When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent — Justice Sonia Sotomayor #quotes#quote#MachineGun#GunViolence#Guns#Thomas#MassShootings#LasVegas#BumpStock
In a #new, secret recording, the #SupremeCourt justice suggests partisan funding is to blame for coverage of justices’ undisclosed luxury #gifts
In a new recording, #SCOTUS Justice Samuel #Alito lashes out at the news organization #ProPublica, describing the news organization’s #Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the #SupremeCourt as driven by #political animus, insisting: “They don’t like our decisions.”
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.”
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. At least twice before, Thomas has similarly defended his failure to make required disclosures as an unintentional error or a misunderstanding of the rules.
Clarence Thomas belatedly admits luxury trips were paid for by rightwing billionaire
Supreme court justice amended his financial disclosure to confirm rightwing mega-donor Harlan #Crow funded travel
#Thomas’s relationship with Crow set off calls for more transparency by the justices and calls for more transparency.
ProPublica also reported last year that Samuel #Alito, another of the court’s conservative justices, flew on a private jet and vacationed with a billionaire who had business before the court.
Alito was granted a 90-day extension to file his report, something he has routinely sought.
Alito is also under scrutiny after reports from the New York Times that there was an upside-down US #flag flying outside of his home in Virginia as well as an Appeal to Heaven flag flying outside of a beach home in New Jersey.
The former is associated with the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the latter with #Christian#nationalism.
The supreme court’s nine justices all agreed to a code of conduct last year, though some experts have noted it does not go far enough and there is no way to adequately enforce it.
@rbreich@darwinwoodka Always pulling punches. I trust #Alito, and #Thomas as much as I trust any other #J6 seditionist #traitor. They just wear better clothes and live in nicer neighborhoods - and do their work with a pen rather than with a flagpole crushing a Capitol Policeman’s head. Not to let the rest of the “Conservative” majority off the hook - they are the same and should all be dealt with as #enemiesofthepeople
As with all of her postings, everything Heather Cox Richardson says today deserves attention. She opens by noting that the Dow Jones closed above 40,000 for the first time in history. But "in comparison to the breathless coverage of the stock market during Trump’s administration, this milestone is getting very little coverage."
"Ethics scandals. Leaked rulings. A deteriorating public image. Radical and unpopular decisions. Growing assumptions that the justices are partisans who pick a preferred conclusion and then work backwards to justify it. Alito’s latest controversy — the latest in a series — makes an ugly situation worse.
If Roberts doesn’t realize that he needs to get his house in order, he’s making a terrible mistake."
Organizations within his network have reportedly funded at least 40 groups advising Project 2025, per NBC News.
Leo is also linked to
💥Project 2025 💥co-author #Roger#Severino
—VP of 💥Domestic Policy at Heritage💥
—who served as the Director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Trump.
Severino began his career at the💥 “Becket Fund for Religious Liberty” 💥where Leo sits on the board of directors.
Severino is one half of a “Catholic Right” power couple.
The other half is Leonard Leo protégé Carrie Severino, who previously clerked for Becket and #Clarence#Thomas.
It was Roger Severino who wrote the section of Project 2025 outlining a ⭐️plan to withdraw the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill ⭐️(mifepristone),
which is also under attack in a case pending before the Supreme Court.
If the religious right fails to convince the Supreme Court, Project 2025 is their “Plan B” (pun intended).
Leo and his network are also linked to #Kevin#Roberts,
a rabidly partisan fundamentalist Catholic activist,
who has served as president of Heritage since 2021.
In 2020, Roberts had been featured on the Resources page of “WhereYouAre,” which calls itself a “collaboration of people in touch with … centers of Opus Dei in Texas.”
#Opus#Dei is a “small but powerful” group “within the Catholic Church” whose members “abide by strict conservative teachings''
and “believe they are called to serve God” not only in their personal lives, but also in their professions, per the Australian Broadcasing Center.
Many of Opus Deis’ members keep their membership a secret.
Leo reportedly belongs to Opus Dei.
Leo also sits on the 💥Napa Legal Institute’s 💥board of directors,
a faith based organization whose chairman of the board is #Timothy#Busch,
one of Leo’s closest allies.
Bush co-founded Napa Legal’s sister organization, the 💥Napa Institute💥, whose annual conference in July 2022 included Kevin Roberts as a speaker. Leo is a Napa Institute donor.
In December that year, Busch announced that the Napa Institute would open an office near the U.S. Capitol within the headquarters of the 💥Eternal World Television Network 💥(EWTN),
a global Catholic-themed television and radio network.
The month before, Kevin Roberts had been interviewed during an EWTN broadcast where he called himself an abortion “purist”
and said that he wanted “not a single abortion happening in this country.”
Roberts reconnected with Leo’s network in 2023 when he spoke during⭐️ “A Duty to God and Country,” ⭐️
an event organized by the 💥Catholic Information Center 💥(CIC) and Napa Institute.
As noted, Leo sits on CIC’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 (Heritage) Director #Paul#Dans belongs to the New York chapter of the 💥Federalist Society, 💥which is co-chaired by Leo at the national level,
while #Steve#Bannon, Project 2025’s unofficial media partner, has served with Leo on the board of directors of 💥Reclaim New York 💥(founded by #Rebekah#Mercer).
Bannon, you may recall, has closely aligned himself with proponents of the so-called “rad trad” (radical traditional) Catholicism movement
and specifically said that he wants to destroy the administrative state,
an express goal of Project 2025.
As observed by Media Matters, Bannon has repeatedly used his War Room perch to normalize Project 2025’s radical agenda.
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott & Alex Mierjeski @ProPublica
#Thomas has attended at least two #Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a #political network that has brought multiple #cases before the #SupremeCourt.