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clarence thomas
As Sotomayor Apologizes to Kavanaugh, Thomas Paints Progressives as Existential Threat
"Cowering liberals think this is a manners contest while conservatives are waging an ideological war," said one observer.
Apr 16, 2026
While one liberal US Supreme Court justice apologized Wednesday for mildly condescending remarks about a colleague, one of the high court's most right-wing members compared progressives to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler—a contrast that one prominent observer called "a perfect commentary on the asymmetry in politics" between liberals and the MAGA right.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she apologized for "inappropriate" public comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh's upbringing during an April 7 speech at the University of Kansas School of Law. Sotomayor, who grew up in financial poverty in the Bronx, referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which the son of high-powered Washington, DC attorneys brushed off the potentially fatal consequences of immigration enforcement stops.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals," Sotomayor told the audience, "and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas linked the progressive movement—which Americans have to thank for many of the rights they have today, from the five-day, 40-hour workweek, to food safety and environmental protection, to near-universal civil and voting rights—with some of the 20th century's worst mass murderers.
"Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government," Thomas told attendees of a University of Texas event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document's signing. "It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government."
Thomas called the declaration "one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of the Western civilization," even though its proclamation that "all men are created equal" did not apply to the 20% of the American population who were enslaved Blacks, and a condemnation of slavery was stricken from the draft due to objections from slave owners.
However, Thomas argued that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence have "fallen out of favor" among progressives.
"Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, to openly oppose the principles of the declaration" Thomas asserted. "Progressives strove to undo the declaration's commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident."
"It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights," he continued, adding that it "led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen."
"Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based," Thomas added, referring to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Nazi leader, and Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
Balls and Strikes editor-in-chief Jay Willis responded to Thomas' remarks on Bluesky, writing that it is "genuinely funny that Sonia Sotomayor issued a public apology today for her mild criticism of a conservative colleague on a specific, substantive issue, and then a few hours later Clarence Thomas picked up a mic and was like ALL LIBERALS ARE AMERICA-HATING COWARDS."
"Clarence Thomas is a right-wing freak," Willis added. "This is an indistinguishable from what unironic retvrn guys post on X about, like, women being allowed to have bank accounts. Anyone who tells you he is a profound thinker or a serious jurist or whatever is not to be trusted."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said on X that "if Dems had a spine, they’d run on impeaching this financially corrupt justice who got away with the allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings."
Many right-wingers, meanwhile, applauded Thomas' remarks, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—who helped try to steal the 2020 election for President Donald Trump—posting on X that "progressivism *is* an existential threat to America."
During his speech, Thomas also expressed his admiration for Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor whose largesse to the justice and his wife Virginia—who was also involved in efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election—has included undisclosed gifts like luxury vacations and private school tuition for a relative.
He also praised John Yoo, his former clerk and senior Justice Department lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memos" for the George W. Bush administration and publicly argued that the president has the power to order the massacre of an entire village of civilians or the crushing of a child's testicles.
Thomas closed his speech with a call to action.
"Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day," he said. "It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today's fashionable bigotries, such as antisemitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor."
"It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized," he continued. "It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises."
This, from a justice on the nation's highest court whose moral and ethical compromises in the form of “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts" he took from a billionaire linked to a case before that same court has "no comparison in modern American history," according to a Senate report.
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If Dems Retake Congress, Platner Says 'Compelling Case' Exists for Impeaching 'At Least Two' Supreme Court Justices
"We need to elect people to the Senate who want to wield power like that," the Maine Democratic candidate said.
Apr 08, 2026
US Senate hopeful Graham Platner wants Democrats to "deal with" the Supreme Court if they retake power in November and launch oversight and possible impeachments to remove justices from office.
Amid President Donald Trump's historic unpopularity, Democrats are heavily favored to retake the House of Representatives and have gained momentum in the Senate, where Platner's bid to unseat five-term incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) could prove decisive.
But the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority has the potential to effectively veto any significant actions a future Democratic Congress or president may seek to take, despite increasing doubts among the American public about its legitimacy and impartiality.
Its image as an independent arbiter of justice has come under further scrutiny as multiple justices have been embroiled in corruption scandals. This is where Platner believes Democrats could have options.
"There is structural power in the Senate to deal with the Supreme Court," the 41-year-old Marine-turned-oyster farmer told a crowd of supporters during an event this weekend.
He said that if Democrats get a majority, "at that point, I very much think that we need to be exercising ethics oversight over the court."
Unlike lower court judges, who must comply with a binding ethics code by avoiding partisan campaigning, disclosing conflicts of interest, and recusing themselves in cases where impartiality may be called into question, Supreme Court justices do not have to adhere to these rules.
Although the Supreme Court did adopt an ethics code for the first time in 2023, it is voluntary, and legal groups like the New York City Bar have described it as unenforceable and far short of what is necessary.
Platner said that "if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standards that we held federal judges, there is a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two."
While he did not specify which two justices he believed could be impeached, it is highly likely that he was referring to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the furthest right justices, whom he has said have helped transform the court into a "political action wing... of conservatism."
In 2023, ProPublica published an investigation exposing that Thomas had, for years, accepted gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, including trips on his private jet and superyacht, as well as $6,000-per-month tuition for his grandnephew. None of these were reported on the justice's ethics disclosures.
It was also revealed that his wife, Ginni Thomas, was heavily involved with right-wing activist groups with business before the Supreme Court, including those that pushed discredited voter fraud claims to overturn Trump's loss in the 2020 election.
Alito, meanwhile, was revealed to have taken a luxury fishing trip to Alaska with the billionaire hedge fund tycoon Paul Singer, who was directly involved or had financial ties to several entities with business before the court, including a right-wing pro-business group that was pushing to have the court block then-President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness policy.
The justice has also been accused of expressing support for Christian nationalism after a flag was seen flying outside his residence that appeared to express solidarity with the movement and with those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. A documentarian has also published recordings of the justice speaking about how America must be returned to a "place of Godliness."
Some Democrats have also raised the possibility of impeaching Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of lying during his confirmation hearings in 2018 when he was faced with allegations of sexual assault from a former classmate.
Right-wing control of the Supreme Court over the past decade has fundamentally altered the American political landscape by rolling back advancements to reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, gutting the Voting Rights Act, and hindering environmental regulation.
And as Trump has expressed open contempt for constitutional limits on his power, the court has often indulged him, siding with his administration more than 80% of the time in emergency docket rulings during his second term while granting him broad "immunity" from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.
In addition to impeaching justices, Platner has called for Congress to expand the Supreme Court's size the next time a Democrat is in the White House, which can be done with a simple majority vote provided the filibuster is suspended.
"But to make that happen," Platner said, "we need to elect people to the Senate who want to wield power like that, who understand that power matters, that it's real and you can use it."
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Cautious Celebration as Supreme Court Allows Marriage Equality to Remain Law of the Land
"We cannot take those protections for granted," said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who helped to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide a decade ago.
Nov 11, 2025
In one of vanishingly few US Supreme Court rulings protecting equal rights, the majority-conservative court on Monday rejected efforts to overturn the decade-old precedent of marriage equality.
Without issuing a comment, the court denied an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was ordered to pay $360,000 in compensation after she refused to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple in defiance of the precedent set by the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
Amid a flurry of rulings that have rolled back sexual and reproductive freedom in other realms—including for the LGBTQ+ community—the court's refusal to hear Davis' appeal was considered a small but still invigorating victory.
“The bar is in hell,” wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on social media. “But this is a win for decency and compassion.”
The ruling came as a relief to advocates for equal rights, who long feared that marriage equality might soon become the next target as the conservative movement grows increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2022, as the court's right-wing majority overturned the right to an abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, the archconservative Justice Clarence Thomas signaled in a concurring opinion that it should be the start of efforts to fully revise the court's recognition of "substantive due process," that is, the recognition of rights not explicitly granted by the US Constitution.
He questioned not just the right of same-sex couples to marry, but the court’s entire recognition of the right to privacy established by the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, which has been the basis for rulings against bans on homosexual relationships and the right to contraception.
Thomas was one of the four conservative justices who dissented from the majority's ruling in Obergefell. Two others—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito—also still serve on the court. The other three conservative justices who have been appointed since, all by President Donald Trump during his first term—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—have remained relatively coy on how they’d rule if marriage equality were to come back up, though they have sided with conservatives in cases that pitted religious liberty against discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.
In 2023, the six conservatives ruled that a Christian web designer was allowed to decline services to same-sex weddings, overturning a Colorado law that banned discrimination against gay people. Notably, the designer who brought the case had not actually been asked to design a website for any gay couple, but the court's right-wing majority accepted her case regardless.
This apparent zealousness to intervene in favor of discrimination appeared to be a red flag, but as Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman wrote for Bloomberg, Monday's ruling "is best read as a signal that the conservative majority has little interest in revisiting gay marriage," even as "the conservative constitutional revolution at the Supreme Court remains underway."
He notes that just four justices are required for a case to be heard by the court. And while it has aggressively rolled back the rights of transgender people, ended affirmative action, and recognized unprecedented executive authority for President Donald Trump, when it comes to same-sex marriage, "their silence is noteworthy."
Public support for marriage equality has grown considerably in the decade since Obergefell. In July 2015, a month after the court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, 58% of Americans said in a Gallup poll that they agreed that same- sex couples should have the same rights as opposite-sex pairs. That number ballooned to a high of 71% in 2023, and even as attacks on LGBTQ+ people have ratcheted up intensely within the conservative movement, support for marriage equality remains stubbornly steady—68% of Americans still say gay marriages should be valid.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who represented two of the plaintiffs in the 2015 case, said that while she welcomes the court's decision Monday not to erode the hard-won rights of gay people further, advocates should not become complacent.
"I am relieved for today’s decision reaffirming same-sex couples’ continued right to dignity and protection under the law, but we cannot take those protections for granted," Nessel said in a news release. “Members of this Supreme Court have already told us they are willing to overturn Obergefell. It’s only a matter of time before they do.”
Her state of Michigan is one of more than two dozen in which same-sex marriage would become illegal or face restrictions if Obergefell is overturned. She said that Monday's decision "allows us a reprieve, an opportunity to bring our state Constitution into alignment with the protections our residents are entitled to and have enjoyed for more than a decade. Now is the time to act."
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