Clarence Thomas Reversed Position After Gifts And Family PaymentsThe Supreme Court justice switched sides on a landmark legal doctrine, satisfying his benefactors’ conservative advocacy machineSupreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines after his wife reportedly accepted secret payments from a shadowy conservative network pushing for the change. Thomas’ shift also came while he was receiving lavish gifts from a billionaire linked to other groups criticizing the same doctrine — which is now headed back to the high court.
The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that the executive branch — not the federal courts — has the power to interpret laws passed by Congress in certain circumstances. Conservatives for years have fought to overturn the doctrine, a move that would empower legal challenges to federal agency regulations on everything from climate policy to workplace safety to overtime pay.
Thomas wrote a landmark Supreme Court opinion upholding the doctrine in 2005, but began questioning it a decade later, before eventually renouncing his past opinion in 2020 and claiming that the doctrine itself might be unconstitutional. Now, Thomas could help overturn the doctrine in a new case the high court just agreed to hear next term.
Groups within the conservative legal movement funded by Leonard Leo’s dark money network and affiliated with Thomas’ billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow have organized a concerted effort in recent years to overturn Chevron. That campaign unfolded as they delivered gifts and cash to Thomas and his family in the lead-up to his shift on the doctrine.
In 2010, Crow bankrolled a dark money group led by Thomas’ wife, Ginni, that paid her $120,000. Leo was on the group’s board of directors. In 2012, Leo’s dark money network steered undisclosed consulting payments to Thomas’s wife. The Leo network has funded Republican politicians and several nonprofits pressing the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine next term.
Thomas should recuse himself from that case, but he probably won't. In his mind, concerns about actual conflicts of interest do not apply to himself. That is deep moral rot. So is the dark money campaign by radical right brass knuckles capitalists who secretly corrupt those corruptible judges.
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Mr. Santos has already begun fighting that narrative. Though he has admitted to some lies, he pleaded not guilty in a packed courthouse on Long Island to all 13 counts, including money laundering, wire fraud, false statements and stealing public funds. Then he walked outside to reaffirm his intention to seek re-election.
“The reality is, this is a witch hunt,” Mr. Santos, 34, said, invoking another old American motif. “This is the beginning for me of the ability to address and defend myself.”
The indictment prompted a new round of calls by rank-and-file Republicans for Mr. Santos to resign or to even be expelled from Congress, but it remains far from clear if the political system will exact a price.
This reflects on deep moral rot in the Republican Party more than it does on Santos. If this was a Democrat in the House with a similar story, House Republicans would have expelled them long before now. Of the two nests of moral rot, that of the radical right, lies- and hypocrisy-riddled GOP is far worse for democracy and the rule of law than than Santos.
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Fact checkers note that Trump's divisive, poison rhetoric at his town hall yesterday was a mass of deceit and outright lies. No surprise there. Just business as usual for the morally rotted fascist Republican Party's fornicating, morally rotted Grifter-in-Chief and tyrant wannabe. This is the human filth that GOP voters will nominate for president in 2024.
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In my opinion, the East-West global divide increasingly reflects a tyranny vs. democracy fight to the death. The widening split is reaching deep into commerce and leading to a bifurcation. Politics and commerce are deeply entwined and not separable any more, assuming they ever were. The NYT writes about China increasingly breaking away from the West in chip technology:
‘De-Americanize’: How China Is Remaking Its Chip Business
Seven months after Washington unveiled tough curbs, Chinese companies are doubling down on homegrown supply chains and drawing billions in cash from Beijing and investors.... U.S. trade barriers have accelerated China’s push for a more independent chip sector. Western technology and money have pulled out, but state funding is flooding in to cultivate homegrown alternatives to produce less advanced but still lucrative semiconductors. And China has not given up on making high-end chips: Manufacturers are attempting to work with older parts from abroad not blocked by the U.S. sanctions, as well as less advanced equipment at home.
The tough U.S. restrictions stemmed from alarm over what officials in Washington viewed as the threat posed by China’s use of its technology companies to upgrade its military arsenal. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently characterized the sentiment as part of a “new consensus” in Washington that decades of economic integration with China was not wholly successful, adding that the new controls were “carefully tailored” to go after China’s most cutting-edge semiconductors.
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