August, 30 2018, 12:00am EDT
Kavanaugh Sided With U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Businesses Associations in 76 Percent of Cases
Public Citizen examined past decisions involving chamber, national association of manufacturers and American petroleum institute
WASHINGTON
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh usually ruled in favor of three big business associations during his time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Public Citizen's U.S. Chamber Watch project said in a report released today.
In cases that came before him and in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers or the American Petroleum Institute participated as a party or amicus curiae, Kavanaugh sided with the groups 25 out of 33 times, or 76 percent.
"Over the past several decades, big business associations, led by the Chamber, have become far more active in federal litigation," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "The involvement of these associations signals to judges what the Chamber and other trade associations believe to be important."
Also today, Public Citizen released a memo (PDF) analyzing Kavanaugh's decisions in which corporations have used the First Amendment as a tool to challenge regulation of economic activity that traditionally would not have been viewed as raising free speech issues. His judicial opinions broadly embrace expansion of the First Amendment to protect commercial activity.
These findings follow a Public Citizen report released Wednesday that found Kavanaugh decided or wrote an opinion against the public interest 87 percent of the time in split-decision cases in five key areas, including consumer, environmental and worker rights cases.
U.S. Senate hearings on Kavanaugh's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court are scheduled to begin next week.
Read the report.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
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Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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