Redskins to something else. The next day, FedEx sent a letter to the team that threatened a yanking of sponsorship dollars.

Why is FedEx important? FedEx holds the naming rights to the team's stadium, and pulling sponsorship could cost the Washington NFL franchise many millions of dollars if the team doesn't comply. Not to mention, the team would scramble to recuperate those dollars with another sponsor—one not likely to throw down cash unless a name change was made.

And within a few hours of the FedEx decision, Nike pulled all of its Redskins merchandise from the Nike.com website. Not only did a search of "Washington Redskins" take users to an empty landing page, Washington was omitted from the list of NFL teams on Nike's website.

On Wednesday, 87 different investors and shareholders, whose total net worth is $620 billion, signed the letters urging the them to pull their sponsorships unless the Redskins change their nickname.

"This is a broader movement now that's happening that Indigenous peoples are part of," said Carla Fredericks, who is director of First Peoples Worldwide and director of the University of Colorado Law School's American Indian Law Clinic. "Indigenous peoples were sort of left out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s in many respects, because our conditions were so dire on reservations and our ability to engage publicly was very limited because of that. With social media now, obviously everything is very different."

FedEx made the first move.

"We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name," FedEx said in a statement.

Then Nike pulled the Redskins gear.

READ MORE
Nike Pulls Redskins From Online Site After FedEx Demands a Name Change
AOC Slams Redskins, Says 'Change Your Name' if Team Wants 'Racial Justice'
Washington Redskins Urged to Lose Name, or Millions in Sponsorships

This isn't the only time in history the Redskins have faced opposition to the name. Native American groups in the late 1960s began efforts to end any harmful stereotypes or images of Native American life, especially in the sports world. By the early 1970s, there became a growing plea from activists for the Redskins to drop their name, or change its mascot altogether.

Although requests for sports teams to change their mascots from Indians and similar names somewhat dissipated throughout the 1980s, it began picking up steam again following the 1991 season, when the Redskins advanced to the Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis.

About 3,000 demonstrators showed up at the game to protest the Redskins name—the largest such protest at the time. Later that year, a Native American group filed a petition to have the team's nickname removed from trademark.

A federal appeals board sided with the petitioners, but the Redskins appealed the ruling. The board ruled that the team's name was belittling to Native Americans.

In 2004, a poll of 768 self-identified Indians showed that only nine percent of them were offended by Washington's nickname, and it's a survey that owner Daniel Snyder has used to this day as a way to defend the Redskins organization and brand.

Lawsuits have continuously been filed against the Washington Redskins, but the organization has never wavered. Snyder even said in 2013 that he would never change the team's name.

After the death of George Floyd on May 25 while in custody of police, protests against his death—and police brutality against Blacks, in general—swept the nation. There have also been protests for equality of all races, including Native Americans.

In the letter from the investors to Nike, it stated, "the use of the R-word as the name and mascot of the Washington National Football League team is offensive and hurtful to American Indian and Alaska Native people and causes direct, harmful effects on the physical and mental health and academic achievement of the American Indian and Alaska Native populations, particularly youth; and ... despite the team's arguments to the contrary, the R-word is not a term of honor or respect, but rather, a term that still connotes racism and genocide for Native peoples and for all others who know of this history and recognize that it is wrong to characterize people by the color of their skin."