From the New York Times:

Terry Van Housen had a question. What he wanted to know from the 30 or so other Nebraska farmers and ranchers gathered in February at the York Community Center was this: What do you do with 10,000 dead cows?

That was the number of cattle Van Housen figured could be at risk if the Obama administration permitted the proposed 1,700-mile XL leg of the Keystone pipeline to cut across their state. Bulldozers would dig a trench not far from Van Housen’s feedlot, completing the final phase of the Keystone project and streamlining the current flow of oil from the bitumen mines of Northern Alberta toward refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. If the pipe were to leak, Van Housen said, his cattle could die.

Read the full story.

From BOLD Nebraska:

As the Senate once again prepares to take a vote on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Nebraska voices will remind Senators that states’ rights are at stake, and that a vote for Keystone XL is a vote to disregard Nebraska’s legal process.

Nebraska rancher Randy (“Stand With Randy”) Thompson penned an open letter to the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, April 30. Thompson has been a key rural voice against Keystone XL — he was arrested along with others in a civil disobedience action at the White House protesting Keystone XL in 2013, and is one of the three landowner plaintiffs in Thompson v. Heineman, the lawsuit that successfully challenged the constitutionality of the KXL routing process in Nebraska, leaving TransCanada with no legal route or eminent domain power.

Read the letter.

From the Omaha World-Herald:

The cowboys sported western hats and the Indians wore traditional feather headdresses as the sound of drumbeats and the smell of wood smoke filled the air Tuesday on the National Mall.

The band of protesters erected a large tepee among seven smaller ones already in place and vowed to defend their “sacred land” and “sacred water” against the Keystone XL pipeline.

It was the start of a weeklong series of themed demonstrations by the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, a group that represents landowners and tribal representatives opposed to the controversial pipeline.

Read more from the World-Herald.

Follow the weeklong protest at rejectandprotect.org

From the Nebraska Sierra Club:

The US State Department today stated that it will delay a decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline because of the continuing litigation over the route through Nebraska. The Lancaster County District Court declared LB 1161 unconstitutional in February 2014. Part of that decision voided Governor Heineman’s approval of the proposed pipeline route. The case is currently on appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court. It appears unlikely the Supreme Court will decide the case before November 2014.

Ken Winston of the Nebraska Sierra Club stated today: “Today’s delay is another victory for all the people who have spoken out against KXL in the past four years, the thousands who have attended State Department and legislative hearings, attended rallies, written letters, made phone calls and signed petitions. Your sacrifices, your voices have made the difference throughout this process. Every delay means that more tar sands will stay in the ground. The longer this goes on, the more people find out about KXL and its threats to our water, land and climate, the more likely they are to oppose it. To paraphrase my daughter Helen, TransCanada may have the money, but when people come together, we have the power.”

Read more at JournalStar.com.