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      Justice Clarence Thomas’s megadonor friend collects Hitler memorabilia – report

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      The Republican megadonor whose gifts to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas have come under the spotlight has a private collection including a garden of statues of dictators, including Mussolini and Stalin; Nazi memorabilia; and paintings including two works by Adolf Hitler, the Washingtonian reported.“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” the Washingtonian quoted an anonymous source as saying, regarding a visit to Harlan Crow’s Texas home. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.”Crow, the source said, also had paintings “done by George W Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler”.A painting of Thomas and Crow smoking cigars in company including the rightwing activist Leonard Leo was included in an explosive report by ProPublica, detailing Crow’s lavish gifts to Thomas over more than 25 years.ProPublica also described trips on private planes and yachts and stays at lavish resorts.In a rare statement, Thomas said he had been advised such “personal hospitality” did not have to be declared under federal rules.He added: “I have endeavoured to follow that counsel throughout my tenure and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”Critics said Thomas had “clearly” broken the law regarding the declaration of gifts. The Washington Post noted Thomas has declared just two since 2004.Crow denied discussing or seeking to influence the court through his friendship with Thomas and his wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas.Critics questioned that, given Crow’s seat on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, a rightwing thinktank which regularly files amicus briefs with the court.Outraged Democrats promised investigations and, in the case of the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, threatened to introduce articles of impeachment.Thomas is the senior conservative on a conservative-dominated court that has issued controversial rulings including Dobbs v Jackson, which last year removed the federal right to abortion.But impeachment and removal is highly unlikely. Supreme court justices effectively govern themselves. Only one has ever been impeached, in 1804, before being acquitted. Republicans hold the House, where impeachment would start.Still, news of Crow’s far-right memorabilia seemed bound to add to Thomas’s embarrassment – perhaps in part because Thomas has written that arguments for abortion rights spring from theories of eugenics, as espoused by Hitler and the Nazis.When Thomas made that argument, in an opinion in 2019, Philippa Levine, a University of Texas history professor, told the Washington Post the justice was “guilty of a gross misuse of historical facts”.On Friday, the Washingtonian published pictures of Thomas’s friend’s collection of Nazi artefacts, which includes a signed copy of Hitler’s memoir, Mein Kampf.The magazine also noted how the Florida senator Marco Rubio ran into problems in 2015, over a Crow-hosted fundraiser on the eve of Yom Kippur.The year before that, the Dallas Morning News reported that Crow became “visibly uncomfortable” with questions about his dictator statues and collectibles of Hitler, whose regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.The paper described the statues of dictators as “a historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man”.Crow also reportedly owns statues of two British prime ministers he counts among his heroes: Winston Churchill – who defeated Hitler – and Margaret Thatcher.The megadonor and his wife were “such hospitable Texas hosts”, according to the Washingtonian’s source.But, the source added, it was “just strange – they had family photos in one room, then all this world war II stuff in another room, and dictators in the backyard”. More

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      Clarence Thomas defends himself after undisclosed gifts revelation

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      The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas said on Friday he was advised the “personal hospitality” extended to him for more than 25 years by the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow, detailed in an explosive report by ProPublica, did not have to be reported under ethics rules.“I have endeavoured to follow that counsel throughout my tenure,” Thomas said in a rare statement, “and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”The statement did little to dampen controversy surrounding the 74-year-old conservative or lessen fire from the political left.Thomas is the longest-serving current justice, nominated by George HW Bush in 1991. On Thursday, ProPublica reported that he has long accepted trips from Crow including travel on private jets and yachts and stays at exclusive resorts.Justin Elliott, one of the report authors, said: “This is the text of the law ethics lawyers told us he violated. Gifts – such as private jet travel – need to be reported, unless they are ‘food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality’. This is in the statute itself and predates the recent filing guidance update.”That update went into effect on 14 March. In a subsequent letter to Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, Roslynn Mauskopf, director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, said gifts not covered by the reporting exemption included gifts “such as transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation”.Thomas said: “Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable.”He added: “It is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future.”Supreme court justices, however, largely sit above federal ethics regulations, essentially governing themselves.Thomas also said Harlan and Kathy Crow were among his “dearest friends” and had joined him and his own wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, “on a number of family trips”.In 2004, 13 years into Thomas’s time on the court, the Los Angeles Times reported gifts from Crow including a Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass. After that, in the same paper’s words this week, Thomas “stopped disclosing” gifts. The Washington Post noted that Thomas has disclosed just two gifts since 2004.ProPublica noted that Crow’s generosity to Thomas was reported in 2011, by the New York Times and Politico. The latter, it said, “revealed that Crow had given half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, which also paid her a $120,000 salary”.ProPublica reported the existence of a painting hung at Crow’s resort in New York state and showing Thomas smoking a cigar in company including Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, which played a major role in tilting the supreme court right with three confirmations under Donald Trump.Crow said he and his wife had been friends with the Thomases since 1996, giving gifts “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends”.He also claimed: “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.”Accountable.US, an advocacy group, contended Thomas was wrong to say Crow did not have business before the court.It said: “For three decades, Crow has served on the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has published and taken credit for multiple amicus briefs filed with the supreme court by the group’s president and scholars.”Crow joined the AEI in 1996, the same year he said he became friends with Thomas.Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said: “First Justice Thomas hid decades of lavish gifts and travel funded by Harlan Crow, but now he’s outright lying when he says this major conservative donor had no interest in the work of the supreme court.“The truth is clear: this is an unprecedented story of corruption at the highest levels, and those involved must be held accountable.”Thomas is the senior conservative of six on the nine-member court, his influence growing through a series of controversial conservative rulings, not least the removal of the right to abortion in Dobbs v Jackson last year. In a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Thomas suggested similar rights – same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraception access – should be reviewed. He did not mention interracial marriage. Thomas is Black. His wife is white.The ProPublica report prompted Senate Democrats to call for an investigation – and some on the left to renew calls for impeachment.Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, said: “Supreme court justices must be held to an enforceable code of conduct, just like every other federal judge … the Senate judiciary committee will act.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, said “Thomas must be impeached”, as the court was becoming known for “rank corruption, erosion of democracy and the stripping of human rights”.Impeachment is highly unlikely, even given other calls regarding Ginni Thomas’s efforts in support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and Clarence Thomas’s failure to recuse himself from a related case. Like Crow, Ginni Thomas has claimed not to talk to her husband about cases or politics.Writing for Slate on the ProPublica report, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern said: “Clarence Thomas broke the law, and it isn’t particularly close.“Thomas broke … a law which contains serious civil penalties, though the bogus technicality on which he relies, in addition to his political clout, will be more than enough to ensure that he never faces any actual legal consequences.” More

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      Clarence Thomas faces impeachment calls after reports of undisclosed gifts

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      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

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      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?

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      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

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      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

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      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