Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

PS: Do me a favor and at least click candidate diaries even if you are not going to read them! It helps in regards to search rankings if anyone happens to be googling a particular candidate, etc.

Also a big thanks to those who liveblogged the CNN ‘debate’. I was well past asleep by that point and will have to catch up later… but I’ll have plenty of articles telling us all about it before I get the chance.

CNN of course does not have the debate up on its youtube page that I can find so heres a couple bootlegs. If I missed that theres a real copy floating around somewhere… please point me in its direction!

CNN TOWN HALL DEBATE – LINDSEY GRAHAM, BILL CASSIDY VS BERNIE SANDERS, AMY KLOBUCHAR

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Part 1
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Part 4

Calls for More Relief Intensify as Puerto Rico Descends Into Humanitarian Crisis

As U.S. President Donald Trump spent his weekend demeaning professional football players for peacefully protesting racial injustice, Puerto Rico continued its descent into a full-blown humanitarian crisis following a direct hit from Hurricane Maria, which last week made landfall as a Category 4 storm, devastating the island and U.S. commonwealth.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital city, described current conditions in an interview with The Washington Post: “There is horror in the streets. There is no electricity anywhere in Puerto Rico.”

“People tell us often, ‘I don’t have my medication, I don’t have my insulin, I don’t have my blood pressure medication, I don’t have food, I don’t have drinking water,'” she continued. “The aid is pouring in, but what people need to realize is…we’re an island—everything we need comes from outside.”

At least 10 Puerto Ricans have died so far because of the storm, but with dwindling resources, that number is expected to rise.

“A damaged dam is in danger of bursting. Most buildings are damaged or destroyed. Millions are without power, and the communication network is crippled,” CNN reported on Monday, after speaking with the island’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló, who warned that “we need to prevent a humanitarian crisis occurring in America.”

Though Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is sending airplanes and ships to deliver food, water, and generators to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands affected by the recent hurricanes, Rosselló said that’s not enough.

“We need something tangible, a bill that actually answers to our need right now,” he said, calling for congressional action. “Otherwise, there will be a humanitarian crisis…. There will be a massive exodus to the United States.”

Tony Blair Says Bernie Doesn’t Have the Answers (Public Opinion Says Otherwise)

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview on The Global Politico Podcast published Monday that people should not approach U.S. President Donald Trump with “flat-out opposition” and seemed to argue that Americans should be less concerned about Trump and more concerned about the platform of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—remarks that earned him immediate derision from commentators on social media.

Critics took particular umbrage at Blair’s attempt to claim that the solutions proposed by “populist right” and the “populist left” are similarly misguided, a stance some mocked as an attempt to equate those fighting for Medicare for All with neo-Nazis.

Throughout the Politico interview, Blair, a “Third Way” centrist figure who enthusiastically supported the Iraq War, characterized the demands of the left in the U.S. and the U.K.—like free public college tuition—as little more than pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

“[Y]ou can go for what are very good-sounding things like, we’re going to abolish tuition fees, or we’re going to give you this for free, or that for free,” Blair said. “Okay, so that’s one way you can go, and it definitely, in today’s world, and in particular, in the absence of a vigorous change-making center, that’s very attractive. But I don’t think it’s the answer, and I’m not sure it would win an election.”

Sanders: America must guarantee healthcare ‘as a right for all people’

In his opening remarks during tonight’s CNN healthcare debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare by highlighting major opposition to the bill.

“Every major health association in this country, whether it is the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Cancer Society, the Alzheimer’s Society, every single major medical organization in this county think this proposal is a disaster,” Sanders said.

Sanders then said “it’s our job now is to defeat this disastrous proposal” and called for a bipartisan fix to the Affordable Care Act in the short-term

“Long term, in my view, I speak only for myself, this country has to join the rest of the civilized world and guarantee healthcare as a right for all people,” he said.

Chelsea Manning says she has been barred from entering Canada

Chelsea Manning, the former US soldier who served seven years in military prison after instigating one of the biggest breaches of classified data in US history, has said she has been barred from entering Canada.

On Monday, Manning posted on Twitter a report from the Canadian government that identified her as a foreign national “who has not been authorized to enter Canada” due to prior convictions.

“So, I guess Canada has permanently banned me?” wrote Manning – one of the most prominent whistleblowers of modern times.

The letter, addressed to the country’s minister of immigration, said Manning had attempted to enter Canada at the official border crossing near Champlain, New York, late last week.

Manning had told Canadian border officials that she had been convicted in 2013 of charges associated with the United States Espionage Act and had been released from prison in May.

The letter added that if the same offence had been carried out in Canada, it “would equate to an indictable offence, namely treason”, and could result in up to 14 years in prison. For this reason, Manning was deemed inadmissible to Canada.

National park ban saved 2m plastic bottles – and still Trump reversed it

A ban on bottled water in 23 national parks prevented up to 2m plastic bottles from being used and discarded every year, a US national park service study found. That is equivalent to up to 326 barrels of oil worth of emissions, 419 cubic yards of landfill space and 111,743lb of plastic, according to the May study.

Despite that, the Trump administration reversed the bottled water ban just three months later, a decision that horrified conservationists and pleased the bottled water industry.

“The bottled water industry has led a years-long campaign against this commonsense policy, all to protect its bottom line,” said Lauren DeRusha Florez, an associate campaign director at Corporate Accountability International.

“The fact that Trump administration officials knew the benefits of this policy back in May but still decided to rescind it last month sure looks to me like the bottled water industry’s lobbying dollars at work,” she said.

The plan to curb pollution in America’s most famous wilderness areas was spurred when arguably its most famous park, the Grand Canyon, banned the sale of plastic water bottles in its gift shops, according to the report. Approximately 331 million people visit US national parks each year.

Facebook’s underclass: as staffers enjoy lavish perks, contractors barely get by

The social network has an army of behind-the-scenes employees who can’t afford to live in an area with out-of-control housing costs

LeBron James joins NFL in hitting back at Trump: ‘The people run this country’

A day after players across the NFL defied Donald Trump with gestures of protest during the national anthem, and as the president continued to tweet his anger, a league spokesman hit back by invoking the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about sexual assault.

“Everyone should know, including the president, that this is what real locker-room talk is,” said the NFL’s Joe Lockhart, referring to Trump’s defense of a leaked tape in which he bragged about groping and kissing women without their consent.

The NBA great LeBron James also slammed Trump, telling reporters: “The people run this country, not one individual. And damn sure not him.”

Corbyn is a changed man – and he’s forging a path to power

We are the grown-ups now.” So said several speakers. In the grotesque political playground of Brexit Britain, Labour has indeed become the nation’s adults, the sensibles, the party least likely to wreck the country’s future. How short a time ago Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were regarded as delinquent adolescents who had never grown out of the 1970s. They may be the masters soon.

What a transformation. Remember how early in the general election campaign they fell 11 points behind in dismal local council results? Whatever Labour leaders say sourly now to those of us who feared the worst, waiting for that exit poll in June they too were braced for heavy losses, never expecting a crushing humiliation for Theresa May.

Bali volcano eruption could be hours away after unprecedented seismic activity

Mount Agung in Bali is experiencing unprecedented levels of seismic activity and could erupt in a “matter of hours” if tremors continue, Indonesia’s volcanology centre has said.

More than 75,000 people have been evacuated in the last few days as Agung, the highest point of the island, has experienced hundreds of internal volcanic earthquakes.

“Instrumentally we have never recorded such high energy or seismicity from Mount Agung,” Devy Kamil Syahbana, a seismologist from Indonesia’s centre for volcanology and geological hazard mitigation, told the Guardian.

Data showed that Mount Agung experienced 844 volcanic earthquakes on Monday, and 300 to 400 earthquakes by midday on Tuesday, he said. “We need to pay attention because these kinds of earthquakes indicate the movement of magma and increase the probability of an eruption.”

Why Donald Trump Attacked the NFL Players Who Take a Knee

He’s stoking racial divisions in order to maintain a grip on a Senate seat that Democrats are surprisingly competitive for.

Natural Disasters Are on the Rise. Maybe the Government Should Actually Study Them.

The commissions are coming. Hurricane season hasn’t ended, but forensics waits for no one, so the after-action reports on Harvey and Irma have to get started. The relevant agencies—local and perhaps federal, plus maybe some national academies and disaster responders—will all no doubt look at themselves and others to see what went right or wrong. Was Houston right not to evacuate? Was Florida right to evacuate? What led to Florida’s electrical outage? Is Houston’s flood control infrastructure tough enough to withstand climate-change-powered storm surges?

That’s as it should be. The science of disaster prediction and response gets only a few laboratories a year, and extracting lessons from them is a big job. Big enough, in fact, that the sheer number of reports can mean those lessons get lost. So Scott Knowles, a historian at Drexel University who studies disasters, has an idea: a federal agency whose job it is to centrally organize that detective work and get the word out. A National Disaster Investigation Board.

Stipulated, this idea would be a tough sell even if the Trump administration wasn’t anti-agency and anti-regulation. But just playing with the notion says something about what people do and don’t learn from disasters. “It’s an index of what a total nerd I am that this is a thrilling idea,” Knowles says. “We have all these agencies that we spend a fair amount of money on that do this work, but what’s missing is a technically sophisticated cop who can come in and say, ‘This worked, this didn’t, this was a repeat, this is an area for research.’ And then put a report out and have it be interesting, so there’s press.”

As a model, Knowles cites agencies like the National Transportation Safety Board, but also pop-up commissions like the one after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, or the 9/11 Commission. Both were riveting

Clinton calls use of private email by Trump administration ‘height of hypocrisy’

Reports that several current and former top White House staff members, including Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon used their private email accounts for official business puts on display the “rank hypocrisy” of the Trump administration, Hillary Clinton said Monday night.

Clinton, the former Democratic presidential candidate, was attacked regularly on the campaign trail for her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. President Donald Trump frequently used the email server issue as a brush with which to paint Clinton as dishonest and opaque.

“The hypocrisy of this administration, who knew there was no real scandal, who knew that there was no basis for all their hyperventilating. Republican members of Congress who politicized the deaths in Benghazi,” Clinton told SiriusXM radio Monday in an interview picked up by The Huffington Post. “No, we’re finding with the latest revelations ― they didn’t mean any of it. It’s just the height of hypocrisy.”

Native tribes deserve respect for work on the Bears Ears Monument

For decades before President Obama proclaimed the Bears Ears National Monument, the Navajo Nation and other local native nations fought to protect the area because of its importance to our cultures, religions and histories. Beginning in 2010, when the possibility of a national monument became real, the Navajo Nation, in alliance with the Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain Tribe and Ute Indian Tribe, engaged in six intensive years of comprehensive research to identify the proper boundaries of a monument that would protect the resources that matter so much to us. Throughout this process, we participated in intergovernmental negotiations, both amongst our nations and with the local, state and federal government.

In the end, the Obama administration designated a smaller area than our nations asked to be protected. But to the Administration’s credit, it incorporated the collaborative management model that our nations painstakingly designed by writing it into the proclamation creating the Bears Ears National Monument. In this model, the Bears Ears Commission, which consists of officials formally appointed by our tribal governments, will partner with federal agencies to ensure management of the monument in a manner that appropriately honors our ancestors whose presence remains upon those lands, our deities who reside there, the medicine of the place, and the continuation of our cultures and religions into the future.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and other Utah officials have made public statements suggesting that the Bears Ears Commission provides an inadequate form of tribal management. Yet our five tribes designed the commission, and we are more than satisfied with what it provides for. The only inadequacy with the commission flows from Zinke’s direction to our federal agency partners to ignore our commissioners and to otherwise block the good work that our commissioners must do to adequately protect the thousands upon thousands of ancient villages, granaries, potsherds, bones, fossils and other “objects” with which the monument lands teem.

Brown U. and Native American Tribe End Standoff Over Land

Brown University and members of a group that identifies as Native American have reached an agreement concerning 375 acres of university land on which the group had encamped, Brown said on Monday in a news release.

The Native American group, the Pokanoket tribe, set up camp on the land, in Bristol, R.I., on August 20. The tribe asserted that the land belonged to the Pokanoket people by ancestral right.

Later members of a faculty committee in Brown’s program in Native American and indigenous studies issued a statement that outlined, among other things, the difference between a group that has an indigenous background and a federally recognized tribe. The committee members drew criticism for describing the Pokanokets’ history and how the group is not federally recognized.

Now the university and the Pokanoket tribe members have signed an agreement that will transfer part of Brown’s Bristol property into a preservation trust to “ensure the conservation of the land and sustainable access by Native tribes in the region,” the news release states.

Racism against Native Americans persists

A Rosebud Sioux woman reflects on the ways prejudice pervades Rapid City.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to host town hall in Holland

Hope College Democrats will host a gubernatorial candidate from the east side of the state.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed will pay a visit to Holland on Wednesday, September 27. The town hall will take place at Hope College’s Martha Miller Center at 7:30 p.m.

Democrat El-Sayed is currently on a statewide listening tour. According to his website, El-Sayed is a Rhodes Scholar, earning a doctorate from Oxford University and a medical degree from Columbia University.

Poll: Crowded Democratic primary race for Maryland governor a wide-open contest

Democrat Joe Cunningham formally launches campaign for SC-1

Democrat Joe Cunningham formally launched his campaign for South Carolina’s First Congressional District (SC-1), which is currently held by Republican Mark Sanford.

The press conference was held Monday afternoon, September 25, at the United States Customs House downtown. The Customs House is the same location that Mark Sanford launched his political career in 1994.

Cunningham highlighted how much Mark Sanford has changed since launching his campaign through life-size cardboard cutouts seen above.

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Charleston, S.C. (WCIV) — Democrat Joe Cunningham formally launched his campaign for South Carolina’s First Congressional District (SC-1), which is currently held by Republican Mark Sanford.

The press conference was held Monday afternoon, September 25, at the United States Customs House downtown. The Customs House is the same location that Mark Sanford launched his political career in 1994.

Cunningham highlighted how much Mark Sanford has changed since launching his campaign through life-size cardboard cutouts seen above.

“Twenty-three years ago, a man stood right here at the Customs House to say the problem with Washington DC is too many career politicians spending too much of our tax dollars because they were influenced by too much special interest PAC money,” said Cunningham. “And you know what? He was right. That man, nearly a quarter of a century ago, was Mark Sanford.”

“But the Mark Sanford of 1994,” Cunningham said, “isn’t the Mark Sanford of today. 1994 Mark Sanford looked you in the eye and promised to serve only 3 terms. But today’s Mark Sanford is running for his seventh term. 1994 Mark Sanford looked you in the eye and pledged not to accept a dime of special interest PAC money. But today’s Mark Sanford has pocketed over $600,000 in special interest PAC money.”

Officials say Cunningham made several promises to Lowcountry voters including that he would only serve three terms in Congress and refuse to accept special interest PAC money.

Labor Leader Runs for Iowa Governor on Progressive Populism

Not too long ago, Iowa was a tenuously blue state. From 2007 to 2010, Democrats had unilateral control of the state government, and Iowans voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012 by substantial margins. But the tide has quickly turned, thanks to the Tea Party wave and well-funded right-wing groups’ investment in Iowa politics.

The fruits of that political investment have been many. From an all-out attack on the state’s labor laws to steep spending cuts and the privatization of the state Medicaid program, Democrats are scrambling to win back the legislature, and a broad field of Democratic contenders have their eyes on the governorship. One of those contenders is Cathy Glasson, a state labor leader who believes Democrats can once again win in the state by embracing a bold progressive platform.

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On the heels of a statewide “listening tour,” Glasson launched her campaign on a platform of unabashed progressive populism, including a statewide $15-an-hour minimum wage, restoration and expansion of union rights, tuition-free community college, and the repeal of costly corporate tax breaks. “If we talk to Iowans about the bread-and-butter issues they care about, which is making a decent living, paying their bills, not going broke sending kids to college, and having health care that won’t bankrupt you, those will resonate with any Iowan who cares about families and the future of the state.”

Glasson’s campaign comes at a time when Iowa Democrats, along with Democrats across the country, are lost in the wilderness, having seen their state-level power diminished to near unprecedented levels. There’s a fervent debate among the party’s various factions about what lessons should be learned from the 2016 elections and about how the party should win its way back to power. Some say the party needs to make a few adjustments in its messaging and better cater to different parts of the electorate; others say it’s time for a comprehensive embrace of big, bold politics that throw the old Democratic playbook out the window.

Glasson helped lead SEIU’s robust political efforts supporting Hillary Clinton, whom the union endorsed early on, in the close Iowa Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders. Now, her campaign reflects the aspirational agenda that Sanders ran on in his presidential bid, which has since pulled the national party leftward.

Jaffe Against Pelosi

OOne thing that is going on throughout the United States: progressive candidates are challenging incumbent Democrats. Paula Swearengin is challenging Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for his Senate seat.

WeWillReplaceYou.com is planning to fund challengers to incumbents. Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, made up of groups of one-time aides to Bernie Sanders, are moving to organize challenges to incumbents.

What promises to be a really interesting fight will pit Nancy Pelosi against challenger Stephen Jaffe. “The 71-year-old employment attorney, a political novice, was one of many Democrats swept up in the fist-shaking presidential crusade of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Thus inspired, he’s now fixed his sights on winning a seat in Congress.

“He hopes to knock off Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the current Democratic minority leader and a political fixture in San Francisco for nigh on 50 years.” She has represented California’s 12th District (essentially the City of San Francisco) since 1987. By the end of July 2017, she had raised over $26 million for the Democratic Party. She had over $2 million in cash on hand for her own campaign as of June 30, 2017. She is the 15th wealthiest member of Congress. Roll Call estimates she has a net worth of $29.3 million. So beating her in a district that she’s owned since 1987 is going to be tough. But let’s look at reasons why he might win and she might lose.

Emily’s List continues to make awful decisions:

Democrat Lee picks up another endorsement in CD3 race

A candidate for the 3rd Congressional District backed by Nevada’s entire Democratic delegation has picked up another endorsement, this one from a pro-choice group.

Emily’s List, a group that supports pro-choice women candidates, is endorsing education advocate Susie Lee today, joining supporters including Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. Founded in 1985, Emily’s List has raised more than $500 million to support Democratic Party campaigns.

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Lee faces Democrat Jack Love in the primary race to replace Rep. Jacky Rosen, who is running against Republican Sen. Dean Heller. Love says he doesn’t have the name recognition or financial backing that Lee does, but he intends to use a grass-roots strategy and reach people through social media and knocking on doors.

Love is an insurance agent who supports Medicare for All, a cause championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He says these early endorsements in this Democratic primary remind him of early endorsements for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016.

“I haven’t seen what the important issues are to (Lee),” he said. “I have nothing bad to say about her. She seems to be well-liked and she’s a Democrat, so she must not be too bad. I’m in this to help the average person.”

Neither could I (find out what issues are important to Lee). Her websites dead (If Im looking correctly).

I did find this:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/democrat-susie-lee-to-run-for-rosens-congressional-seat/

The accelerating gridlock and division in Washington is creating a country where opportunity comes with a price tag, and the door to the American Dream for every working family is closing even further,” Lee said. “Families in Nevada deserve leaders like me who will work with a problem-solving approach and a more cooperative style that focuses on solutions.”

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Lee was encouraged by Democratic Party leaders to run for the 3rd District seat that Rosen later won. Rosen announced in June that she will seek the Senate seat currently held by Republican Dean Heller.

In terms of policy stances, Lee said she wants to attract good-paying jobs, protect families of immigrants “from being ripped apart,” and rein in prescription drug prices.

“I know that we can work together to find real solutions to the problems in our community,” Lee said.

and this in regards to her last run for office

Susie Lee’s wealth under fire in competitive Nevada congressional primary

“She has never run for office, never taken a tough vote, and frankly, doesn’t represent our values,” Arguello-Kline wrote. “She and her husband own 17 homes across the country and use their private jet to take vacations. She is an investor whose personal wealth comes from questionable investments in companies like Walmart, Halliburton and GEO Group (a for-profit prison company).”

Given the specificity of the those charges and the likelihood that Lee’s opponents will use her wealth as a negative over the next three months of campaigning, we wanted to see just how accurate the union is.

A union spokeswoman forwarded a screenshot of an excel spreadsheet listing all of the properties owned by Lee and her husband Dan, a casino company CEO.

We found the union to be correct: The couple listed 14 rentable properties in multiple states on their 60-page financial disclosure report, with a total net value between $2.2 million and $4.8 million. They also own a five-bedroom home in Las Vegas worth around $2.1 million, a vacation home in Wilson, Wyo., and another house in Las Vegas where Lee’s mother-in-law lives, according to county assessor records (personal and vacation homes aren’t required to be disclosed). That adds up to 17 properties.

Lee does indeed list several investments in companies generally seen as liberal kryptonite, including Halliburton, for-profit prison company GEO Group and Walmart.

Voting machine concerns have states eyeing return to paper ballots

When voters in Virginia head to the polls this November, they’ll be casting their ballots the old-fashioned way.

The state’s Board of Elections decided earlier this month to de-certify the widely used Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines ahead of the gubernatorial election – prompting counties and cities to replace their touchscreen machines with those that produce a paper trail.

Virginia is not alone. Several states are now considering a return to old-fashioned paper ballots or a reinforced paper trail so results can be verified, amid concerns over hacking attempts in last year’s presidential race as well as longstanding cybersecurity worries about touchscreen machines.

Our No. 1 priority is to make sure that Virginia elections are carried out in a secure and fair manner,” James Alcorn, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement, calling the move “necessary to ensure the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”

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A chief concern with Virginia’s machines was that they leave no paper trail, making voting discrepancies nearly impossible to prove. Virginia was already planning to move away from the touchscreens, but will now accelerate the shift to optical-scan ballots, in which voters fill out a paper ballot to be deposited and recorded in an electronic system.

Gee if only there had been discussion of this for years but it was brushed off as ‘CT’

Pipeline opponents sue Sunoco, alleging constitutional violations

Four opponents of the Mariner East 2 pipeline sued Sunoco Pipeline and its parent, Energy Transfer Partners, in federal court on Monday, alleging the company violated several constitutional rights when police arrested the plaintiffs on a private property in Huntingdon County.

The suit accuses Sunoco, plus a private security firm, a publicist, and 27 state and local police officers of violating constitutional protections over free speech, false arrest, malicious prosecution and equal protection when the plaintiffs were arrested on the property owned by the Gerhart family in March 2016.

The claims stem from a confrontation between the Gerharts and their supporters, and Sunoco and law-enforcement officers on March 29, 2016 when a tree-cutting crew entered an easement that the company obtained through eminent domain on the Gerharts’ land to build the pipeline.

Does Minnesota really need a new oil pipeline?

Ever since Enbridge first proposed its $7 billion Line 3 project three years ago — its largest pipeline project ever — the company has touted it as a replacement project.

The Canadian company has operated its existing, 1,000-mile Line 3 for nearly 50 years. But the pipeline is corroding, which necessitates extensive and expensive maintenance, spokeswoman Jennifer Smith said.

“The best way to keep the communities and the environment safe really is to replace it,” she said. “This is a 1960s-era pipeline. We can replace it. We’ve got newer technology on our coating, it’s stronger steel, it would be thicker steel.”

However, the state Commerce Department argues the pipeline isn’t needed. A new round of public hearings for Line 3 begins Tuesday as state regulators face the question of whether the project is necessary.

The pipeline was originally built to carry 760,000 barrels of oil a day. But the company has had to cut that nearly in half to maintain safety. The proposed new line would boost capacity back up to the original amount.

North Dakota’s bill for oil pipeline protest costs now at $39 million

North Dakota’s bill for policing protests of the Dakota Access pipeline continues to rise.

The North Dakota Emergency Commission is set to borrow an additional $5 million Monday to cover law enforcement costs. That will bring the total line of credit from the state-owned bank of North Dakota to $39 million.

State Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong says 11 states provided law enforcement help to North Dakota, and some bills are only now arriving.

Mud spill at Snitz Creek halts pipeline drilling

Constructors of the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline allowed a small amount of “drilling mud” to enter Snitz Creek last Wednesday, the second such spill in less than a month.

The spill was stopped and drilling was suspended until the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection approves a restart, according to a periodically-updated DEP list.

“Drilling mud” is a mixture of water and bentonite clay used when boring holes in the ground in areas, such as wetlands, where it would be environmentally unsuitable to dig an open trench for the pipeline. It is considered non-toxic.

However, drilling practices were blamed for clouded water or reduced water flow at several wells in Chester County in July.