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Democrats Have One Way to Correct Corruption of Justices Thomas and Alito: Expert
Calls are mounting for U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to hold hearings on Supreme Court ethics and corruption, subpoena right-wing Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and have them explain why, as some, including Democratic Jewish Senators, believe they are promoting Christian nationalism rather than properly interpreting the Constitution and U.S. law, while accepting lavish gifts.
Chief Justice John Roberts has already refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Justice Alito has said Congress has no power over him or the Court.
“In the summer of 2023, Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal that Congress has no authority to regulate the Supreme Court, despite the ethical regulations Congress already imposes on the justices,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported last month. “Around the time he made this erroneous statement, the justice saw fit to fly a flag in his yard that had been carried by January 6 rioters and associated with the ‘Stop the Steal’ insurrection movement, marking the second time since January 6 that such a flag had flown outside of the justice’s residence.”
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Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed Justice Thomas took even more trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow than he had disclosed and that had never before been reported. Thomas has received an estimated $5.8 million in gifts over the past two decades, a large portion from Crow, the government watchdog Fix the Court revealed two weeks ago.
Subpoena Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito now. Looking at you @DickDurbin. https://t.co/Y4achCgxaN
— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) June 6, 2024
Justice Alito’s recent remarks revealing he believes the Supreme Court has to move the nation to one of “godliness,” on top of the symbols of insurrection flying at his homes, has some Americans deeply concerned about his Christian nationalism and the effect it has on his ability to deliver impartial rulings.
Chairman Durbin has steadfastly refused to issue subpoenas to anyone on the Supreme Court. Last summer he defended not even inviting Justice Thomas to a committee hearing on ethics, saying the invitation would have been ignored.
Should Democrats be relying on the Senate to fix the Supreme Court?
No, says Vox’s Ian Millhiser, author of two books on the Supreme Court: Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted (2016), and The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America (2021).
“What can Democrats actually do about Thomas’s and Alito’s corruption?” Millhiser, who writes about the Supreme Court and the Constitution, asks in his latest piece at Vox. “Nothing, unless they win the election,” he answers.
“At the end of the day, the future of the Supreme Court will be decided by the November election. If President Joe Biden prevails, he is likely to appoint more judges like his Supreme Court appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a mainstream liberal. If Donald Trump prevails, he is likely to fill the bench with Alitos.”
Millhiser says, “what, exactly, could Durbin — or any other Democrat, for that matter — actually do about Thomas’s and Alito’s dubious relationship with judicial ethics? The honest answer is ‘not much.’ ”
“Congress, certainly could do a great deal to check these two men’s power. Congress, after all, has the power to impeach and remove justices,” he writes.
But there’s more.
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“It also could add seats to the Court, which would quickly be filled by Biden appointees who would effectively neutralize Thomas and Alito’s votes. It could potentially strip the Court of much of its jurisdiction. It could take away some of the Court’s budget — perhaps the parts that pay for Thomas’s and Alito’s law clerks and staff. It could even evict the Court from its marble palace and move the justices’ office space to a shack in Nome, Alaska,” he notes.
“But no legislation reforming the Supreme Court, no matter how ambitious or how modest, is likely to pass so long as Republicans control the House of Representatives,” Millhiser notes.
Of course, there has to be a Democrat in the White House and at minimum a Democratic majority in the Senate to actually get progress.
Millhiser also cautions those seeking to paint Democrats as the problem.
“There’s no reason to doubt the good faith of advocates who want the Senate to pressure out-of-control justices to behave ethically and professionally. Far too many of these advocates, however, have allowed a tactical disagreement with Durbin to make Democrats the villain in this narrative and undermine the party in November.”
Or, as he puts it on social media, “I’m worried that some Democratic activists need a reality check. If two Republican justices are behaving horribly, the right thing to say about this scandal is not ‘Democrats are feckless.’ Attack your enemies, not your friends!”
READ MORE: ‘Pyongyang in the Rotunda’: GOP Red Carpet Rollout for Trump’s DC Trip Likened to North Korea
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A MAGA “civil war” is playing out across the right-wing ecosystem, sapping attention from the ideas that once powered the base and held GOP leaders to power. Now, the movement appears more consumed by infighting than achieving political goals.
MAGA is being drained of “its political muscle, leaving it defenseless as the Trump administration revisits policies previously opposed by the base,” according to Axios. The strength of MAGA “lies in its ability to rally influencers, politicians and activists behind a hard-charging conservative agenda.” But that “superpower is faltering amid a cascade of bitter personal feuds.”
The National Pulse’s editor-in-chief Raheem J. Kassam told Axios, “There’s no focus on anything philosophical or even ideological right now.”
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“It’s all just a cacophony of grifters tussling over audience and ego,” Kassam said. “So, corporate America gets to wield power with the admin virtually unencumbered by scrutiny from the base.”
Serving up a series of examples, Axios reported that on issues such as artificial intelligence, marijuana, Venezuela, and redistricting — all of which “would have triggered significant MAGA backlash” earlier — there has been “mostly crickets.”
Trump reportedly will loosen federal regulations on marijuana soon — an act that once would have attracted MAGA influencers to scream about “pothead culture,” Axios noted. This time, however, the news “barely made a ripple on right-wing social media.”
The “America First” president seizing a tanker loaded with Venezuelan oil and refusing to rule out boots on the ground to overthrow the Maduro regime “barely pinged on MAGA’s radar.”
MAGA influencer CJ Pearson told Axios that “the movement is wholly consumed right now on personality clashes. That is a recipe for electoral doom, and it’s unfortunate to see the unity that we saw after Charlie [Kirk]’s death dissipate so quickly.”
READ MORE: ‘His Heart Just Ain’t in It’: Report Reveals Trump’s ‘Achilles Heel’
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, demanding records related to the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump “has increasingly pressured his administration to find widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite those claims having been debunked and dismissed in dozens of cases by the courts,” The Washington Post reported.
The lawsuit calls for Fulton County to hand over to DOJ “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”
READ MORE: ‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, according to the Post. “indirectly and without evidence accused Georgia officials of ‘vote dilution'” in a statement.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Dhillon said.
“At this Department of Justice,” Dhillon added, “we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Trump in a recorded telephone call told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist
Two years later, a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on racketeering charges. The case ultimately was recently dismissed after setbacks and that Trump, having since become a sitting president, could not be indicted.
Democracy Docket, which covers voting rights, elections, and the courts, called the move “a major escalation in the Trump administration’s dangerous effort to revive President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen.”
The news site also reported that Kristin Nabers, the state director for All Voting is Local, said in a statement: “This administration’s unending obsession with the 2020 election results in Georgia uses outright lies to compensate for the fact that they lost.”
“With this terrible overstep of power, the DOJ is now weaponizing laws meant to protect voters for their political vendetta,” Nabers added.
Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics called it “More insane nonsense.”
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s “signature” weave — where he goes off-script and off-topic — is not working for Americans when it comes to affordability.
That’s according to CBS News correspondent John Dickerson, writing at The Atlantic.
His weave was “on display” this week during a speech that the White House promoted as focused remarks on the economy, but his comments included, Dickerson noted, “the topics of tariffs, U.S. Steel, fracking, wind turbines, electric-vehicle mandates, immigration, crime, gender policies, Obamacare, the Fed, his election victories, rare-earth negotiations, a D.C. terror attack, and ‘the lips that don’t stop’ of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.”
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The problem, he noted is, “now that the engine of the U.S. economy is smoking, the American people are looking for a technician, not an improv comic.”
Trump is hitting “a wall of resentment,” according to Dickerson, who pointed to a Politico poll which, he noted, found that “nearly half of voters—including 37 percent of Trump’s own 2024 coalition—said that the cost of living is the ‘worst they can ever remember.'”
There’s more.
“Only 31 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a new AP/NORC poll found, down from 40 percent in March,” he reported. “It’s the lowest economic approval that AP/NORC has registered in either of Trump’s two terms. In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, a majority of respondents said that his policies are driving up food and grocery prices.”
During times of crisis other presidents have worked to get results:
“Franklin D. Roosevelt passed 15 major bills in 100 days. Ronald Reagan, in the teeth of double-digit unemployment, pushed for sweeping tax cuts week after week. Bill Clinton built an economic ‘war room’ before he even took office, and his team introduced what has now become a political cliché: focusing ‘like a laser beam’ on the economy. Barack Obama instituted a morning economic briefing that put the issue on par with national security. Each practiced the same principle: If you can’t solve the problem fast, at least get caught trying.”
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He say that now, Trump is trying. “Kind of.”
Despite talking about “affordability” during his Pennsylvania speech, he also knocked it.
“The president’s most focused message on affordability is that affordability concerns are a hoax. He used that word, or an equivalent, several times on Tuesday, as he has in Oval Office remarks, in a Cabinet meeting, and on social media.”
The “unavoidable truth, no matter how hard you weave,” Dickerson wrote, is that “his argument is weak because he has to overcome people’s lived experience.”
READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’
Image via Reuters
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