The highest court in the nation has announced today its justices must abide by an ethics code.
The code begins: “A Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States should maintain and observe high standards of conduct in order to preserve the integrity and independence of the federal judiciary.”
The news comes on the heels of revelations about undisclosed financial ties involving conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito that many have argued is a conflict of interest for people in their positions.
That’s it for this US politics liveblog. Here are the key points from today:
The US supreme court has issued a new code of ethics following controversies involving conservative justices who failed to disclose financial ties to republican mega-donors.
Biden is getting ready to meet Xi Jinping on Wednesday in San Francisco – a demonstration of goodwill on the part of China, whose leader hasn’t visited the US in six years.
2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley reacted to the news of Tim Scott suspending his presidential bid. “Tim Scott is a good man of faith and an inspiration to so many. The Republican primary was made better by his participation in it,” Haley said on Twitter/X. “South Carolina is blessed to continue to have him as our senator. Scott announced conceded on Sunday, just six months after launching his campaign.”
New House speaker and Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson has until Friday to garner support for his spending plan, or risk a government shutdown and a fate similar to his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted from the role in October.
Trump, Trump, and more Trump: The former president received swift condemnation from the Biden-Harris campaign for comparing his political enemies on the left to vermin – language criticized as mirroring that of fascist dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. And ongoing is Trump’s civil fraud trial, after which he could be fined $250m.
Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries is considering Mike Johnson’s proposal to stave off a shutdown and discussing it with members.
Jeffries says he has concerns with the proposal, specifically what he calls “the bifurcation of the continuing resolution in January and February 2024” as well as Republicans’ failure to address national security and domestic funding priorities of Americans. He also said Democrats wouldn’t accept “any extreme right-wing policy provisions in connection with funding the government”.
But he doesn’t reject it outright, writing:
House Democrats will continue to put people over politics, work with our colleagues to keep the government open and push back against right-wing extremism.
He added:
We will proceed this week through the lens of making progress for everyday Americans by continuing to put people over politics.
What’s not clear is who will enforce the code, or how.
The code was released just days before the Senate judiciary committee was expected to vote to authorize subpoenas for Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo – two mega-wealthy donors to conservative causes and political figures, and who paid for luxury trips for justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The committee had advocated for an ethics code in the wake of the controversies, and in recent months, justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh expressed support for one. In May, chief justice John Roberts said there was more the court could do to “adhere to the highest ethical standards”, without providing any specifics.
The full 14-page ethics code can be read here:
Although judges have long been beholden to certain rules surrounding conduct, this marks the first time the supreme court has published and adopted a formal code of ethics, similar to those of lower federal courts.
A statement of the court that precedes the new code says:
“For the most part these rules and principles are not new: The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice.
“The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”
The new supreme court ethics code has arrived in the wake of public pressure due to ProPublica’s revelations about undisclosed gifts received by justices.
In April, ProPublica revealed supreme court justice Clarence Thomas had taken undisclosed trips paid for by Dallas billionaire and major Republican donor Harlan Crow.
In June, it was revealed another conservative justice Samuel Alito, took a trip to Alaska with a Republican billionaire in 2008, which he also did not disclose.
The highest court in the nation has announced today its justices must abide by an ethics code.
The code begins: “A Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States should maintain and observe high standards of conduct in order to preserve the integrity and independence of the federal judiciary.”
The news comes on the heels of revelations about undisclosed financial ties involving conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito that many have argued is a conflict of interest for people in their positions.
If found guilty, Donald Trump faces a fine of at least $250m. The former president also might soon lose his business license due to fraud, New York judge Arthur Engoron ruled.
Readers can follow along in our standalone liveblog on the trial here.
In other Trump-related news, Donald Trump Jr is testifying today as a defense witness in the New York civil fraud trial against him, his father and their company.
The Trumps and the Trump Organization are accused of massively inflating the value of their properties in order to secure loans. They have denied any wrongdoing.
Upon taking the stand, Trump Jr said: “I’d say it’s nice to be here, but I have a feeling the attorney general would sue me for perjury,” a dig at New York attorney general Letitia James.
The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign criticism of Donald Trump’s remarks at the weekend that the campaign, along with others, compared directly to fascistic dictatorial speech, included a list of articles in various US publications.
They include prominent voices slamming Trump and the list is below. Meanwhile, the statement from the Biden-Harris campaign, via spokesperson Ammar Moussa, concludes with this remark: “Donald Trump thinks he can win by dividing our country. He’s wrong, and he’ll find out just how wrong next November.”
Then it adds: read what they’re saying about Trump’s statement.
Washington Post: “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini”
Forbes: “Trump Compares Political Foes To ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda”
The New Republic: “It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk”
HuffPost: “Fascism Expert Offers Truly Chilling Take On Donald Trump’s ‘Vermin’ Rant”
The Post piece includes this:
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”
One year after their last in-person talks, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden will come face-to-face once again on Wednesday in San Francisco.
The encounter will dominate events at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit as the Chinese and US presidents seek to stabilise relations in an increasingly fraught geopolitical climate.
The meeting, which could last several hours, is the culmination of months of lower level dialogues which took place over the summer, with Washington sending more delegates to China than Beijing did to the US.
The fact of China’s leader visiting the US for the first time in six years demonstrates some goodwill from the Chinese side.
A speech from Xi to the US-China business community would underline his keenness to attract foreign businesses back to China, many of whom have been spooked by the three years of zero-Covid and the recent raids foreign consulting firms, as well as an increasing number of US restrictions on doing business with China, especially in hi-tech sectors.
Sweeping restrictions on the export of advanced technology to China will come into effect on 16 November, the day after Xi’s meeting with Biden. The new rules are a tightening of controls introduced last year, aimed at cutting off China’s access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, which are required to develop advanced artificial intelligence. Read more here.
The US political news landscape is tense, with a government shutdown looming, Joe Biden getting ready to meet Xi Jinping and Donald Trump being slammed for parroting fascist dictators, even as he dominates the opinion polls a year out from the presidential election.
Stay tuned for more news. The day so far:
The Biden-Harris 2024 election campaign has issued a strong statement condemning remarks Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made in a speech on Saturday, Veterans Day, in which he compared his political enemies on the left to vermin.
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley praised fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott after he suspended his White House bid.
A fourth government shutdown in a decade would have far-reaching consequences for the nation in numerous different fields, including national security.
New House speaker and Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson is up against the clock to see if he can win support for his suggested spending plan, before the looming government shutdown this Friday.
The Democrat Abigail Spanberger will quit Congress next year to run for governor of Virginia.
Announcing her move a week after voters delivered a rebuke to the current Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, she cited rightwing threats to reproductive rights and attempts to clamp down on public schooling.
“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads,” Spanberger, 44, said in a video on Monday. “Our country and our commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms and to our democracy.”
Last week, voters gave Democrats control of both houses of the Virginia legislature, seemingly ending talk of a late entry into the Republican presidential primary by Youngkin, a governor deemed relatively centrist who has nonetheless chosen to focus on culture war issues in office.
Spanberger is seen as a centrist. A former CIA officer and gun control group organiser, she was elected to the US House in 2018 from a state which has trended Democratic but remains keenly fought. In 2022, she won a redrawn seat by her widest margin to date.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
