Clarence Thomas Was A More Frequent Flyer On Harlan Crow Air Than We Knew

Posted on by David Kurtz

Ed. Note: Nicole Lafond will be back to helming Where Things Stand soon.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went up and away into the wild blue yonder aboard billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow’s private jet three other times that he hasn’t reported on his financial disclosure filings, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Durbin’s revelation of the new information about Thomas’ travels came this afternoon, not even 24 hours after Senate Republicans killed a Durbin measure that would have imposed new ethics standards on the Supreme Court.

The demand for greater Supreme Court accountability has ramped up in the months since ProPublica published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on freebies, gifts, and other financial benefits — including travel — that Crow had bestowed on Thomas but which Thomas had not included in his public financial disclosures.

Just last week, Thomas filed an amended 2019 report that for the first time included the travel that ProPublica had previously reported, a tacit though begrudging acknowledgement by Thomas that he should have included them in the original filing.

The three newly revealed trips announced today by Durbin were not included in Thomas’ amended filing last week.

The three previously unreported trips on Crow’s private jet include:

  • A May 2017 flight from St. Louis to Kalispell, Montana, with a return flight to Dallas;
  • A March 2019 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C. and Savannah, Georgia;
  • A June 2021 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C., and San Jose, California.

Durbin obtained the information about the three flights via a Judiciary Committee subpoena of Crow last November. You can see a portion of the relevant response from Crow’s lawyer here. It’s not clear when the committee obtained Crow’s responses or why Durbin released them today.

In a statement to CBS News, Crow’s office said he had reached an agreement with the committee to provide certain information going back seven years to resolve the matter.

Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow.

Durbin has been a very reluctant warrior on Supreme Court ethics oversight, dismissing as useless the prospect of holding public committee hearings on the court’s ethical lapses and lack of institutional accountability. But Durbin did launch an investigation last fall and has slowly budged in recent days, a result of a combination of outside pressure and a new round of news reports about insurrectionist flags flying outside two of Justice Samuel Alito’s homes.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information — like what we’ve revealed today — and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a press release.

Crow owns a Bombardier Global 5000, ProPublica previously reported. It’s a long-range, twin-engine business jet with a reported range of more than 5,000 nautical miles and cruising speed upwards of 560 m.p.h.

The Best Of TPM Today

Unanimous Supreme Court Shoots Down Bid To Restrict Abortion Drug Mifepristone – Kate Riga

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

Behold The House GOP’s Never-Ending Stream Of Disinformation – David Kurtz

What We Are Reading

How Viktor Orbán Wins – Journal Of Democracy

171,000 Traveled for Abortions Last Year. See Where They Went. – NYT

Electric Vehicle Outlook 2024 – BloombergNEF

Republicans Play Down State Efforts To Ban IVF As They Block Federal Bill To Protect It

Posted on by Emine Yücel

As Senate Republicans sought to explain away why they wouldn’t support the Democrats’ in vitro fertilization bill — an effort to protect and expand nationwide access to fertility treatment, including IVF — they shrugged off the idea that a real threat existed. IVF, they claimed, was certainly not imperiled at the state level.

“I certainly don’t hear that anywhere. I don’t see it anywhere. I’ve never heard anybody ever suggest that,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), an obstetrician, told TPM on Thursday when asked if he was worried about the possibility of states taking away access to IVF.

Continue reading “Republicans Play Down State Efforts To Ban IVF As They Block Federal Bill To Protect It” →

Making Sense of a Big Stack of Editors’ Blog Posts

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I want to thank all of you who wrote in in response to yesterday’s post asking for your favorite Editors’ Blog posts. Please keep them coming. At one level it’s just very gratifying and affirming to hear which ones you’ve especially enjoyed, which ones had some particular meaning for you. But this wasn’t just an ego trip. Or, it mostly wasn’t that. I’ve been considering putting together a collection of pieces from the last 24 years. I’m not sure whether that would include the “best” or most popular, or just ones that built up a series of themes or arguments over time. My thought was too pull them together, clean them up and assemble them into bundles focused on key themes and questions that have animated the Editors’ Blog over the years. And then on top of this, add a short essay for each trying to make sense of how the question or problem evolved over time, how the opinions stack up in retrospect, what we can say now about something that happened in … say 2010, the importance of which simply wasn’t clear at the time.

Again, this is a very general idea. But I just wanted to give you a sense of what spurred me to ask the question.

Continue reading “Making Sense of a Big Stack of Editors’ Blog Posts” →

Unanimous Supreme Court Shoots Down Bid To Restrict Abortion Drug Mifepristone

Posted on by Kate Riga

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the anti-abortion doctor plaintiffs in a major mifepristone case lack standing to reimpose restrictions on the drug.

The case presented a major risk to the drug’s accessibility, as adding back restrictions that the Food and Drug Administration had previously lifted would apply nationwide, even in blue states with robust abortion rights.

The plaintiffs in the case — represented at oral argument by lawyer Erin Hawley, wife of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — contorted themselves to try to find some injury that the lifting of various restrictions on mifepristone caused them. They crafted hypotheticals about floods of suffering women being sent to their emergency rooms when they happened to be the only doctor on call; they complained that they had to spend money to drum up opposition to the FDA’s actions. But none of that, Kavanaugh wrote, passed muster. 

“Federal courts do not operate as an open forum for citizens ‘to press general complaints about the way in which government goes about its business,’” he said.  

Cutting through the plaintiffs’ many speculative theories of how they might, maybe, one day be harmed by the drug, Kavanaugh put it plainly: “Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.” 

That idea — that the anti-abortion doctors’ desire for other doctors not to prescribe mifepristone and for patients not to take it simply does not give them grounds to sue — is both an obvious and basic facet of our legal system, and one that seemed to elude both U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit, both of whom granted the plaintiffs standing in their haste to restrict the abortion drug.

The Court also clearly couldn’t swallow the slippery slope of what granting standing on such tenuous grounds could mean. The floodgates would be opened to an unmanageable wave of litigation: Every doctor would suddenly get the right to sue the FDA for approving virtually any drug with side effects; others could file lawsuits whenever an official makes a change that could bring about new physical harms (lifting emissions regulations, starting a middle school football league, increasing speed limits, expanding gun rights, as Kavanaugh proposed in a series of hypotheticals). 

“Firefighters could sue to object to relaxed building codes that increase fire risks,” he wrote. “Police officers could sue to challenge a government decision to legalize certain activities that are associated with increased crime. Teachers in border states could sue to challenge allegedly lax immigration policies that lead to overcrowded classrooms.”

As ever, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in concurrence to nudge the decision further to the right: agreeing with the other justices that the anti-abortion doctors don’t have standing in this case, but also trying to seal off an avenue for abortion rights cases in the future (using language lifted from the anti-abortion movement to do so).

“Just as abortionists lack standing to assert the rights of their clients, doctors who oppose abortion cannot vicariously assert the rights of their patients,” he wrote.

Associational standing, the concept Thomas seeks to end, is often used by civil rights groups on behalf of individuals. 

The Court’s decision was to some extent expected, and even the right-wing justices at oral argument couldn’t find a way to accept the plaintiffs’ tortured theory of standing. But it’s a major win for abortion rights nevertheless, showing that there are some limits to the shoddiness of the cases the conservatives will accept to further their ideological and policy aims.

That bare minimum adherence to basic legal principles, in this case, narrowed the pipeline that has proven so successful for right-wing litigants. The group behind the lawsuit — the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — was formed in Amarillo, Texas after Dobbs specifically so it could plant the lawsuit with reliably anti-abortion judge Kacsmaryk. 

After Kacsmaryk granted the bulk of their requests, including revoking the FDA’s 20-plus year approval of mifepristone, the case, as intended, moved to the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit. The panel there grudgingly concluded that the statute of limitations to challenge the initial approval of the drug had passed, but gamely ordered the reimposition of more recent restrictions that the FDA had lifted after finding them to be both onerous for patients and medically unnecessary.  

Judge James Ho, a 5th Circuit judge and one of the most infamous Trump appointees, tried out the mind-boggling argument that the anti-abortion doctors had suffered an “aesthetic injury,” which gave them standing. 

“Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them. Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones,” he wrote. “Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

The decision is the latest slap on the wrist for the appellate court and Kacsmaryk, both of whom the Supreme Court has overturned with some frequency.

Trump’s Campaign Of Retribution Is Already Well Underway

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

About The House GOP Attack On Merrick Garland

I wrote yesterday about the House GOP eschewing any pretense of governing for this entire term in favor of using the levers of power to advance its own electoral interests via a relentless disinformation campaign against Joe Biden and his administration.

The vote yesterday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress — for sticking to well-established precedent and not coughing up an audio recording of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Biden — is just the latest example of that disinformation campaign at work.

I also mentioned how the House GOP uses journalistic conventions to run its disinformation campaign not just on the backs of friendly right-wing propaganda outfits, but also directly through witless mainstream news outlets.

Here’s an easy example of what that looks like: Politico reduces it all to gamesmanship, score-keeping, and horse-race coverage. Under a headline that reads “House GOP gets a political win for Trump,” the lede is:

House Republicans landed a big political punch against President Joe Biden on Wednesday, just hours before they’re set to welcome Donald Trump to the Hill. They almost certainly can’t do more before November.

Well done, everybody.

A final point on all this: It’s clear to anyone paying a whit of attention that the House GOP is the forward operating base for Trump’s campaign of retribution. He has set out to avenge all of the perceived slights, attacks, and legal accountability directed at him in part because he’s characterologically incapable of anything else. But he also does it because it makes a strength out of a weakness and further inoculates him from the political damage of his criminal trials, especially with the kind of coverage he gets for it, even from non-propaganda outlets.

Holding Merrick Garland in contempt is just a small part of that larger revenge agenda.

Trump Returns To The Scene Of The Crime

Republicans welcome Donald Trump to the Hill today, his first visit since he, as president, instigated the Jan. 6 attack on the country’s legislative branch. But why let a violent armed mob sicced on the nation’s Capitol get in the way of letting bygones be bygones.

Also, This …

Trump is obsessed with getting Congress to somehow overturn his conviction — or at least exact revenge on those involved. See, e.g., Garland contempt of Congress vote above.

What Happened To The Proud Boys?

TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports: “Through a series of prosecutions, federal law enforcement effectively decapitated the Proud Boys’ leadership. It’s left an organization that is vulnerable, unclear in its organization, more prone acting at the local level, far weaker than it was at the end of the Trump administration, but still resilient and capable of inflicting harm.”

Lindsey Graham Kills Modest SCOTUS Reform Bill

Under pressure from nearly everyone left of center, Senate Democrats mustered a messaging bill on Supreme Court reform. It wasn’t the most ambitious set of reforms, and they knew Republicans would kill it. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did the honors for Republican senators and refused to provide unanimous consent for the bill to proceed.

Quote Of The Day

I didn’t expect her to meow several times.

Lauren Windsor, the activist who posed as a conservative Catholic and secretly recorded Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife Martha at an event last week

The Supreme Court As Trump’s Shamans

As we await the Supreme Court’s decision on Trump’s claims of presidential immunity, some sharp analysis beautifully executed by Yale historian Timothy Snyder:

The legal theory of Trump’s coup attempt, made explicit in argument before the Supreme Court, is that the chieftain is immune to law.  There is magic around the chieftain’s person, such that he need respond only to himself.  The words “presidential immunity” are an incantation directed to directed to people in black robes, summoning them to act as the chieftain’s shamans and confirm his magical status.

Some of the people in black robes, Supreme Court justices, like being shamans. Our shamans are allowed to take bribes from those who support the chieftain, and also allowed to claim that as magicians, people unlike others, they are unaffected by them. If there is any doubt, our shamans tell us, they can be trusted to be judges in their own case.

The full essay is here.

Senate GOP Expands Election-Year Blockade On Biden Noms

Some Senate Republicans are using Donald Trump’s conviction as an excuse to do something they probably would have done (or at least wanted to do) anyway: Slow roll the confirmation of Biden nominees between now and the election. That same group expanded the blockade yesterday.

The hook here, of course, is that these senators are pitching in on the disinformation campaign that falsely claims President Biden engineered Trump’s Manhattan hush money conviction.

On The IVF Front …

  • Senate Republicans are expected to filibuster today a Democratic bill to protect IVF access nationwide. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer set up the election year vote to put Republicans on the spot about their support for Dobbs and their lack of support for IVF.
  • TPM’s Emine Yücel was on the Hill yesterday and filed this dispatch on Senate Republicans’ squirming and their tactics to try to flip the script on IVF.
  • The Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose IVF as inconsistent with the dignity of “every human being, which necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings.”

Quite A Trick

If I’m reading this right, the extremist track record of Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, is so controversial that state Republicans are altering campaign finance laws to make it easer to make anonymous campaign contributions. So you’ll be able to contribute to Robinson’s campaign without fear of being tarred by association with him!

End Of A Long Road

With so much time having elapsed, the last remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre had to rely on somewhat novel legal theories to seek reparations for the attack, and yesterday the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected those arguments.

‘With All Due Respect’ Never Contained So Little Respect

It’s nice to see someone not indulge Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy’s overlarded bumpkin schtick. Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, is mesmerizing in this snippet of testimony. With her use of her voice, her body language, and the substance of her answer, she takes Kennedy apart at the molecular level:

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Senate Democrats Dream Of Delegating Supreme Court Oversight To The House

Posted on by Kate Riga

Ed. Note: Nicole Lafond will be back to helming Where Things Stand soon.

After a parade of stories centered on Justice Samuel Alito’s demonstrations of his right-wing partisanship, Senate Democrats have executed their big response: a show vote on a bill that would impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court.

Continue reading “Senate Democrats Dream Of Delegating Supreme Court Oversight To The House” →

GOP Sens Scramble To Find Reason To Oppose IVF Bill, Warning Of An ‘Anti-Religious Agenda’

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Senate Democrats are continuing their efforts to put their colleagues across the aisle on record for their unwillingness to support reproductive rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which opened the door to a flood of state-level abortion bans. Last week, Democrats brought forward a bill to protect access to contraception. This week it will be a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization.

Continue reading “GOP Sens Scramble To Find Reason To Oppose IVF Bill, Warning Of An ‘Anti-Religious Agenda’” →

A Favor and a Question

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wanted to ask you a question for a project I’m putting together: Do you have a favorite Editors’ Blog post? This isn’t one of those things where you have to choose a single one. There are going on 24 years of posts in the Editors’ Blog. So I’m curious to hear from readers if there are particular ones that stand out or that you found memorable or anything else like that over that period. One, none, five — any number is fine. If there are ones that come to mind, can you drop me a line at the regular TPM email address — talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com — and just put in the subject line “Editor’s Blog,” or something like that?

You don’t need to know the title. For the first eight or nine years they didn’t even have titles.