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Clarence Thomas faces impeachment calls after reports of undisclosed gifts
Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice on the US supreme court, is facing renewed calls for impeachment after it was reported that for two decades he has accepted undisclosed luxury gifts from a Republican mega-donor.Thomas may have violated financial disclosure rules when he failed to disclose travel on yachts and jets and other gifts funded by the property billionaire Harlan Crow and uncovered by ProPublica.It found that Thomas flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet and holidays on Crow’s 162ft super-yacht. He has enjoyed holidays at Crow’s ranch in Texas and joined him at an exclusive all-male California retreat. The justice usually spends about a week each summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondack mountains in New York.The revelations prompted sharp criticism by Democrats of Thomas, who after 31 years is the longest-serving justice and an influential voice in the rightwing majority that last year ended the right to abortion.Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said: “This behavior is simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a justice on the supreme court.“Today’s report demonstrates, yet again, that supreme court justices must be held to an enforceable code of conduct, just like every other federal judge. The ProPublica report is a call to action, and the Senate judiciary committee will act.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congresswoman from New York, tweeted: “This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached. Barring some dramatic change, this is what the [chief justice John] Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights.”Impeachment remains unlikely, even given other calls regarding the pro-Trump activities of Thomas’s wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, and not just because Republicans hold the House. Only one supreme court justice has ever been impeached: Samuel Chase, in 1804-05. He was acquitted in the Senate.Thomas, 74, has made his humble origins a central part of his identity. He was born in Savannah, Georgia, and learned Geechee, a Creole language spoken by the descendants of slaves, before standard English. He was abandoned by his father but says his grandfather instilled his work ethic.In a documentary which Crow helped finance, Thomas described no-frills tastes: “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that – I prefer being around that.”ProPublica told a different story, drawn from flight records, internal documents and interviewees ranging from super-yacht staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba-diving instructor.It found that Thomas’s friendship with Crow has enabled him to experience luxuries he would never have been able to afford on his salary of $285,000. For example, in 2019, Thomas and his wife flew on Crow’s jet to Indonesia for nine days island-hopping on Crow’s yacht. The trip would have cost more than $500,000.ProPublica also noted that each summer Thomas spends about a week at Camp Topridge, Crow’s Adirondacks resort. The 105-acre property offers boathouses, a clay tennis court, a batting cage and a replica of Hagrid’s hut from Harry Potter. A painting there shows Thomas enjoying a cigar alongside Crow and talking with influential rightwingers including the legal activist Leonard Leo.ProPublica said: “The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the US supreme court.”It said the trips do not appear in Thomas’s financial disclosures and cited two experts saying that appears to violate a law that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to declare most gifts.In a statement, Crow denied seeking to influence supreme court decisions. The Dallas businessman said he and his wife, Kathy, had been friends with the Thomases since 1996 and “the hospitality we have extended … is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends”.Crow added: “Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality. We have never asked about a pending or lower-court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue.“More generally, I am unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that. These are gatherings of friends.”ProPublica said it reviewed a record showing that “during just one July 2017 trip, Thomas’ fellow guests included execs at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major GOP donors, and one of the leaders of the conservative American Enterprise Institute thinktank”.Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court Action Fund, said: “How many of Crow’s pet interests have had business in front of the court while Thomas was enjoying the lifestyle of the rich and famous on the right-wing mega-donor’s dime?“Thomas’ repeated mockery of basic ethical standards calls into question every decision he has imposed on millions of Americans.”Meagan Hatcher-Mays, of the grassroots movement Indivisible, called for the Senate judiciary committee to investigate “Thomas’s reported ethical lapses, and move quickly to hold hearings and votes on the Supreme Court Ethics, Transparency, and Recusal Act.“The American people want to believe that the court is fair, that the justices behave ethically, and that their decisions are free from undue political influence.”Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said the “alleged failure to report Harlan Crow’s substantial expenditures … could further undermine public trust in the supreme court and Thomas specifically.“This is especially important now, when public trust in the court has plummeted in light of Dobbs overruling of Roe v Wade and the leaked opinion.” More
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Supreme court justices felt tricked by Trump at Kavanaugh swearing-in – book
Sitting justices of the US supreme court felt “tricked” and used by Donald Trump when the then president assured them a White House celebration of the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh would not be overtly political, then used the event to harangue those who questioned Kavanaugh’s fitness to sit on the court.“Most of the justices sat stone faced” as Trump spoke at the ceremonial swearing-in, the CNN correspondent Joan Biskupic writes in a new book, Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences.“Some justices told me later that they were sorry they had gone.”Biskupic, senior supreme court analyst for CNN, adds: “To varying degrees, the justices felt tricked, made to participate in a political exercise at a time when they were trying to prove themselves impartial guardians of justice, rather than tools of Republican interests.”Nine Black Robes will be published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Published excerpts have covered key issues on the court including the controversial treatment of staff for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal justice who died in September 2020 and was swiftly replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, an arch-conservative; rulings on gay rights; and the 2022 Dobbs vs Jackson decision that removed the federal right to abortion.The appointment of Coney Barrett – jammed through before the election by the same Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who previously held open a seat for a year and through an election in order to fill it with a conservative – tilted the court 6-3 to the right.Joe Biden has made the historic appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the court, but he has not altered that 6-3 balance.Kavanaugh was Trump’s second appointment, replacing the retiring Anthony Kennedy, a conservative for a conservative.Accused of drunken behaviour and sexual assault while a high school student, Kavanaugh, a former George W Bush administration aide, was narrowly confirmed in an atmosphere of deeply partisan rancour.On 8 October 2018, Trump staged his celebration.Saying “what happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process”, Trump falsely claimed Kavanaugh had been “proven innocent” of the claims against him.As Biskupic writes: “There had been no trial, not even much of an investigation of [Professor Christine Blasey] Ford’s accusations. But as with so many of Trump’s assertions, the truth did not matter to him or … his supporters.”Biskupic notes that among the “stone faced” justices at the White House, Clarence Thomas, the senior conservative, was “conspicuously enthusiastic, alone applaud[ing] heartily after Kavanaugh spoke”.She adds: “A Department of Justice spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, later described Thomas as ‘the life of the party’ at the event.”Thomas is the subject of controversy centering on the activities of his wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas.Ginni Thomas has been shown to have lobbied state lawmakers as part of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat and to have attended an event in Washington on January 6, prior to the deadly attack on Congress by Trump supporters.In January 2022, Clarence Thomas was the only supreme court justice to say Trump should not have to give records to the House January 6 committee. Such records turned out to include texts between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.In congressional testimony released last December, Ginni Thomas said she was “certain [she] never spoke with” her husband “about any of the challenges to the 2020 election”.She also claimed Clarence Thomas was “uninterested in politics”. More
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The $37m question: why do US states elect judges in expensive, partisan elections?
While the 4 April Wisconsin supreme court race is technically non-partisan, the two candidates have not shied away from taking positions on policies that align with political parties. The Democratic party has spent heavily on the liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, while conservative candidate Dan Kelly has the backing of Republicans and top conservative donors.The race is already the most expensive state supreme court election in US history, with over $37m in spending. The unprecedented spending and political debate begs the question of why partisan groups are permitted to get involved in the selection of supposedly nonpartisan judges, and why judges are directly elected at all?It’s not uncommon for state supreme court judges to be selected through partisan elections in the United States. Thirty-eight states elect the people who sit on their highest courts in some way, whether it’s partisan elections, non-partisan competitive races, or retention elections where voters get to decide whether to keep someone on the bench.These judges often have the last word on major policy decisions in their states, from reproductive rights to voting policy and redistricting. Since the US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion with its Dobbs decision last year, attention on state supreme court races has intensified, with groups on both sides of the debate recognizing that state courts will have the last say on whether abortion is legal.Douglas Keith, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program, explained that this political landscape comes at the same time that campaign spending on state supreme court races has already been increasing. Meanwhile, research has shown judges tend to rule in favor of their donors.According to the Brennan Center, the 2019-2020 election cycle set an overall national spending record of $97m. The group is still crunching numbers from 2022, but “I expect to see that we have enter for these races once again,” Keith said.A number of factors have contributed to the record spending, including the fact that the partisan balance of the court is up for grabs.“It’s a little bit of a perfect storm in that we are immediately post-Dobbs and so the awareness of how important these courts are is maybe at a peak,” Keith said, adding that Wisconsin’s election had added significance because it’s a swing state and the winner will determine the ideological leaning of the court heading into the 2024 presidential election.Have US states always allowed voters to elect state supreme court judges?The concept of having voters directly elect state supreme court judges dates back to the mid-19th century when there was a growing frustration that these top decision makers were being selected in “smoke-filled rooms, behind closed doors”, Keith said.“There was a sense that there wasn’t enough transparency,” he added. “That there was political deal-making and horse-trading that people didn’t want in the selection of judges, and there was a movement towards partisan elections.”Each state has a unique history when it comes to deciding who will sit on its top bench. Of the 38 states that currently use some kind of election to select judges for the high court, 16 states empower the governor to appoint judges, who are then reselected in retention elections. Another 14 states have voters select judges in contested, nonpartisan elections and eight states allow voters to select judges in contested, partisan elections.What’s the alternative?A few decades after states moved to partisan elections, some states began taking issue with the political influence involved in these elections and moved towards merit selections. Since 1940, more than half of states have switched at least in part from popular elections or solely appointments to experiment with merit selection.In states that use a merit system, the governor ultimately appoints judges with the help of a nominating commission or board, which is usually composed of a combination of attorneys, other judges, and the general public. The board considers applicants for the position and forwards the best candidates to the governor.Some research has shown that judges selected through a merit process produce higher-quality work than judges selected by partisan elections.The American Bar Association recommends against judicial elections, calling out the “corrosive effect of money on judicial election campaigns” and “attack advertising”.But for the most part, state policy on how to select judges has not changed in recent history, and judicial elections are used to select the vast majority of state judges.“There hasn’t been significant change in a long time,” Keith said. He explained that some states, like Ohio and North Carolina, made smaller changes more recently – both added party labels to their ballots, making these races partisan. But the last state to dramatically change how it selects judges was Rhode Island in 1994.Why have these races drawn such a large increase in spending in recent years?Before recent years, there were sporadic elections that drew large spending. In the 1980s and 1990s, big businesses and trial lawyers were frequently at odds over tort reform, which sometimes led to high-cost elections.The type of spending we see now did not become possible until the 2010 supreme court Citizens United decision, which prohibited the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, opening the floodgates for outside groups to pour money into political races.The Brennan Center has tracked spending in these races through 2020 and found that the 2019-2020 state supreme court election cycle was the most expensive in history, but this year’s Wisconsin race has already broken records for spending in a single election.Is the spending equal on both sides of the political divide?Republicans were first to dedicate vast amounts of financial resources to state supreme court races. In 2014, the Republican State Leadership Committee – which is now the leading spender in state judicial elections – tested whether money could influence the North Carolina supreme court election. The group launched its Judicial Fairness Initiative, a project aimed at backing conservative judges, explaining that it wasn’t enough to elect legislators and governors if they would run into state supreme courts who rejected their policy priorities.It took longer for Democrats to try to match Republicans’ level of spending, but they began to increase spending in state supreme court races as they focused more attention on races that would impact redistricting, especially around the 2020 cycle. According to the Brennan Center, 44% of outside-group spending in 2019-20 state supreme court elections came from groups on the left, marking a higher percentage than in previous cycles.In Wisconsin, Democrats have poured millions of dollars into advertising for Protasiewicz. Of the more than $25m booked in television advertising as of 22 March, Protasiewicz has ordered more than $10m, and outside groups supporting her including A Better Wisconsin Together, Planned Parenthood, and the American Civil Liberties Union have spent an additional $5.4m, giving her a roughly $5m spending advantage in booked advertising over Kelly.Does the increased political spending affect how judges rule once elected to the bench?Though it’s hard to measure the impact of campaign spending and how winning judges will ultimately act on the bench, there has been some research and analysis showing that judges are more likely to rule in favor of major donors and political parties that support them.In their forthcoming book Free to Judge, law professors Michael S Kang and Joanna M Shepherd find that the desire to win re-election results in judges who lean toward the interests and preferences of their campaign donors across all cases.Other research shows that judges tend to be harsher in criminal cases during election years than they are during non-election years, especially when there are more TV ads. 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Republican Ted Cruz introduces bill to block US supreme court expansion
The Republican senator Ted Cruz, whose party defied convention to delay then rush conservatives on to the supreme court, has introduced a constitutional amendment to stop Democrats expanding the court in response.“The Democrats’ answer to a supreme court that is dedicated to upholding the rule of law and the constitution is to pack it with liberals who will rule the way they want,” Cruz said.“The supreme court should be independent, not inflated by every new administration. That’s why I’ve introduced a constitutional amendment to permanently keep the number of justices at nine.”There is no constitutional provision for how many justices sit on the court.Democrats say the current court is not independent of the Republican party.In 2016, when the conservative Antonin Scalia died Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, held the seat open until a Republican president, Donald Trump, could replace a Democrat, Barack Obama, and nominate Scalia’s replacement. Neil Gorsuch filled that seat.In 2020, Democrats were helpless again when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, died shortly before the presidential election and McConnell changed course, rushing Amy Coney Barrett on to the court before Trump lost to Joe Biden.Those changes and the replacement of the retiring Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh produced a court dominated, 6-3, by conservatives.Conservative justices including Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas have claimed not to be influenced by political considerations.Coney Barrett notably did so, saying the court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”, while standing next to McConnell at a political studies centre named for the Republican leader.Among conservative rulings passed down by the new super-majority, a May 2022 decision saw the court side with Cruz in a case concerning personal loans to campaigns. The three liberal justices said the ruling paved the way for corruption.But the Dobbs decision of last year, removing the right to abortion, most enraged Democrats and progressives.On the left, plans have been floated to increase the size of the court and thereby redress its ideological balance.Writing for the Guardian last year, David Daley, author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, said: “The court’s hard-right majority has neither popular support for its agenda nor institutional legitimacy.“It is the product of a hostile takeover of the courts 50 years in the planning by conservatives who have long understood that unpopular policies … can be thrust upon Americans by an unaccountable and unelected judiciary.“The court must be expanded and reformed to counter a rightwing power play that threatens to remake American democracy and life itself.”Biden ordered a commission to study options for reform. It found bipartisan support for term limits for justices but reported “profound disagreement” on whether the court should be expanded. Biden has said he is “not a fan” of expanding the court.Cruz’s amendment has little chance of passing a Democratic-held Senate but 10 Republican senators supported it nonetheless.Josh Hawley of Missouri said: “For years the left has been desperate to pack the court to promote their radical agenda. We must ensure that we stay true to the court’s founding principles, maintain the precedent of nine justices, and keep the Democrats from their brazen attempts to rig our democracy.” More
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Ron DeSantis has his next target in his sights: freedom of the press | Trevor Timm
Ron DeSantis has his next target in his sights: freedom of the pressTrevor TimmFlorida’s rightwing governor and legislature want to gut one of the United States’ most important first amendment rulingsRon DeSantis, the Florida governor, and his cronies, not content with destroying free speech in public schools, have set for themselves a new target: destroying press freedom and every Floridian’s right to criticize public officials. Along the way, they aim to overturn the most important first amendment US supreme court decision of the 20th century.The latest bill to raise eyebrows sounds like it’s made up by the opponents of Florida Republicans to make them sound ridiculous. Unfortunately, it’s real. The proposed law, authored by state legislator Jason Brodeur, would – I kid you not – compel “bloggers” who criticize the governor, other officers of the executive branch, or members of the legislature to register with the state of Florida. Under the bill, anyone paid to write on the internet would have to file monthly reports every time they utter a government official’s name in a critical manner. If not, they’d face potentially thousands of dollars in fines.Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism | Jason StanleyRead moreIt’s a policy so chilling that it would make Vladimir Putin proud, and I wish that was hyperbole. In 2014, Russia’s autocratic leader signed a very similar provision, then known as the “blogger’s law”. As the Verge explained at the time, “under it, any blogger with more than 3,000 readers is required to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media oversight agency”.As despotic as this proposed Florida blogger law may be, it’s also so laughably absurd, and so unconstitutional on its face, that it’s hard to imagine even DeSantis’s rubber-stamp legislature would pass it. As Charles C Cooke recently wrote, “Senator Jason Brodeur is a moron, but he’s a solo moron” with no apparent further support here. One would hope. But the blogger blacklist bill may be useful for another reason: as an attention-grabbing sideshow, to take heat off another free speech-destroying proposal that has DeSantis’s explicit backing – this one aimed at a bedrock principle of press freedom in the United States.For the past few weeks, while his new Orwellian higher education rules have been getting the lion’s share of attention, DeSantis has also been on the warpath against New York Times v Sullivan, the landmark supreme court decision from the early 1960s that set the bar for defamation law in this country – and gave newspapers and citizens alike wide latitude to investigate and criticize government officials.Many legal scholars consider it the most important first amendment decision of the last century. It is one of the primary reasons newspapers in the US can aggressively report on public officials and powerful wealthy individuals without the constant fear that they are going to be sued out of existence. And up until a few years ago, when Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch started criticizing it, everyone assumed it was settled law.Recently, DeSantis staged a dramatic “roundtable” discussion to present to the public that he was now invested in changing Florida defamation law for “the little guys”, “the run-of-the-mill citizens”, the ordinary folk who don’t have “thick skin” like his. He then proceeded to use the majority of the presentation to rail against New York Times v Sullivan, which of course doesn’t apply to “the little guys” at all – only to powerful public figures like him.A few days later, DeSantis’s allies in Florida’s legislature introduced bills that would fulfill his wish and directly violate the Sullivan supreme court ruling. In their original draft, the law’s authors made no attempt to hide their disdain for the bedrock first amendment decision either. They called it out directly in the bill’s preamble, bizarrely stating that the unanimous decision from almost 60 years ago “bears no relation to the text, structure, or history of the first amendment to the United States constitution”. (That sentence was later deleted in the next version.)While the Florida house and senate version vary slightly in specifics, even the “tamer” senate version – introduced by the very same state senator Brodeur – guts almost every aspect of journalists’ rights. Here’s just a partial list of what the bills aim to do:
Kill off a large part of Florida’s journalist “shield bill”, which protects reporters from being forced to testify in court.
Presume any news report written with anonymous sources is defamation.
Roll back Florida’s anti-Slapp law, which ironically protects “little guys” like independent newspapers when they are sued by wealthy individuals for the primary purpose of bankrupting them.
Weaken the “actual malice” standard from Sullivan, to make it easier for public officials to sue newspapers or critics.
Now, can states just pass laws that blatantly ignore supreme court precedent? Of course not. Any responsible judge would strike this down as unconstitutional right away. But DeSantis may be hoping for a friendly appeals court ruling from a Trump-appointed judge or supreme court showdown to revisit the Sullivan ruling – following the same decades-long Republican strategy that finally overturned Roe v Wade. And in the meantime, DeSantis can burnish his anti-media bona fides for his presidential run, and Republican legislatures around the country can use the opportunity to copy the bill or one-up him.Whether the bill survives in the long term doesn’t change the fact that it would destroy all media in Florida – the traditional and mainstream, but also the independent and alternative, including all the conservative publications that have sprouted up all over the state in recent years.DeSantis has turned Florida into a national laboratory for speech suppression. And every American – Republican or Democrat – should be horrified.TopicsUS politicsOpinionRon DeSantisFreedom of speechJournalism booksFloridaUS supreme courtcommentReuse this content More - in US Politics
Walgreens limits abortion pills sales after pressure from conservative states
Walgreens limits abortion pills sales after pressure from conservative statesRepublican attorneys general threatened the company with legal consequences for sending pills by mailWalgreens will not distribute the abortion pill mifepristone in nearly two dozen conservative states after Republican attorneys general threatened the largest US pharmacy companies with legal consequences for sending abortion pills by mail.South Carolina woman arrested for allegedly using pills to end pregnancyRead moreThe decision, first reported by Politico, came weeks after the attorneys general sent a letter to Walgreens and CVS arguing that sending abortion pills by mail would violate federal law and abortion laws in those states. A spokesperson for Walgreens said the move was in response to that letter.Walgreens had previously announced plans to become a certified pharmacy to dispense the pill in jurisdictions where it was legal to do so after the US Food and Drug Administration opted to allow retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone pills, including by mail.But on Thursday the company confirmed to Politico that it would not dispense abortion pills by mail or within their stores in 20 states, including some states where abortion and medication abortion are legal.“There is currently complexity around this issue in Kansas and elsewhere,” Fraser Engerman, Walgreens’ senior director of external relations, told the outlet.Top Democrats were critical of the move. Adam Schiff described Walgreens as caving. “So much for putting a priority on the health of their customers,” he said on Twitter.Senator Amy Schumer said, “This is exactly why we need to codify the protections of Roe v Wade and guarantee the right to access care.”Abortion pills are a critical part of reproductive care nationwide. Of all US abortions, more than half are now with pills rather than with a procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. But medication abortion has drawn increasing attention since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade last June.The FDA has limited dispensing of mifepristone to a subset of specialty offices and clinics due to safety concerns for more than 20 years. The agency has repeatedly eased restrictions and expanded access, increasing demand even as state laws make the pills harder to get for many women.But the announcement from Walgreens suggests that mifepristone access may not expand as broadly as federal regulators intended in January. Typically, the FDA’s authority to regulate prescription drug access has gone unchallenged. But more than a dozen states now have laws restricting abortion broadly – and the pills specifically – following last year’s supreme court decision overturning the federal right to abortion.Attorneys general from conservative states have also argued that shipments of mifepristone violate a 19th century law that prohibited sending items used in abortion through the mail.An anti-abortion group filed a federal lawsuit in Texas in November seeking to revoke mifepristone’s approval, claiming the FDA approved the drug 23 years ago without adequate evidence of safety.A federal judge could rule soon. If he sides with abortion opponents, mifepristone could potentially be removed from the US market. Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills.TopicsAbortionUS politicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More
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Supreme court justices appear skeptical about Biden’s student debt relief plan – as it happened
The supreme court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic today to arguments that Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel some student debt under a two-decade old federal law was an unconstitutional expansion of power, Bloomberg News reports.The court today heard two cases challenging the program Biden announced last year, one filed by a group of Republican-led states, and the other by two people who sued because they were left out of the program. According to Bloomberg, several of the court’s six conservatives judges expressed skepticism to the government’s argument that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted the sort of emergency that would allow debt cancellation under a 2003 law.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the court heard two cases Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he is wary of expanding presidential powers during national emergencies. The Biden administration argues that the student loan forgiveness program is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency powers.”
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Congress didn’t authorize the president to unilaterally take a step with such enormous financial implications for millions of Americans.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modifying?” Roberts said, referring to a key word in the 2003 law at the center of the case.
The law, known as the Heroes Act, says the secretary can “waive or modify” provisions to ensure that debtors “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.
Roberts likened the case to the court’s 5-4 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending a program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Roberts joined the court’s liberal wing in the majority in that 2020 case.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt may soon be struck down by conservative supreme court justices, who sounded skeptical of the government’s argument that the program was permitted under federal law. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still has not said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.
GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.
The House Republican “weaponization” committee plans to scrutinize the Twitter files.
A Florida Republican lawmaker wants to formally terminate the state’s Democratic party.
The Biden White House may soon get its first Asian-American cabinet secretary.
In a House armed services committee hearing today on America’s military aid to Ukraine, Matt Gaetz, a rightwing lawmaker who is opposed to arming Kyiv, thought he had backed a top defense department official into a corner.In questioning Colin Kahl, the defense department’s undersecretary for policy, Gaetz cited a report that indicated the Azov battalion had received American weapons for years. Founded in 2014, the unit is controversial because some of its early members held far-right views, though commanders say it has since moved away from that ideology.The problem? The report Gaetz cited was published in the Global Times, an English-language publication of the Chinese Communist party.In the polite fashion of a congressional witness, Kahl called out Gaetz for falling for what he said was “Beijing’s propaganda”. You can watch the exchange in the clip below, around the three-minute mark:Rep. Matt Gaetz asks about Global Times Investigative report.@DOD_Policy Kahl: “Is this the Global Times from China?”@RepMattGaetz: “No, this is well…yeah, it might be. Yeah…”Kahl: “I don’t take Beijing’s propaganda at face value.”Gaetz: “Fair enough.” pic.twitter.com/9XQewKdZeA— CSPAN (@cspan) February 28, 2023
Tucker Carlson’s staff was allowed to view the 40,000-plus hours of surveillance footage Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over, but needed permission to copy any video, CBS News reports.Carlson’s employees “may request any particular [video] clips they may need, then we’ll make sure there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified, including escape routes,” according to Barry Loudermilk, the Republican chair of a subcommittee under the House committee on administration. “We don’t want al Qaeda to know certain things.”McCarthy’s decision to provide the footage to Carlson – a popular Fox News commentator who has downplayed the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters on the Capitol – sparked fury among Democrats, who argued the footage could compromise Congress’s security arrangements.McCarthy has said he will soon make the footage public, but today told reporters he wanted to first give Carlson exclusive access:.@GarrettHaake asked @SpeakerMcCarthy why he gave Jan 6 security footage to Tucker Carlson.MCCARTHY: “Have you ever had an exclusive? Because I see it on your networks all the time. So he’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country.” pic.twitter.com/2zsnKmUb4V— Kyle Stewart (@KyleAlexStewart) February 28, 2023
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is calling for the testimony of Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, after one of the freight rail company’s trains derailed in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month and spilled toxic chemicals:Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls on Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, to testify following the train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio:“Mr. Shaw, you have an obligation — obligation — after what happened to testify before the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/h6acw8EDYL— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2023
The supreme court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic today to arguments that Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel some student debt under a two-decade old federal law was an unconstitutional expansion of power, Bloomberg News reports.The court today heard two cases challenging the program Biden announced last year, one filed by a group of Republican-led states, and the other by two people who sued because they were left out of the program. According to Bloomberg, several of the court’s six conservatives judges expressed skepticism to the government’s argument that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted the sort of emergency that would allow debt cancellation under a 2003 law.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the court heard two cases Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he is wary of expanding presidential powers during national emergencies. The Biden administration argues that the student loan forgiveness program is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency powers.”
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Congress didn’t authorize the president to unilaterally take a step with such enormous financial implications for millions of Americans.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modifying?” Roberts said, referring to a key word in the 2003 law at the center of the case.
The law, known as the Heroes Act, says the secretary can “waive or modify” provisions to ensure that debtors “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.
Roberts likened the case to the court’s 5-4 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending a program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Roberts joined the court’s liberal wing in the majority in that 2020 case.Biden administration officials faced tough questioning from both Republicans and Democrats on the House foreign affairs committee during today’s hearing on US-Chinese relations.Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California, criticized China for failing to cooperate with investigators seeking to determine the origins of Covid-19, and he pressed Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on why the state department had not done more to condemn China’s “obfuscation”.“They failed to cooperate. They failed to come clean,” Sherman said. “The state department has done almost nothing to tell the world how China is responsible, not maybe for the virus, but certainly for their obfuscation and failure to cooperate afterwards.”Kritenbrink replied, “We have long stated that China needs to do a better job of being transparent.”Shortly after that tense exchange, congresswoman Sara Jacobs, a Democrat of California, asked Kritenbrink how the state department defines competition with China and how US officials can ensure that such competition does not devolve into conflict.“We’re competing for and fighting for the kind of region that we want to live in,” Kritenbrink said. “We talk about a free and open region where countries can freely pursue their interests and where people in those countries can enjoy freedom.”Jacobs replied, “I just think it’s really important that we stay focused on those end goals because China’s not going anywhere. We don’t want to feed into the [Chinese Communist Party’s] talking points around us just being out to weaken China for the sake of weakening them indefinitely.”Julie Su has received Joe Biden’s nomination to become the next labor secretary, the White House announced.If Su wins the Senate’s required approval, she would be the Biden administration’s first cabinet-level secretary of Asian-American descent. She would succeed labor secretary Marty Walsh, who is now leading the National Hockey League players’ union after becoming the first cabinet secretary to depart Biden’s White House.The White House’s announcement Tuesday contained a statement from Biden, which referred to Su, who once served as California’s labor secretary, as a longtime “champion for workers” and “a critical partner” to Walsh.“She helped avert a national rail shutdown, improved access to good jobs free from discrimination through my Good Jobs Initiative, and is ensuring that the jobs we create in critical sectors like semiconductor manufacturing, broadband and healthcare are good-paying, stable and accessible jobs for all,” Biden said.In 2021, the Senate appointed Su as Biden’s deputy labor secretary in a vote along party lines. After last fall’s midterms, Biden’s Democratic party controls the Senate by a 51-49 margin.The Democratic Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman is out of work for a few weeks at least while the staff of Walter Reed medical center in Washington DC treats him for depression. But Biden’s vice-president Kamala Harris can serve as a tie breaker for any votes that require it.Biden’s cabinet was the first in 20 years without a secretary with Asian American or Pacific Island heritage. Asian-American legislators and advocate had pushed for Biden to nominate Su to the labor secretary’s role after he defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and again pushed for her to be put up for the position after Walsh’s departure.Testifying before the House foreign affairs committee this morning, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said that China represents “our most consequential geopolitical challenge”.“It is the only competitor with both the intent and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological capability to reshape the international order,” Kritenbrink said.“The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the [People’s Republic of China] as it becomes more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad will test American diplomacy like few issues we have seen.”Kritenbrink noted that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. In that discussion, Blinken condemned China’s “unacceptable and irresponsible violation of US sovereignty” with its use of a surveillance balloon shot down by American fighter jets on 4 February off the coast of South Carolina, Kritenbrink said. Blinken also warned China about the potential consequences of providing material support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.“At the same time, the secretary reiterated our commitment to maintaining open lines of communication at all times, so as to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead to conflict,” Kritenbrink said.“In coordination with US government departments and agencies, this committee and colleagues across Capitol Hill, we’re confident we can sustain the resources and policies needed to prevail in our competition with the PRC.”It seems the figurative wipeout of the Florida Democratic party in the midterm elections was not enough for the state’s Republicans, who on Tuesday introduced legislation to have it formally terminated.Unashamedly billed “The Ultimate Cancel Act” by its sponsor, vociferous conservative state senator Blaise Ingoglia, the bill requires Florida’s division of elections to decertify any political party that has “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”In a press release accompanying Senate Bill 1248, Ingoglia, who tweets using the handle GovGoneWild and is a devotee of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, insists that because the Democratic party adopted “pro-slavery positions” in at least five conventions during the 19th century, it has no place in politics in 2023 or beyond.Additionally, the bill would automatically transfer the registrations of Florida’s 4.9m registered Democratic voters to no-party affiliates.Democrats in Florida lost by huge margins in 2022, now Republicans here want to eliminate the party pic.twitter.com/zQ80TmnrkG— Matt Dixon (@Mdixon55) February 28, 2023
“For years now, leftist activists have been trying to ‘cancel’ people and companies for things they have said and done in the past,” Ingoglia claims in the release, which also cites the removal of controversial Civil War-era statues and memorials.The release, tweeted by Politico’s Florida bureau chief Matt Dixon, goes on to say: “Using this standard, it would be hypocritical not to cancel the Democratic party itself for the same reason.”It remains to be seen if Ingoglia’s bill gains any traction. But with a supermajority in both houses of Florida’s legislature, Republicans certainly have the numbers to pass it.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt is having its day at the supreme court, where conservative groups are arguing to do away with the proposal. However, there are signs at least one conservative justice may believe the individuals and states trying to undo the Biden administration’s signature program for debt-burdened Americans don’t have standing to sue. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still hasn’t said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.
GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.
The House Republican “weaponization” committee will scrutinize the Twitter files.
As they heard two cases intended to stop Joe Biden’s student debt cancelation program this morning, some of the supreme court’s nine justices questioned whether conservatives suing over the program had the ability to do so.The court is currently dominated by conservatives, who hold a six-member majority that could upend the Biden administration’s plan to help Americans saddled with student loans. The questions justices pose to attorneys appearing before them in their hearings are no guarantees of how they will ultimately vote, but there are indications at least some conservatives are skeptical of the challengers, particularly Amy Coney Barrett.Here are what a few supreme court watchers saw in this morning’s arguments:I think this Supreme Court will likely do whatever’s necessary to abolish Biden’s student debt relief plan, but arguments aren’t going as well for the challengers as a LOT of people expected. Barrett sounds extremely skeptical on standing. The liberals are roasting Nebraska’s SG.— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) February 28, 2023
Argument in the first student-debt case just wrapped up. There’s a clear majority of conservative justices to strike down Biden’s order on the merits. But it’s less clear if there’s one to overcome standing hurdles to get there. Barrett was pretty pointed in Qs for MO’s SG.— Matt Ford (@fordm) February 28, 2023
Three liberals clearly against state standing and for Biden Admin on the merits.Barrett unsympathetic to state standing, ambiguous on merits.Alito clearly for state standing, against Biden on merits.Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kav against Biden on merits, quiet on standing.— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) February 28, 2023 More
