Sheldon Whitehouse: “I am back now for the 33rd time to keep shining a little light on the rightwing billionaires' covert scheme to capture…”

“I am back now for the 33rd time to keep shining a little light on the rightwing billionaires' covert scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court. As a result of that scheme, the Court's rightwing just took a wrecking ball to the government's ability to protect Americans from big polluters and corporate cheaters. This year's billionaire bonanza came through four decisions that gutted administrative Agencies' ability to do their job--perfect payback to the polluter billionaires who helped foot the bill to get these Justices onto the Court in the first place. The first decision is Ohio v. EPA, where the Supreme Court undermined the Environmental Protection Administration's ability to enforce the ``good neighbor'' provision of the Clean Air Act, the provision that defends the air quality of ``downwind'' States like mine, Rhode Island, from powerplants and industrial facilities in ``upwind'' States, where sometimes they build the smokestacks extra high so that the pollution doesn't hit the polluting State, but it floats over and comes down and hits us in Rhode Island. Without even full briefing on the merits, industry litigants succeeded in getting the Court to stall proposed clean air regulations and place a thumb on the scales in favor of polluters. At the hands of the Federalist Society Justices, the right of polluters to pollute beat the right of Rhode Islanders to breathe clean air. Then came SEC v.…”