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A dangerous moment at Standing Rock.

This is Trahant Reports.

A line of trucks and commercial vehicles on North Dakota’s Highway 6 Saturday was a speeding train. One vehicle after another. Traveling too fast and too close. Then, still on track, the entire train turned left and began racing down a rural dirt road.

This is where the Dakota Access Pipeline is on a speedy timetable. As the company has testified in court it wants the 1,170 mile, $3.8 billion project up and running by January 1, 2017.

Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and several hundred people camped nearby are determined to slow down that train, protect the waters of the Missouri River, and ultimately, help the country begin the most important conversation of this era about energy, climate and survival.

And North Dakota is acting as the trustee for the company, using what it considers the powers of state, to make this project so.

How far will North Dakota go?

Look at where it has been. The state has been an ally instead of a referee. Helping to craft a regulatory approach that avoided regulation. There is this crazy notion that the company did everything it was supposed to do so leave them alone. Yah. Because the plan was to avoid pesky regulation. It’s so much more efficient to be governed by official winks instead of an Environmental Impact Statement.

How far will North Dakota go?

They’ve already tried intimidation, humiliation, and the number of arrests are increasing. Pick on protectors, elders, journalists, famous people, anyone who could make the state appear potent. The latest action is a road block on a state highway and the reclaiming of land that the tribe retained in its Treaty.

Action. Reaction. The idea of civil disobedience is that there are unjust laws (or in this case, rigged laws) and there are people willing go to jail to highlight that injustice. The state lost its moral claim when it moved the pipeline route away from its own capital city to near the Standing Rock Nation.

Again, the question is, how far will North Dakota go?

Is the state ready to arrest hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And then what? The illogical conclusion to that question is too terrible to think about.

Yesterday a call went out from the camps for more people. People who, as Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, are willing to get arrested. People who will interrupt their lives so that this pipeline will go no further. It’s a call to a higher law than the one that’s codified by North Dakota. And for every water protector arrested, there will always be someone else ready to be next.

How far will North Dakota go? The military-style law enforcement base at Fort Rice sends its message: Whatever it takes. And, yes, that’s frightening.

Except. There is an antidote to those fears. It’s found among the people at the Standing Rock camps who continue to use prayer as their status quo.

I am Mark Trahant

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Let’s start with the big picture. Donald Trump’s recorded revelation of felony intent — and yes, it’s that serious — ought to disqualify him from the presidency. This is Trahant Reports.

During a debate Sunday night, Trump apologized. Deflected and at one point tried to pivot and make the conversation about ISIS. Of course the problem is, there is no excuse for Trump’s recorded words. He was off camera at the time and it was more than ten years ago. But let’s be clear, we are not talking about lewd behavior, consensual relationships, or being boorish. Trump said he can engage in criminal behavior. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he said. “You can do anything.”

So in the days that followed, we’ve seen dozens of elected Republicans disinvite Trump from events (as is the case with Paul Ryan) and others reverse their endorsement (as happened in Utah, Arizona and New Hampshire) along with calls for Trump to drop out of the race. This is unprecedented and expected. We knew this was Donald J. Trump. This tape is only conformation.

Denise Juneau, who’s running for Montana’s only House seat, called on her opponent Rep. Ryan Zinke to withdraw his endorsement of Trump. “Donald Trump has shown his complete disrespect for women since the beginning of his campaign, but that didn’t stop Congressman Zinke from backing him from day one,” Juneau said in a news release. Montana’s 500,000 mothers, daughters and sisters are watching.”

Watch how this discourse plays out in every congressional race in the country, including the five seats where Native Americans are on ballot.

Of course most politicians will try to talk about something else. North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer would prefer to talk about energy policy. Cramer said this week that the Paris Agreement on climate change is quote “unilaterally disarming the American economy at the behest of the world.” And that statement is exactly why he’s on the side of the Dakota Access Pipeline project and ready to roll over the sovereignty and legitimate concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux.

Even before the Trump tape surfaced, Cramer’s opponent Chase Iron Eyes raised some of these same issues. “Today in my debate with Kevin Cramer I said we are creating a 21st century North Dakota; a North Dakota where women can earn the same as men for the same work! Where women’s sovereignty over their own bodies must be respected,”

In Washington state, Democrat Joe Pakootas immediately denounced the Trump tape. “As a husband, father and grandparent I am appalled and sickened by the vulgar comments spoken by my opponent’s presidential candidate Donald Trump. Most Americans are outraged and disgusted by this sick behavior,” he said. Last night my opponent again expressed her unwavering support for Mr. Trump. He is not fit to be president & anyone who endorses a man like that does not deserve another term in the United States House of Representatives.”

That last sentence sums up the debate ahead.

Trahant Reports – Dangerous Phase Begins At Standing Rock

Trahant Reports – Will Republicans Stand By Trump?