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      Ginni Thomas Has a Lot of Explaining to Do

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      Again and again, during the years that Donald Trump was in the White House, liberals would ask themselves a single question: “Can you imagine if Barack Obama had done this?”“This,” of course, was any one of the antics or misdeeds that marked Trump’s time in office: the lies, the insults, the cruelty and the criminality. Imagine if Obama had gone out of his way to excuse the equivalent of a white supremacist mob; imagine if Obama had gone to the site of a natural disaster and tossed out paper towels like so many footballs; imagine if he had railed against “shithole countries” or tried to pressure a foreign leader into turning over information to undermine his political opponents.Imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had plotted to subvert and overturn a presidential election that he had lost.Republicans would have lost their minds. Having whipped themselves into a lather over fake scandals and manufactured controversies during the actual Obama administration, they would have exploded into paroxysms of partisan rage over any one of these misdeeds. The Benghazi hearings would have looked like a sober-minded investigation compared with what Republicans would have unleashed if the shoe had been on the other foot.The point of this mental exercise, for liberals, was to highlight the hypocrisy of the Republican Party under Trump. Tucked into this attempt to condemn Republican behavior, however, is an important observation about the value of political theater. All this conservative hysteria did not defeat Barack Obama at the ballot box, but it may have helped to put his party at a disadvantage.The main effect of these years of Republican scandal mongering was to produce a cloud of suspicion and mistrust that helped to undermine Obama’s preferred successor as president, as well as to shield Trump, as the 2016 Republican nominee, from the kind of scrutiny that might have made him more vulnerable.Democrats do not need to mimic Republican behavior in all of its deranged glory, but they would do well to heed the lesson that for many voters, where there is smoke, there must be fire.It is with this knowledge in mind that Democrats in Washington should do something about Ginni Thomas, who has just been asked to testify before the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. The reason is straightforward. Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, worked with allies of Donald Trump to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election. (Thomas quickly let it be known that she was looking “forward to talking to” the committee and couldn’t wait “to clear up misconceptions.”)Earlier this year, we learned that Thomas exchanged text messages with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in the weeks and days before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. We also learned, last month, that she urged Arizona Republicans to discard the results of the election and choose a “clean slate of Electors” for Trump.And we’ve learned this week from the Jan. 6 committee that Thomas also sent messages directly to John Eastman, the conservative lawyer (and former law clerk for Justice Thomas) who essentially devised the plan to try to overturn the 2020 presidential results.Eastman spoke at the “stop the steal” rally before the attack and even requested a pardon by way of Rudy Giuliani for his activities leading up to the insurrection: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”“Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known,” The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Eastman, for his part, claimed to have known of a “heated” dispute among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the 2020 election. “So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” he is said to have written in an email to another lawyer. (On Thursday, Eastman posted a rebuttal on Substack asserting that he’d heard about the “heated fight” from news reports and that he could “categorically confirm that at no time did I discuss with Mrs. Thomas or Justice Thomas any matters pending or likely to come before the Court.”)But if the first revelation, of Thomas’s correspondence with Meadows, was shocking, then these revelations of Thomas’s contact with Eastman are explosive. And it raises key questions, not just about what Ginni Thomas knew, but about what Clarence Thomas knew as well. How, exactly, did Eastman know of tensions on the court? And why did he predict to Greg Jacobs, chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, that the Supreme Court would rule 7-2 in support of his legal theory about the Electoral College certification process before conceding that in fact that might not be the case?So while the committee is rightly seeking testimony from Ginni Thomas, Democrats should say something too. They shouldn’t just say something, they should scream something.Not only did Ginni Thomas try to make herself a part of the effort to overthrow the government, but Justice Thomas was the only member of the court to vote in favor of Donald Trump’s attempt to shield his communications from congressional investigators, communications that would have included the messages between Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas.There is something suspect happening with the Supreme Court, and other constitutional officers have every right to criticize it. Democratic leaders in Congress should begin an investigation into Ginni Thomas’s activities and announce that they intend to speak to her husband as well. President Biden should tell the press that he supports that investigation and hopes to see answers. Rank-and-file Democrats should make a stink about potential corruption on the court whenever they have the opportunity. Impeachment should be on the table.This probably won’t win votes. It could, however, capture the attention of the media and even put Republicans on the defensive. It is true that politics are unpredictable and that there’s no way to say exactly how a given choice will play out in the real world. But if the much maligned (and politically successful) investigations into Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails are any indication, real pressure might turn additional revelations into genuine liabilities for the Republican Party.The easiest thing for Democrats to do, of course, is nothing — to steer away from open conflict and leave the controversy (and the questions) to the select committee. But if Democrats choose instead to act like a political party should, they would do well to remember that if the tables were turned, their opponents would not hesitate to use every argument, and every tool, at their disposal.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ginni Thomas Urged Arizona Lawmakers to Overturn Election

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      The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to legislators in a crucial swing state after the Trump campaign’s loss in 2020.In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, twice lobbied the speaker of the Arizona House and another lawmaker to effectively reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s popular-vote victory and deliver the crucial swing state to Donald J. Trump.Ms. Thomas, known as Ginni, a right-wing political activist who became a close ally of Mr. Trump during his presidency, made the entreaties in emails to Russell Bowers, the Republican speaker, and Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative. Ms. Bolick’s husband, Clint, once worked with Justice Thomas and now sits on the Arizona Supreme Court.The emails came as Mr. Trump and his allies were engaged in a legal effort to overturn his defeats in several battleground states. While the Arizona emails did not mention either presidential candidate by name, they echoed the former president’s false claims of voter fraud and his legal team’s dubious contention that the power to choose electors therefore rested not with the voters but with state legislatures.“Do your constitutional duty,” Ms. Thomas wrote the lawmakers on Nov. 9. On Dec. 13, with Mr. Trump still refusing to concede on the eve of the Electoral College vote, she contacted the lawmakers again.“The nation’s eyes are on you now,” she warned, adding, “Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”After she sent her first round of emails, but before the second round, Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, more directly pressured Mr. Bowers. They called him and urged him to have the state legislature step in and choose Arizona’s electors.Mr. Bowers could not be reached for comment on Friday. In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a spokesman said that Mr. Bowers never saw Ms. Thomas’s email. He ended up rebuffing all the requests to intervene, even in the face of protests outside his house.Ms. Bolick, who did not return requests for comment and is now running to become Arizona’s next secretary of state on a platform to “restore election integrity,” proved more of an ally. She thanked Ms. Thomas for reaching out, writing that she hoped “you and Clarence are doing great!” Among other things, she would go on to urge Congress to throw out Arizona’s presidential election results and award the state’s Electoral College votes to Mr. Trump.The emails, reported earlier by The Washington Post and obtained by The New York Times, were part of a letter-writing campaign hosted on FreeRoots, a political advocacy platform. On Friday, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and close friend of the Thomases, said on Twitter that Ms. Thomas “did not write the letter and had no input in the content,” but rather merely “signed her name to a pre-written form letter that was signed by thousands of citizens.”“How disturbing, what a threat!” he wrote, dismissing the revelations as a “lame story.” He added: “A private citizen joining a letter writing campaign, hosted by a platform that served both conservative and liberal causes. Welcome to America.”In fact, the emails are a reflection of the far broader and more integral role that Justice Thomas’s wife played in efforts to delegitimize the election and install Mr. Trump for a second term — efforts that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, with a protest called the “March to Save America” that turned into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.As a string of revelations by The Times and other outlets in recent months has demonstrated, Ms. Thomas actively supported and participated at the highest levels in schemes to overturn the election. Those efforts have, in turn, cast a spotlight on her husband, who from his lifetime perch on the Supreme Court has issued opinions favoring Mr. Trump’s efforts to both reverse his loss and stymie a congressional investigation into the events of Jan. 6.This February, The New York Times Magazine reported on Ms. Thomas’s role on the board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that had instructed members to adopt letter-writing tactics — of the kind she personally used in Arizona — to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to circumvent voters by appointing alternate electors.C.N.P. Action had also circulated a newsletter in December 2020 that included a report targeting five swing states, including Arizona, where Mr. Trump and his allies were pressing litigation. It warned that time was running out for the courts to “declare the elections null and void.” The report was co-written by one of Mr. Trump’s leading election lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, a friend of Ms. Thomas.And in the lead-up to the rally on Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas played a mediating role, uniting feuding factions of planners so that there “wouldn’t be any division,” one of the organizers, Dustin Stockton, later told The Times.Ms. Thomas declined to speak to The Times for that article, but a few weeks later, in an interview with a friendly conservative outlet, she denied playing any role in the organization of the rally, even as she acknowledged attending it. (She said she left before Mr. Trump addressed the crowd.)But she has adamantly opposed a fuller inquiry into the insurrection. Last December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from their conference for joining the committee investigating the Capitol riot, saying it brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.”And in late March, The Post and CBS reported that she had sent a series of text messages to Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, imploring him to take steps to reverse the election. Ms. Thomas urged him to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a set of conspiratorial claims that Trump supporters believed would overturn the vote. In the text messages, she also indicated that she had been in contact with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about a post-election legal strategy.Democrats expressed outrage. In a letter after the text messages were reported, two dozen Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, wrote: “Given the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements.”Still, it remains an open question whether the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will seek an interview with Ms. Thomas. In March, people familiar with the committee’s work signaled a desire to ask Ms. Thomas to voluntarily sit for an interview. But the committee has yet to do so, and its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, told reporters that Ms. Thomas had not come up recently in the panel’s discussions.Justice Thomas has remained defiant amid questions about his own impartiality, resisting calls that he recuse himself from matters that overlap with his wife’s activism. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 to allow the release of records from the Trump White House related to Jan. 6, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter. In February last year, he sharply dissented when the court declined to hear a case brought by Pennsylvania Republicans seeking to disqualify certain mail-in ballots.The latest revelations about his wife follow a speech last week in which he lambasted protests in front of the houses of justices after a draft opinion was leaked that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” he told a conference of fellow conservatives. “And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we’re going to have as a country.”And he flashed at his own partisanship in claiming that the left’s protests lacked the decorum of the right — while failing to mention last year’s attack on the Capitol, or protests like those in front of Mr. Bowers’s house.“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way,” he said. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.”Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife have frequently appeared at political events despite longstanding customs of the Supreme Court.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Thomases have long defied norms of the high court, where justices often avoid political events and entanglements and their spouses often keep low profiles. No spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has ever been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas. C.N.P. Action, where she sits on the board, is a branch of the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative organization that includes leaders from the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. Ms. Thomas also founded an organization called Groundswell that holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the Supreme Court.Justice Thomas, for his part, has frequently appeared at political events hosted by advocates hoping to sway the court. He and his wife sometimes appear together at such events, and often portray themselves as standing in the breach amid a crumbling society.“It’s very exciting,” Ms. Thomas said during a 2018 Council for National Policy meeting, “the fact that there’s a resistance on our side to their side.”Luke Broadwater More

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      How Conflicts of Interest Are Hurting the Climate

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      Bill McKibben, the environmental activist, explains.From “The Daily” newsletter: One big idea on the news, from the team that brings you “The Daily” podcast. You can sign up for the newsletter here.Conflicts of interest are, by their nature, often obscured. A financial tie here, a family connection there, concealed by the division of public and private life. But what happens when those conflicting interests inform national — and international — policy?In the executive branch, the Trump presidency was dominated by this question. In the judicial branch, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under pressure to recuse himself from cases regarding the 2020 election and its aftermath after The Times revealed that Virginia Thomas, his wife, was involved in efforts to overturn the vote. And in the legislative branch, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, is facing increasing scrutiny of his financial ties to the coal industry.The influence of money and corporations in the federal government is a “growing problem,” said Aaron D. Hill, associate professor of management at the University of Florida. Nearly one in eight stock trades by members of Congress intersects with legislation, and research shows that members of the House and Senate generate “abnormally higher returns” on their investments. Still, Congress members are subject to less stringent (or, at times, unenforced) oversight on conflicts of interests than those in other branches of government.But what is the impact of this lack of oversight? As you heard on Tuesday’s show, at every step of his political career, Manchin helped a West Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action.So we reached out to Bill McKibben, environmental activist, professor and author, to ask him about the rippling effects of Manchin’s actions on the climate movement. His responses have been lightly edited.You recently wrote: “The climate movement has come very close — one senator close — to beating the political power of Big Oil. But that’s not quite close enough.” How have Manchin’s actions affected the broader climate movement?For Biden and his climate efforts, Manchin’s opposition seems to be excruciating. The Democrats can’t do anything to offend him for fear of forfeiting his vote. So they’ve largely given up executive authority on climate, but he never quite delivers the vote. Now he seems to be saying that if he gives some money for renewables, it has to come with money for fossil fuel as well. I’d say Big Oil has never made an investment with a higher rate of return.On climate, at least so far, we might have been better off without control of the Senate, because then at least we could have gotten what executive action could accomplish.In the case of Manchin, congressional conflict-of-interest loopholes have consequences well beyond American borders. What equity concerns does this illuminate?Ginni Thomas and the 2020 Presidential ElectionThe conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has come under scrutiny for her involvement in efforts to keep Donald J. Trump in power.A Long Crusade: The Thomases battled for years for a more conservative America. This is how far Ginni Thomas went after the 2020 election.Her Texts: Weeks before Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas sent a flurry of texts imploring Mr. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote.Embracing Conspiracies: An examination of Ms. Thomas’s texts shows how firmly she was embedded in the fringe of right-wing politics.Will Justice Thomas Recuse?: Legal experts say Ms. Thomas’s texts are enough to require his recusal from election cases, but Chief Justice John Roberts cannot force it.We’re not just gutting America’s energy future to please one corrupt coal baron; he’s managed to upend global climate policy, too. The plan for Glasgow, I think, was for Biden to arrive with Build Back Better in his hip pocket, slam it down on the table and tell the Chinese and Indian delegations to match it. Instead he arrived with nothing, gave a limp speech — I’m not certain he went to sleep afterward, but the conference did.In 2020, fossil fuel pollution killed about three times as many people as Covid-19 did. This statistic can feel overwhelming. As an activist, what are the most effective strategies you see for generating momentum and a sense of urgency in addressing the climate crisis?The sad thing is, we’ve generated a ton of it. It was the biggest voting issue for Democratic primary voters, and the issue where polling showed Trump’s position was furthest off from the mainstream. But the desire of people doesn’t reliably translate into political action in our system anymore. There’s never been a purer case of vested interest thwarting necessary action. As the Exxon lobbyist told a hidden camera last summer, Manchin was the “kingmaker.” Or, alternately, the man who melts the ice and raises the sea.What is making you feel optimistic about climate action lately?Well, it’s the perfect moment for action, and some places we’re starting to see it. Vladimir Putin has reminded us that the daily carnage of pollution and the existential threat of climate damage are joined by the fact that fossil fuel underwrites despotism more often than not. It could be a pivot point, and, in the case of the E.U., may turn out to be. But so far here, Biden and his team haven’t really messaged it that way. They’ve been way more focused on carrying water for Big Oil.But I can tell you that more and more people are getting it, and not just the young people who have been in the lead of the climate fight. Our crew of over-60s at Third Act [a climate action group focused on mobilizing “experienced Americans”] are joining in large numbers this pledge to take on the banks that back the fossil fuel industry. After the record temperatures in the Antarctic combined with the missile strikes on Mariupol, people have had enough.From the Daily team: Remember cheap oil?In April 2020, we explored why the cost of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives.Bing Guan/BloombergThis week, we sat down with Michael Simon Johnson, a senior producer, for our series in which we ask Daily producers and editors to tell us about their favorite episodes that they’ve worked on.Michael’s pick is “A Glut of Oil,” from the spring of 2020. It’s an episode that looks back at half a century of American foreign and energy policy to explain how, at the time, the price of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives. And it’s one that has particular resonance today as parts of the world grapple with how to reduce reliance on Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine.What was “A Glut of Oil” about?It was an episode we did in April 2020, when oil prices dropped into the negatives. It required some context, so a huge portion of the episode ticked through history, starting with the Arab-Israeli War in the ’70s, the U.S. stepping in to provide weapons — not unlike the way we are with Ukraine right now — and Arab countries retaliating by cutting off our oil supply, causing an energy crisis. It felt important to start there because that is where it changes our foreign policy. The whole point of energy independence was so that we can exercise control over our foreign policy and not have other countries dictate who we help and why — or where we invade.We spent 50 years trying to solve that problem and we succeeded. Then the pandemic happened and we literally had the opposite problem — what happens when we have too much oil?Why is it one of your favorite episodes that you’ve worked on?What it did for me was take all of these aspects of American history that I don’t tend to think of as related and it drew a line between them; they’re actually all part of a single continuum. I re-evaluated modern American history through the lens of oil, and I saw so many more connections because of that than I would have seen otherwise. Going back in history allowed us to go on this amazing journey through history and through archival tape.How important is it for there to be historical context in climate episodes?Historical context is one of the first tools we turn to when we’re making an episode in general, but it’s not specific to climate episodes. We are generally trying to arm listeners with the tools they need to understand and to have more context for what is happening. We want people to understand what is happening as some part of a continuum.On The Daily this weekMonday: The story of Iryna Baramidze, one of the millions of Ukrainians who have fled their country amid the war.Tuesday: Inside the investigation into Manchin’s conflicts of interest.Wednesday: How Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, came to be at the heart of the conservative movement.Thursday: Why this year’s midterms could have the fairest congressional map in a generation.Friday: What is happening inside the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol?That’s it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox.Love podcasts? Join The New York Times Podcast Club on Facebook. More

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      Ginni Thomas’s Texts Show Why Our Democracy Is in Danger  

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      A week has gone by and I’m still aghast. Still astonished. Still absorbing what Ginni Thomas said in those text messages to Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, as she urged him to overturn the 2020 election, and what she apparently believes in her poisoned mind.So let’s please, please move past Will Smith and the deconstruction of that ugly incident and reallocate our attention to her behavior. It has broader and more profound consequences. It also explains why, despite my efforts not to, I sometimes feel almost hopeless about this country’s present and future.“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote to Meadows in the days following the election, her derangement and despair wrought in a bonanza of exclamation points. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice.”The precipice! I should haul out a few extra exclamation points myself, especially because Thomas went on to say that she and Meadows were watching “the Left” attempt “the greatest Heist of our History.”She’s up in arms. She’s uppercase. And she’s emblematic: Her gratuitously capitalized words distill what makes political discussion today so difficult and why our democracy is indeed in danger.“This Great President.” That’s no accidental pinkie — no clumsy thumb — on the shift key. Among today’s extreme partisans, who represent a frighteningly large slice of the electorate, a given president or politician is a commanding general in the battle of good versus evil. I mean Good versus Evil.Restraint is retro. Hyperbole is the order of the day. Thus, “precipice” is the new “edge,” “Heist” is the updated “scam,” and “of our History” is an essential qualifier, lest someone underestimate the threat and minimize the stakes.There’s no entertaining the thought that a majority of your fellow Americans may not share your views. In an age of extreme narcissism, that’s unimaginable, impossible, phantasmagorical.If the polls cast you in the minority, they’re wrong. If the vote runs contrary to your desires, it’s rigged. Or those fellow Americans just don’t matter, not like you do. You’re on the side of the angels. They’re trying to shepherd everyone into the abyss.That Manichaean mind-set is legible in Thomas’s language, which jettisons temperance and truth. There’s no oxygen for either in the right’s — excuse me, the Right’s — exaggerated sense of extreme grievance, which she so perfectly embodies.What a terrifying moment, in which the wife of a serving Supreme Court justice unabashedly exploits her insider access, ignores the idea of checks and balances, promotes conspiracy theories and essentially endorses insurrection. Her conduct isn’t some passing curiosity. It’s a sign of the times. And it’s a warning to us all.A Few Notes About ‘Don’t Say Gay’Octavio Jones/ReutersFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis is right. The words “Don’t Say Gay” appear nowhere in the “parental rights” legislation that he signed on Monday, which bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity with young schoolchildren in Florida. “Don’t Say Gay” is the negative nickname that the law’s opponents have given it, and DeSantis has deftly portrayed that nomenclature as liberal hysteria and leftist overreach.But that, too, is unfair. There are reasons aplenty to balk at what Florida has done — to see it as more than a simple caveat affecting only students through the third grade. And I say that as someone who is not pushing instruction on matters gay or trans for students in that age range, who doesn’t care a whit whether a 7-year-old knows the name Harvey Milk, who agrees that parents’ sensibilities and sensitivities must be factored into how schools operate.Here’s what DeSantis doesn’t cop to: a vagueness in the legislation’s language that suggests its potential application to children well beyond the third grade. Look at the words I’ve boldfaced in this clause of the law: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade three or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” What additional prohibitions — what future muzzling — are those phrases opening the door to?It’s a necessary question, because it’s coupled with this one: What’s motivating the law’s promoters and supporters, who’ve lifted this issue above so many others with more relevance to, and impact on, the quality of Floridians’ everyday lives?In case you missed it, DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, framed the bill as an important defense against pedophiles’ recruitment of children into homosexual activity. There’s no other way to read this tweet of hers: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” She’s paid to articulate DeSantis’s viewpoints, and she’s peddling perhaps the nastiest, cruelest homophobic stereotype there is.Under fire for those remarks, she said that she was using her personal Twitter account during her off-work hours. How very reassuring.For the Love of SentencesGetty ImagesIn the Times newsletter Read Like the Wind, the book critic Molly Young spins many magical sentences, sometimes within a single paragraph, like this one in a recent reflection on the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and his novel “Ubik”: “It may be worth noting that what jelly beans were to President Reagan, amphetamine tablets were to Dick. The man simply loved his uppers. Sometimes I approximate his state of mind by bolting a Monster energy drink before settling in for some sci-fi. (My favorite flavor of Monster is called ‘Assault.’ It tastes like Coca-Cola mixed with poison.) The blurb on this copy of ‘Ubik’ describes Dick as ‘The most brilliant SF mind on any planet.’ Any planet!” (Thanks to Zoe Zagorski of Portland, Ore., and Conrad Macina of Landing, N.J., for nominating Molly’s prose.)Sticking with Times book critics, here’s Alexandra Jacobs in her recent review of “Truly, Madly,” by Stephen Galloway, which describes Vivien Leigh’s romance with a certain screen and stage legend named Laurence: “Her three-decade entanglement with Olivier, considered one of the greatest talents of his generation, was its own sort of doomed flight: It soared sharply into the heavens, then was rocked with turbulence before its inevitable tumble down to earth and straight through to hell.” (Sandy Peters, Phoenix)Also in The Times, Ligaya Mishan, contemplating lentils, had lyrical leguminous fun: “They start out as pebbles in the hand, hard and tiny — in certain parts of the world, they are the size against which all small things are measured. Then, in the pot, their little stony hearts melt. They soften, loosen up and let other flavors in. They’re still discrete, still individuals, but now joined in common cause, and they swell and grow plump, so you end up with more than twice as much, velvety and lush.” (Stella Liu, Manhattan)Paul Krugman noted: “Putin’s response to failure in Ukraine has been extremely Trumpian: insisting that his invasion is all going ‘according to plan,’ refusing to admit having made any mistakes and whining about cancel culture. I’m half expecting him to release battle maps crudely modified with a Sharpie.” (Avi Liveson, Chatham, N.J., and Valerie Masin, Boston, among others)And Bret Stephens, in his weekly back-and-forth with Gail Collins, wrote: “It looks like we have a new superinfectious subvariant of Covid to keep us awake at night. Forget Omicron, now we’ve got Omigod.” (Kris Schaff, Omaha, Neb., and Larry Berman, Westfield, N.J.)In National Parks magazine, Jacob Baynham reported on a positive reaction to the meatless, fungus-based breakfast patties he cooked for his family one morning: “Our disobedient dog begged at my feet, an endorsement tempered by the fact that he also eats mouth guards, used tissues and socks.” (Peter Alexander, Longmont, Colo.)In a review of “Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman,” by Susanne Schattenberg, in The London Review of Books, Neal Ascherson wrote: “Polish communism was dead, though it took nearly eight years for the nation to wriggle out from under the corpse.” (George Milman, Beverly Hills, Calif.)And in his Weekly Dish newsletter on Substack, Andrew Sullivan pondered the rebirth of imperial Russia with this observation: “The greatest mistake liberals make when assessing reactionaryism is to underestimate it. There is a profound, mesmerizing allure — intensified by disillusion with the shallows of modernity — to the idea of recovering some great meaning from decades or centuries gone by, to resurrect and resuscitate it, to blast away all the incoherence and instability of postmodern life into a new collective, ancient meaning.” (Stephen Ranger, Toronto)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.On a Personal Note (Reader Mailbag Edition)ReganFrank BruniI’ve felt the lash of your anger when I’ve written harshly about a public figure you admire. I’ve experienced the sting of your disappointment when I’ve praised a book or movie that you then checked out and didn’t like at all. In a manner that pleases me — because it tells me that you’re engaged — you’re quick to give me feedback, bitter as well as sweet.And you let me have it about my possible miscoloring of a beautiful bird.I wrote last week about “flares of orange” outside my windows in Chapel Hill, N.C., and I guessed that those were cardinals flying by. Many of you were scandalized and sent me emails noting that cardinals are red. You recommended apps that could help me with my avian ineptitude. You urged me to educate myself about the natural world. I could feel myself being marched off to flora-and-fauna boot camp — which is probably where I indeed belong.My feathered friends are definitely cardinals, and they may well have been more red than orange — my grasp of color is less than firm. But cardinals, it turns out, can be orange or at least orange-ish red. They’re chromatically noncommittal. I was probably being sloppy with my description of those “flares,” but maybe my yard’s cardinals are special? I’ll keep an eye peeled and a color wheel at hand and I’ll let you know.You wrote me, too, with a complaint that I’ve also fielded from many of you in the past: Where’s Regan? When a few newsletters go by without any photo of, or tribute to, my canine companion, some of you object and others actually worry.I’m happy to alleviate your concern with the picture at the top of this section of the newsletter. It’s Regan rolling around recently in the front yard, just for the tactile sensation and pure fun of it. She does that sometimes when she’s excited, or when there’s a perfect nip in the air, or maybe when she’s bored, or possibly when she feels some generous impulse to entertain me. Down she goes and around she twists. Each of my giggles prompts more of her squiggles. We have this down to a clownish science.Many of you also point out errors of language, and Ervin Duggan of Davidson, N.C., flagged my statement last week that Ted Cruz, so odious during the confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, at least deserved points for “gumption.” “Gumption” actually or usually means initiative or resourcefulness, and I indeed didn’t intend to compliment the Texas senator for either. I was steering toward something more along the lines of audacity and took a wrong turn. Maybe I had, in my mind, “bumption,” which isn’t a word according to several dictionaries I consulted but has, in the past, circulated a bit as a kin to overblown arrogance. Cruz possesses that in spades.Judge Jackson doesn’t, as best I can tell. None of you complained that in my assessment of the hearing, I never digressed from my disgust over many senators’ bad behavior to praise her for a preternatural degree of restraint. But I’ll say it: I should have. She comported herself with dignity, which strikes me as the ideal cornerstone of judicial character. More

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      The Political Lives of Clarence and Ginni Thomas

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      Rob Szypko, Rikki Novetsky, Chelsea Daniel and Marc Georges and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherA series of text messages released in the past week show how Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, urged White House officials to push to overturn the result of the 2020 election.There has never been a spouse of a sitting justice who has been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas — and that presents a real conundrum for the court.On today’s episodeJo Becker, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.For two decades, Clarence, left, and Ginni Thomas have been waging a battle against what they see as the liberal order.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesBackground readingThe long crusade of the Thomases has taken them from the fringes of the conservative movement to the very center of it.In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Ginni Thomas was involved in a range of efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in power.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Jo Becker contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky and John Ketchum.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Ginni Thomas Is No Outlier

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      At this point, there’s very little distance between the fringes of the modern Republican Party and the elites who lead it. Superficial differences of affect and emphasis mask shared views and ways of seeing. In fact, members of the Republican elite are very often the fringe figures in question.Take Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. She is an influential and well-connected conservative political activist who has been a fixture of Washington since the late 1980s. A fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump, she reportedly urged his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to do everything in his power to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in power. And judging from her text messages to Meadows — which include the hope that the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators” are awaiting trial before military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay — she is also something of a “Q” believer, one of millions of Americans who embrace the conspiracy theory that Trump is fighting a messianic war against the “deep state.”Ginni Thomas is also, notably, the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And while Justice Thomas is in no way responsible for the actions of his spouse, it does beggar belief to think he is unaware of her views and actions, including her work to keep Trump in office against the will of the electorate.But that’s something of a separate issue. What matters here is that we have, in Ginni Thomas, a very high-profile Republican activist who holds, and acts on, fringe, conspiratorial beliefs. And she is not alone.Like Thomas, Attorney General William P. Barr is a mainstay of the Republican establishment in Washington, a consummate insider with decades of political and legal experience. His service under President Ronald Reagan in the White House led to his appointment as head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President George H.W. Bush. From there, he was appointed deputy attorney general and then, in 1991, attorney general. He returned to public life in 2019 to serve a second stint as attorney general, this time under Trump.But there’s no reason to think that Barr’s traditional credentials somehow preclude fringe beliefs. As it turns out, they don’t.In a November 2019 speech sponsored by the Federalist Society, Barr spoke at length on his vision of executive power under the Constitution. In his view, the framers “well understood that their prime antagonist was an overweening Parliament,” and that their aim at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to create a powerful, “unitary” executive with the singular authority of a monarch. “To my mind,” he said, “the real ‘miracle’ in Philadelphia that summer was the creation of a strong Executive, independent of, and coequal with, the other two branches of government.”Barr concedes the fact of “checks and balances” but insists that, properly understood, the executive branch has nearly limitless authority across multiple arenas. In his view, Congress has no right to challenge claims of executive privilege and the courts have no right to limit the president’s power to make war. “The Constitution is designed to maximize the government’s efficiency to achieve victory — even at the cost of ‘collateral damage’ that would be unacceptable in the domestic realm,” Barr said. “The idea that the judiciary acts as a neutral check on the political branches to protect foreign enemies from our government is insane.”These are extreme views. What Barr describes isn’t a president, but a king. It is a gussied-up version of Trump’s belief that, under Article II of the Constitution, he had “the right to do whatever I want as president.” It may not be QAnon, but it still belongs to the fringe.With that said, and despite his later rejection of Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, Barr does appear to hold somewhat conspiratorial views not unlike those of Ginni Thomas. In an interview he gave to The Chicago Tribune just before the 2020 election, Barr insisted that mail-in voting would lead to “selling and buying votes” and implied that Democrats would manufacture votes to win elections.“Someone will say the president just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from,” Barr said.You can play this game with any number of prominent Republicans. Leading figures like Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia regularly give voice to conspiracy theories and other wild accusations. Last month, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, released an 11-point agenda that, among other things, denies the existence of transgender people and calls on the government to treat socialism as a “foreign combatant.”And those Republicans who don’t openly hold fringe views are more than willing to pander to them, from Senator Ted Cruz’s enthusiastic embrace of “stop the steal” to Senator Josh Hawley’s QAnon dogwhistle that Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is soft on (and sympathetic to) child predators.For Democrats, and especially for Democratic leadership, the upshot of all of this is that they should give up whatever hope they had that the Republican Party will somehow return to normal, that the fever will break and American politics will snap back to reality. From its base to its leaders, the modern Republican Party is fully in the grip of an authoritarian movement animated by extreme beliefs and fringe conspiracy theories.Democrats can’t force Republicans onto a different path. But they also can’t act as if they’re above the fray. That appears to have been the plan so far, and if the current political state of the Democratic Party is any indication, it’s not working. The only alternative is to confront the Republican Party as forcefully as possible and show the extent to which that party has descended into conspiracies and corruption.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Is Likely to Seek Interview With Ginni Thomas

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      The committee is preparing to reach out to the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas after the disclosure of her text messages supporting efforts to overturn the election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is likely to reach out soon to Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, to request that she sit for an interview, according to two people familiar with the matter.The decision to ask Ms. Thomas for an interview — after intense internal debate about the matter — came after the revelation last week of Ms. Thomas’s text messages to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in which she relentlessly urged him to pursue a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Investigators have also discussed whether to issue subpoenas for any other communications she may have had with the White House or the President Donald J. Trump’s legal team about the election, including a message that she told Mr. Meadows she had sent to Jared Kushner, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.After a closed-door meeting of the committee on Monday evening, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, emerged to tell reporters that “no decision” had been made about whether to issue a subpoena to Ms. Thomas.Although the committee has been in possession of Ms. Thomas’s text messages for months, not everyone on the panel had seen the documents before they were published in news reports. That prompted debate among the committee’s members, several of whom urged the panel to try to interview her.A person familiar with the discussions said the panel concluded that Ms. Thomas had relevant information, and that it was important for investigators to hear from her. CNN earlier reported the committee’s decision.An adviser to Ms. Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.For at least several weeks, the committee’s senior investigators have discussed whether to call Ms. Thomas, who is known as Ginni, to testify. They also debated sending a subpoena to Ms. Thomas for her communications, with some top investigators initially arguing against it because they viewed her as a minor player in the attempts to subvert the election. But the disclosure of the text messages, first by The Washington Post and CBS News, and public pressure renewed those discussions.A New York Times Magazine investigation last month examined the political and personal history of Ms. Thomas and her husband. That included her role in efforts to overturn the election from her perch on the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that helped advance the “Stop the Steal” movement, and in mediating between feuding factions of organizers “so that there wouldn’t be any division around Jan. 6,” as one organizer put it.Ms. Thomas acknowledged that she had attended the rally that preceded the violence in an interview with a conservative news outlet this month, but she has otherwise downplayed her role. Then came disclosure of the texts to Mr. Meadows.In the messages, she called the 2020 election a “heist” and even suggested the lawyer who should be put in charge of that effort.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Judge says Trump likely committed crimes. More

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      Ted Cruz Knows Which Side He’s On

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I think many Americans would give President Biden reasonably high marks for his handling of the war in Ukraine so far. His speech in Poland, in which he said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” may have been provocative, and it might have his advisers scrambling to soften it, but it was right, and the right message to send about what should become of Vladimir Putin’s foul regime.Yet Biden still reminds me of George H.W. Bush, who handled the big foreign policy crises of his day with aplomb but wound up as a one-termer. What do you think of the comparison?Gail Collins: Hey, isn’t it interesting to recall that when Bush was fighting to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991, the big American ally was Russia? Those were the days, I guess. Just noticed that a Gallup poll found that right after the war, Bush had an 89 percent approval rating.Bret: Bush had the advantage of not having to face down a nuclear-armed adversary — thanks to an Israeli strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor a decade earlier.Gail: And yet he got defeated for a second term by Bill Clinton. We could discuss the possibility of Biden suffering a similar fate — perceptions of a bad economy trump strong foreign policy. Except that Clinton’s genius was in portraying himself as a Democrat who normal Republicans didn’t have to fear. Very, very doubtful the next Republican presidential nominee is going to be able to turn that trick.Do you really think Biden would be walloped if people actually had to compare him to Trump, one on one, presuming the two of them ran again?Bret: I continue to have a hard time believing that Biden intends to run again, when he’s 81. I also don’t think Trump’s going to run — he’s damaged himself more deeply than he probably realizes with his imbecile praise of Putin and his continued election denialism.Gail: This scenario presumes Trump bows to reality. Hehehehehe. Sorry, continue.Bret: Fair point.Assuming your hypothetical turns out to be right, I’d probably place a small bet on Trump winning a rematch, awful as that is. I know Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were able to turn their presidencies around after difficult starts. But both men were naturally gifted political figures in a way Biden just isn’t. Both men were in touch with the center of American politics in a way Biden should be, but isn’t, because he steered too far to the left in his first year. And both men were sailing into calmer seas, economically speaking, as they prepared their re-election campaigns, whereas I don’t see inflation being tamed except at the price of a very steep recession.Would you bet on Biden in a rematch?Gail: Yeah, but I don’t think Biden is going to run. Although he’d be crazy to formally announce this soon and turn the bulk of his presidency into a lame-duck limp.Bret: Don’t agree that he should wait to announce, but that’s an argument for another time.Gail: And I don’t think his problem is steering too far to the left. His problem is that he doesn’t — never did have — that political genius for selling the country, or even his supporters, on a big message.Bret: Give ’em hell, Harry, he is not. But it looks like he’s trying with his plan to tax the very rich. Which … well, what do you think of it?Gail: Ah, Bret, our most reliable, perpetual disagreement. Yeah, given the fact that the richest Americans are now paying an effective tax rate around 8 percent, I would say a minimum of 20 percent on households worth more than $100 million is not a burden.Bret: Probably won’t get past the Senate, may be ruled an unconstitutional wealth tax by the Supreme Court and is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was supposed to hit only a handful of high-flyers in the 1970s but wound up taxing far less wealthy people. But the proposal could still be … popular. Anything else you’d like to see him do?Gail: I’d also be happy to see him lead a quest to control prescription drug prices: Let Medicare negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry and cap the cost of certain medications, like insulin. It’d be a debate people could really get into.Bret: I think job No. 1 for Biden is to make sure Putin experiences unmistakable defeat in Ukraine. A stalemated truce in which Russia steals more of Ukraine’s coastline, ports and energy riches will only entice Putin to create further crises so that he can “solve” them in exchange for Western concessions. I also think we should accept more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees; we should welcome as many who want to come here with open arms.Gail: We should talk more about the refugees long term, but of course the immediate challenge is to support them in every way possible.Bret: If Romania can take in more than half a million refugees, we can take in at least as many.Gail: Not going to argue, but right now back to domestic matters …Bret: Biden’s other big task is doing what he can to ease the burden of inflation. We both know that’s mainly a job for the Fed. But the government can still ease all kinds of regulatory burdens that constrict supply chains, like employing members of the National Guards to make up for the trucker shortage. I’m also in favor of the proposal from Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly — both Democratic senators — to suspend the federal tax on gasoline for the rest of the year, though I would only reinstate it once the price of gasoline falls below $3.50 a gallon, no matter whether that happens before November or after. Gas taxes are really regressive once you stop to think of the bite they take out of the pockets of working-class people who drive back and forth to work.Gail: Short-term gas price relief would be great, as long as it’s combined with long-term plans to fight climate change with energy-efficient cars and more mass transit. Although I know the latter tends to cause many conservative conservatives to shudder.On a completely different but totally fascinating topic: Ginni Thomas. Wife of a Supreme Court justice and now revealed as a very aggressive, deeply crazy activist in the Trump-really-won sideshow.Should we worry about her? Is she dangerous or just astonishingly weird?Bret: Depends on whether you think that being a fever-swamp conservative is dangerous, weird or just the depressing new normal. “All of the above” is also a possibility. Mrs. Thomas attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. She urged the Trump team to feature Sidney Powell, the lawyer with bizarro theories about voting machine fraud. And she wrote Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, some texts right after the election was called for Biden, telling him to “stand firm” against “the greatest Heist in our History.”All of which says to me that I’m glad I’m not the one who gets to hang with Ginni Thomas, but de gustibus non est disputandum, as they used to say. Do you think her behavior should require Clarence Thomas to recuse himself in some cases?Gail: If they get an overturn-the-election case, or even anything relating to the Jan. 6 riots, I would say he’d either have to recuse or be impeached. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine enough pressure building. But I’d be happy to hear I’m wrong. What do you think?Bret: He’d have to recuse himself in those kinds of cases, because the appearance of a conflict of interest is now overwhelming. That said, if every public official were on the hook for nutty things done or said by spouses or family members, it would probably have unintended consequences nobody would like. For instance: Hunter Biden.Gail: I will refrain from dipping back into our Hunter Biden argument except to point out that some experts think he’s getting a reasonable price for his artwork these days. Lips sealed …Bret: But speaking of the Supreme Court, did you watch the Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson? How do you think she did?Gail: Better than great.Bret: Agree. I don’t think her confirmation is in any doubt, especially now that Joe Manchin has come out in her favor, but I enjoyed watching her politely making mincemeat of Ted Cruz, who is a one-man reminder of why sentient people hate politicians. If Republicans were wiser, they’d register their disagreements with some of her positions but vote to confirm her on the principle that she’s fully qualified to serve on the high court. But … they won’t.Gail: Also watching the dreaded Marsha Blackburn asking Jackson to define “woman.” Glad we agree that Republicans aren’t wise.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, it looks like we have a new superinfectious sub-variant of Covid to keep us awake at night. Forget Omicron, now we’ve got Omigod.Gail: I’m going with Dr. Fauci’s theory that it’s not something to get frazzled about. Unless, of course, you haven’t been vaccinated, in which case there’s probably not any point in having a conversation.But I am appalled that Congress didn’t approve the $15.6 billion Biden wanted for tests, treatments and research on vaccines for new variants. If I’m going to side with the throw-away-masks crowd, I’m also going to side with the fund-the-support-system gang.Bret: If we’re going to start thinking of Covid as a relatively normal illness, maybe we need to stop treating it like a national emergency. What do you say we argue about this another day?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More