Energy

Environmentalists Are Burning Mounds Of Cash To Resist Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

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The environmental group League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is launching a campaign to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court.

LCV is spending $200,000 to run an ad slamming Kavanaugh for putting Americans’ “health, our environment, and our democracy at risk.” The ad hits Kavanaugh for rulings that sided “with big corporations over people” and put “toxic pollutants in our air.” The environmental group is also building opposition across several states, Politico reports.

Environmentalists are critical of Kavanaugh’s history of ruling against the Environmental Protection Agency largely on rules that saddled companies and industry with exorbitant costs relative to each rule’s environmental benefit.

“With the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Trump has nominated an individual whose record shows he will side with the wealthy and powerful over the public interest,” LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a statement after Trump announced Kavanaugh’s nomination. “Kavanaugh has consistently come down on the side of Big Polluters instead of protecting clean water and clean air for all.”

A bevy of interest groups have launched similar campaigns to sway the Senate into voting against Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, but their success is growing more doubtful. Former-Hillary Clinton aide Brian Fallon expressed dismay at the outlook for the various movements.

“There were too many Democrats who decided out of the gate that this was an unwinnable fight,” Fallon told The Washington Post. Fallon leads Demand Justice, a progressive advocacy group, that committed to spending millions to campaign against Kavanaugh.

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