For more than a decade, controversy over an oil pipeline that passes directly through a Native American reservation and then across a sensitive waterway that is also a key shipping lane has brewed in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has joined an already complex fray, with policy decisions and legal filings as well as administrative and judicial appointments that have shifted the strategies and potential outcomes of the situation. The changes affect not just pipeline operator Enbridge but also the environmental, Indigenous and political leaders working to shut down the pipeline, known as Line 5.
