Resilience Part 1 (or a First Look at the 538 Model for 2024)

Posted on by Josh Marshall

538 just released its official 2024 forecast model. It shows a toss-up. (Technically, out of a thousand simulations, Biden wins 53% of the times and Trump wins 47% of the times.) This is significant, but not perhaps in the way you think.

First, while poll averages are helpful to making sense of the current state of the race, forecasts are like predicting the future. In fact, they are literally about predicting the future. And predicting the future is hard — a basic life lesson if you haven’t come across it yet. To me, the 538 modeling is the gold standard. But I see it still as half a novelty. That’s no criticism of the people who put it together, incredibly smart folks. It’s just that there are a lot of factors that can’t be reduced to formulas and data inputs and the data that can be put into the model come with their own clouds of uncertainty. To me it’s a helpful data exercise which takes a knowledgable person’s range of factors, adds a bunch more and looks at them in a systematic and consistent-over-time fashion, stripped of wishful thinking. That’s helpful. It’s just not the be all and end all.

But here’s why it’s significant.

Continue reading “Resilience Part 1 (or a First Look at the 538 Model for 2024)” →

Aileen Cannon Slaps Around Jack Smith Yet Again

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.

Form Over Substance

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pulled another one of her trademark moves in the Mar-a-Lago case, batting down Special Counsel Jack Smith with a contemptuous hand wave on a relatively minor point while mostly siding with him in rejecting a Trump motion.

The big picture: Cannon denied a Trump motion to dismiss some counts of the indictment on the grounds that they weren’t sufficiently pleaded.

But in doing so, Cannon did toss Trump a bone, ordering that one paragraph from the indictment be struck because it was irrelevant to the underlying charges.

To be clear, no charges were dismissed, no counts eliminated, and no substantive damage was done to the prosecution’s case — at least not yet.

At issue was an episode described in the indictment at Trump’s Bedminster club where he showed a representative of his PAC — widely reported to be Susie Wiles, who is now a Trump campaign adviser — a classified map:

The conducted alleged in that incident is not charged as a separate crime in the indictment, and Cannon determined it was extraneous and unnecessary to the charges and risked being prejudicial to Trump.

At a certain level, no harm no foul. But a few points of concern:

(1) Cannon suggested this is the kind of evidence that should come in later — if at all — under federal rules that govern prior bad acts, and she sounded a bit skeptical that it would meet that test, which is odd.

(2) Cannon’s tone is still high-handed and dismissive. She’s certainly not the first federal judge to adopt that tone as a default, and woman judges often get unfairly criticized for the same brusque tone that men judges routinely exhibit. But given the high-profile nature of the case, its historic significance, and her own bumbling handling of it, it suggests a lack of self awareness.

(3) Cannon’s move is another example of her lack of proportion. She can’t keep the case on track, hasn’t set a trial date, keeps devoting court resources to extraneous matters and avoids devoting them to the issues at the heart of the case — but she’s going to highhandedly nitpick one episode in an extended indictment and then opine about her skepticism that “speaking indictments” are appropriate. Not a good sign.

The public discourse around Cannon’s handling of the case often focuses on her bias, corruption, inexperience, and incompetence. I’ve raised some of those issues here. But I keep going back to last week’s CNN profile of Cannon co-authored by my former colleague Tierney Sneed. It paints Cannon as a stickler for form and procedure:

Those tendencies include a penchant for letting irrelevant legal questions distract from core issues, a zero-tolerance approach to any technical defects in filings, and a struggle with docket management that allows the type of pretrial disputes that other judges would decide in weeks go unresolved for months.

Favoring form over substance is often a crutch for people who don’t feel comfortable with the material or who lack confidence in their own abilities or who struggle to see the forest for the trees. Inexperience, lack of competence, and fear of making mistakes are classic triggers for this kind of nitpicking behavior. The high-handed tone is similarly a defense mechanism to disguise the underlying insecurity.

I’m not trying to psychoanalyze Cannon here, just make the point that her motives are probably more complicated that wanting to let her patron Trump off the hook or to secure herself a promotion to an appeals court seat.

About Those Secret Recordings Of The Alitos

I’m not a big fan of journalists misrepresenting or disguising who they are and surreptitiously recording people, so I was inclined not to focus on yesterday’s disclosure by Lauren Windsor that she had recorded Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, his wife, and Chief Justice John Roberts last week at an event of the Supreme Court Historical Society.

But the episode has gotten considerable pickup by other news outlets and is widely circulating now in the public sphere so let me at least flag it to your attention:

  • Politico: Alito and his wife are captured in audio recordings talking about abortion leak, flag controversy
  • NYT: In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness.’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism.
  • NYT: Justice Alito’s Wife, in Secretly Recorded Conversation, Complains About Pride Flag

Speaking Of The Pride Flag …

While Martha Alito was complaining about having to look at the Pride flag this month, the aggressively far-right Colorado Republican Party was urging its members to burn it:

More from Michelle Goldberg.

Hopeless

A whopping 80% of Republicans believe President Biden was behind Donald Trump’s conviction in state court in Manhattan.

More evidence that the people who claim to be most animated by “federalism” don’t understand it.

Standing By For Hunter Biden Verdict …

The jury in Hunter Biden’s federal trial in Delaware on gun charges began deliberating Monday and will resume its work today.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

Rudy’s Giuliani’s mug shot in the Arizona fake electors case was released:

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Schumer Tees Up A Vote On IVF To Make GOP Squirm Some More

Posted on by David Kurtz

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

Abortion politics was a minefield for Republicans even before the Alabama Supreme Court granted full legal status to frozen embryos, but in the aftermath of that decision the fault lines within the GOP have become more visible.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is aiming to exploit and highlight those divisions with a vote as soon as Thursday on a bill protecting IVF nationwide. The Democratic bill — sponsored by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (IL), Patty Murray (WA), and Cory Booker (NJ) — is an amalgam of three other previously introduced bills on reproductive health.

The IVF vote comes on the heels of last week’s Senate vote on protecting access to contraception nationwide, another instance of Senate Democrats forcing awkward votes for Republicans in advance of the election. Awkward because Republican positions on reproductive health are broadly unpopular but remain a key litmus test internally, especially with the religious right.

The contraception bill failed due to lack of Republican support, and the IVF bill is expected to meet a similar fate. But setting aside the parliamentary maneuvering and election year positioning, the issue of IVF has Republicans genuinely scrambling.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who is running for re-election this year, has a new campaign ad out revealing that his youngest daughter is undergoing IVF treatment and promising to “always protect IVF.” Scott’s ad tries to paper over the issue by claiming it’s just all part of Democrats’ “ridiculous” attacks that Republicans “hate women, birth control, even IVF.” In the spirit of papering it all over, Scott is also sponsoring a “non-binding” Senate resolution in support of IVF.

In another sign of the internal tensions, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Katie Britt (R-AL) last month introduced a bill that would deny Medicaid funding to states that ban IVF. Punchbowl reports that Republicans may maneuver this week to use some combination of their own pending measures to blunt the Democratic effort to hold them over a barrel on IVF, but there remains considerable division within the conference on this.

This comes against a backdrop of conservative and religious groups rallying to oppose IVF. The Heritage Foundation took strident issue with the Cruz-Britt bill, accusing the two Republicans senators of cheerleading for “Big Fertility.”

Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention meets in Indianapolis beginning tomorrow where it will vote on whether to oppose IVF, a position being pushed by Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler spoke today to a group of several hundred uber-conservative Southern Baptists who are trying to drag the convention farther to the right.

While condemning the conviction of Donald Trump, whom he said was more aligned with SBC values, Mohler said: “But if we believe in the sanctity and dignity of every single human life from the point of fertilization, we need to recognize any intervention by an embryo, any commodification of the embryo, any turn of the embryo into a consumer product is an assault upon human dignity.”

It’s not clear whether the SBC will approve the resolution opposing IVF. The Senate is likely to take up the issue on Thursday.

The Best Of TPM Today

The Trump Campaign Has Made A Deal With An Online ‘Propaganda’ Network – Hunter Walker

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

Becoming The Swamp – TPM Staff

What We Are Reading

Part I: Fascism in America? – Thomas Zimmer

Part II: The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem – Thomas Zimmer

Finding Your Role in the Climate Fight – Jeff Seidman et al.

Seeing the Commonalities: EU Election Edition

Posted on by Josh Marshall

You’ve likely seen the news of the new European Union elections in which the far-right — particularly in France and Germany — have made big gains. Those gains in turn spurred French President Macron to call snap elections for the national parliament, an extremely high stakes gamble. European politics are complicated and different from those of the U.S. in numerous ways. Each country, notwithstanding the centralizing force of europeanization, remains its own microcosm. But it’s worth taking a moment to focus on their essential similarity.

Take the example of France.

Continue reading “Seeing the Commonalities: EU Election Edition” →

The Trump Campaign Has Made A Deal With An Online ‘Propaganda’ Network

Posted on by Hunter Walker

On May 31, Vanessa Broussard lost her cool. She was reporting live as an anchor for Right Side Broadcasting Network and President Trump was set to hold a press conference to discuss the previous day’s guilty verdict against him or, as Broussard put it, the “horrific outcome in the bogus hush money trial.” To hear Broussard tell it, the gravity of the moment overtook her. 

“This is not how I usually start a broadcast — but today’s different, so I’m unapologetic today for this side of me that you’ve never seen before,” Broussard declared to the more than 136,000 viewers. “Today, I am tired, I’m fed up, I’m disgusted, and I’m mad — and you should be too.”

Broussard’s blend of blatant Trump boosterism coupled with a gesture toward some more traditional journalistic separation exemplifies the approach that has helped Right Side Broadcasting go from a small independent operation to one with over 1.65 million subscribers on YouTube. These viewers are generally treated to unedited footage of Trump’s regular rallies and events that is sometimes bookended with supportive introductions from RSBN’s anchors and hosts. The company also re-airs a show featuring Trump’s daughter-in-law and Republican National Committee chairwoman Lara Trump. But explicit Trump partisanship isn’t the only way RSBN is different from other broadcasters. They are also doing business directly with Trump’s campaign. 

Campaign finance reports filed by the Trump campaign show it made eight payments to RSBN between April 2023 and last month totaling $59,000. The company’s leaders, founder and CEO Joe Seales and his wife, Bridgette Seales, explained the reason for the payments in a conversation with TPM last Friday afternoon. According to Bridgette, the campaign paid RSBN for some of the footage that its cameras have obtained from their consistent coverage of Trump’s rallies — and that relationship is ongoing. 

“We would give raw video feeds that we sell,” Bridgette explained. “We sell those to anybody, anybody can buy them, so the Trump campaign did buy them from us that they used for rebroadcasting purposes and they still do buy them from us.” 

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung also confirmed the arrangement in an email to TPM. 

“RSBN has made available the option to purchase their broadcast feed so the campaign can use it to stream out to various social and video channels,” Cheung said. 

It’s quite natural that the Trump campaign might turn to a supportive organization that reliably has cameras filming the former president’s events for footage. However, the deal is also somewhat at odds with the veneer of independence that RSBN has sought to maintain. 

The story of how the company grew along with Trump’s political career has been well told in a series of articles published over the years. In general, the narrative of RSBN’s rise started with the (often false) assertion Trump made at many of his signature rallies during the 2016 campaign that the mainstream press never showed the size of his crowds. During that race, Seales began to set up cameras to film Trump’s events. The operation, which officially incorporated in the Seales’ home state of Alabama a few days after Trump took office in January 2017, eventually grew to its seven figure audience. However, in all of the tellings of RSBN’s origin story, Seales has framed it as some kind of independent voice. That includes an extensive profile of the company published by the Associated Press last month where Seales denied being any kind of official campaign surrogate.

“We aren’t affiliated with them,” Seales told the Associated Press. “We just cover Donald Trump. Our goal has never been to be an extension or a cheerleader for the Trump campaign.” 

Asked how taking payments from the Trump campaign squared with his comments, Bridgette Seales insisted selling raw footage does not constitute an affiliation. 

“We are not affiliated. They buy them for their rebroadcasting services,” Bridgette said. 

It’s a delicate distinction — and one the Seales’ argue includes editorial independence. The Associated Press article (also published by the Washington Post) included a quote from an academic expert who described RSBN as “a pro-Trump propaganda channel, not an objective news source.” In his conversation with TPM, Joe Seales bristled at that and described it as an unfair characterization.

“I think sometimes my hosts have sort of — if you’re watching from home, it might seem like they’re more cheerleaders for the Trump campaign, but my original idea for this network was just not to provide a whole lot of commentary at all, and just kind of show up, and cover a live event, and let people decide for themselves what they want to believe,” Joe said. 

Joe further described his objective for the operation as a desire to ensure Trump wasn’t taken “out of context” by the mainstream press. 

“I am conservative myself and I just felt the need to show up and document some of the stuff that was going on so that we could have a record of it,” he explained. 

While Seales might not appreciate how his network or Trump are characterized by other media outlets, RSBN’s mix of MAGA boosterism and supposed objectivity has fueled explosive growth. Along with selling footage, the company brings in donations. Its broadcasts also include sales pitches. 

Moments after expressing her anger at Trump’s conviction, Broussard, the RSBN achor, offered some financial advice pegged to the verdict. 

“Before we start, we want to remind you that Democrats are in control,” Broussard said, adding, “It’s now crystal clear that they will go to any depth to hurt Americans any chance they get, so don’t let them control you and don’t let them control your finances. That’s why we encourage you to contact the Birch Gold Group. Highly recommended by RSBN, the Birch Gold Group can be trusted with your financial future.” 

RSBN has also expanded beyond airing Trump’s events into a broader online media operation. The company hosts articles on its home page and shows featuring its personalities. In early March, just ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries, former RSBN director of programming Brian Glenn taped a special interview with Trump at the former president’s Florida beach club. RSBN also rebroadcasts shows from other conservative personalities, including a podcast talk show hosted by Trump’s daughter-in-law-slash-Republican National Committee chairwoman, Lara Trump. 

To recap, that means Trump’s relative, who has become a top figure in his party, has her own online show, which is running on a pro-Trump network that also has a deal with the campaign. Mapping these connections reveals the connections and often blurred boundaries between Trump, the official GOP, and the world of right wing MAGA influencers — if there are any boundaries at all. 

RSBN’s unique place in the pro-Trump influencer ecosystem has led to growing pains along with the growth. Last month, Glenn, who is reportedly the boyfriend of far right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and widely seen as a rising star in MAGA media, revealed he was leaving the network. Glenn ultimately announced a move to the far-right cable network Real America’s Voice on June 3. 

“Brian really wanted to do shows — long form show production — which is something that we don’t do here,” Joe Seales told TPM. “We weren’t able to offer him that opportunity. And so, yeah, he moved on to Real America’s Voice, and we split amicably, and so, we wish him the best.”

Along with facing competition for its talent, RSBN’s close ties to Trump raise larger questions about where it might be headed after the election. In his conversation with the Associated Press, Joe Seales described the company’s business model and continued existence as relying on Trump. He similarly told TPM that he has no long-term plans for the broadcaster, and that RSBN’s future could depend on “the outcome of the election.”

Whatever is next, Seales might not be along for the ride. Like so many of us, the founder of RSBN feels the politically charged landscape of the past few years has taken a toll. 

“I personally don’t plan to be a part of the company in terms of anything operational. I’m ready to get out of politics,” Seales said. “Too much vitriol in it for me. Eight years is enough.” 

Rudy G Gets Big Guffaws At Far-Right Confab For Calling Fani Willis A ‘Ho’

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.

Who He Really Is

If you came of age in the crime wave of the ’80s and ’90s, you were witness to the national debate over whether former federal prosecutor turned New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a racist targeting people of color or a no-nonsense crimefighter applying a tough hand to a difficult situation. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, by the way. Both can be true.

We can settle the racist part of the debate now (was any doubt left?) — and throw in misogynist as a special bonus — after Giuliani’s sexualized rant Friday directed at Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis.

In video of his appearance at former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn’s far-right Reawaken America conference posted by Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer, Giuliani played to the crowd in the most base and craven way:

Recall how we got to this point: It was Giuliani who famously smeared Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, both Black women. That seems to have been a catalyzing reason that Willis undertook to bring the sprawling RICO case against Giuliani, Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants. Freeman and Moss subsequently won a nearly $150 million defamation judgment forcing Giuliani into bankruptcy. But he still didn’t stop, continuing to defame them regularly even after losing that lawsuit, until he finally agreed in recent days to cease and desist as part of the bankruptcy settlement.

With Freeman and Moss no longer viable targets, Giuliani has turned his ire to another Black woman. Contrast that with the situation in Arizona, where Giuliani is also facing criminal charges brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes for his effort to subvert the 2020 election. No “ho” comments from Rudy for Mayes, who is a white woman.

Perhaps we’ll eventually get to see whether the criminal justice system will come down as hard on a white man for calling his Black prosecutor a “ho” as we might expect if it were a Black man in the dock.

What Trump’s Revenge Really Means

Greg Sargent:

In the media, this story tends to be framed as follows: Will Trump seek “revenge” for his legal travails, or won’t he? But that framing unwittingly lets Trump set the terms of this debate. It implies that he is vowing to do to Democrats what was done to him.

But that’s not what Trump is actually threatening. Whereas Trump is being prosecuted on the basis of evidence that law enforcement gathered before asking grand juries to indict him, he is expressly declaring that he will prosecute President Biden and Democrats solely because this is what he endured, meaning explicitly that evidence will not be the initiating impulse.

Trump Sits For Probation Office Interview Today

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled today sit for a virtual pre-sentencing interview with a probation officer in the New York hush money case.

Keep An Eye On This …

The judge in the hush-money case alerted Trump’s attorneys and prosecutors Friday to a commenter who posted on the court system’s Facebook page claiming to be a cousin of a juror and possess inside knowledge of the jury’s deliberations before it rendered a verdict. Initial indication are that it’s probably a troll and not a real compromise of jury proceedings.

Clarence Thomas Fesses Up … Sorta

The freebies given to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow that were first unearthed by ProPublica have now been officially reported by Thomas in an amended 2019 financial disclosure report. Thomas claims the gifts were “inadvertently omitted.” 

More On Russ Vought And Trump II

The WaPo has its own version of the story on the shadow cabinet being assembled by pro-Trumpers in anticipation of a Trump II encore. This version also fronts Russ Vought, the OMB director in Trump I, as a central figure and touts him as a possible Trump II White House chief of staff. For the moment, Vought is the policy director for the 2024 platform committee of the RNC.

Failing Upward

Ed Martin, a former chairman of the Missouri Republican Party who was big supporter of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort in 2020, has been hired by the RNC to help shape the party’s 2024 platform, Sahil Kapur and Ryan J. Reilly report for NBC News.

Hard To Figure What’s Going On Here

Cause …

  • WaPo: Republicans pitch tax cuts for corporations, the wealthy in 2025
  • WSJ: At End of Trump Tax Cuts, Progressives See Leverage to Target the Rich

Effect…

  • Politico: Wall Street titans shake off qualms and embrace Trump

I Can’t Get Enough Of These Stories

Politico: How vulnerable GOP lawmakers are taking credit for an infrastructure law they opposed

The Jury Could Get The Hunter Biden Case Today

Expected today in the trial of the president’s son on federal gun charges in Delaware: A spare defense case by Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell, closing arguments, and then the jury gets the case.

Biden Admin. Sets New MPG Standards

The new fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. auto and light truck fleet are weaker than initially proposed but still raise the targets for passenger cars from 48.7 mpg to 65 mpg and for light trucks (including SUVs) from 35.1 mpg to 45 mpg by 2031.

Carbon Dioxide Levels Surge Faster Than Ever

NOAA, last week: “Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever — accelerating on a steep rise to levels far above any experienced during human existence …”

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Becoming The Swamp

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

In this week’s episode of The Insurrectionists Are Running The Show, NBC News reported on Friday that the RNC recently hired a big time supporter of the “Stop the Steal” movement to work on the party’s policy platform-writing committee.

Continue reading “Becoming The Swamp” →

Just Posting Endlessly

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wanted to share another thought on the Post’s travails. I’m chagrined that a friend had to make the point for me since it’s a point I should know as well as anyone. It’s not like there’s not a ton of money to be made on journalism in DC. The fact that it’s one of the few spaces in the U.S. that has spawned a series of successful media startups over the last fifteen years testifies to that — Politico, Axios, Punchbowl and more. Indeed, it was veterans of the Post who branched off and launched the first two and in many ways ate the Post’s launch before Bezos came into the picture.

Continue reading “Just Posting Endlessly” →

Justice Clarence Thomas Acknowledges He Should Have Disclosed Free Trips From Billionaire Donor

Posted on by John Light

This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation’s highest court.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow.

The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not need to disclose such gifts. “Justice Thomas’s critics allege that he failed to report gifts from wealthy friends,” his lawyer previously said in a statement issued on the justice’s behalf. “Untrue.”

In the new filing released Friday, however, Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019, writing that he “inadvertently omitted” the trips on his previous reports.

Last year, ProPublica documented an array of undisclosed luxury vacations and other gifts Thomas has received over the years from several billionaires, including Crow. ProPublica revealed Crow had treated Thomas to numerous private jet flights and international yacht cruises, covered private school tuition for Thomas’ relative, and paid Thomas money in an undisclosed 2014 real estate deal.

Legal ethics experts said that Thomas appeared to have violated the law by failing to disclose the trips and gifts.

The Thomas revelations helped plunge the Supreme Court into its biggest ethical crisis in the modern era. Justice Samuel Alito also failed to disclose a luxury fishing trip that was paid for by wealthy political donors, one of whom had cases before the court. In recent weeks, Alito has faced criticism for politicized flags that flew at two of his homes. The public’s approval of the court has plummeted in the last few years, polls show.

In response, the court last year adopted a code of conduct for the first time in its history. The code, however, has no enforcement mechanism.

This is not the first time that Thomas has responded to public controversy about his disclosure practices by amending an old form. The forms are required by a federal law passed after Watergate that says justices must annually report income, assets and most gifts. At least twice before, Thomas has similarly defended his failure to make required disclosures as an unintentional error or a misunderstanding of the rules.

Last summer, Thomas amended his 2014 disclosure to include the real estate deal with Crow after ProPublica reported on the transaction. At the time, he wrote that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be publicly reported and said he “continues to work” with judiciary staff to determine “whether he should further amend his reports from any prior years.”

Thomas engaged an outside lawyer last year to review his past filings. The new filing does not make clear whether that review is finished. The justice and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement last year, Thomas’ attorney, Elliot Berke, said that “after reviewing Justice Thomas’s records, I am confident there has been no willful ethics transgression.”

A committee of judges of the Judicial Conference, the principal policymaking body for federal courts, also said last year it had launched a review of the allegations against Thomas. By law, if there is “reasonable cause” to believe a justice intentionally omitted information from a report, the conference is supposed to refer the matter to the attorney general. Such a referral would be unprecedented. A judiciary spokesperson told ProPublica on Friday there is no update on that review.

Even after the new amendments, there are many gifts Thomas received that he has still not disclosed.

As ProPublica previously reported, in 2019, Thomas flew to Indonesia on Crow’s private jet for an extended island cruise on Crow’s superyacht. If Thomas had chartered the plane and the yacht himself, it could have cost more than half a million dollars. Seven ethics-law experts said that Thomas appeared to have violated federal law by failing to disclose the free travel.

Thomas did not mention the flight to Indonesia or the yacht trip in his new filing. However, he disclosed a previously unknown detail about the trip: that Crow and his wife paid for Thomas’ stay at a hotel in Bali. Thomas acknowledged that he should have reported that.

ProPublica also reported that Thomas had taken at least six undisclosed trips with Crow to the Bohemian Grove. Thomas’ amendments to his reports include only one of those trips. Members typically must pay thousands of dollars to bring a guest to the retreat.

In his new filing, Thomas disclosed receiving one gift last year: photo albums that he valued at $2,000 from Terrence and Barbara Giroux. Terrence Giroux was the executive director of the Horatio Alger Association, a nonprofit that provides college scholarships to low-income students. Thomas is an honorary board member of the nonprofit.

Thomas reported no free trips last year, which would make 2023 an anomaly. Thomas received undisclosed vacations from Crow and other wealthy benefactors virtually every year for more than two decades.

In the disclosure forms released Friday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only other Supreme Court justice to report receiving a gift in 2023. Jackson said she received $12,500 worth of artwork for her chambers at the court, as well as a gift from Beyoncé of four concert tickets, which she valued at $3,711.84.

Alito, who has said he did not need to disclose his fishing trip, received a 90-day extension for filing his disclosure form for last year.

Yet More Posting

Posted on by Josh Marshall

From TPM Reader RJ, who has a somewhat less generous view of the Post. This is a case where I should remind people that on some topics I post a range of views from readers. That doesn’t mean I endorse them. That said, there are some points here that ring true to me. As the dominant paper in what is an inherently political town, politics and government is inevitably the Post’s big thing. And as we’ve discussed in other posts, it’s hard to make it as one of the very few financially viable national papers if that’s your big and dominant thing.

Continue reading “Yet More Posting” →