Tag Archives: gorsuch

Fossil fuel execs to Texas: Don’t target trans people.

by ConcepcionDunham Posted on August 1, 2017

Oh, and by the way, did you know there’s an EPA museum?

The one-room exhibit opened in Washington, D.C., just before Trump’s inauguration. The displays tell the history of the EPA while highlighting big Obama-era steps towards combating climate change, like the implementation of the Clean Power Plan and the signing of the Paris Agreement.

In light of Trump’s decisions to ditch both, the EPA as displayed isn’t looking quite Trump-y enough. A career EPA official told the Washington Post that, in addition to a coal display, plans are underway to add controversial EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch to the exhibit and expand on Trump areas of interest like the Superfund program. The Clean Power Plan and Paris Agreement displays are already scheduled for removal.

If you want a preview of the changes, current EPA officials have already put up a poster board that includes a photo of Pruitt shaking hands with miners and description that calls Trump’s approach to the EPA “back to the basics.” What basics are those, you might ask? We were wondering the same thing.

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Fossil fuel execs to Texas: Don’t target trans people.

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Republicans Just Went Nuclear. Neil Gorsuch Is Heading to the Supreme Court.

by MichealOIEB Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Senate Republicans on Thursday voted to kill the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, invoking the so-called “nuclear option” so that a minority party will no longer have the ability to block a vote for nominees to the nation’s highest court. The rule change cleared the way for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the empty seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch is expected to be officially confirmed Friday.

Over the past two weeks, Democrats coalesced around a strategy of filibustering Gorsuch when all but three Democratic senators announced they would oppose him—even though it was widely believed that Republicans would respond by changing the rules to prohibit filibusters of Supreme Court nominees. The decision was risky because it means Democrats will now have even less leverage if one of the more liberal justices leaves the court while Trump is in the White House.

Democrats’ actions were in part a result of the party’s activist and donor base, which has been pushing lawmakers to resist Trump and his nominee to the fullest extent possible. Democrats want to keep their base energized, not demoralized. But Democrats had other reasons for filibustering, as well. There was the issue of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court last year, whom Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider. The Garland episode helped persuade Democrats that temporarily preserving the ability to filibuster would be of little use, since Republicans were already prepared to do whatever it takes to put conservative justices on the court. As a progressive activist explained to Mother Jones, “Any vote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans take is really just the icing on the cake—this thing has been cooked since Senate Republicans defied any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama.”

Democrats were also motivated by deep concerns about Gorsuch’s jurisprudence and his performance during his confirmation process. In his confirmation hearings, Gorsuch was so disinclined to reveal anything about his judicial philosophy that it took considerable cajoling to get him to express an opinion on Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that struck down segregation in public education.

What Democrats could ascertain from Gorsuch’s record suggested that he was an ultra-conservative jurist who would go out of his way to issue broad rulings rather than taking a narrow approach to decisions, including in a case that limited aid for special education children in public schools. In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested that Gorsuch could become the most conservative member of the Supreme Court.

Finally, Democrats were put off by how Gorsuch conducted himself in the meetings he held with senators. Three senators, all women of color, claimed Gorsuch had failed to meet with them after their offices had tried to schedule a meeting.

As Ian Millhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, explained to the Washington Post, Gorsuch hurt his chances with Democrats throughout the process: “He mansplained fairly basic concepts to women senators. He pushed way too hard on the ‘I’m not going to express a view about anything, ever’ fallback—much harder than previous nominees. And then, after the Supreme Court unanimously overturned one of his opinions, he defended himself by misrepresenting his own opinion.” On the third day of Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion overturning Gorsuch’s approach to enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a piece of Gorsuch’s record that had particularly irked Democrats.

Gorsuch will soon be a Supreme Court justice, but his confirmation will go down as a major moment in the continued breakdown of the US Senate.

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Republicans Just Went Nuclear. Neil Gorsuch Is Heading to the Supreme Court.

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Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Has Little in Common With Most Americans

by AlbertiGoin Posted on March 22, 2017

Mother Jones

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One of the main jobs of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee this week has been to deflect attacks on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch by Democrats, who are trying to paint him as a tool of corporations and a foe of the little guy. To that end, Republicans have tried both to humanize the federal judge and to highlight the parts of his background that might make him more relatable to the average American. They’ve got him talking about the Denver rodeo and mutton bustin’ and quoting David Foster Wallace.

But those humanizing efforts are falling a bit flat. That’s largely because when it comes to demonstrating all that he has in common with the regular folks who might come before the court, Gorsuch is his own worst enemy. A graduate of Georgetown Prep, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and Oxford, Gorsuch is the son of Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency chief and spent most of his formative years inside the Beltway, including a stint as a clerk on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. His nomination to the 10th Circuit Court was championed by the secretive billionaire Phillip Anschutz, his former client, and Gorsuch co-owns a Colorado mountain cabin with two of Anschutz’s top deputies.

On Tuesday night, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) asked Gorsuch about how he “liked to get his hands dirty.” If Flake was hoping to reveal a nominee who subscribes to Family Handyman and loves power tools, he was disappointed. The judge responded by reminding the committee how much he loves to ski. (Gorsuch was on the slopes when he learned about the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he’s been nominated to fill.) “I always say the family that skis together stays together,” Gorsuch had said earlier in the hearing. Gorsuch told Flake that his daughters were “ferocious double-black-diamond skiers,” and at that very moment, one of them was doing some backcountry skiing near Telluride.

The exchange was unlikely to help most Americans relate to the judge. Today, skiing is largely a sport of the wealthy. A one-day lift ticket at Winter Park, the Colorado resort where Gorsuch said he liked to go, costs $144. A single day of skiing for a family of four could cost nearly $600, not including all the gear and lunch at the lodge. And teaching kids to ski so they can become “ferocious double-black-diamond skiers” is an enormous investment. A single day in the Winter Park ski school will set you back $189 for one child, not including equipment rentals. For most of the country, even with discounts for locals, those costs put skiing largely out of reach.

Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had asked Gorsuch about his experience in politics. “Are you a lawmaker?” Lee asked. “Have you ever held a position as a state legislator? Have you ever held a position as a member of Congress?” Gorsuch responded with a chuckle, “I’ve served on my kid’s school board.”

The following day, Flake asked Gorsuch about his civic involvement outside of the court, mentioning his school board service. “Boy, that I found taxing, and loved every minute of it,” Gorsuch said. Flake nodded appreciatively, telling Gorsuch, “That typifies the West. People get along. They have to. On a school board there’s no passing the buck there. You’ve gotta make decisions. Local government is like that.”

What Flake seemed to have missed, though, is that Gorsuch never served on a public school board. He was on the board of the Boulder Country Day School, a small private school with tuition that runs from $15,000 to $20,000 a year. That’s a big difference from serving on a public, elected school board just about anywhere in the country.

In fact, Gorsuch is among the most privileged individuals to be nominated to the Supreme Court in recent memory. Justice Clarence Thomas grew up poor in Pinpoint, Georgia, speaking Gullah. His idea of a good time is camping in a Walmart parking lot in his RV en route to a NASCAR race. Sonia Sotomayor hails from a Puerto Rican family and grew up with a single mom in a South Bronx tenement. Samuel Alito is a Jersey boy, the son of Italian immigrant teachers, who graduated from a public high school. At first glance, Gorsuch’s background somewhat resembles that of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who likewise comes from a tony private-school background—except that Roberts worked summers in a steel mill to pay his way through Harvard.

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Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Has Little in Common With Most Americans

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5 Things We’ve Learned About Neil Gorsuch So Far

by LaraeThurgood Posted on March 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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Two days into Neil Gosuch’s confirmation hearings, the proceedings have yielded little insight into the Supreme Court nominee’s views about important legal precedent or landmark cases. In keeping with the tradition of previous nominees, he has declined to give any opinions on past or future cases, or explain his personal views on controversial legal issues from abortion to gay marriage. And he’s sidestepped questions about his work in the Bush Justice Department, which included helping the administration defend torture and denying access to the courts for detainees at Guantanamo. But the hearings have unearthed some more obscure trivia about the 10th Circuit judge. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits that have emerged so far:

He likes David Foster Wallace: Waxing poetic about his view of the law, Gorsuch told the Judiciary Committee: “We’re now like David Foster Wallace’s fish. We’re surrounded by the rule of law. It’s in the fabric of our lives.”

Gorsuch was referring to the story the late writer told in a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. “There are these two young fish swimming along,” Wallace told the graduating students, “and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?'”

His confirmation hearing isn’t the first time Gorsuch has referenced Wallace’s fish. He’s invoked it at least once before, in an article for the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy. “If sometimes the cynic in all of us fails to see our Nation’s successes when it comes to the rule of law,” he wrote, “maybe it’s because we are like David Foster Wallace’s fish that’s oblivious to the life-giving water in which it swims.”

He thinks it’s OK for a women to be president even if the founders didn’t: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Gorsuch about his belief that judges should interpret the Constitution the way the Founders would have written it, better known as originalism, which would seem to make it difficult for the law to adapt to modern life. “I’m not looking to take us back to quill pens and horse and buggies,” Gorsuch told her. But Klobuchar pressed on. She wanted to know how he could square his originalist philosophy with the fact that the Constitution as first written didn’t allow women to vote. “So when the Constitution refers 30-some times to ‘his’ or ‘he’ when describing the president of the United States, you would see that as, ‘Well back then they actually thought a woman could be president even through women couldn’t vote?'” she asked. In response, Gorsuch growled, “Of course women can be president! I’ve got two daughters. I hope one of them grows up to be president.”

He loves The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) opened his questioning of Gorsuch by asking him: “What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?” The judge responded with a smile, “42.” Gorsuch explained that the question is a joke he uses to break the ice when swearing in nervous lawyers.

Gorsuch claimed everyone knew the answer to the question because it comes from Douglas Adams’ cult classic novel, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was clear that aside from Cruz, most of the senators on the Judiciary Committee had not read the book. “If you haven’t read it, you should,” Gorsuch told them. “It may be one of my daughter’s favorite books. And so, that’s a family joke.” Cruz gave Gorsuch a dreamy look and said that he saw Gorsuch’s Hitchhiker joke as “a delightful example of the humanity of a judge that your record has demonstrated.”

He had a pet goat: In his opening statement Monday, Gorsuch gave a shout out to his daughters, who were home in Colorado watching the hearings on TV. He reminisced about “devising ways to keep our determined pet goat out of the garden,” one of his favorite memories with them.

His kids have engaged in “mutton busting”: Cruz got Gorsuch talking about the Denver rodeo, where he takes his law clerks every year. The spectacle finishes up with the prize steer visiting the lobby of the Brown Palace hotel. As part of the festivities, the rodeo features something called mutton busting—a children’s version of bronco riding, done on sheep instead of bulls—which Gorsuch described like this:

You take a poor little kid, you find a sheep, and you attach the one to the other and see how long they can hold on. And you know, it usually works fine when the sheep has got a lot of wool and you tell them to hold on. I tell my kids hold on monkey style. Really get in there, right? Get around it. Because if you sit upright, you go flying right off. Right? You want to get in. The problem when you get in is that you’re so locked in that you don’t want to let go. Right? So then the poor clown has to come and knock you off the sheep. My daughters got knocked around pretty good over the years.”

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5 Things We’ve Learned About Neil Gorsuch So Far

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Never Has It Been Easier to Get Secret Cash to a President

by JanaGoffage2300 Posted on February 9, 2017

Mother Jones

On a recent Tuesday evening, a donor, lobbyist, or foreign diplomat hoping to make inroads with President Donald Trump and his retinue of family members and allies needed only to show up to the lobby bar of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Seated together on couches near the bar were Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son and now the co-head of the Trump Organization; Brad Parscale, the digital guru for Trump’s presidential campaign who is now running an outside group created to bolster Trump and his agenda; and Nick Ayers, a political consultant and former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who is also working for Trump’s new outside group. With security guards stationed nearby, the men held court, posed for photos with guests, and then headed to the White House to attend the announcement ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

No president in American history has entered office as conflict-ridden as Trump. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the ways someone seeking to influence him and his administration could do so without a trace. A donation made through a shell corporation to Trump’s inaugural committee. An undisclosed donation to America First Policies, the new outside group run by Ayers, Parscale, and other ex-Trump aides. A monthly retainer to Avenue Strategies, the consulting firm launched by former Trump aides Corey Lewandowski and Barry Bennett and conveniently located one block from the White House.

But there is a simpler and more direct way to put money in the pocket of the new president and his family: spend money at a Trump hotel or resort. Lots of money. In many ways, the president’s properties—which he refuses to divest or separate himself from in any serious way—serve as ideal conduits for directly influencing and even bribing the Trump administration.

Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University and an expert on federal contracting, says an individual, corporation, or foreign government could pay for rooms at Trump hotels, spend lavishly at hotel restaurants, and drop sizeable sums on ballrooms and other event spaces to direct money to the Trump family in the hopes of acquiring influence. “It’s a win-win,” Schooner says. “If you use the space, you’re entertaining people on the president’s property, and if you don’t, you’ve basically just funneled the money to the president and the president’s family.”

At this point, Schooner added, there is no way for anyone outside the Trump Organization and the Trump family to know if any corporations, lobbyists, advocacy groups, businesspeople, foreign governments, or overseas leaders spend money at Trump properties. (Ditto arms traders, sleazy financiers, or any other bad actors.) Noting the recent decision by Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to double its initiation fee, Schooner said, “They’re willing to raise the price on anything. What would be an outrageous payment for a social event at a Trump property? $100,000? $200,000? $300,000? And the public will never find out about it.” In other words, anyone who wanted the Trumps’ attention and goodwill could rent out space at a Trump hotel or resort for an exorbitant amount—whether they actually used it for a function or not.

Foreign dignitaries have already flocked to Trump’s Washington hotel. A week after the election, nearly 100 foreign diplomats partied at one of the hotel’s ballroom spaces, dubbed the Lincoln Library. Kuwait moved its annual National Day party from the Four Seasons to Trump’s DC hotel. As one Asian diplomat told the Washington Post in November, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’? Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?'”

A DC-based lobbyist, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about Trump and his properties, told me that he hadn’t personally felt pressure to patronize Trump’s hotel, but “reading between the lines isn’t that tough here.” He went on, “There is a reason that the senior staff hang out in the lobby bar at the hotel. They are seeing who spends time and money there and who books large parties there and large blocks of rooms for delegations.” The lobbyist said he wouldn’t be surprised to see major trade associations such as the US Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Broadcasters use the hotel to put up visiting colleagues and affiliates. “Point is,” the lobbyist said, “someone is paying attention to the person who orders the $1,000 bottle of wine.”

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) recently sent a letter to Trump requesting information from Mar-a-Lago, the Trump-owned private club in South Florida that will serve as the president’s winter White House. Whitehouse and Udall asked Trump to make public Mar-a-Lago’s private membership list and the names of members and visitors to the club when Trump is there, and to explain how Trump plans to screen members and guests for ties to foreign governments that may seek to influence the president. “Now that you are president, you have an obligation to dispel any suspicions that access to you can be purchased by a private club membership fee,” the senators wrote. (The White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

Unlike presidents before him, Trump has refused to divest from his international business holdings, over the objections of myriad ethics experts. Indeed, the Trump Organization is capitalizing on the soaring profile of its founder. Mar-a-Lago upped its initiation fee from $100,000 to $200,000. A Trump Organization executive also suggested that the company plans to expand its hotel offerings, eyeing 26 US metropolitan areas for new projects. (The company currently has properties in five major markets.) At Trump’s January 11 press conference, a lawyer for Trump said the new president would step down from management roles at the Trump Organization and put his assets into a trust controlled by his sons but would not give up his ownership stake. Trump’s lawyer also said Trump would donate the profits—not revenue—from his hotels derived from foreign government sources to the US Treasury, but at present there is no method for confirming that Trump is in fact complying with the agreement.

Outside ethics experts say Trump’s conflicts-of-interest plan does almost nothing to clear up problems that could arise during his presidency. Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, called the plan “meaningless.” Norm Eisen, who served as an ethics attorney under President Obama, told Mother Jones that Trump’s plan “falls short in every respect.”

Trump still stands to benefit financially from the properties he owns. He recently transferred ownership stake in his Washington hotel into a trust that exists solely “to hold assets for the exclusive benefit of Donald J. Trump,” according to a regulatory filing obtained by ProPublica. So money spent at the Trump International Hotel in Washington still winds up in his own coffers. It doesn’t have to create a profit for Trump to benefit: Hotel revenue can cover overhead and debt payments, such as Trump’s $170 million loan from Deutsche Bank for his DC hotel.

Trump said at his January 11 press conference that he would not discuss business with his sons, but ethics experts say there is no way to police this. Donald Jr. and Eric appear to enjoy ample access to their father, to the White House, and to policymakers in and around the administration. On inauguration weekend, the brothers hobnobbed with their father’s foreign business partners at inaugural parties. The brothers’ social-media accounts show them sitting front row for Gorsuch’s announcement ceremony in the West Wing and later chatting one-on-one with Gorsuch while Pence stood awkwardly behind Donald Jr.

So how much could someone trying to gain goodwill with Trump potentially spend at one of his hotels? Going by the hotel’s advertised rate of $481 a night, a 20-room reservation for 10 days—whether used or not—adds up to $96,400. The hotel’s suites range in price from $1,025 a night (the Ivanka suite) to $25,000 a night (the Trump Townhouse).

The Trump administration has gone out of its way to promote Trump’s Washington hotel. Sean Spicer, then the incoming White House press secretary, plugged the hotel during a press briefing on the day before Trump’s swearing-in. “It’s an absolutely stunning hotel,” Spicer told reporters. “I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by.” During the official inaugural parade, Trump stopped his motorcade near the hotel, exited his vehicle, and began walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, where he and his family waved to fans. Since Trump took office, his Washington hotel has become a hub and gathering spot for Trump supporters, acolytes, and—yes—family members.

Larry Noble, the general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a good-government group that has highlighted Trump’s many conflicts of interest, says Trump could have easily resolved any conflicts stemming from the Washington hotel and all the other properties he owns or financially benefits from by fully divesting his assets. “The hotel is a shining example of his conflicts of interest and his arrogance about his conflicts of interest,” Noble says. “There’s only one answer: He should’ve divested himself and sold the hotel.”

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Never Has It Been Easier to Get Secret Cash to a President

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