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      Judge Orders Rail Operator to Pay $400 Million to Tribe for Trespassing

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      BNSF Railway broke its agreement with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community when it ran hundreds of train cars a week containing crude oil through the tribe’s land in Washington State, according to a federal judge.A judge has ordered a railway company to pay nearly $400 million for trespassing on Native American land by far exceeding the number of train cars carrying crude oil that it was allowed to run through a tribe’s land, according to documents filed Monday in federal court in Washington State.According to the documents, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the company, BNSF Railway — which operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America — committed “willful, conscious and knowing trespass” when it ran several 100-car trains carrying crude oil every week through the Swinomish Reservation, which spans about 15 square miles on Fidalgo Island in the western part of the state.Under an agreement between the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and the rail company, one eastern-bound train, and one western-bound train, of 25 cars or less, were allowed to pass through the tribe’s land each day. But from September 2012 to May 2021, BNSF exceeded that allowance, with at least six 100-car trains traveling in each direction per week, according to a 2015 lawsuit filed by the tribe.Each week, the trains passed through the far north end of the tribe’s land, near a casino, gas station, convenience store and R.V. park, lawyers for the tribe said in the suit. They noted that crude oil, notoriously dangerous cargo, had resulted in derailments, deadly explosions and spills, as well as environmental contamination. BNSF ignored repeated demands by the tribe to cease its “unauthorized use,” according to the suit, and said it would continue running the same number of trains through Swinomish land. In a trial earlier this month, it was determined that the rail company had “breached the contractual obligations” of its agreement with the tribe, and that it should be stripped of the net profits gained through its unauthorized use of Swinomish land, Judge Robert S. Lasnik said in court documents that were filed Monday.In an email on Monday, BNSF refused to comment on the case, and lawyers representing the company did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Steve Edwards, the chairman of the tribe, said in a statement on Monday that the group was thankful that Judge Lasnik had ruled in its favor. He noted that the large sum the judge had ordered the rail company to pay reflected the “enormous wrongful profits that BNSF gained by using the tribe’s land day after day, week after week, year after year over our objections.”“This land is what we have,” Mr. Edwards said. “We have always protected it, and we always will.” More

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      A Lesson From Covid on How to Destroy Public Trust

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      Big chunks of the history of the Covid pandemic were rewritten over the last month or so in a way that will have terrible consequences for many years to come.Under questioning by a congressional subcommittee, top officials from the National Institutes of Health, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged that some key parts of the public health guidance their agencies promoted during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic were not backed up by solid science. What’s more, inconvenient information was kept from the public — suppressed, denied or disparaged as crackpot nonsense.Remember the rule that we should all stay at least six feet apart? “It sort of just appeared,” Fauci said during a preliminary interview for the subcommittee hearing, adding that he “was not aware of any studies” that supported it. Remember the insistence that the virus was primarily spread by droplets that quickly fell to the floor? During his recent public hearing, he acknowledged that to the contrary, the virus is airborne.As for the repeated assertion that Covid originated in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China, not in an infectious diseases laboratory there, N.I.H. officials were privately expressing alarm over that lab’s lax biosafety practices and risky research. In his public testimony, Fauci conceded that even now there “has not been definitive proof one way or the other” of Covid-19’s origins.Officials didn’t just spread these dubious ideas, they also demeaned anyone who dared to question them. “Dr. Fauci Throws Cold Water on Conspiracy Theory That Coronavirus Was Created in a Chinese Lab” was one typical headline. At the hearings, it emerged that Dr. David Morens, a senior N.I.H. figure, was deleting emails that discussed pandemic origins and using his personal account so as to avoid public oversight. “We’re all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them,” he wrote to the head of a nonprofit involved in research at the Wuhan lab.I wish I could say these were all just examples of the science evolving in real time, but they actually demonstrate obstinacy, arrogance and cowardice. Instead of circling the wagons, these officials should have been responsibly and transparently informing the public to the best of their knowledge and abilities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Electric Car Batteries Might Aid the Grid (and Win Over Drivers)

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      Automakers are exploring energy storage as a way to help utilities and save customers money, turning an expensive component into an industry asset.Electric cars are more expensive than gasoline models largely because batteries cost so much. But new technology could turn those pricey devices into an asset, giving owners benefits like reduced utility bills, lower lease payments or free parking.Ford Motor, General Motors, BMW and other automakers are exploring how electric-car batteries could be used to store excess renewable energy to help utilities deal with fluctuations in supply and demand for power. Automakers would make money by serving as intermediaries between car owners and power suppliers.Millions of cars could be thought of as a huge energy system that, for the first time, will be connected to another enormous energy system, the electrical grid, said Matthias Preindl, an associate professor of power electronic systems at Columbia University.“We’re just at the starting point,” Dr. Preindl said. “They will interact more in the future, and they can potentially support one another — or stress one another.”A large flat screen on the wall of the Munich offices of the Mobility House, a firm whose investors include Mercedes-Benz and Renault, illustrates one way that carmakers could profit while helping to stabilize the grid.The graphs and numbers on the screen provide a real-time picture of a European energy market where investors and utilities buy and sell electricity. The price changes from minute to minute as supply and demand surge or ebb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      San Diego Is Once Again a Top Migrant Entry Point

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      Asylum seekers from around the world are trying to enter the United States through California, and immigrant traffic there has reached its highest level in decades.From sunrise to sunset, the U.S. Border Patrol buses arrived every hour at a sunbaked parking lot in San Diego.Dozens of migrants stepped outside each time, many seeming to be confused about what was happening at this trolley hub on a recent weekend. There were no local officials to answer questions. No services. And few ways to reach their next destination in the United States.For the first time in 25 years, the San Diego region has become a top destination for migrants along the southern United States border, surpassing the number of illegal crossings at areas in Arizona and Texas for several weeks this year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.It has been a surprising turn for a border spot that was the focal point of the bitter national debate over immigration decades ago, before falling out of the spotlight as migrant flows shifted eastward. The recent surge in San Diego has been overwhelming enough that a government-funded welcome center exhausted its budget and had to close in February. Since then, the United States Border Patrol has bused migrants to a trolley center and sent them on their way.After being dropped off at the Iris Avenue Transit Center, many of the migrants head to the San Diego International Airport or find shelter provided by churches or nonprofit organizations in the San Diego area.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate With Many Americans

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      As the 2024 presidential election ramps up, here is what polls say about public views on the growing number of migrants.Former President Donald J. Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats. As many as 1.3 million people were expelled, mostly Mexican and Mexican American workers, some of whom were U.S. citizens. Critical to the initiative — named Operation Wetback, for the racial slur — was intense anti-immigrant sentiment. Officials at the time used that sentiment to justify family separations and overcrowded and unsanitary detention conditions — practices that the Trump administration would deploy decades later in its own immigration enforcement.As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some Latino advocacy and immigrant-rights groups are sounding the alarm that Mr. Trump’s tactics could amount to a repetition of a sordid chapter of American history. But recent polling shows that Mr. Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January. Authorities have reported record numbers of migrant apprehensions at the southern border for three straight years, including 2.4 million apprehensions in the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. Although the numbers have dropped sharply in recent months, immigration remains an albatross for President Biden: Even some Democratic mayors have complained that they need help from the federal government to contend with the migrant populations in their cities.Americans’ views on immigration are complex and constantly changing. Here is a snapshot of where public attitudes on immigration stand now.Public support for more immigration has ebbed after rising under Trump.Mr. Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration, both legal and illegal, helped push Americans of various political stripes to support more permissive policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump, culpable

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      [Ahora también estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos]El jueves, en un humilde juzgado del Bajo Manhattan, el expresidente y actual abanderado republicano fue declarado culpable de 34 delitos graves de falsificación de registros comerciales. La decisión del jurado, y los hechos presentados en el juicio, ofrecen otro recordatorio —quizás el más crudo hasta la fecha— de las muchas razones por las que Donald Trump no es apto para ocupar el cargo.El veredicto de culpabilidad en el caso del pago a cambio de silencio del expresidente fue emitido por un jurado unánime de 12 neoyorquinos elegidos al azar, que consideró que Trump, el muy posible candidato a la presidencia por el Partido Republicano, era culpable de falsificar registros comerciales para evitar que los votantes se enteraran de un encuentro sexual que él creía que habría sido políticamente perjudicial.Los estadounidenses pueden preguntarse sobre la importancia de este momento. La Constitución no prohíbe que las personas con una condena penal sean elegidas o ejerzan de comandante en jefe, aunque estén tras las rejas. Los fundadores de la nación dejaron esa decisión en manos de los votantes. Muchos expertos también han expresado su escepticismo sobre la importancia de este caso y sus fundamentos jurídicos, que se basó en una teoría legal inusual para buscar un cargo de delito grave por lo que es más comúnmente un delito menor, y Trump sin duda buscará una apelación.Sin embargo, lo mejor de este caso sórdido es la prueba de que el imperio de la ley obliga a todos, incluso a los expresidentes. En circunstancias extraordinarias, el juicio se desarrolló como cualquier otro juicio penal en la ciudad. El hecho de que 12 estadounidenses pudieran juzgar al expresidente y posible futuro presidente es una muestra notable de los principios democráticos que los estadounidenses aprecian.El juez Juan Merchan, el jurado y el sistema judicial neoyorquino impartieron justicia con celeridad, proporcionando a los estadounidenses información vital sobre un candidato presidencial antes de que comience la votación. Varias encuestas han demostrado que la condena afectará la decisión de muchos votantes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I.M.F. Is Upbeat on China’s Growth but Questions Industrial Policy

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      Surging exports and factory investment are buoying China’s output, but the housing market faces serious troubles and industrial policies may hurt other countries.Responding to China’s surging exports and extensive investments in new factories, the International Monetary Fund made sizable increases on Wednesday in how much it believes China’s economy will grow this year and next.The I.M.F. now estimates that China will grow 5 percent this year and 4.5 percent in 2025. That is 0.4 percentage points more for each year compared with the fund’s predictions just six weeks ago.China’s gross domestic output expanded 5.2 percent last year as the economy rebounded following nearly three years of stringent pandemic policies that included numerous municipal lockdowns and mandatory quarantines. Many economists, including at the I.M.F., had anticipated that growth would falter this year because of a severe contraction of China’s housing market and a slowdown in domestic spending.Yet while property prices continued to fall and retail sales grew sluggishly, China’s economy powered ahead instead in the first three months of this year, expanding at an annual rate of about 6.6 percent because of booming exports and strong factory investments.The Chinese government is taking steps to address the housing crash, but it faces enormous challenges. Years of overbuilding have resulted in four million new but unsold apartments and, by one conservative estimate, as many as 10 million that developers have sold but not finished building.Many owners of vacant apartments now find themselves facing years of hefty mortgage payments but little chance the apartments will appreciate significantly in value.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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      The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More