Economy
Trump Judge Partially Blocks FTC Ban on Anti-Worker Noncompete Clauses
"We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes," the agency said in response to the decision.
A Trump-appointed federal judge on Wednesday partially blocked a Federal Trade Commission rule banning most noncompete clauses, ubiquitous anti-worker agreements that prevent employees from moving to or starting their own competing businesses.
Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary ruling preventing the ban from taking effect against the handful of plaintiffs that sued the FTC over the rule mere hours after it was finalized in April. The plaintiffs include the tax service firm Ryan LLC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest corporate lobbying organization.
Researchers at the Revolving Door Project noted Wednesday that Ryan LLC was "represented by [former President Donald] Trump's Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, via BigLaw firm Gibson Dunn."
Watchdogs accused the U.S. Chamber, which celebrated Wednesday's decision, of "judge-shopping," a tactic the organization frequently uses to secure favorable legal outcomes. District courts in Texas fall under the purview of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is dominated by right-wing extremists.
In her Wednesday decision, Brown did not immediately grant the plaintiffs' request for a nationwide injunction against the ban on noncompetes. But the judge signaled she would likely block the rule in its entirety with her final decision in the case on August 30—just days before the ban's scheduled implementation date.
"The court concludes the commission has exceeded its statutory authority in promulgating the noncompete rule, and thus plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits," Brown wrote in her 33-page decision.
"The need for judicial reform in Congress has never been more clear as far-right 5th Circuit territory judges have effectively put up a giant neon sign, 'Corporations, Please Sue Here.'"
A spokesperson for the FTC said in response to the ruling that the agency stands by its "clear authority, supported by statute and precedent, to issue this rule."
"We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans' economic liberty," the spokesperson added.
The FTC, led by antitrust trailblazer Lina Khan, estimates that roughly 30 million U.S. workers are bound by noncompete agreements that restrict their ability to switch jobs in pursuit of higher wages and better benefits. The commission believes its ban on noncompetes would result in up to $488 billion in wage increases for U.S. workers collectively over the next decade.
Progressive advocacy groups cast Wednesday's decision as the latest attack on workers—and gift to corporations—by a Trump-appointed judge.
"By halting the noncompetes ban, this court is standing in the way of real gains for workers again," said Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at Demand Progress. "With the decision overturning Chevron earlier this week, it's a one-two punch against everyday people."
Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement that "the industry-funded U.S. Chamber continues to cost everyday Americans a ton of money with its suing spree against the Biden administration crackdowns on corporate greed, junk fees, and anti-worker barriers."
"The U.S. Chamber's lawsuit holding up the administration's credit card late fee rule is already costing Americans $27 million a day —and now this latest lawsuit could slam the door shut for millions of American workers to begin pursuing better opportunities," said Carrk. "Noncompete clauses could force employees to endure low wages and poor working conditions as the rule drags through the courts. The big bank and Wall Street CEOs on the U.S. Chamber's board have gotten a huge return on their investment while American workers pay the price."
"The need for judicial reform in Congress has never been more clear," Carrk added, "as far-right 5th Circuit territory judges have effectively put up a giant neon sign, 'Corporations, Please Sue Here.'"
The US Supreme Court Has Opened the Door for a Fascist American King
The Court has exposed itself as a nakedly political—and reactionary—institution, and the existential dangers it poses must be met by mass mobilization and fierce resistance.
"The president is not above the law,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts before ruling that President Trump is above the law.
In a Monday decision both shocking and unsurprising, the Supreme Court’s reactionary six-member majority ruled that the president of the United States has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for acts relating to “core constitutional duties.” An elementary school civics student taught that ours, supposedly, is a “government of laws and not of men,” would recognize the dangers of this ruling.
Theft, plunder, embezzlement, extortion, abduction, assassination, or, to state the obvious—attempted election interference or a coup: presidents could now be shielded from criminal prosecution for these acts and, for the first time in history, may feel empowered to commit them without fear of legal consequences, confident they can claim they are “core” duties and even basic “official” acts.
At every turn, this Court defers to power, Trumpian or corporate, at the expense of pluralism, individual freedom, and democracy.
The dangers are not hypothetical. This ruling ensures that President Trump will not stand trial for his involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol before the election. And if he wins election in November, acting on his pledge to become a “dictator for one day,” he will have at his disposal this authoritarian decision by the authoritarian court majority he created. With this ruling, we can see how the mechanisms of dictatorship merge into something realistic and profoundly dangerous.
The rise of presidential impunity, however, predates Trump. After 9/11, when the Bush administration launched an illegal invasion of Iraq and systematically committed war crimes, including torture, the courts barely pushed back, and, later, President Obama chose to “look forward, not backward,” further cementing that impunity.
When Center for Constitutional Rights, the organization I lead, sought to impose civil liability against high level executive branch officials, days from Trump’s inauguration, the Court gave officials carte blanche to violate the Constitution as long as they claimed their violations were undertaken pursuant to a policy. An expanded, overly powerful, unaccountable presidency was waiting for Trump in 2016—and now a cravenly political Supreme Court has affirmed it.
Under this Court's cruel and retrograde jurisprudence, a president cannot regulate carbon emissions or forgive student loans but might face no consequences for politically motivated killings or mass murder.
Yet this Court limits executive power when it suits its political ends, as it just did when it undercut the ability of federal agencies to enact environmental regulations, or earlier, to forgive student loans. The common baseline of these decisions is hostility to democracy and its aspiration for the collective good.
Under this Court's cruel and retrograde jurisprudence, a president cannot regulate carbon emissions or forgive student loans but might face no consequences for politically motivated killings or mass murder. The president is free to commit crimes to protect his craven self-interest, but women cannot protect their own bodies; indeed the president has immunity for bona fide crimes against the republic, while women can be criminalized for their personal choices. It is a jurisprudence that elevates wanton machine gun killings as a legal right over voting, equality, and public health.
At every turn, this Court defers to power, Trumpian or corporate, at the expense of pluralism, individual freedom, and democracy. It has exposed itself as a nakedly political—and reactionary—institution, and the existential dangers it poses must be met by political limitations on its recklessness and continued mass mobilization that resists fascism in every corridor of power.
'Gift to Corporate Greed': Dire Warnings as Supreme Court Scraps Chevron Doctrine
"Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today's decision," said one advocate.
The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative supermajority delivered corporate polluters, anti-abortion campaigners, and other right-wing interests a major victory Friday by overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, a deeply engrained legal precedent whose demise could spell disaster for public health and the climate.
The high court's 6-3 ruling along ideological lines in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce significantly constrains the regulatory authority of federal agencies tasked with crafting rules on a range of critical matters, from worker protection to the climate to drug safety.
The majority's decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
"The weight of human suffering likely to arise from this decision should keep the justices up at night," said Emily Peterson-Cassin of Demand Progress, a watchdog group that called the decision "a gift to corporate greed."
"The Supreme Court is threatening safeguards that protect hundreds of millions of people from unsafe products, bad medicines, dangerous chemicals, illegal scams, and more," Peterson-Cassin added. "By handing policy decisions usually deliberated over by experts to lower level judges, the Supreme Court has set off a seismic political shift that primarily serves only the most powerful corporate interests."
Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey issued a similarly stark warning: "Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today's decision. Some ramifications of this decision won't be felt for decades, but they will be felt."
The Chevron doctrine, which stemmed from the high court's 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, held that judges should defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue.
In her dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the consequences of upending Chevron could be vast given that it underpinned "thousands of judicial decisions" and has "become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds—to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest."
Kagan noted that unlike the Supreme Court, federal agencies are staffed with experts that should be granted deference to interpret ambiguities in laws written by Congress, which "knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes."
"When does an alpha amino acid polymer qualify as a 'protein'?" Kagan asked. "I don't know many judges who would feel confident resolving that issue... But the [Food and Drug Administration] likely has scores of scientists on staff who can think intelligently about it, maybe collaborate with each other on its finer points, and arrive at a sensible answer."
By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the liberal justice wrote, the Supreme Court's majority demonstrated that it "disdains restraint, and grasps for power."
"This is the outcome of a multidecade crusade by big business and right-wing extremists to gut federal agencies tasked with protecting Americans’ health and safety."
An array of right-wing and industry organizations—including groups with ties to the Koch network and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo—pushed the Supreme Court to scrap the Chevron doctrine, and Friday's decision could embolden separate legal challenges.
"Anti-abortion activists are celebrating the ruling as a big win for their plans to further restrict medication abortion," The New York Timesreported Friday, citing a strategist for Students for Life who said that "getting rid of Chevron is the first domino to fall."
"They see the decision as a new precedent that can work in their favor as they seek to bring another case against the Food and Drug Administration to the Supreme Court, which rejected their bid to undo the FDA's approval of the drug earlier in June," the Times added.
Climate advocates warned the ruling could also be devastating for the planet, potentially hamstringing the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments as they attempt to rein in planet-warming pollution using existing law. The American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas industry's largest lobbying group, celebrated Friday's ruling as environmentalists voiced dismay.
"Today's reckless but unsurprising decision from this far-right court is a triumph for corporate polluters that seek to dismantle commonsense regulations protecting clean air, clean water, and a livable climate future," said Food and Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "This decision brings into sharp relief the critical importance of electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices guided by science and sound legal precedent."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that Friday's ruling "by an extremist Supreme Court eviscerates four decades of legal precedent that protects Americans' rights to clean air and water, safe workplaces, and healthcare by preventing the dedicated civil-servant experts who staff our federal agencies from implementing the laws enacted by Congress."
"That is why Congress must immediately pass my Stop Corporate Capture Act, the only bill that codifies Chevron deference, strengthens the federal-agency rulemaking process, and ensures that rulemaking is guided by the public interest—not what's good for wealthy corporations," said Jayapal. "Make no mistake: This is the outcome of a multidecade crusade by big business and right-wing extremists to gut federal agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health and safety to instead benefit corporations aiming to dismantle regulations and boost their profits."
Progressive International Applauds Kenyans for Rising Up to Defeat IMF Austerity Bill
"They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
Progressive International on Thursday applauded the people of Kenya for taking to the streets en masse to defeat an International Monetary Fund-backed legislative package that would have hiked taxes on ordinary citizens as part of an effort to repay the government's powerful creditors.
"Pushed through at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. State Department, the bill would impose severe austerity measures and crippling taxes on Kenya's working people, who are already strained by Kenya's legacy of colonial underdevelopment," Progressive International said in a statement.
"The Progressive International stands firmly with the people of Kenya," the organization added. "They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
The Kenyan government's proposal, welcomed by the IMF as necessary for "debt sustainability," triggered massive youth-led protests in the nation's capital last week as thousands of citizens already immiserated by sky-high living costs flooded the streets to express outrage at the U.N. financial institution and their government for fueling the crisis.
The government crackdown was swift and deadly, with police using tear gas and live ammunition to beat back demonstrators calling for the withdrawal of the proposed bill and the resignation of President William Ruto, who took office in 2022.
Protesters achieved one of their objectives Wednesday when Ruto announced he would not sign the tax legislation, just days after he
ordered the country's military to help suppress the demonstrations.
"Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this finance bill, I concede, and therefore, I will not sign the 2024 finance bill, and it shall subsequently be withdrawn," Ruto said in an address to the nation, which spends more than a quarter of its revenue on debt interest payments.
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country."
As The Associated Pressreported, the withdrawn measure would have "raised taxes and fees on a range of daily items and services, from egg imports to bank transfers."
Kenya's public debt currently stands at $80 billion, around $3.5 billion of which is owed to the IMF—an explicit target of protesters' ire.
"Kenya is not IMF's lab rat," declared one demonstrator's sign.
The IMF said in a brief statement Wednesday that it was "deeply concerned" about the "tragic events" in Kenya and claimed its "main goal in supporting Kenya is to help it overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the wellbeing of its people."
“Kenya is not IMF’s lab rat”
“I was in my healing era” pic.twitter.com/xLt2GG51hf
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) June 20, 2024
As Bloomberg's David Herbling wrote over the weekend, Ruto "has spent his first two years in office ramming through a slew of unpopular taxes—on everything from gasoline to wheelchair tires, bread to sanitary pads—thrilling international investors and the IMF, which has long urged Kenya to double its revenue collections to address its heavy debt burden."
Ruto's withdrawal of the tax-hike bill appeared unlikely to fully quell mass discontent over the president's IMF-aligned economic policies as protests continued on Thursday.
"The protests today are not as big as they were two days ago but they are still no less intense where they are happening," Al Jazeera's Zein Basravi reported from Nairobi. "If President Ruto, protesters say, had signed off on killing the tax bill 72 hours ago, a week ago, these protests might not be happening. But the decision he made, the concession, has come too little too late, and it has not gone far enough, and it has come at the cost of too many young lives."
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country, 23 killed," Basravi added. "And they hold Parliament responsible for not standing stronger, standing firmer, against the president as they feel he was overreaching his position."
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said in a statement Wednesday that it is "crucial to recognize that the International Monetary Fund's austerity conditions have contributed to the economic hardships facing Kenyan citizens."
"These measures often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations and can exacerbate social unrest," continued Omar, who chairs the U.S.-Africa Policy Working Group. "It is imperative that protesters remain peaceful as they continue to demand change. I stand in solidarity with the people in the wake of both state violence and IMF-imposed austerity measures."
"The Kenyan government must immediately disclose the location and condition of all those who have been taken into custody or disappeared, cease the use of excessive force, respect the right to peacefully protest, and continue to engage in meaningful dialogue to address the legitimate concerns of its citizens," Omar said.