Seattle mayor, police chief vow to review protest tactics


People peacefully protest at University Village, Monday, June 1, 2020, in Seattle as demonstrations continued, sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times via AP)

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle’s mayor and police chief promised a large crowd of protesters Tuesday to review the department’s use of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades to break up a crowd of peaceful protesters the night before, encouraging them to keep marching as long as they do not do damage.

“Your voices holding me accountable are important and you should continue to raise them,” Mayor Jenny Durkan told those assembled outside the city’s Emergency Operations Center downtown. “We want you to march. ... We want you to continue on the path of justice. But we need you please to do it peacefully.”

Earlier in the day Seattle’s police watchdog agency said it would investigate the use of pepper spray Monday night to break up a fourth consecutive day of large protests over the George Floyd killing.

The department insisted that demonstrators threw fireworks and tried to storm a barricade near a police station. Police Chief Carmen Best said one officer was struck in the face with a chunk of concrete.

 Protesters chant "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" as they march Monday, June 1, 2020, in Seattle. Monday's protests in the city against police violence were peaceful. (Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times via AP)

But video posted on Reddit and Facebook showed that in the moments before the chaos began, an officer grabbed a pink umbrella that a demonstrator was holding just across a barricade as a shield against a potential application of pepper spray. Other officers nearby then began spraying chemicals and firing flash-bangs at the crowd.

“It was a beautiful, beautiful march for hours,” the mayor said. “We know the end was not how it was meant to be, and the chief and I have talked about it. We’re going to look at it.”

Durkan also promised to address underlying issues of injustice and discontent with the crowd. When one protester asked her when, she asked what the group was doing Wednesday.

Best expressed support for the protesters, saying, “As a black woman, I feel the same things you feel. Just because I wear the uniform doesn’t change that.”

Demonstrators listen to people speak Monday, June 1, 2020, outside City Hall in Seattle during peaceful protests over the the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, among others. (Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times via AP)


During a subsequent news conference, Durkan emphasized that change is needed to remedy a deep history of discrimination that has marred the U.S. since its founding. She also spoke to Seattle’s efforts to reform its police departments; in her prior position as U.S. attorney, she led the Justice Department in forcing the city into a consent decree to change training and accountability practices after questionable uses of force.

She stressed that police uses of force must be rare, necessary and proportional, and she said she had concerns about police tactics used Monday night.

Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability said Monday it has received about 12,000 complaints over the Seattle Police Department’s handling of the demonstrations, break-ins and theft. There were reports that a young girl was tear-gassed, officers placed their knees on the necks of two people who were being arrested, and protesters twice grabbed unattended rifles out of police cars before being disarmed by a television news crew’s security guard. Many of the incidents were captured on video.

On Tuesday, the agency said it was adding Monday night’s use of pepper spray to disperse the crowd to the long list of events it’s investigating. The agency, which is led by a civilian director and supervisors, uses civilian investigators as well as Seattle police sergeants to conduct its work, then presents its findings and recommendations to the chief.

The city’s Office of the Inspector General will also conduct a review, Durkan said.

“I am extremely concerned that the crowd management tactics that I have seen being used by the Seattle Police Department are just out of proportion,” Seattle City Council President Lorena González said in an interview.

Demonstrators in Washington and around the country have been protesting the killing of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air.

The police department declared the protests a riot about 9 p.m., saying the decision was made “after a crowd threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers and attempted to breach barricades one block from the East Precinct.”

That explanation drew criticism from protesters and some city leaders. City Council Member Teresa Mosqueda tweeted a link to overhead video taken by a witness and posted on Reddit, which did not show projectiles from the crowd or attempts to breach the barricade in the moments before the chaos began.

“THIS IS NOT A RIOT,” Mosqueda tweeted.

González said the police and fire chiefs were due to discuss the demonstration response at a council meeting on Wednesday.

“We want to be able to get a better understanding of what the response was and has been,” she said. “My hope is that we’ll be able to correct course in a way that doesn’t eviscerate the trust we have spent so many years trying to rebuild with communities of color in our city.”

Best said a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will remain in effect through Saturday. She said police do not intend to enforce it in a heavy-handed manner but want to be able to use it to keep the peace if necessary, given the looting and violence that occurred during last weekend’s protests.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the police watchdog agency has received about 12,000 complaints, not 1,200.

Washington man has some surprise guests: about 60 protesters


Demonstrators react as a helicopter circles low as people gather to protest the death of George Floyd, Monday, June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rahul Dubey had some unexpected guests Monday night — about 60 in all — as a tense nation’s capital continued to grapple with the fallout from the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

They were protesters out after Washington’s 7 p.m. curfew and about to be arrested when Dubey frantically waved them into his rowhouse. Police chased them as far as the entrance. Inside, pandemonium ensued as some of the screaming protesters hit by pepper spray sought relief for their eyes with milk and water. On the back patio, neighbors pitched in by handing milk over the fence.

“The whole time he didn’t think of himself,” said one of the protesters, a 22-year-old Virginia man named Meka who declined to give his last name. “He was just trying to keep everybody safe, make sure we knew our rights and to make sure our spirits were lifted throughout the night.”

Dubey said a police line was about two houses away when he flung his door open and he encouraged people to come inside.

“And now the pepper spray is coming, and they’re coughing and they can’t see and they’re tripping up on the stairs and their friends or whoever’s around them is helping them, pulling them inside the house. And this went on for 10 minutes,” Dubey said, adding that “it was pure terror. It was 10 minutes of terror.”

Meka insists that the protesters acted peacefully throughout the evening. He said he didn’t see anybody who tried to fight police or cause damage. At the same time, he acknowledged openly defying the curfew as he participated in his third consecutive night of protesting.

“I believe, as an American citizen, they don’t have the right to place a curfew on us if we were just peacefully protesting. I believe that’s unconstitutional in the first place,” Meka said, adding that he was just trying to make a difference in the world.

Dubey said he also viewed the protesters as acting respectfully: “The last thing that they were chanting with their arms out peacefully was ’let us through, let us through.’”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a curfew from 7 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. the following day. She emphasized that “if you are out, then you are subject to be stopped and/or arrested, so it’s very important that you stay at home.”

The move came after violence erupted the night before near the White House, where looters and vandals set fire to parked cars and buildings, including historic St. John’s Church. Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish that fire.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said at a news conference Tuesday that police started seeing behavior among the protesters in northwest Washington around 9 p.m. Monday that was consistent with what preceded violent activity the night before.

He said police moved to get that stopped with arrests and a homeowner “allowed a number of people who were going to be arrested into his home.”

Newsham said police were in constant communication with Dubey and that the people in the home ultimately were not arrested. At one point, Meka said, police officers sought to enter after stating they had received a 911 call, but the protesters all denied making such a call and the officers left.

All told, however, there were 194 arrests in that neighborhood.

While the visitors praised Dubey, he was impressed with them as well.

“They were all strangers to each other before this started and when we were in that first hour we were all taking care of each other,” he said. As night continued into early morning, he said the group began “sharing stories of where they were on Sunday and what had happened and, you know, why Black Lives Matter and what they were feeling inside.”

DEAR POLITICAL CHICKEN LITTLES 

THERE IS NO ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL ORDER

THE BLACK BLOC ARE ALL LOCAL

ANTIFASCIST ACTION IS ANYONE OPPOSED TO FASCISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY

ANARCHIST ARE ANTI STATE, ANTI GOVERNMENT AND ANTI ORGANIZATION

EVERYONE KNOWS ANARCHIST ORGANIZATION IS AN OXYMORON

AND I SHOULD KNOW I AM AN ANARCHIST

SO ARE YOU 

False claims of antifa protesters plague small U.S. cities

ALL CLAIMS ABOUT ANTIFA ARE FALSE

Demonstrators gather to protest the death of George Floyd, Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

CHICAGO (AP) — In the days since President Donald Trump blamed antifa activists for an eruption of violence at protests over police killings of black people, social media has lit up with rumors that the far-left-leaning group is transporting people to wreak havoc on small cities across America.

                              HOW TO IDENTIFY ANTIFA AKA ANTI FASCISTS

The speculation was being raised by conservative news outlets and pro-Trump social media accounts, as well as impostor Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Twitter and Facebook busted some of the instigators behind the unsubstantiated social media chatter. Twitter determined Monday that a tweet promising antifa would “move into residential areas” and “white” neighborhoods was sent by the white supremacy group Identity Evropa. The tweet was shared hundreds of times and cited in online news articles before Twitter removed it Monday, a company spokesperson said

Yet the tweet continued to circulate Tuesday on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook, using information shared by Twitter, announced Tuesday night it also took down a handful of accounts on its platform that were created by whites supremacy groups like Identity Evropa and American Guard, some of them posing as part of the antifa movement.

For years, some social media users have tried to delegitimize controversial or political protests with baseless theories that they were organized by wealthy financiers or extremists organizations. Over the weekend, Trump singled out antifa as being responsible for the violent protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd, saying in a tweet: “It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left.”

“Usually you see this when there’s an interest to deflect conversations from protests to just accusing the protests of being violent, organized or having backers that are evil,”said Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University. “The president mentioning it, of course, has generated a huge spike.”

The theories about antifa — short for “anti-fascists” and an umbrella term for lefitst militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations — have trickled through cities across the country in recent days.

Police departments say people are phoning in “tips” they see on social media claiming antifa is sending buses or even planes full of antifa activists to their area.

In Payette County, Idaho — a rural county of 24,000 — the calls started early Monday morning after one Facebook user said the sheriff had spotted antifa rioters in the area. The calls didn’t taper off until the sheriff’s office debunked the rumor on Facebook.

“It’s really a small community, where our citizens know us pretty well,” said Payette County Sheriff Lt. Andy Creech. “When the post got out there, we started getting phone calls directly.”

Meanwhile, Facebook users were also warning their friends to stay clear of a shopping center in a New Jersey suburb, saying it would be the center of antifa destruction on Tuesday.

But police had “no credible information” that antifa would be present in the area, Toms River Police Department media specialist Jillian Messina said in an email. The police aren’t aware of anyone showing up at all, she added.

Identical Facebook and Twitter posts about busloads of antifa protesters also stumped the Sioux Falls Police Department, where officers in the South Dakota city said they didn’t see any unusual bus activity in town. But the claims still spread for days ahead of a planned protest this Saturday, said Sam Clemens, a public information officer for the department.

“Everyone heard there were going to be buses of people,” Clemens said. “It was very specific: there were three busloads.”

Even the owner of a Michigan limousine business was forced to refute online rumors when two of his buses became the center of a conspiracy theory that liberal financier George Soros was funneling protesters to Milan, Michigan. Social media users widely shared a manipulated photo of his white buses, edited to show the words “Soros Riot Dance squad” emblazoned on the sides.

The buses belong to Sean Duval, the owner of local transportation company Golden Limousine International, and don’t have any words printed on them.

Said Duval: “It’s frustrating when people from the outside start instigating and try to turn American against American.”

___

Associated Press writers Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, Calif., Beatrice Dupuy in New York and Ali Swenson in Seattle contributed to this report.

Pink Claps Back at All Lives Matter Instagram Commenters: 'The Epitome of White Privilege'

Pink is speaking out in support of Black Lives Matter.

© Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic Pink re-posted Billie Eilish's statement slamming the "All Lives Matter" movement

On Saturday, the "What About Us" singer, 40, re-posted a portion of Billie Eilish's powerful statement in which she slammed the “All Lives Matter” movement in wake of George Floyd's death. Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on May 25 after a white officer pinned him to the ground with a knee on his neck.


"I have an enormous platform and I try really hard to be respectful and take time to think through what I say and how I say it," Eilish's statement began. "But holy f—ing s—, I'm just gonna start talking."

"If I hear one more white person say 'aLL liVeS maTtEr' one more f—ing time, I'm gonna lose my f—ing mind," the statement continued. "Will you shut the f— up? No one is saying your life is not hard. No one is saying literally anything at all about you. All you mfs do is find a way to make everything about yourself. This is not about you. Stop making everything about you. You are not in need. You are not in danger."© Provided by People Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

When hateful messages appeared in the comments section of her post, Pink (born Alecia Moore) was quick to shut them down.

“Totally get where you’re coming from. HOWEVER, as a person with a lawyer brain, I have to say… when you single out one race and say ‘that’ race matters. You ARE implicitly saying other races don’t matter as much. It is automatically inferred,” one commenter wrote. “I believe it does this situation a disjustice [sic] by putting it in the #blacklivesmatter category. This could happen to ANY ONE OF US! THAT is the atrocity! THAT is the REAL issue. It is not about race.”

In response, Pink hit back, "You are the epitome of white privilege and the saddest part is that you don’t even hear yourself and probably never will."

RELATED: Beyoncé, Oprah and More Stars Share Powerful Messages as Protests Erupt Over George Floyd's Death

When another person wrote, "All Business Owners Life's Matter too," she replied, "So you can't read."

“There are NO white people in need!!! I get it… but come on… dont’ just rattle off nonsense,” yet another wrote, to which Pink quipped, "I would need you to make sense in order to respond."

Along with Eilish's statement, Pink has also been re-posting messages about Floyd's death shared by stars like Ellen Pompeo, Alyssa Milano, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis on Instagram.

Pink is just one of the many celebrities using their platforms to decry the killing of Floyd. Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Jamie Foxx, Selena Gomez, Bella Hadid and Kim Kardashian West all made statements after a video released last week showed a Minneapolis police officer, who has since been identified as Derek Chauvin, placing his knee firmly on the back of Floyd's neck next to a patrol car.

In the footage, Floyd can be heard groaning in pain while bystanders plead with Chauvin to be more gentle. Three other police officers were also present for the incident which resulted in Floyd's death.

Chauvin was fired from his post and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced on Friday. The third-degree murder charge carries a maximum of 25 years in prison, according to Minnesota's criminal code.

The cases of three other police officers present at the time of Floyd's death are still under investigation, Freeman said, but he added, "I anticipate charges" against the three officers.

Freeman also said that more charges against Chauvin are possible.

Floyd's death has caused widespread outrage and protests against racial injustice and police brutality in Minneapolis, as well as other major U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit. At times, the encounters between the protestors and police have turned violent.

HOW DID BIDEN'S STATE DO?
Negotiations, restraint, little intervention: How police responded to Wilmington protest, riot

Jeanne Kuang and Karl Baker, Delaware News Journal June 2, 2020

Several protest leaders in Wilmington said face-to-face negotiations with police on Saturday helped keep the situation from escalating into violence on either side until nightfall, when the peaceful protest eventually morphed into one punctuated by looting in the city's downtown.

Across the nation, protests in response to George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police have been followed by chaotic confrontations between protesters and police and in many cases, deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets.

In Wilmington, it didn't come to that. Police were largely restrained — day and night.

Protesters said police allowed them to control their own crowd for most of the day and negotiate an end to more heated confrontations.

Shaheed Banks, who said he's been treated poorly by police in the past, spoke at the initial rally at Rodney Square. Afterward, as he helped lead the crowd on a march to the Wilmington Police Department headquarters, he found police flexible.

"An officer told us, 'Sir, I'm taking your lead,'" Banks said. "And I respect that. They actually let us protest and let us police ourselves."

Banks, along with protesters Keith James and Hyland Henry, said they worked alongside police to de-escalate conflict when some threw rocks, argued with officers and smashed a police car.

Wilmington Police Chief Robert Tracy, right, speaks with protesters in front of the Wilmington Police Department Saturday, May 30, 2020. (Photo: Jerry Habraken, Delaware News Journal)

BACKGROUND: 'Not just a black thing anymore:' Wilmington protesters demand justice for George Floyd

When a handful of protesters were detained by police at the station, demonstrators negotiated for their release. When police were concerned about growing tension, they allowed Henry onto the station's roof to address the crowd.

"They said they don't want this to escalate and we need to move," he said. "I said, 'If you let me talk, I can move the people.'"

He then helped lead the crowd toward the Riverfront and I-95.

Wilmington Police Chief Robert Tracy did not make himself available for an interview about the police's handling of the day and night's protests, despite multiple requests made through Mayor Mike Purzycki's office.


Gov. John Carney in an interview with Delaware Online/The News Journal on Monday said Wilmington officers were asked to be restrained, "to not get sucked into" what he said were out-of-state activists' ploys to provoke police retaliation. Carney did not provide evidence for that claim, citing unspecified "police intelligence."

THE MYTH OF THE 
OUTSIDERS: Carney says Wilmington protesters inciting violence 'were not from here,' gives few detailsEdward Maguire, an Arizona State University criminologist who studies police responses to protests, said communication with influential protest figures is a sign of "a real success."

"There are always people who are perceived as influential by the crowd and those are the people who police should be having conversations with them, asking them what they want and approaching them from the perspective of facilitation rather than control," Maguire said.


Keep up with Wilmington news: Subscribe to Delaware Online for access to stories about life in Delaware's largest city.

The Wilmington crowd was next met on the highway by a row of Delaware State Police patrol cars and troopers holding long guns, which Hyland, a protester, criticized as inappropriate in front of peaceful protesters who kneeled on the highway.
Despite moments of tension during that impasse, James said he and others had peaceful exchanges with the troopers, asking police to denounce the Floyd killing and put the guns away in exchange for the crowd to leave.

Members of the Delaware State Police remove their guns and put them away after negotiating with protesters on I-95 Saturday, May 30, 2020, in Wilmington. (Photo: Jerry Habraken, Delaware News Journal)

James, who is running for state representative in the 10th District, and others led the crowd back to the police station, where they had a similar exchange with Tracy and Purzycki.

"Then we left from there, as we said we would," he said.

From there, some of those group leaders, including Henry, went home.

But crowds moved to downtown Wilmington's Market Street, where the demonstration took a turn. Some protesters began shattering windows. Others decried it.

Wilmington police showed up in riot gear, which some in the crowd said would inflame the situation.

Dover protesters peacefully march, rally downtown Monday afternoon

BLM BLACK LIVES MATTER IS NOW A MASS MOVEMENT, NO LONGER SO CALLED 'FRINGE RADICALS'

IN PART THANKS TO COVID-19, A LOCKDOWN AND A SMARTPHONE VIDEO

AND THE OUTRAGE NOT JUST OF THE BLACK COMMUNITIES BUT THE WHITE ALLIES AS WELL, WHITE LIBERALS RADICALIZED ONCE AGAIN AGAINST 

POLICE BRUTALITY

LIKE IN JOE BIDENS DELAWARE

32 PHOTOS June 2, 2020

A group of about 50 protesters held a peaceful protest in Dover Monday afternoon. The gathering began with the group lying down on Legislative Mall for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the reported time that a Minneapolis police officer held George Floyd to the ground while pressing a knee into his neck. At 1 p.m., the protesters began to march down Loockerman Street and continued to rally in the downtown area for the next couple hours.
EMILY LYTLE, DOVER POST

.

Live Updates: US Lawmaker Questions Secret Service's Alleged Role in Tear Gassing Protesters Near WH

© Sputnik / Artur Gabdrahmanov
US 02.06.2020


Mass protests across the United States erupted against police brutality and racism on 25 May, after George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old African American man, died in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis. Some protests have turned into violent riots that include arson and widespread looting.

The US is preparing for another wave of anti-racism protests over Floyd's death as the states of California, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and the District of Columbia have already mobilised National Guard troops to disperse protesters and help local law enforcement officers ensure security. Several Democratic governors, however, have pushed back against Trump's threat to deploy the military.

US President Donald Trump stated earlier he is taking presidential action to mobilise all available federal resources to respond to the ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd including the deployment of thousands of armed troops to quell riots in the nation's capital.

Speaking at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, Trump said the death of George Floyd was a grave tragedy but warned against surrendering to hostility. Trump stressed that every US citizen has the right to be safe in their workplace, home, and city streets.

On 25 May, the 46-year-old Floyd, an African American, died in Minneapolis police custody after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for at least eight minutes. Video evidence surfaced the following day which has sparked nationwide protests many of which have led to violence and rioting.

THE WASHINGTON POLICE SHOULD BE DIRECTED BY THE MAYOR TO STAND BETWEEN PROTESTERS AND TRUMP'S MILITIAS TO SERVE AND PROTECT THE PEOPLE AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT 

HONG KONG OR WASHINGTON

Trump’s fossil fuel agenda gets pushback from federal judges

By MATTHEW BROWN May 28, 2020

This Dec. 22, 2018, file photo shows a pump jack over an oil well along Interstate 25 near Dacono, Colo. Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands.

Judges have ruled administration officials ignored or downplayed potential environmental damage in lawsuits over oil and gas leases, coal mining and pipelines to transport fuels across the U.S., according to an Associated Press review of more than a dozen major environmental cases.

The latest ruling against the administration came Thursday when an appeals court refused to revive a permitting program for oil and gas pipelines that a lower court had canceled.

Actions taken by the courts have ranged from orders for more environmental analysis to the unprecedented cancellation of oil and gas leases across hundreds of thousands of acres in Western states.

In this April 13, 2020, photo provided by TC Energy, construction contractors for TC Energy are seen installing a section of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline at the U.S.-Canada border north of Glasgow, Mont. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris has struck down a nationwide permitting program for new oil and gas pipelines in a lawsuit against the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada. (TC Energy via AP)

“Many of the decisions the Trump administration has been making are arguably illegal and in some cases blatantly so,” said Mark Squillace, associate dean at the University of Colorado Law School and a specialist in natural resources law. “They’ve lost a lot of cases.”

Some of the most far-reaching rulings have come from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, an appointee of former President Barack Obama posted in Montana.

This month alone Morris canceled energy leases on several hundred thousand acres in cases that centered on potential harm to water supplies and greater sage grouse, a declining species. He also struck down the nationwide permitting program for new oil and gas pipelines in a lawsuit against the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada.

The The rulings brought cheers from environmentalists who have looked to the judiciary to check Trump’s ambitions. But Morris was denounced by oil and gas industry representatives and allies in Congress as an “activist judge” inserting his own agenda into cases.


In this April 13, 2020, photo provided by TC Energy, a pipe storage yard with material for construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline is seen at a staging area along the U.S.-Canada border north of Glasgow, Mont. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris has struck down a nationwide permitting program for new oil and gas pipelines in a lawsuit against the controversial Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada. (TC Energy via AP)

The ire directed at Morris, a former clerk for the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, appears to be politically driven, legal analysts said. Federal judges in other states — including appointees of both Democratic and Republican administrations — have also ruled against Trump.

— In California, Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, an appointee of George H.W. Bush, struck down the administration’s attempt to repeal a rule meant to ensure companies pay fair value for oil, coal and other natural resources from public lands.

—In Colorado, Judge Lewis Babcock, a Ronald Reagan appointee, sided with conservation groups and said the administration’s review of 171 proposed natural gas wells didn’t look closely enough at the cumulative effect of drilling on climate change and the area’s mule deer and elk populations.

—In Idaho, a magistrate judge canceled more than $125 million in oil and gas leases on public lands that are home to sage grouse, after determining the Trump administration illegally curtailed public comment.


In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a mining dumper truck hauls coal at Cloud Peak Energy's Spring Creek strip mine near Decker, Mont. Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

Administration officials said the courtroom setbacks had not stopped them from paring back burdensome regulations to create jobs and save taxpayer money while still upholding environmental protections and public health.

“It is hardly surprising that these frequent-filer litigants can sometimes find forums to temporarily slow administrative actions,” Interior press secretary Ben Goldey said.

Kathleen Sgamma with the Western Energy Alliance, which lobbies for oil and gas companies, said a better measure of the administration’s success is the growth in U.S. energy production under Trump. The U.S. overtook Saudi Arabia in 2018 to become the world’s largest oil producer.

“The big picture is the administration’s ’energy dominance’ agenda has been hugely successful,” Sgamma said. Trump deserves praise for recognizing that regulations hampered the industry’s growth and needed to be eased, she said.

In the Keystone XL case, Morris ruled the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had never justified use of a blanket environmental permit for construction of oil and gas pipelines through wetlands, streams and other waters. The Army Corps suspended the permitting program, affecting thousands of projects.

U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, a Montana Republican, called the ruling “a massive overreach by an activist judge” that went beyond the court’s authority.

Government attorneys filed an emergency appeal to block Morris’ ruling, but the rejection of it Thursday by a two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means the issue could drag out for months before a final decision.

A longtime colleague of Morris who served with him on Montana’s Supreme Court said his detractors should look more closely at his record.

“He follows the rule of law,” said retired Justice Mike Wheat.

Attorneys who sue on behalf of environmental groups have long sought out venues they believe favorable, but it hasn’t always worked out.

In March, an Obama-appointed judge in California upheld the Trump administration’s repeal of a 2015 rule regulating hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for oil and gas.

Last week, on the same day Morris canceled oil and gas leases on more than 300,000 acres of public lands in Montana and Wyoming, he ruled for the administration in a coal mining case brought by environmentalists and the Democratic attorneys general of California, New York, New Mexico and Washington.

The judge had initially ruled against the administration and said its lifting of an Obama-era moratorium on coal sales was flawed. But he accepted Interior’s subsequent justification that the move had a negligible impact on climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

That case illustrates a growing frustration among environmental activists: While judges have ruled against Trump on climate change and other issues, that hasn’t stopped the administration from issuing flawed or incomplete environmental analyses then pushing forward until challenged in court again.

“It’s like they are creating a whack-a-mole game that we have to play,” said Jeremy Nichols with Wildearth Guardians.

__

Follow Matthew Brown on twitter: @MatthewBrownAP