September, 29 2020, 12:00am EDT
Environmental Protections Could Be in Danger with Trump's SCOTUS Pick
Amy Coney Barrett’s pro-corporate record in line with trump’s industry allyship.
WASHINGTON
This past weekend, President Trump officially nominated Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Since Barrett has only been a federal judge since 2017, not much is known yet about her environmental record. But from her views on corporations to women's reproductive rights and health care, it's fair to call her a devotee of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked in the late 1990s -- far from a pro-environmental champion.
"With Amy Coney Barrett's history of repeatedly siding with corporate interests over people, all signs point to her putting Trump's personal agenda ahead of the health and safety of Americans and the nation's public lands," said Western Values Project director Jayson O'Neill. "Trump has already rolled back a historic number of essential public land and environmental protections -- earning him the dubious record of being the worst public lands and environmental President in history. But if Barrett is confirmed to the high court, Trump's actions could be upheld, enshrining a lasting threat to our nation's public lands and environmental well-being."
New findings by government watchdog Accountable.US show that in her time serving on the 7th Circuit, Barrett ruled with corporate interests over people 76% of the time. And with Trump's history endangering western lands to promote the oil and coal industries, his choice to tap Barrett is of little surprise.
Here is a look at a few of Barrett's previous anti-environmental judicial rulings:
- "This summer, Barrett blocked an effort by a park preservation group and Chicago residents to stop construction of the Obama Presidential Center in the city's Jackson Park."
- "Signed on to a 2018 decision that asked the Army Corps of Engineers to revisit its decision that placed 13 acres of Illinois wetlands off-limits to a housing developer."
- "Barrett was a clerk for Scalia in 1999 when the Supreme Court agreed to hear what would turn out to be a major ruling, written by Ginsburg, that opened the door for environmental groups to sue industrial polluters." Scalia was one of two justices that dissented.
If confirmed, it is likely that Barrett will continue her proven pattern of siding with corporate interests and work to overturn Obama-era environmental protections that the Trump administration has been so adamant about erasing, including addressing the climate crisis already ravaging the nation.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
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While Kicking Millions Off Healthcare, GOP Holds 'Sham Hearing' on Medicaid Fraud
"If Republicans are really interested in looking into waste, fraud, and abuse, they should look no further than the actions of Trump and his administration."
Jun 25, 2026
Congressional Democrats and healthcare justice advocates on Thursday accused Republicans of trying to divert attention away from their destructive cuts to Medicaid—and the resulting large-scale loss of insurance coverage—by convening a hearing on purportedly "rampant" fraud in the program that provides care to tens of millions of low-income Americans.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, noted in his scathing opening remarks at the hearing that Republicans have "repeatedly insisted" they are only interested in fighting fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars, even as their unprecedented Medicaid cuts strip healthcare from millions of people across the US, including many children.
"You cannot cut healthcare by $1 trillion and not impact millions of people’s healthcare," said Pallone, pointing to a report published earlier this week estimating that more than 5 million Americans have lost health insurance since President Donald Trump signed the GOP's massive budget package into law last summer.
"If Republicans are really interested in looking into waste, fraud, and abuse, they should look no further than the actions of Trump and his administration," Pallone continued, pointing to the illegal and costly war of choice in Iran as just one example. "Playing politics with Americans’ healthcare is cruel and dangerous. Unfortunately, that is what we are repeatedly seeing from Republicans here in Washington."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care decried the GOP's "sham hearing" and said Republicans are "pointing fingers at everyone but themselves."
“Let’s be clear about who the real fraudsters are: not the senior rationing insulin, not the mom skipping the emergency room, and not the family choosing between groceries and seeing a doctor," said Brad Woodhouse, the group's president. "It’s Republicans ripping away healthcare from millions with one hand and signing tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations with the other.”
"They’ve decided that if they simply say they’re eliminating fraud in Medicaid, then they can get away with eliminating Medicaid. They are wrong."
Thursday's hearing featured testimony from the state Medicaid directors of California, Minnesota, New York, and Ohio, each of whom said they are committed to fighting fraud in their systems. Experts say most Medicaid fraud is committed by providers, not ordinary patients bilking the program.
In recent months, the Trump administration has launched investigations into the Medicaid programs of several states, including California, Minnesota, and New York—probes that officials in those Democratic-controlled states say are politically motivated and based on exaggerated claims of fraud.
In April, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services—led by Mehmet Oz—admitted that it grossly overstated the number of New Yorkers who received personal care services under the state's Medicaid program last year.
"Oz claimed that New York's Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming, and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state's 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees," The Associated Press reported. "The real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told the AP."
Republicans have repeatedly cited "waste, fraud, and abuse" as reasons to target and slash federal Medicaid spending. But according to one analysis, just seven of the 24 Medicaid provisions in the 2025 Republican budget law specifically target waste, fraud, and abuse in the program. Overall, the GOP law will cut federal Medicaid spending by roughly $900 billion over the next decade.
In the coming months, Republicans are expected to pursue another budget reconciliation package that they say would crack down on "fraud" in Medicaid—a seeming admission that the 2025 budget law didn't accomplish the GOP's stated objective.
"As Republicans try to figure out a way to pay for President Trump’s reckless war of choice with Iran through another partisan reconciliation bill, they are reportedly considering even more cuts to Medicaid," Pallone said Thursday. "More than 70 million Americans who are disabled or chronically ill, elderly, or children rely on Medicaid for their healthcare."
"The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress continue to find ways to endanger or take away that care," Pallone added. "They’ve decided that if they simply say they’re eliminating fraud in Medicaid, then they can get away with eliminating Medicaid. They are wrong."
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'More People Will Die': Sotomayor Reads Searing Dissent as Supreme Court Lets Trump Block Asylum Seekers
The liberal justice lamented that the majority ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado empowers the Trump administration to slam the door shut on refugees "even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed."
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Thursday affirmed the Trump administration's deadly policy of blocking people legally seeking asylum from entering the United States in a ruling that prompted liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to take the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the justices reversed lower-court rulings, including a 2024 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel decision that people approaching authorized border entries are arriving "in" the United States under federal law.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to rule on the practice of "metering," by which US authorities limit the number of asylum seekers who can present themselves at a port of entry each day to request protection. The policy was first implemented during the Obama administration and expanded during President Donald Trump's first term, with US Solicitor General D. John Sauer calling it “a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border.”
“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Sauer argued in court filings. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—agreed.
“In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place," Justice Samuel Alito said.
“We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not ‘arrive in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country," he added. "An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border."
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined a scathing dissent penned by fellow liberal Sonia Sotomayor. Jackson also dissented separately. In a sign of her vigorous objection to the ruling, Sotomayor took the rare step of reading parts of her 35-page dissent—which is nearly twice as long as the majority opinion—from the bench.
"The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having US immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto US soil," Sotomayor began. "They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away."
Sotomayor noted that metering "created dire humanitarian conditions at the border."
As US Customs and Border Protection "turned back more and more asylum seekers who had traveled treacherous distances to reach that point, makeshift camps sprung up on the Mexican side of the border, with tens of thousands of those turned away waiting days, then weeks and months, for asylum processing that often never took place," she continued.
Sotomayor noted the dangerous conditions in the border camps, asserting that "those turned away under the metering policy also found themselves subject to the very 'persecution and crime' they were fleeing," and citing cases in which people waiting in Mexico were murdered, raped, kidnapped, and assaulted. She detailed instances in which desperate asylum seekers, including children, drowned while attempting to swim across the Rio Grande into the United States.
"Hundreds of others have met a similar fate, and many more died crossing the desert along the southern border, all making 2020 and 2021 some of the 'deadliest years for migrant crossings' in various regions of the southern border," Sotomayor wrote.
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme."
"The majority’s conclusion focuses almost exclusively on the word 'in' within the phrase 'arrives in the United States,'" Sotomayor stressed. "If that were all this case were about, the majority might have the better of the argument. Statutory interpretation, however, requires much more."
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme," she continued, pointing to one of the most frequently cited principles in modern US jurisprudence.
"The majority’s interpretation of 'arrives in the United States' makes no sense," Sotomayor argued. "To start, the majority ignores that 'arrival' and 'arriving' in the immigration context have never focused on the precise location of a noncitizen’s feet."
She continued:
Imagine a movie theater policy that states, “Anyone who arrives in the theater may buy a ticket and all moviegoers must have their tickets scanned before entering.” If a person walks up to a ticket booth located just outside the theater, it would be unreasonable to think they could not buy a ticket under the policy because they are not “in” the theater yet. Perhaps the policy could have been clearer by using the preposition “at,” but everyone understands, from context, what the policy means.
Context leads to the same conclusion here. Requiring an asylum seeker to plant a foot across the border to become an “applicant for admission"... might be plausible looking at the words “arrives in” in a vacuum, but it makes a hash of the statutory scheme overall. Instead, construing text in context, an asylum seeker can be fairly said to “arrive in the United States” for purposes of being an applicant for admission and seeking asylum when she walks up to a port of entry and physically presents herself to an immigration officer who is standing on US soil.
Sotomayor further noted that the modern asylum system "developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust and World War II," when the United States and other indifferent nations turned back shiploads of desperate Jewish refugees and denied asylum to Jews fleeing almost certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the family of famous diarist Anne Frank.
The dissenting justice highlighted the ill-fated voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, which carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. After being refused docking in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the ship returned to Europe, where hundreds of its passengers were killed during the Holocaust.
"Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past," Sotomayor said. "Yet if the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto US soil."
"The majority’s interpretation permits the government to do that even if the refugees complied with all applicable laws and regulations, even if the port had ample capacity to inspect them, and even if turning them back would result in the very persecution from which they narrowly escaped," she added. "The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die."
In another extraordinary move, Alito followed Sotomayor's reading by defending the metering policy as necessary for maintaining "orderly and humane" conditions at the border. He then moved on to his next opinion, which upheld the Trump administration's cancellation of temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.
Responding to the Mullin ruling, Al Otro Lado executive director Erika Pinheiro said, "We believe that today’s ruling violates international law, as well as the express intent of Congress, which enshrined the rights and obligations of the Refugee Convention into US federal law over 40 years ago."
"For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families who are fleeing persecution, torture, and death to ask for protection at US borders and exercise their legal right to seek asylum,” she continued. "This decision has destroyed the United States’ position as a global leader in promoting the rights of refugees and threatens to serve as a dangerous justification for other countries that unlawfully prevent refugees from crossing borders in search of safety."
"In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost," Pinheiro added.
Today, the Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow to asylum rights in the United States.In a 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court ruled that the Trump administration may turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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— American Immigration Council (@immcouncil.org) June 25, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, also issued a statement, contending that the two rulings "will devastate women and children who are fleeing unimaginable danger, vetted workers who have been in the US for decades making significant contributions, senior citizens who depend on their healthcare providers for lifesaving care, and business owners who rely on their workers to sustain their businesses, among many others."
Congresswoman Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) said that "whether denying asylum seekers the chance to be heard or ripping Temporary Protected Status away from families who have spent years building their lives in this country, this corrupt court, beholden to an authoritarian-like president, once again chose politics over the Constitution."
"Asylum seekers deserve the opportunity to have their claims heard before the government decides their fate," she continued. "Above all else, this case is simply cruel and denies humanity to our fellow human beings seeking safety."
"These rulings should alarm every American," Mejia added. "When the government can deny one group a hearing or strip away protections they have relied on for years, it is not just immigrants who lose. It sends a dangerous message that constitutional rights can be discarded whenever those in power find it politically useful."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that by targeting asylum, the justices "are preventing the most vulnerable people from even seeking safety on our shores."
On social media, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said, "This extremist Supreme Court just gave Trump the green light to block asylum seekers at the border and end TPS protections for Haitians and Syrians."
"People fleeing danger deserve compassion, not cruelty," Lee added. "We must reform and expand the court immediately."
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'Antithesis of the Rule of Law': ICC Judges Sue Trump Over Sanctions
"These judges are being punished for discharging their judicial duties independently by rendering decisions with which the Trump administration disagrees."
Jun 25, 2026
Three judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday sued the Trump administration over sanctions placed on them by a 2025 executive order.
The three plaintiffs—Judges Kimberly Prost of Canada, Solomy Bossa of Uganda, and Reine Alapini-Gansou of Benin—have served on ICC panels related to alleged crimes committed by either the American or Israeli militaries, and are among the eight ICC judges who have so far been hit with sanctions by the US State Department.
The ICC drew ire of US President Donald Trump for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opening a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
The judges' lawsuit contends that Trump's executive order establishing the sanctions was manifestly unlawful and in direct violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits the government from making arbitrary and capricious policy changes.
The suit also claims that the US sanctions, which were invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, are illegal because their work at the ICC does not pose an "emergency" to the country's national security.
Andrew Loewenstein, attorney at Foley Hoag and lead counsel in the lawsuit, said the sanctions were designed to intimidate the ICC into dropping investigations related to the US and Israel.
"This sanctions regime is the antithesis of the rule of law,” Loewenstein said. "By targeting their financial and other personal interests, the sanctions are designed to exert extra-judicial pressure on Judges Prost, Bossa, and Alapini-Gansou and their colleagues on the ICC bench, with the objective of punishing them for past judicial decisions and coercing them into prioritizing their private interests over deciding cases on the basis of the law and facts."
Loewenstein also noted that "the sanctions obstruct the ability of victims and witnesses of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as their lawyers, from being able to present evidence or argument in the judges’ courtrooms or otherwise participate in proceedings before them."
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and a co-counsel representing Judge Prost in the complaint, described the Trump administration's sanctions as "an unprecedented attack on judicial independence and the rule of law."
"These judges are being punished for discharging their judicial duties independently by rendering decisions with which the Trump administration disagrees," Goldston added. "This is an effort to pressure them to render future decisions more to the administration's liking."
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