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Ginni Thomas Thanked Group Fighting Ethics Reforms Spurred by Her Husband's Scandals
Leaked audio reveals that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas praised a far-right group whose president later attacked Justice Elena Kagan as "treasonous."
Sep 04, 2024
Leaked audio published Wednesday by the investigative outlets ProPublica and Documented reveals that the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas effusively thanked a far-right group fighting judicial ethics reform effort spurred in large part by revelations about her husband's undisclosed gifts from Republican billionaires.
During a private July 31 call with the organization's top donors, First Liberty Institute president and CEO Kelly Shackelford read aloud an email—some of it in all-caps—from Ginni Thomas hailing the group's opposition to court reforms that are broadly popular with the U.S. public.
"YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH," Ginni Thomas, who was closely involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, wrote to the group, according to Shackelford.
"I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the Supreme Court," Thomas wrote.
Later in the call, First Liberty's president attacked liberal Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan as "treasonous" and "disloyal" for supporting an enforcement mechanism for the toothless ethics code that the high court unveiled under immense public pressure late last year.
Listen to the audio released by ProPublica and Documented:
The First Liberty Institute's donor call came days after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) uncovered additional billionaire-funded private travel that Justice Thomas failed to disclose, the latest in a string of scandalous revelations that began with ProPublicareporting last year.
ProPublicaestimates that Thomas—part of a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that has overturned the constitutional right to abortion care and dramatically curtailed the power of federal regulatory agencies—has over the past three decades taken dozens of luxury vacations bankrolled by billionaire Harlan Crow and other GOP megadonors with interests before the court.
Survey data released shortly after ProPublica's first bombshell report in April 2023 found that a majority of U.S. voters at the time backed Supreme Court ethics reforms and wanted Thomas to resign from the nation's most powerful judicial body.
"Ginni Thomas isn't protecting the court. She's protecting her and her husband's bribes."
ProPublica noted that Shackelford held the First Liberty donor call "shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes," including term limits and a binding ethics code for justices.
"On the donor call, Shackelford voiced strong opposition to various court reform proposals, including the ones floated by Biden, as well as expanding the size of the court," the investigative outlets noted. "All of these proposals, Shackelford said, were part of 'a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court.' This effort was led by 'people in the progressive, extreme left' who were 'upset by just a few cases,' he said."
News of Ginni Thomas' support for First Liberty's efforts to combat Supreme Court ethics reforms was seen as further confirmation of the urgent need to overhaul the judicial body, whose favorability ratings are near historic lows.
"Ginni Thomas isn't protecting the court," progressive activist Melanie D'Arrigo wrote on social media. "She's protecting her and her husband's bribes."
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at Stand Up America, said in a statement Wednesday that "the First Couple of the Supreme Court—Clarence and Ginni Thomas—have once again reminded us why we need term limits and a binding code of ethics to restore faith in our nation’s highest court."
"In a brazen political move, Ginni Thomas praised right-wing advocates working to quash commonsense Supreme Court reforms," said Edkins. "Having spent countless hours on all-expense-paid vacations on superyachts paid for by right-wing billionaires with interests before the court, it's almost too on the nose that Ginni thanked these advocates."
"It's a shameless reminder that the First Couple, and the Supreme Court broadly, must be held accountable," he added. "Congress must act by passing term limits and a binding code of ethics. The American people deserve a Supreme Court free from corruption and political bias."
This story has been updated to include a statement from Stand Up America.
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Blinken Hasn't Ended Aid for Israeli Military Units Tied to Killings, Rapes
"Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws," said one critic.
Apr 18, 2024
Amid global condemnation of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Biden administration's complicity, ProPublicarevealed Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has for months ignored staff recommendations to cut off American aid to Israeli military and police units accused of human rights violations including killings and rapes.
"The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel," which was the catalyst for the current Israeli escalation in Gaza, reported ProPublica's Brett Murphy. "They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed, and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails."
Murphy obtained government documents and emails and spoke with current and former U.S. State Department officials, who said the recommendations from the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum—named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored laws restricting aid to human rights abuses—were sent to Blinken in December and "they've been sitting in his briefcase since then."
While U.S. President Joe Biden has gradually increased his criticism of Israeli forces killing civilians in Gaza, "multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinken's inaction has undermined Biden's public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps," Murphy wrote.
The Israeli government did not respond to the reporter's request for comment, but a U.S. State Department spokesperson did. "This process is one that demands a careful and full review," the American representative said, "and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question."
Global critics have long accused the U.S. government of giving Israel special treatment while Israeli officials and troops subject Palestinians to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, settler colonization, and now "plausibly" genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Since October, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza.
The reporting sparked a fresh wave of outrage. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights declared that "this is how Antony Blinken will go down in history: for enabling Israel to commit the gravest of war crimes with U.S. tax dollars."
Alex Kingsbury, a member of The New York Times editorial board, noted that "Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws," while Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that "this would be a career ender for a normal Cabinet secretary under normal circumstances."
Democracy for the Arab World Now "submitted Leahy sanctions requests for two of the Israeli units that Antony Blinken has putzed and punted on, in breach of U.S. law, despite clear evidence of despicable abuses—[including] torture, executions, and even murder of an American," according to executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. "But Antony Blinken insists on special privileges and exemptions for Israel, refusing to hold it accountable, U.S. law be damned."
@StateDept In 2023, we documented Israel counter-terrorism YAMAM unit\u2019s abuses, including two extrajudicial killings & two indiscriminate and reckless killings, including of a child in Jenin in March 2023, constituting gross violations of human rights under Leahy Law & war crimes under Rome\u2026— (@)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Robert S. McCaw said in a statement that "despite these internal report State Department reports detailing egregious human rights abuses by the Israeli government, including allegations of rape and torturing children in the West Bank, Secretary Blinken has ignored his own staff and continued to greenlight weapon shipments to the responsible Israeli military and police units."
"The glaring disconnect between the gravity of the accusations and his refusal to act on them is deeply disturbing," McCaw added. "Secretary Blinken must halt any further weapons transfers that the Israeli government will use to commit more human rights violations."
Human rights attorney Qasim Rashid pointed out that in contrast with how the Biden administration has treated Israel, the U.S. government pulled funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—as Palestinians in Gaza starve to death—over the "mere allegation" that a small number of staff were involved with Hamas.
"If we had been applying Leahy effectively in Israel like we do in other countries, maybe you wouldn't have the IDF filming TikToks of their war crimes now because we have contributed to a culture of impunity," Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and a member of the forum who resigned in protest in October, told Murphy.
Another State Department official, Annelle Sheline, stepped down late last month as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. She said that with the U.S. government continuing to arm Israel as it devastates Gaza, "trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
Sheline's resignation came just days after the Biden administration accepted Israeli government assurances that its use of U.S.-supplied weapons complies with international law—which human rights advocates and officials worldwide, including some congressional Democrats, have challenged over the past few weeks.
Over two dozen Democrats wrote Wednesday to Blinken and two other top officials that "we remain concerned by the stark differences and gaps in the statements being made by the State Department and White House on how Israel has not been found to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance, which are contradictory to those made by prominent experts and global institutions."
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Why the Market—Not to Mention the Billionaires—Cannot Save Journalism
This isn’t just a journalism crisis: it’s a democracy crisis. And it’s a problem that we must collectively confront as a society.
Feb 02, 2024
It’s been a particularly brutal stretch for American journalism. Even for an industry that’s become synonymous with precarity and crisis, the recent job losses have been jolting.
On Wednesday, The Messenger, a digital news startup that lost $50 million in less than a year, announced suddenly that it was closing, letting go nearly 300 employees, reportedly without warning or severance pay. The Los Angeles Times announced last week that it’s cutting 115 jobs, more than 20% of its newsroom. In December, the Washington Post, once hailed as a promising new model for sustaining journalism in the digital age, eliminated 240 positions through volunteer buyouts, nearly 10% of its employees.
Most reform initiatives thus far amount to placing Band-Aids on gaping wounds.
This recent spate of downsizing is part of a longer trend: the U.S. has lost almost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005. The shocking decimation of the journalism industry has led to the proliferation of ever-expanding news deserts in which more than one half of American counties have little or no access to local news. And it will only get worse.
There’s never a good time for mass layoffs in the journalism sector, but it’s especially dire as we head into a pivotal election year and the world suffers from brutal wars and climate catastrophes. This isn’t just a journalism crisis: it’s a democracy crisis. And it’s a problem that we must collectively confront as a society.
Billionaires Won’t Save Us
One lesson is crystal clear from the recent bloodletting: the “benevolent billionaire” model for saving journalism—the belief that through their noblesse oblige to democracy, wealthy saviors would transcend the merciless political economy of capitalism to singlehandedly rescue the fourth estate—was always founded on false hope. The likes of Jeff Bezos (owner of the Washington Post) and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (owner of the Los Angeles Times) lost tens of millions of dollars last year despite sustained attempts to generate new revenue streams. Operating a newspaper is an expensive undertaking, and even billionaires can suffer from sticker shock.
Meanwhile, not all media oligarchs are as “benevolent” as Bezos and Soon-Shiong. Take, for instance, the once-formidable Baltimore Sun, which was acquired earlier this month by David D. Smith, the executive chairman of the right-wing Sinclair network of television stations that’s notorious for driving media to the right, reducing coverage of local politics, and parroting Trump talking points. Other distressed papers are being scooped up by vulture capitalists like Alden Global Capital, now the second-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.
These downturns, even if predictable, should bring further clarity to the fact that we need systemic alternatives to commercial media, especially nonprofit and public-ownership models. Working towards a structural fix to the failing commercial model for local news means going beyond small-bore reforms. We must clearly articulate a bolder, longer-term vision for reimagining what journalism should be.
Non-Reformist Media Reforms
Unfortunately, most reform initiatives thus far amount to placing Band-Aids on gaping wounds. Whether forcing platforms like Google and Meta to pay publishers and broadcasters more for their content or erecting paywalls that force readers to shell out money, the ongoing reliance on advertising and other monetization schemes are dead ends. Even most policies that call for various kinds of media subsidies—long overdue baby steps in the right direction—ultimately aim to prop up the commercial sector without making major structural changes and leaving the same ownership model intact.
The current crisis calls for “non-reformist reforms” that aim to transform journalism by mitigating or even eliminating the commercial pressures that prevent our news media from serving democratic needs. Such a project should rely on a two-pronged approach of de-commercializing and democratizing media outlets, with the end goal of building entirely new institutions committed to participatory democracy.
Ultimately, our strategies must be informed by the reality that no long-term commercial future exists for most journalism. Tweaking market mechanisms and scrambling for new business models is futile when the market itself is a core part of the problem. Our democracy requires that we disentangle news and information from capitalism—we need a horizon for journalism beyond the market.
A major impediment to this kind of radical project is our inability to imagine alternatives to the commercial media system. However, the burgeoning nonprofit news sector—though often overly-reliant on private capital—demonstrates what journalists can do when unyoked from commercial imperatives. Nonprofit exemplars such as City Bureau, Outlier Media, ProPublica, and the Texas Tribune all conduct top-notch journalism and, compared to their commercial counterparts, are often more responsive to their respective communities and to larger social missions. An infusion of philanthropic money into local news by Press Forward—more than $500 million over five years—suggests this sector will continue to expand. But it’s still woefully insufficient given the scope and severity of the crisis.
Our North Star should remain fixed, even if it takes decades to realize: all members of society should have access to news and information from local media institutions that look like and are operated by the communities they serve.
Ultimately, only a robust public media sector can commit to a universal service ideal that guarantees media access for everyone. We can leverage public infrastructures such as post offices, libraries, public access media, public broadcasting stations, and universities as initial building blocks for a new public media system. But much greater public investments are still necessary, especially with the U.S. being a global outlier for how little it funds public media.
Toward this aim, non-reformist reforms have strategic value by guiding policy interventions in the present juncture that seek to expand future opportunities—interventions that can mobilize and diversify coalitions, shift commonsense, build power from below, and broaden the terrain of struggle for structural reform. Therefore, any initiative that erodes the commercial and anti-democratic design of existing media institutions—by transitioning them into nonprofit outlets, facilitating public media partnerships, unionizing newsrooms, and establishing media cooperatives—can help radicalize news workers and engage communities while laying the groundwork for more transformative change in the future.
Ambitious plans for these kinds of nonmarket-based models are beginning to proliferate. Elsewhere, I’ve called for a practical utopianism embodied by the Public Media Center, a new anchor institution established in every community that’s federally guaranteed but locally owned and controlled. A complementary approach is the Local Journalism Initiative, which enables people to vote on allocating funds to local news organizations of their choice, thereby guaranteeing competition between multiple newsrooms in every county.
Regardless of the precise model, our North Star should remain fixed, even if it takes decades to realize: all members of society should have access to news and information from local media institutions that look like and are operated by the communities they serve. And everyone should be empowered to tell their own stories through their own media. None of this can happen, however, until we take journalism out of the market.
This article first appeared at The Law and Political Economy Project and this slightly updated version appears here with permission.
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