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    Bernie Sanders says he opposes urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down

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    Bernie Sanders said he opposes any move to force Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal justice on the US supreme court, to step down so that Joe Biden could nominate a younger liberal replacement before he finishes his term as president.Sotomayor, 70, is known to suffer from health issues, and some Democrats fear a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died during Donald Trump’s first term – giving him a third opportunity to nominate a new justice and further shore up the top court’s conservative bent.In his first term, Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett to take the place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died less than two months before the 2020 election – leaving six largely conservative judges to just three liberals.Trump’s first-term appointees to the court were critical to overturning abortion rights and a series of other rulings that delighted conservative activists.In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders, a progressive senator who identifies as an independent but usually votes with Democrats, said it would not be “sensible” to ask Sotomayor to step down while Biden is still in office.He added he’d heard “a little bit” of talk from Democratic senators about asking Sotomayor, who is serving a lifetime appointment to the supreme court, to step aside.“I don’t think it’s sensible,” Sanders said, without elaborating further.No elected Democrat has so far publicly called on the justice to resign, but the idea comes amid a feverish effort by Democrats to “Trump-proof” their agenda before the Republican takes office in January.Supreme court justices are nominated by the sitting president but face an often grueling confirmation process in the Senate. With Democrats soon to lose control of the body, the opportunity for Biden to appoint – and for Democratic senators to confirm – a successor to Sotomayor is fast slipping away.Biden appointed Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court. She was confirmed in 2022. However, with just two months left in office, it is unlikely that Biden and a Democrat-controlled Senate would be able to nominate and confirm a new justice to the court in time.Democrats have previous floated the possibility of increasing the number of justices to counter the court’s political make-up. In July, Biden proposed term limits and a code of ethics for court justices, after a series of scandals relating to the conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito called into question their impartiality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden said the court had “gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office”.In a second term, meanwhile, Trump could have the opportunity to further deepen the court’s conservative leaning, as Thomas and Alito are both in their mid-70s.Just as Democrats are considering whether Sotomayor should step down to install a replacement liberal justice, Republicans could do the same after they take power in January. “Alito is gleefully packing up his chambers,” Mike Davis, a conservative legal operative, predicted on social media this week.Although a Republican majority in the Senate refused to take up confirmation hearings in 2016 when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia, protesting that to do so in an election year would be unfair, they had no such problems when Trump nominated Barrett to replace Ginsburg in 2020, also an election year. More

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      David Brock on Clarence Thomas and supreme court hijack: ‘The original sin’

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      Thirty years ago, David Brock made his name as a reporter with The Real Anita Hill, a book attacking the woman who accused Clarence Thomas, George HW Bush’s second supreme court nominee, of sexual harassment. After tempestuous hearings, Thomas was confirmed. Brock – who memorably characterized Hill, a law professor, in sexist terms as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” – was launched as a rightwing media star.Thirty years on, Thomas still sits on the court, the longest-serving hardliner on a bench tilted 6-3 to the right by three confirmations under Donald Trump. But Brock switched sides long ago, disillusioned by rightwing lies. He apologized for smearing Hill and eventually became a prominent Democratic operative, close to Bill and Hillary Clinton.He founded watchdogs and Super Pacs and kept on writing books. He dealt with his political conversion 20 years ago in Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Now, with Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America, he has returned to what he calls “the original sin” of the modern supreme court: “Thomas’s perjury to get on the court” and his allegedly untruthful answers to questions about his treatment of Hill and other women.“That’s my starting point,” Brock says. “And then I show over time that other justices misled the public in their Senate confirmation hearings based on their denial of the fact that they were opposed to Roe all along – which sort of came out in the wash with the Dobbs decision.”Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade, removing the federal right to abortion, came in June 2022. The way it went down helped give Brock his subtitle. John Roberts, the conservative chief justice, sought to uphold Roe but Dobbs was decided 5-4 anyway, Roberts unable to sway any other rightwinger. As Brock sees it, Thomas now owns the court.View image in fullscreen“That was a tipping point,” Brock says, pointing to major rulings on guns, affirmative action, environmental regulation, corporate bribery, presidential immunity and more, all rightwing wins. “But the other thing about about Roberts is he’s let these ethical issues just sit there. They cast their own ethics code about a year ago – and it has no enforcement mechanism. He’s been a weak leader, I think.”If 2022 was the year of Dobbs, 2023 and 2024 have been the years of gifts and grift: a parade of reports, Pulitzer prize-winning in ProPublica’s case, about how Thomas did not declare lavish gifts from mega-donors with business before the court, prominent among them Harlan Crow, a billionaire with a penchant for Nazi collectibles.For Brock, “all the revelations about Clarence Thomas and the gifts put another layer on top of the book I was writing about the crisis of legitimacy at the court, as a result of the fact Dobbs was so unpopular. You had that ethical crisis as well.”Thomas denies wrongdoing. So do Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, other hardliners with reported ties to rightwing money. Roberts refuses to testify on the issue in Congress. The result, as Brock says, is “a situation where polls show the supreme court is held in very low regard”.Brock holds Thomas in low regard too. On the page, he calls the justice “a scrapper and a battler”, a “supreme court justice turned showman”, and a “Bork without the brains” – a stinging reference to Robert Bork, the hardliner whose nomination failed in 1987, fueling rightwing determination to dominate at all costs.Brock says: “We went for a number of years when Thomas didn’t really speak from the bench at all [but] he’s been much more active in these last few years, and I think he’s a bit emboldened by the fact that he has now at least four colleagues who on many of these cases are going to agree with him.”Another driver of the court’s sharp rightward turn is Leonard Leo, the dark money impresario Thomas once called “the number three most powerful person in the world”. Brock could have used “the Leo Court” for a subtitle too, given Leo was “clearly was responsible for the three Trump justices”, via “an unprecedented move by Trump during the 2016 campaign, to provide lists to the Federal Society [which Leo co-chairs] of who he would nominate, as a way of bolstering his credibility with the evangelical right, which was skeptical of his personal behavior”.Leo also provided ballast for Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, as he ruthlessly blocked Barack Obama’s last pick for the court, Merrick Garland, “and so Trump was able to campaign on there being an open seat, and so … the McConnell strategy and the Leo strategy came together, and that is basically how Trump got elected”.In such terms, Brock has written a broad history of the court’s rightward shift from Nixon to Trump and after. But he has also written an old-fashioned broadside, a 300-page call for political action. Regarding Thomas, Brock wants impeachment.Identifying “eight specific areas of wrongdoing that require further investigation by Congress”, Brock says Thomas should first face scrutiny for his “bald-faced lie” in his confirmation hearings, when he categorically denied “any sexual discussion within the workplace”, a statement challenged by numerous witnesses.Brock’s other counts are linked to Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife and a prominent far-right activist, and include failure to recuse in cases connected to her lobbying work and involvement in Trump’s election subversion; failure to disclose her earnings from the rightwing Heritage Foundation; and failure to disclose his own gifts from Crow, Leo and others.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenBrock is not the first to call for Thomas to be impeached. In July, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched her own attempt in Congress. Like the New York Democrat, Brock is a realist: he knows that even should Democrats retake the House and impeach Thomas, a closely divided Senate would be extremely unlikely to convict and remove. But that is no reason not to try.“Sometimes I play this thought experiment with myself about how the Republicans would exploit an opportunity to take advantage of their opponents’ vulnerabilities. I have no doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot and you had a Democratic Clarence Thomas, you’d have hearing after hearing, and I think you probably would have an impeachment inquiry.“And so what I argue is that even if you only get an impeachment hearing or investigation in the House, it would still shine light on all of this, and it’s still worth doing, even though we know we wouldn’t have the votes required to remove him. I think it would be a good experience for the public to air all this out.”Brock also says impeachment “would help make the case for supreme court reform”, yearned for by the left, in the face of staunch rightwing opposition.Another good idea for Democrats in election season, Brock says, is to keep a spotlight on Ginni Thomas. That spotlight may soon grow brighter. Citing two anonymous sources, Brock reports that Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump Republican, was responsible for blocking serious scrutiny of the Thomases by the January 6 committee, even as it uncovered evidence of close involvement in Trump’s 2020 election subversion.It’s an explosive claim – particularly as Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president. To Brock, it’s simply indicative of the damage the Thomases have done.“I think increasingly people are becoming aware that there’s something rotten at the core of the fact that Thomas refuses to recuse himself from these cases where his wife is actively involved 100% … she’s been a longtime, but very behind the scenes, influential operative.”So of course has Brock. Once, he was on the same side as Clarence Thomas’s most prominent supporters, among them Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and former Trump administration official Brock says “knew the truth of the Anita Hill accusations” but worked to instal Thomas on the court regardless.Strikingly, Brock also once moved in the same circles as Brett Kavanaugh, then a Republican aide and attack dog, now another member of the far-right bloc that dominates the supreme court, his own controversial confirmation, also beset by allegations of sexual misconduct, also part of American history.Such close connections to his subject help make Brock’s book a fascinating read. Asked how he will respond to attacks from former comrades, whether they read the book or not, he says: “Those will come with the territory.”

      Stench is published in the US by Knopf More

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      Clarence Thomas’s wife thanks group for efforts to block court ethics reforms

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      Ginni Thomas, the far-right activist wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has thanked a religious liberties group for its efforts to block reforms of the court aimed at reining in the justices’ ethical breaches, including those of her husband.A new recording obtained by the investigative website ProPublica and the watchdog Documented discloses a July email in which Ginni Thomas thanked First Liberty Institute for fighting to oppose supreme court reforms. She specifically referred to White House proposals from Joe Biden designed to rein in wayward justices on the country’s highest court, of which her husband is the prime example.“I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the supreme court. Many were so depressed by the lack of response by R[epublican]s and conservatives,” she said.Writing in all caps, she added: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”The email was read out by the head of First Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford, on a 31 July call with donors to the group. He said the email had been written by Ginni Thomas that same day.Two days previously, Biden had called for sweeping changes to the court, including term limits for the nine justices and a code of ethics that would be enforced by an outside body. Under current arrangements, the justices are liable to a voluntary code which they individually police themselves.In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, the US president explained why he thought a tougher code of ethics was now necessary. He pointed to “scandals involving several justices” that had damaged public confidence in the court, including “undisclosed gifts to justices” and “conflicts of interest connected with Jan 6 insurrectionists”.Biden did not mention names, but Clarence Thomas has been implicated in both types of ethically questionable behaviour. ProPublica has exposed the lavish international travel that the justice enjoyed courtesy of the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.A conflict of interest relating to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump has also been revealed by the House committee investigating the insurrection. It showed that Ginni Thomas was deeply implicated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the lead-up to January 6, writing several messages to the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the conspiracy unfolded.When the supreme court was asked to adjudicate on Trump’s request that White House records – which, it was later found, included Ginni Thomas’s messages – should not be disclosed to the House committee, only one justice sided with Trump: Clarence Thomas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFirst Liberty Institute is an influential player in rightwing judicial circles. With income of $25m, it has regularly argued cases before the supreme court calling for greater involvement of religion in the public square.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used to work as a lawyer for the group and has called Shackelford a mentor. More

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      Clarence Thomas failed to disclose more private jet travel, senator says

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      The conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose more private travel on a jet owned by the rightwing mega-donor Harlan Crow, a Democratic senator said on Monday, amid a swirling ethics scandal and demands for judiciary reform.“I am deeply concerned that Mr Crow may have been showering a public official with extravagant gifts, then writing off those gifts to lower his tax bill,” Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Senate finance committee chair, told a lawyer for Crow in a letter.“This concern is only heightened by the committee’s recent discovery of additional undisclosed international travel on Mr Crow’s private jet by Justice Thomas.”The committee, Wyden said, had “obtained international flight records showing that on 19 November 2010, Justice Thomas and his wife [the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas] flew from Hawaii to New Zealand on Mr Crow’s private jet, before flying back from New Zealand to Hawaii on the jet a week later on 27 November 2010. Mr Crow was also a passenger on these flights.“To date, Justice Thomas has never disclosed this private jet travel on any financial disclosure forms, even though Justice Thomas has amended disclosures to reflect other international travel on Mr Crow’s private jet.”Thomas was confirmed in 1991, after stormy hearings in which he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a law professor. More than 30 years later, he is the longest-serving rightwinger on a court controlled by Republican nominees, 6-3.Gifts to Thomas, undeclared and primarily from Crow but also from other sources and to other justices, have stoked an ethics crisis. Apparent political sympathies among the judges – and family members, with Ginni Thomas having participated in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election – have only added fuel to the fire.The non-profit newsroom ProPublica won a Pulitzer prize for its reporting on the issue. In Congress, the New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has led calls for Thomas and Samuel Alito, his fellow arch-rightwinger, to be impeached and removed – a political gambit without a realistic chance of success.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judges but in practice police themselves. An ethics code was introduced last November but remains without outside means of enforcement.Elena Kagan, one of three liberals on the court, has called for better enforcement of ethics rules. John Roberts, the rightwing chief justice, apparently remains unmoved. Despite calls from Wyden and other Democrats, Roberts has refused to testify in Congress.All the while, the Roberts court has handed down major conservative victories, including removing the federal right to abortion and saying presidents enjoy immunity for some acts.Joe Biden recently introduced reform proposals including term limits. In response to the president’s proposal, Neil Gorsuch, the first of three rightwingers appointed in four years during Trump’s presidency, used an interview with Fox News to warn: “I just say: be careful.”Thomas has said he initially believed he did not have to disclose gifts from donors. In the case of Crow, a real-estate billionaire known for collecting memorabilia associated with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, gifts to Thomas also included resort stays, a property purchase and payment of school fees.Thomas did not immediately comment about Wyden’s letter.As reported by the New York Times, a spokesperson for Crow said his lawyers had “already addressed Senator Wyden’s inquiries, which have no legal basis and are only intended to harass a private citizen”.Crow “consider[s] this matter settled”, they said.Wyden said he was “concerned that I have so far been unable to even determine the full extent of the potential tax abuse at issue”.A committee spokesperson told the Times the panel still hoped Crow would provide tax records voluntarily.Wyden said: “Neither Mr Crow nor Justice Thomas have disclosed the full scale of the Thomases’ use of the Michaela Rose [Crow’s superyacht] and private jets courtesy of Mr Crow, even as the Congress continues to uncover additional international private jet travel with Mr Crow that Justice Thomas failed to disclose on his ethics filings.”Citing filings recently updated by Thomas, “to include an eight-day voyage aboard the Michaela Rose in Indonesia in 2019”, Wyden said the justice “still has not disclosed other trips” on Crow’s yacht”.He added: “Public reports show evidence that Justice Thomas was a passenger aboard the Michaela Rose in Greece, New Zealand and elsewhere.“Additionally, a relative of Justice Thomas has stated that he personally witnessed Justice Thomas travel aboard the Michaela Rose in the Caribbean, Russia and the Baltics, with the trip to Russia also including helicopter ride(s).”Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, a group which campaigns for court reform, said: “The undue influence exerted by wealthy and powerful individuals like Harlan Crow over Justice Thomas highlights systemic corruption that cannot be ignored.”Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said Wyden had “strengthen[ed] the case [the president] made for common-sense reforms that are backed by constitutional experts across the political spectrum – as well as the vast majority of the American people.“The most powerful court in the United States shouldn’t be subject to the lowest ethical standards, and conflicts of interest on the supreme court cannot go unchecked.” More

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      Biden calls for supreme court reforms including 18-year justice term limits

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      Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to the US supreme court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.In an op-ed published on Monday morning, the president said justices should be limited to a maximum of 18 years’ service on the court rather than the current lifetime appointment, and also said ethics rules should be strengthened to regulate justices’ behavior.The call for reform comes after the supreme court ruled in early July that former presidents have some degree of immunity from prosecution, a decision that served as a major victory for Donald Trump amid his legal travails.“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden wrote.“I served as a US senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”Biden called for a “no one is above the law” amendment to the constitution, which would make clear that no president is entitled to immunity from prosecution by virtue of having served in the White House. Biden also said justices’ terms should be limited to 18 years, under a system where a new justice would be appointed to the supreme court by the serving president every two years.The president also called for stricter, enforceable rules on conduct which would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial interest.Last week Justice Elena Kagan called for the court to strengthen the ethics code it introduced in 2023 by adding a way to enforce it. That code was introduced after a spate of scandals involving rightwing justices on the court: Clarence Thomas was found to have accepted vacations and travel from a Republican mega-donor, while Samuel Alito flew on a private jet owned by an influential billionaire on the way to a fishing trip.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLegislation would be required to impose term limits and an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but it is unlikely to pass the current divided Congress.The constitutional amendment on presidential immunity would be even more difficult to enact, requiring two-thirds support from both chambers of Congress or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratification by 38 of the 50 state legislatures.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      AOC launches effort to impeach Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito

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      Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against the conservative US supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Wednesday over the justices’ “pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court”.The articles of impeachment are unlikely to gain traction in the US House, which is controlled by Republicans. The effort follows calls from two US senators, Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, for the US attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential criminal violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Thomas.“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.The articles were supported by seven other Democrats in the House.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “The unchecked corruption crisis on the supreme court has now spiraled into a constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large.”Reporting by the news outlet ProPublica revealed that Thomas failed to disclose several luxury vacation trips that were paid for by Harlan Crow, a conservative megadonor. Thomas has also been pressed to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6 US Capitol attack and Donald Trump because his wife, Ginni, is involved with groups that were connected to the insurrection.The resolution filed against Thomas contains three articles of impeachment. The first focuses on his failure to disclose gifts from Crow. The second two involve his refusal to recuse himself from cases connected to his wife.Alito also took a vacation with and flew on a private jet chartered by Peter Singer, a Republican billionaire. Additionally, Alito refused to recuse himself from cases involving the attack on the US Capitol after it was reported that his wife, Martha-Ann, flew an upside-down American flag associated with the insurrection at their Virginia home. Further, the Alitos flew a flag associated with Christian nationalism at a beach home in New Jersey.Ocasio-Cortez filed two articles of impeachment against Alito. One focuses on his failure to disclose luxury travel and the other on his refusal to recuse himself from January 6 cases.Alito and Thomas were both part of a majority opinion earlier this month saying that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, a major win for Trump. They both also were in the majority in a case narrowing the grounds under which January 6 participants can be criminally prosecuted.Supreme court justices have wide discretion over whether to recuse themselves from a given case – something that sets them apart from other justices. Facing pressure after ProPublica’s reporting, the court’s nine justices formalized a code of conduct last November, a move that was seen as a step in the right direction, but still weak. More

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      The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt | Rebecca Solnit

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      The violent attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, and all the ancillary attempts to steal the 2020 election, were a coup attempt led from the executive branch of the federal government with support from Republicans in the legislative branch. 1 July 2024 – this Thursday – was a more successful coup attempt orchestrated by six judges of the judicial branch.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in an opinion joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, after the US supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that Donald Trump holds “absolute immunity” for “official acts” done while president. Part of what’s shocking about the state of the union right now is that an entire party and the US supreme court’s conservative majority have abandoned almost everything – the truth, the rule of law, their own legitimacy, their place in history and the fate of the nation – to serve one man.They could not have picked a more outrageous man to throw their weight and reputations behind – a psychotic clown who’s also an indicted felon found liable in civil court for sexual assault, barred from doing business in New York, a stealer of state secrets, a would-be thief of an election and the instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch of government and the constitutionally mandated transition of power after an election. A grifter who in 2016 won a minority victory in a corrupted election – his conviction earlier this year was on charges for one small part of that corruption. A man who has gloated about seizing dictatorial powers and never letting go and a worshiper of tyrants denounced by dozens of his former cabinet members and senior staffers.January 6 was an attack on the constitution and so was 1 July. That no one is above the law has been a pillar of this nation and a cherished value since the 18th century; to knock it down in the 21st destabilizes structures and values that have stood these two centuries and more. A president with total immunity poses obvious threats to the rule of law, the balance of powers and democracy itself, and if that president is the vindictive criminal on the Republican ticket the dangers are immediate and obvious.The day before this ruling Trump approvingly shared a post on his own social media platform calling for Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, to be tried in a televised military tribunal – for boldly opposing his coup attempt and being one of the few members of their party to support his impeachment. She committed no crimes and the military has no jurisdiction over her, but under Trumpism there are no laws, just opportunities.The people I talked to and saw on social media were stunned, horrified, uncertain of what we do next. When the agency that is supposed to be the final authority on the rule of law becomes lawless, what do you do? There is much we can do, and much of it will be new kinds of campaigns with new goals, because we are in unprecedented territory.While a lot of elected officials seemed immobilized by this much-anticipated legal ruling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the representative, vowed to introduce legislation to impeach some supreme court justices – she didn’t say which ones, but it seems likely that Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas top her list. The Politicus newsletter notes that the senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, “has been one of the few members of Congress who has consistently sounded the alarm about Supreme Court corruption for years, and he isn’t letting the Senate’s limitations stop him from planning a massive investigation” of the supreme court.Of course this has been brewing for a long time. Before these decisions were handed down, journalists were reporting on the Alito household flying apparently pro-insurrection flags in open defiance of norms of judicial neutrality and on more illicit gifts Thomas had taken. Thomas’s wife was an eager participant in the January 6 coup attempt and all the back-room machinations around it; he and Alito were obliged by all norms and ethical principles to recuse themselves from Thursday’s decision, aptly titled Trump v United States, but of course did not.That was just part of the supreme court majority’s rampage this summer. As Nation legal correspondent Elie Mystal wrote a few days before, of the ruling that is devastating for environmental protection and science-based policy: “In the biggest judicial power grab since 1803, the Supreme Court today overruled Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 case that instructed the judiciary to defer to the president and the president’s experts in executive agencies when determining how best to enforce laws passed by Congress. In so doing, the court gave itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state and its regulatory agencies. The US Constitution, flawed though it is, has already answered the question of who gets to decide how to enforce our laws. The Constitution says, quite clearly, that Congress passes laws and the president enforces them. The Supreme Court, constitutionally speaking, has no role.” Until now.Then came Monday’s bigger judicial power grab, because as another legal pundit, Asha Rangappa pointed out, in saying official presidential acts were above the law, the court “has made itself the ultimate umpire of what is ‘official’ or ‘not official,’ thereby giving itself power to determine which prosecutions are warranted and which aren’t. Basically, they’ve made themselves, not POTUS, the kings here.” Mystal tweeted, “I mean, at a core level, listening to us lawyers is of no more use here. We are beyond ‘law.’ We are beyond principles we studied or researched” while sharing her fellow law journalist Dahlia Lithwick’s declaration, “As an official representative of the legal commentariat I want to suggest that tonight’s a good news cycle to talk to the fascism and authoritarianism experts. This is their inning now…”We do have fascism and authoritarianism experts, who are often also scholars of civil society resistance and the ways dictatorial regimes can be resisted and toppled. And we do know that this is a time when civil society participation will be crucial. First of all to make sure a Democrat takes the White House in November; from that victory much can be restored. If Trump wins, the pieces of the coup will cohere into not the end of democracy in America but at least its kidnapping and torture by its enemies.There are remedies within the legislative process and the rule of law to some of this. But we will only get them with massive public participation. Civil society must press the case that this court is fatally illegitimate and Roberts, Alito and Thomas must resign. And we must press our legislators to act. Other countries have survived worse, and most of the countries to the south of the US have been through revolutions, coups, dictatorships and other dramas in the past century, as well as successful non-violent resistance and democratic triumphs.One thing is clear after this epochal supreme court decision: the fate of the country is in the hands of its people. Or rather two things are clear: the rightwing pursuit of increasingly outrageous minority rule is because they are increasingly a minority; the will of the people and the majority of votes are not on their side when it comes to everything from reproductive rights to climate action. Which is why they have to suppress votes, gerrymander districts, try to steal elections and now torch the constitution. In one way, this demonstrates their strength. In another, their weakness. It’s up to us to make that weakness matter more than that strength.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery | Moira Donegan

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      Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can. In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.In so doing, the court has narrowed the scope of anti-corruption law for state and local officials to apply to only those exchanges of money, goods and official favor in which an explicit quid pro quo arrangement can be proved. As in Cargill – the court’s recent decision legalizing bump stocks, wherein the court declared that the gun accessories do not render semiautomatic rifles into machine guns based on a lengthy technical explanation of the meaning of a “trigger function” – the court in Snyder has made an extended, belabored foray into a definitional distinction between “bribes” and “gratuities”.But the glaring reality remains that this is largely a distinction without a difference. As Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, this is an interpretation which no reasonable reading of the statute can support. In a dissent whose tone seemed exasperated, almost sarcastic, she called the majority opinion “absurd and atextual”, saying it “elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain texts of this statute and is a quintessential case of the tail wagging the dog”. The “bribery” versus “gratuity” distinction, she said, allows officials to accept rewards for official acts in ways that are “functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe”.The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works. In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor. But corruption, influence-peddling, and unfair and undue methods of persuasion are more subtle and complicated than this in practice.For an example, we need look no further than the conservative justices of the supreme court itself, who have become notorious, in recent years, for accepting lavish gifts and chummy intimacy from rightwing billionaires. According to investigative reporting by ProPublica, Clarence Thomas has accepted vacations, real estate purchases, tuition for his young relatives, and seemingly innumerable private jet trips from the billionaire Harlan Crow, as well as financing for an RV from another wealthy patron, Anthony Welters. Thomas has argued that these gifts and favors are merely the “personal hospitality” of “close personal friends”.ProPublica also reports that Samuel Alito, who flies insurrectionist flags outside his Virginia mansion and New Jersey beach house, has accepted the hospitality of the Republican mega-donor Paul Singer; the billionaire took Alito along on his private jet to a fishing resort in Alaska, where the justice stayed, played and reportedly drank $1,000 wine on the billionaire’s dime. (Alito has disputed aspects of ProPublica’s characterization.)There is no reporting to indicate that the justices received this expansive and expensive generosity in direct compensation for their extremely conservative jurisprudence, even though the judges’ legal writings have furthered the billionaire’s material interests and social preferences. It seems reasonable, to me, to infer that the gifts, as frequent and valuable as they are, are not the product of explicit agreements to exchange things of value for specific official acts.If anything, I think that these relationships do not seem corrupt to the men who take part in them; that they see their relationships with billionaires, and their receipt of these billionaires’ largesse, as innocent and proper expressions of affection between friends and ideological fellow travelers. Clarence Thomas may be able to feel something, in the dark depths of his soul, that we might recognize as akin to love, and he may indeed feel that love for Harlan Crow.But this “love”, or whatever it is, does not mean that what is happening between these men is not corruption, and it does not mean that the law has nothing to say about it. Connections like these are cultivated with both the intention and the effect of rewarding and encouraging conservative outcomes; an explicit quid pro quo comes to seem vulgar and unnecessary in their midst, in which social reinforcement and personal loyalty do the work that a more explicit bribe would otherwise accomplish.Adding money – or, in the court’s parlance, “gratuities” – to these arrangements only makes this more obvious. It is not a coincidence that the court has chosen to legalize for state and local officials exactly the sort of corruption that they partake of so conspicuously themselves.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      How the US supreme court could be a key election issue: ‘They’ve grown too powerful’

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      “Look at me, look at me,” said Martha-Ann Alito. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.”It was a bizarre outburst from the wife of a justice on America’s highest court. Secretly recorded by a liberal activist, Martha-Ann Alito complained about a neighbour’s gay pride flag and expressed a desire to fly a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in protest.This, along with audio clips of Justice Samuel Alito himself and a stream of ethics violations, have deepened public concerns that the supreme court is playing by its own rules. The Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has described a “national clamour over this crisis of legitimacy” at the court.A poll last month for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America suggests that the supreme court will now play a crucial role in voters’ choices in the 2024 election. Nearly three in four voters said the selection and confirmation of justices will be an important consideration for them in voting for both president and senator in November.Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, said: “The idea that these guys act as if they are kings ruling from above, to me, should absolutely be an issue. It was always Republicans who said we hate unelected judges legislating from the bench and we hate judicial activism. That’s all this stuff is.”View image in fullscreenPublic trust in the court is at an all-time low amid concerns over bias and corruption. Alito has rejected demands that he recuse himself from a case considering presidential immunity after flags similar to those carried by 6 January 2021 rioters flew over his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Justice Clarence Thomas has ignored calls to step aside because of the role his wife, Ginni, played in supporting efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.Ethical standards have been under scrutiny following revelations that some justices failed to report luxury trips, including on private jets, and property deals. Last week Thomas, who has come under criticism for failing to disclose gifts from the businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow, revised his 2019 form to acknowledge he accepted “food and lodging” at a Bali hotel and at a California club.These controversies have been compounded by historic and hugely divisive decisions. The fall of Roe v Wade, ending the nationwide right to abortion after half a century, was seen by many Democrats as a gamechanger in terms of people making a connection between the court and their everyday lives.There are further signs of the debate moving beyond the Washington bubble. Last week, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper argued that, since the court’s own ethics code proved toothless, Congress should enact legislation that holds supreme court justices to higher ethical standards. The paper called for the local senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is chair of the Senate judiciary committee, to hold a hearing on the issue.Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “It’s important to keep in mind that, even though debate among members of Congress would lead you to believe that court reform is a polarising issue, it really isn’t. For years we have seen broad bipartisan support for basic supreme court reforms such as ethics.“A broad bipartisan consensus exists that they’ve grown too powerful, that they have too much power over laws and regulations. That’s shared among nearly three-fourths of Americans, including 80% of independents, so the demand is there and this isn’t something where it’s Democrats versus Republicans in the sense of real people. The American people want change and want to check the judiciary.”Congressional Democrats have introduced various bills including one to create an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel within the supreme court. Broader progressive ideas include expanding the number of seats on the court or limiting the justices to 18-year terms rather than lifetime appointments.But such efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans, who over decades impressed on their base the importance of the court, ultimately leading to a 6-3 conservative majority including three Trump appointees.This week Senate Republicans blocked the ​​Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, legislation that would require the court to adopt a binding code of conduct for all justices, establish procedures to investigate complaints of judicial misconduct and adopt rules to disclose gifts, travel and income received by them that are at least as rigorous as congressional disclosure rules.In response, Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said its “nearly 2 million members are fired up and ready to continue advocating for supreme court reform – in Congress and at the ballot box”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Galen of the Lincoln Project worries that Democrats lack the necessary aggression to capitalise on the issue. “[Senate majority leader Chuck] Schumer and Durbin are not change agents. They consider themselves institutionalists and they continue to call themselves that. They’re in a place where they can’t possibly conceive of something like that. Democrats are just afraid of their own shadow.”That principle might apply to the US president himself. The 81-year-old, who served in the Senate for 36 years, is reluctant to call out justices by name or call for sweeping reforms of the court, although he is making its decision to end the constitutional right to abortion a centrepiece of his campaign.Ed Fallone, an associate law professor at Marquette University Law School said: “I don’t know that Joe Biden is the politician to try and benefit from this issue. Biden has always presented himself as an institutionalist and more of a centrist than many segments of the Democratic party.“There’s a real risk here for Biden because, if he does try to get political advantage from the public’s growing concern about the supreme court, it seems to conflict with his message that we should all respect the court system and the judicial system and the Trump prosecutions and the various legal problems of former Trump advisers. It seems difficult to reconcile telling the public to respect the judicial system with also embracing the idea that the very top of the system is flawed and needs reform.”Fallone added: “You will see other Democrats seize on this issue and start to push it, in particular those who are are going to try to energise the left side of the base, maybe not necessarily for this election, but maybe anticipating Biden might lose and starting already to look ahead to the following election.”Other argue that, competing for voter attention with the cost of living, immigration and other issues, the supreme court will ultimately fade into background noise.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC, said: “The middle of the country, the independents and the swing voters do not care about the supreme court, and I don’t think any effort by Democrats or the media bringing up these things about Alito or Thomas is going to register or motivate those people. It motivates partisans. It doesn’t motivate swing voters on either side.”Read more: The supreme court’s decisions this week
      US supreme court strikes down federal ban on ‘bump stock’ devices for guns
      US supreme court unanimously upholds access to abortion pill mifepristone
      US supreme court sides with Starbucks in union case over fired employees More