Justice Gorsuch, he added, “appears to have put his cards on the table as firmly in favor of allowing class actions to be stamped out through arbitration agreements.”
As a result, Professor Fitzpatrick said “it is only a matter of time until the most powerful device to hold corporations accountable for their misdeeds is lost altogether.”
.. Arbitration clauses in employment contracts are a recent innovation, but they have become quite common. In 1992, Justice Ginsburg wrote, only 2 percent of non-unionized employers used mandatory arbitration agreements, while 54 percent do so today.
.. Some 23 percent of employees not represented by unions, she wrote, are subject to employment contracts that require class-action waivers.
Under those contracts, Justice Ginsburg wrote, it is often not worth it and potentially dangerous to pursue small claims individually. “By joining hands in litigation, workers can spread the costs of litigation and reduce the risk of employer retaliation,” she wrote.
.. The contracts may also encourage misconduct, Justice Ginsburg wrote.
“Employers, aware that employees will be disinclined to pursue small-value claims when confined to proceeding one-by-one, will no doubt perceive that the cost-benefit balance of underpaying workers tips heavily in favor of skirting legal obligations,” she wrote, adding that billions of dollars in underpaid wages are at issue.
.. By a 5-to-4 vote, the court said a California couple who objected to a $30 charge for what had been advertised as a free cellphone were barred from banding together with other unhappy customers.
Evangelical leaders, Mnuchin, the hordes of GOP apologists, Trump’s current and former White House staff — all of them — have chosen to ignore, minimize or even defend Trump’s vulgarities, lies, racism, misogyny and anti-democratic antics. If they think they can escape accountability by peers and by history — not to mention by future employers — because, well, “because Gorsuch” or “because corporate tax cuts,” they may be surprised. Their ongoing buffoonish defense of Trump may turn out to be the most memorable thing they have done in public life.
If Trump’s attempt to disassociate himself from lawyer Michael Cohen’s hush-money payment proves untenable — and who believes Cohen paid for this out of the goodness of his heart? — will the religious mop-up squad give him a second mulligan for lying? Maybe they should find out how many paid-off women are out there before offering more absolution.
.. The price one pays for defending Trump is self-humiliation, as one aide and ex-aide after another have learned.
.. After Mnuchin whined that Todd was focusing on the “wrong things” instead of the economy, Todd bore down:
TODD: You keep saying that’s what we should be focused on, then why can’t the president be focused on that, sir?
MNUCHIN: I think the president has been very focused on that.
TODD: Would you call last night’s speech a focused speech on that?
MNUCHIN: I wasn’t at the campaign rally, as you know. But again don’t take these campaign rallies and focus them on that’s what it is, okay.
TODD: So should we stop covering the campaign rallies? Do you think it’s a mistake then for us to cover them at all? That it doesn’t matter what he says? If it doesn’t matter what he says there. If we are to dismiss everything he says at a campaign rally as I think you’re trying to imply, then are you saying we should cover these things?
MNUCHIN: No, you’re putting words in my mouth. I wasn’t in any way saying you should dismiss that whatsoever. . . .
TODD: When he uses vulgarity to talk about individuals, what are they supposed to tell their kids?
MNUCHIN: Well again, I’ll be with my kids this morning, and I’ll be focused on them on what the president is doing to protect the United States, it’s citizens, and more importantly it’s economy.
TODD: So he’s not a moral– don’t worry about his values, don’t worry about him as a role model.
MNUCHIN: I never said that whatsoever. So I don’t know why you’re putting these words in what I’m trying to say. Okay. So again, I am very comfortable with what we’re doing, okay? And again I think you’re trying to take this out of perspective, and implying something I’m not saying.
TODD: Fair enough, what do you…what are you supposed to say when he’s using these vulgarities, to kids?
MNUCHIN: Again, I think you should be focused on what the policies are. He’s using these vulgarities in the context of a campaign rally and obviously there were a lot of funny moments on, on, on that rally.
TODD: Yeah, they were hilarious. Anyway, Secretary Mnuchin. I appreciate you coming on, again.
.. His record of normalizing Trump will define his tenure as secretary just as much as his role in passing a tax bill.
.. Evangelical leaders, Mnuchin, the hordes of GOP apologists, Trump’s current and former White House staff — all of them — have chosen to ignore, minimize or even defend Trump’s vulgarities, lies, racism, misogyny and anti-democratic antics. If they think they can escape accountability by peers and by history — not to mention by future employers — because, well, “because Gorsuch” or “because corporate tax cuts,” they may be surprised. Their ongoing buffoonish defense of Trump may turn out to be the most memorable thing they have done in public life.
Trump’s New Solicitor General Could Fire Russia Investigator Robert Mueller
Francisco was a partner at Jones Day, which Bloomberg Businessweek has called“Trump’s favorite law firm.” The outlet reported in March that at least 14 lawyers from the firm had joined the Trump administration or had been nominated to do so, including Don McGahn, the White House counsel.
.. lawyers from “Trump’s favorite” firm contributed only $7,422 to Trump’s campaign, compared to $267,899 to Hillary Clinton’s.
.. Francisco also is an expert at the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarians in the legal world. The executive vice president, Leonard Leo, is said to have secured the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Gorsuch and FBI Director Christopher Wray also are listed as experts there. Francisco has donated thousands of dollars to federal election candidates, all Republicans, though not to Trump.
.. Ted Cruz, who once worked with Francisco at the law firm Cooper & Kirk. “He’s a brilliant lawyer & a principled conservative.”
Evangelicals, Having Backed Trump, Find White House ‘Front Door Is Open’
When the White House wants to gather evangelicals for one of its many issue-specific “listening sessions,” the Rev. Johnnie Moore is often one of the first to hear.
It wasn’t always clear that Mr. Moore, a 34-year-old Southern Baptist minister who was a co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board, would be a frequent White House guest.
.. Not a day goes by when there aren’t a dozen evangelical leaders in the White House for something.”
.. On Thursday, Mr. Moore will join what he calls the “Super Bowl for peacemakers” here: the annual National Prayer Breakfast, where around 3,000 clergy members, politicians and business leaders will eat, network and listen to speeches, including one from President Trump.
.. Mr. Trump will stand before an audience that has cheered the president’s first-year agenda as its own:
- announcing that the American Embassy in Israel would move to Jerusalem,
- anointing a national “prayer Sunday,”
- appointing Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court,
- signing anti-abortion legislation,
- opening a “conscience and religious freedom division” at the Department of Health and Human Services and
- fighting to end the Johnson Amendment, which threatens religious organizations with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they endorse political candidates.
.. Mr. Moore, a former Liberty University vice president
..
The group, which also includes
- Tim Clinton,
- Robert Jeffress,
- Darrell Scott,
- Samuel Rodriguez and
- Paula White, who has been called Mr. Trump’s personal “spiritual adviser,”
is a frequent and influential voice in the ears of senior administration officials.
.. Jennifer Korn, who as a deputy director of the public liaison office manages contact between the White House and faith groups, sends out invitations to policy briefings and the “listening sessions.”
.. Ms. Korn invites senior West Wing advisers such as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Kellyanne Conway to visit the groups, which range from 20 to 100 guests and are often tied to specific faith-related legislation, executive orders and court appointments.
.. Mr. Jeffress, another core member from the campaign board, has been one of Mr. Trump’s most reliable evangelical advocates
.. “I can’t look into the president’s heart to know if he really personally believes these positions he’s advocating, or whether he thinks it’s smart politics to embrace them because of the strong evangelical influence in the country,” Mr. Jeffress said in an interview. “But frankly, I don’t care. As a Christian, I’m seeing these policies embraced and enacted, and he’s doing that.”
.. He and Mr. Moore are sympathetic to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that shields young undocumented immigrants, which is often viewed as a progressive cause.
.. When he is in the Oval Office with faith leaders, Mr. Moore said, they try to “personalize” issues for Mr. Trump, including in a recent discussion on DACA, when the group told the president that he should view the issue as a father and grandfather.
.. evangelical advocacy in the White House also helped expedite the confirmation of former Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas as ambassador for international religious freedom, a post for which he and the core group of evangelical voices in the White House had long pushed.
.. The Rev. A. R. Bernard, the pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn and a member of the campaign board, announced that he was no longer associating with the White House evangelical group after Mr. Trump’s failure to condemn white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., in August.
.. saw Mr. Trump as largely indifferent to faith leaders’ to-do list.
“There was nothing hidden. He wanted that voting bloc. He wanted their votes,” Mr. Bernard said
.. “It was transactional. He wanted to do whatever he thought would get those votes.”
.. When reports emerged last month that a pornographic-film actress was paid $130,000 to keep quiet
.. “He’s not the pastor of our country,” Franklin Graham
.. Tony Perkins, the president of the evangelical Family Research Council, said that evangelicals would give Mr. Trump a “mulligan.”
Mr. Jeffress agreed.
.. “Evangelical support for President Trump has always been based on his policies, not on his personal piety,” he said.
.. Mr. Scott, a pastor at the New Spirit Revival Center in the Cleveland .. aid Mr. Trump’s interest in evangelicalism stemmed not from opportunism but from wanting to atone for a life largely devoid of conventional religiosity.
.. Mr. Trump would often apologize if he cursed in front of them.
.. “I find his reverence for clergy very old-school,” Mr. Scott said. “When he’s in the room with clergy, he adopts the position of the lesser. He seems to regard the clergy as the greater.”
.. Mr. Trump has the view of “while you guys were off pursuing a higher calling, I was off building buildings,” Mr. Scott said. “Now it’s time for me to catch up.”
.. “People sort of think of evangelicals as these bumpkins. That always drives me crazy,” Mr. Moore said before he dashed out of a downtown Washington cafe. “I think we are far more informed than people give us credit for.”