Jury selection began on Monday for a lawsuit filed against Greenpeace in Morton County, North Dakota, kicking off a trial for a grievance that began nearly a decade ago. And environmentalists say the $300 million lawsuit filed by a pipeline company is an attack on First Amendment rights.

Attempt to silence a movement?
The protests at the center of the lawsuit began in 2016 after the approval of the Dakota Access pipeline. Thousands of demonstrators, staying at a camp in a remote area near the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, stood with the protesting tribes. Greenpeace showed up to assist the organizing Indigenous groups and support the Indigenous People's Power Project, a nonprofit group that "teaches protesters nonviolent direct action tactics," said Truthout. 

The pipeline received federal approval from the first Trump administration in 2017 but continues to be subject to ongoing litigation. The Dallas company Energy Transfer filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace that year, accusing the organization of inciting and orchestrating the protests. 

Energy Transfer, which operates the 1,100-mile pipeline that carries oil from western North Dakota to Illinois, alleges that Greenpeace encouraged violence to damage Energy Transfer's profits and reputation. Many environmentalists see the lawsuit as a clandestine intimidation tactic "intended to instill fear throughout the broader movement," said The Washington Post. 

Test of the First Amendment
If Greenpeace wins the lawsuit, it would cost the organization significant money for attorney fees and other costs. If the organization loses the case, it could "face financial ruin, ending over 50 years of environmental activism," said Greenpeace USA. 

If Energy Transfer wins against Greenpeace, it "would not only be devastating to Greenpeace, but it would inspire other companies to take more actions against their opponents," said Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said to the Post. "It could have a real chilling effect."

In the meantime, Greenpeace is fighting against Energy Transfer in other ways. Citing Dutch laws, Greenpeace International filed a countersuit against Energy Transfer in Amsterdam, where Greenpeace is based, to recover costs incurred during the lawsuit. The first hearing for the countersuit is set to be held this summer.

Spain has been named the world's best-performing rich economy by The Economist. "A decade after the country was written off as a basket case," the country is enjoying a "new age of prosperity," said The Times. Its GDP expanded by 3.5% in the last quarter of 2024, "outstripping official forecasts and far outperforming its eurozone peers," said Reuters. By contrast, over the same period, the U.K. economy grew by just 1.7%, France recorded 1% growth, Italy grew by only 0.6%, and Germany managed 0.1%. 

What's driving growth? 
Key to Spain's economic resurgence has been the government's "strikingly different approach to migration," said The Guardian. Unlike his fellow leaders in France, Germany, Italy and the U.K., Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has extolled the virtues of a liberal immigration policy, telling his country's parliament in October that the choice was "between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country." 

Spain's "strong export figures" and "robust consumption" have only been possible because of the "health of the country's labor market," boosted by migrants, said Euronews. Of the 468,000 jobs created last year, only 59,000 were taken by Spanish nationals, according to the country's National Statistics Institute Active Population Survey. 

What about tourism? 
At the same time, record tourism — 94 million people visited Spain last year — has helped fuel GDP growth and "represents about 13% of the economy," said The Times. Other factors behind Spain's boom include its "abundance of wind and solar renewables," which have "helped to keep energy relatively cheap while EU Covid recovery funds bolstered the economy," said The Guardian. The socialist-led government also "ran a deficit to fund initiatives, such as raising pensions and public sector hiring." 

Will the boom last? 
The country's "heavy reliance on tourism" has led to a "growing backlash against the industry by local people." There have been a series of protests by residents in urban and coastal tourist areas who believe holiday rentals and homes have pushed up the price of housing. 

And although unemployment has fallen overall, youth unemployment is above 26%, the highest rate in the EU. This is the "most worrisome part of the Spanish economy," Jordi Gual, a former chairman of CaixaBank, said to The Times.