#U.S. Justice Clarence Thomas

[minnesotafollower]

Congress Fails To Adopt Important Immigration Legislation

Congress Fails To Adopt Important Immigration Legislation

Previous posts documented Congress’ earlier failure this Session to adopt (a) the Afghan Adjustment Act to improve the legal status of Afghan evacuees in the U.S. and (b) important bipartisan immigration reform, one of which was offered by Senators Kyrsten Sinema (ex-Democrat & now Independent) and Thom Tillis (Rep., NC) that would have addressed the legal fate of so-called Dreamers and provided…

[sbrown82]

Oh shit! Here we go!!!

[filosofablogger]

Integrity and Trust -- Gone!

Integrity and Trust.  Over the past year or so, the Supreme Court, once the most trusted of the three branches of government, has lost both its integrity and the trust of the public.  I turn to the wisdom of Robert Reich for his ideas on how to restore integrity and trust to the Court … Three reforms to restore trust in the Supreme Court On the anniversary of Dobbs, and the revelations about…

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Senate

Investigate corrupt Supreme Court justices and pass a code of ethics now!

254 so far! Help us get to 500 signers!

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. They hand down decisions that can affect the entire country for generations. They should be held to the highest level of scrutiny and the highest ethical standard. It is a disgrace that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accept gifts and vacations from billionaire benefactors, often without disclosing them to the American people. The Senate has the power to rein in this corruption in this co-equal branch of government. They should use it. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin should hold full hearings on Clarence Thomas’ and Samuel Alito’s misconduct as soon as possible. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should bring a bill to implement a Supreme Court code of ethics to the Senate floor as soon as possible. Thanks.

▶ Created on October 25, 2023 by Jess Craven

📱 Text SIGN PYQUHH to 50409

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[scottguy]

Clarence Thomas put something in his concurring opinion that has no legal weight. But it was A SIGNAL to Trump lawyers and they admitted it in a huge Freudian slip. 😂🙄

Donald Trump's defense attorney, John Lauro, quickly corrected himself in court on Thursday after saying Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had "directed" him to challenge special counsel Jack Smith's authority in the election subversion case.

[mugiwara-lucy]

One of the main reasons why I’m voting for Kamala Harris is because sometime within the next couple of years there will be two open seats in the Supreme Court.

Let’s not forget one of the judges that Trump appointed in his first term OVERTURNED ROE V WADE. And the old fucker BRAGS about it:

If he gets back into office, I’m sure we can all anticipate AILEEN CANNON being one of those Supreme Court justices. And if you all don’t know who she is, she threw out the case where Trump STOLE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE:

In a nutshell, if Trump gets into office, he will appoint two younger Supreme Court justices younger than Clarence Thomas, meaning the Supreme Court will be locked HARD RIGHT for AT LEAST 30 years.

By then, that means our potential children and grandchildren (if you even want to have kids) will have LESS RIGHTS THAN US.

Do you really want that?

That’s why I feel with Kamala Harris being President, we can BALANCE OUT the courts!

Please Vote Blue.

Thank You 🙏

[wilwheaton]

Moreover, recent revelations affirm that there are deep biases among the nakedly pro-Trump justices of this court and that Chief Justice John Roberts knew that when the court took the case. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito should have been recused under any standard of judicial ethics. We already knew that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, was entangled in the run-up to Jan. 6 and was a witness in the congressional investigation of the insurrection. Last Thursday, the shocking news broke that an upside-down flag, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy, flew at Alito’s house shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Word of the flag filtered back to the court,” reported The New York Times, and yet the incident was hidden from the public for years. Had Alito and Thomas been recused, it would have required the votes of the four other Republican-appointed justices, including Roberts, to take the case. At a minimum, given Roberts’ repeated statements of concern for the credibility of the court, he owes the public a transparent accounting of how Alito and Thomas can be allowed to continue to sit on this case. The public is due similar explanations for their participation in the court’s decision to hear Fischer v. U.S., which challenges convictions of insurrectionists under the obstruction-of-an-official-proceeding statute also at issue in the Trump prosecution.

New York’s speedy Trump trial is a rebuke of the Supreme Court

[robertreich]

Billionaires Don’t Want You to Know About This Supreme Court Case

A majority of Americans support a wealth tax. But, surprise, surprise, the wealthy Republican megadonors who’ve been plying Supreme Court justices with gifts and vacations do not. And if those justices don’t recuse themselves from a case I’m about to explain, it will be a grave conflict of interest and potentially block Congress from ever enacting a wealth tax.

Moore v. U.S. concerns a one-time tax charged in 2017 on profitable foreign investments regardless of whether investors cashed them in.

The plaintiffs argue that the tax is unlawful under the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to tax incomes.

Right now the super wealthy can take advantage of increases in the value of their stock portfolios by using stock as collateral to borrow all the money they need instead of taking taxable income. It’s a way to have their cake and eat it too.

If the Supreme Court buys the argument that the Constitution does not give Congress the power to tax increases in the value of investments, that would make it impossible to ever pass a wealth tax.

But here’s the kicker: This case raises profound conflicts of interest on the Supreme Court.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both accepted luxury vacations from billionaires who stand to gain financially and are tied to conservative political groups that are responsible for appealing the case.  

No wonder Americans don’t trust the Supreme Court.

So what can you do?

First, share this video to spread the word about this little-known case.

Second, contact your representatives, and urge them to demand that justices with conflicts of interest recuse themselves.

And third, if your representative doesn’t support a wealth tax to combat inequality, replace them with somebody who does.

With so much at stake, now is not the time to sit on the sidelines.

[rederiswrites]

Why are we afraid of a Trump presidency? Well, here's the beginning of political historian Heather Cox Richardson's daily writeup:

April 30, 2024 (Tuesday) This morning, Time magazine published a cover story by Eric Cortellessa about what Trump is planning for a second term. Based on two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors, the story lays out Trump’s conviction that he was “too nice” in his first term and that he would not make such a mistake again. Cortellessa writes that Trump intends to establish “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.” He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people. He is willing to permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to try to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. In a second Trump presidency, the U.S. might not come to the aid of a European or Asian ally that Trump thinks isn’t paying enough for its own defense. Trump would, Cortelessa wrote, “gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.” To that list, former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer added on social media that if Trump wins, “he could replace [Supreme Court justices Clarence] Thomas, [Samuel] Alito, and 40+ federal judges over 75 with young zealots.” “I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?” Cortellessa wrote. No, Trump said. “‘I think a lot of people like it.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos:

The U.S. Supreme Court heard Donald Trump’s immunity claim in his federal criminal trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election Thursday, and the conservative majority is likely going to give Donald Trump what he wants: a delay of the trial until after the election. If Trump wins again, the conservatives have essentially signaled that they would be open to blanket immunity for him against any future criminal charges.   The fact that Supreme Court justices are suggesting that the president is above the law proves why the court must be reformed. Four of the justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch—even went so far as to suggest that special counsel Jack Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional, and they reinforced Trump’s argument that the president is immune. Kavanaugh even told Michael Dreeben, a lawyer from Smith’s office, that it’s a “serious constitutional question whether a criminal statute can apply to the president’s criminal acts.”

That would be the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for the chief executive, rubber stamped by the highest court of the land. It’s worth remembering that Thomas refused to recuse himself from this—and most of the Trump election interference cases—despite the fact that his wife, Ginni Thomas, was deeply involved in Trump’s coup attempt. When she testified to the Jan. 6 special congressional committee, she maintained that the election was stolen.  His failure to recuse himself comes after a new ethics code has supposedly been enforced, saying that “a Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.” So much for that suggestion from Chief Justice John Roberts. His code has no teeth, which is yet another reason why ethics reform—and indeed court reform and expansion—is essential. 

Joan McCarter writes in Daily Kos that the Trump v. United States "immunity" case is a good reason to reform and expand SCOTUS.

[simply-ivanka]

BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised the question to Trump’s lawyers if they have challenged special counsel Jack Smith's authority to bring charges against the former president, which could provide a loophole that may disqualify Smith.

Mr. Sauer said that Trump attorneys have not raised such concerns "directly" in the current case at the Supreme Court however, Trump’s attorney John Sauer agrees with the "analysis provided by AG Edwin Meese and AG Michael B. Mukasey," referring to the amicus brief the two former attorneys general submitted to the Supreme Court on March 19.

In the brief, the two attorneys general argue that Mr. Smith "does not have authority to conduct the underlying prosecution."

[filosofablogger]

More Memes -- Laugh, Growl, and 🙄

Only recently did I start paying attention to memes, and setting aside some to share here.  Like the political cartoons, the memes are sometimes humorous, sometimes give us food for thought, and sometimes cause us to grrrrrrrowwwwllll.  Since it’s Sunday, the end of the week, I thought I’d skip ranting for one day and just share the few memes from this week’s collection!  Relax and enjoy your…

[follow-up-news]

The Supreme Court on Wednesdayallowed the Biden administration at least in the short term to enforce its latest attempt to curb climate-harming carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants that contribute to climate change. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, rejected emergency requests brought by Republican states led by West Virginia and various industry groups seeking to block the regulation. "We look forward to implementing this rule, which is based on proven and cost-effective control technologies, to secure up to $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits over the next two decades," an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. The Supreme Court is often skeptical of major agency actions, but it has bucked that reputation in recent weeks. It has now rejected three different efforts to block major air pollution regulations, with the others involving methane and mercury. The brief court order Wednesday noted that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas would have granted the application, while fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito did not participate. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote a brief statement saying the applicants "have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges." But he added that there is no need for the court to step in at this stage because the first compliance deadlines do not kick in until June. The case will now continue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. After it rules, the issue could go before the justices again.

[mariacallous]

When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a major fight over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, conservatives defending the law plan to point to an unexpected place as a model: Europe.

Two decades ago, Republicans appeared allergic to foreign influence on the U.S. legal system, decrying Supreme Court decisions that looked abroad — often to Europe — for guidance on culture-war issues like gay rights and the death penalty.

Now, that aversion seems to have eroded. Lawyers and legislators on the right are embracing recent moves to restrict some types of care for transgender minors in four European countries. And these American conservatives are using them as evidence that new bans or limits on such treatment in Tennessee and 25 other states are not only prudent — but also consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

“Systematic reviews by national health authorities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway have all concluded that the harms associated with these interventions are significant, and the long-term benefits are unproven,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in defense of the state’s ban on transition-related medical care for minors.

The law, passed last year, bans hormone treatments or surgeries for minors that would allow them “to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” Challengers to the law, along with the Biden administration, asked the high court to declare the measure unconstitutional after a federal appeals court upheld it. The challengers say the law discriminates on the basis of gender in violation of the 14th Amendment.

A brief from Tennessee state officials defending the law quotes no fewer than three times a passage from the appeals court ruling that upheld the law, saying: “Some of the same European countries that pioneered these treatments now express caution about them and have pulled back on their use.”

The conservatives’ sudden affection for European medical standards and judgments rankles some transgender advocates, who say it’s a hypocritical about-face.

“I think it’s rich that folks that don’t look to Europe for anything, especially socialized medicine, for the guideposts on how to move forward with public policy, are citing any kind of medical policy” from Europe, said Sasha Buchert of Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group.

Conservatives combat foreign influence on U.S. law

The conservative crusade against U.S. judges taking note of legal developments overseas reached a fever pitch in the 2000s.

“It certainly was extreme for a while,” said Austen Parrish, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. “You had Supreme Court justices that were being threatened with death threats. ... There was this great pushback on anything foreign, because somehow it was giving up on American sovereignty, and we had to chart our own path.”

In 2005, as the anti-foreign-law frenzy was at its height, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) suggested at confirmation hearings for John Roberts as chief justice that U.S. judges who cited foreign precedents should be subject to impeachment. Roberts pledged not to rely on foreign law himself but said removing judges who did would be a step too far.

“I’d accuse them of getting it wrong on that point, and I’d hope to sit down with them and debate it and reason about it,” Roberts said.

That same year, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer even faced off in a public debate that aired arguments for and against its use.

Justice Clarence Thomas also weighed in, declaring in a 2002 opinion a distaste for foreign influence that seemed to extend beyond legal rulings. “This Court … should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans,” he wrote in a death penalty case.

In the court’s seismic 2022 ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion, the conservative majority tiptoed around the foreign law issue. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion noted that the Mississippi legislature that passed the abortion restriction at issue in that case found that the U.S. was one of only seven countries that permitted elective abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He then relegated further discussion of that issue to a footnote.

The court’s liberal minority unapologetically embraced international practice as a reason to preserve Roe v. Wade. “American abortion law has become more and more aligned with other Nations,” Justices Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote, adding that the nuances of those laws are important. “Most Western European countries impose restrictions on abortion after 12 to 14 weeks, but they often have liberal exceptions to those time limits, including to prevent harm to a woman’s physical or mental health.”

Some European countries rethink gender-affirming care

Complaints that some doctors were handing out puberty-blocking medication too widely have triggered reexamination of treatment practices in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Norway in recent years.

The highest-profile retreat came in the U.K., following a broad review of gender-affirming care by the National Health Service. The head of the review, Dr. Hilary Cass, concluded that studies about treatment for gender dysphoria were unreliable, that doctors were often not tending to patients’ other issues and there was a lack of attention to patients seeking to “detransition.”

“This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint,” Cass wrote. “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”

After the findings in the so-called Cass review, released in draft form in 2022 and finalized in April, NHS stopped prescribing puberty blockers for those under 18 and closed the main NHS clinic in England offering gender-affirming care for minors.

Sweden, Finland and Norway have guidelines that reject certain treatments, such as surgery, for adolescents. But all three countries have some means for teenagers to access puberty blockers, often through clinical trials, according to briefs filed by outside parties with the Supreme Court.

“None of those countries have banned care in the way that Tennessee has,” said Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is set to argue against the law at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. “None of those countries have taken away every pathway for adolescents to access the medical care that they need.”

While some transgender advocates have been highly critical of the Cass review and other steps that have limited treatments, Strangio was relatively positive about efforts by the European medical community to refine standards for gender-affirming care.

“I think the examples of Europe are often very distorted in the press,” Strangio told reporters on a video conference Monday. “What they’re actually showing us is tailored responses to ensure that people who need treatment get it.”

Strangio acknowledged some risks to puberty blockers and other treatment, but said that alone doesn’t justify an all-out ban on the use of those drugs for minors with gender dysphoria. He noted the same drugs remain available for use in other situations.

“In all other contexts, what Tennessee does and what other governments do when there is beneficial care that carries risk is to inform patients and to attempt to minimize risks. That is what is going on in Europe. That is not what is going on in Tennessee,” he said.

Some judges were unimpressed by Europe examples

U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, who blocked Tennessee’s law last June, found similar flaws in the state’s arguments about new limits on transition-related medical care abroad. He said the recalibration of treatment in various countries isn’t akin to the flat prohibition on hormone treatment for transgender minors that Tennessee and other states have imposed.

“Defendants’ reliance on the practices of European nations is not an apt analogy where none of these countries have gone so far as to ban hormone therapy entirely,” Richardson said.

Richardson, an appointee of President Donald Trump, used language that harkened back to earlier conservative skepticism about the relevance of foreign examples to a U.S. court case.

“There is the additional problem that the Court can put only so much weight on the practice of other nations,” he wrote. “After all, the Court cannot outsource to European nations the task of preliminarily determining … the extent to which the treatments at issue are safe.”

Federal judges in Indiana and Florida also rejected similar arguments as they blocked gender-affirming care bans in those states.

A spokesperson for Skrmetti declined to comment for this story, but in a recent op-ed the Tennessee AG repeatedly and prominently invoked Europe’s moves on transition-related medical care.

“Medical research and practices in Europe support a cautious approach,” Skrmetti wrote.

Are conservatives invoking foreign law, or experience?

One scholar who has criticized some efforts to banish foreign law from the U.S. legal system noted that Tennessee isn’t invoking foreign statutes or court rulings.

“There has been this kind of hardcore talk of ‘no foreign law in American courts,’ which I think mostly stems from people not really thinking very hard about when it is you need to use it,” said Eugene Volokh of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Volokh said he views the conservative states’ claims as more factual than legal.

“If the question is: Is youth gender medicine really likely to be effective? That’s something that you shouldn’t ignore … If the English and the Swedes and the Dutch say one thing, then that’s certainly evidence. It’s not dispositive evidence, but it’s certainly evidence,” he said.

Conservatives’ references to Europe at the Supreme Court in the current legal fight point not to court rulings or laws, or to facts or studies, but to medical practice guidelines and standards.

Those amount to national policy in some countries — particularly those with government-run health services, some legal experts say. And they note that urgings from judges like Thomas that U.S. courts ignore “foreign moods, fads or fashions” expressed a sentiment that appeared to go beyond rejecting black-letter law or judicial rulings.

“I definitely see the same thing playing out,” Seattle University law professor Sital Kalantry said.

“There was a big debate where conservatives freaked out about it when the liberals were using it. But now, if it seems to be conveniently supporting their ends, then they’re willing to make reference to international practice. ... We’re now at this place that both perspectives are selectively using international law and practice to support their predetermined end point.”

[mugiwara-lucy]

Hello, everyone! While I am VERY proud of the Democrat voter turnout for Early and Mail In Ballots; here's ANOTHER thing to keep in mind.

Two of the Supreme Court's chairs will be up for grabs and the next president will be able to put in two new justices that are younger. Currently there's a 6-3 demographic in the Whitehouse with 6 being Republican and 3 being Democrat. SHould Kamala win, she can put two more Democrat court younger justices in and we'll be 5-3 (the five being Democrats!) and we'll have a less corrupt SCOTUS.

Should Trump win......he'll stack the Supreme Court with younger justices and the Supreme Court will be locked HARD RIGHT for AT LEAST 30 years.......do we REALLY want that??

And keep in mind, one of the justices (Clarence Thomas) was talking about giving a look at gay marriage if he comes back into office.

And I bet one of the Supreme Court justices that Trump will put will be Aileen Cannon, the person who threw out Trump's stolen documents case. We ALL KNOW he stole those documents for nefarious reasons......do we REALLY want someone like that in office??

Here is the link below to register to vote along with the deadlines varying by state! Also, your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! ALSO PLEASE check your registration DAILY because MAGA WILL purge your voter registration!!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and try early voting that way you can avoid MAGA fuckery on November 5th! Down below is a list of dates by state:

And Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option! BUT if you decide to go with Mail In/Absentee Ballots; PLEASE mail your ballots at the ACTUAL USPS office!! That way MAGAts won't fuck with it.

And if you’re an American who lives overseas; PLEASE use the option of voting overseas since I know every country other than North Korea, Russia and China do NOT want to see Trump’s stinky ass back in the Oval Office! Here’s a link below:

Like I said last night....because of Trump's first term, we had Roe v Wade, Affirmative Action and Chevron overturned. I bet all the money in my savings and checking accounts that Interracial Relationships, Women’s right to vote and Gay Rights will be done away with should he be back in office. BET MONEY.

We're doing well....let's NOT get complacent like 2016.

THANK YOU.