The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: u s supreme court
'I Admit It': Ginni Thomas Pushed Election Lies Without Any 'Specific Evidence'

'I Admit It': Ginni Thomas Pushed Election Lies Without Any 'Specific Evidence'

2022 will be remembered as a year in which the U.S. Supreme Court’s reputation continued to deteriorate, from the wildly unpopular overturning of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to the revelation that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results. The January 6 Select Committee discovered that after now-President Joe Biden won the election, Ginni Thomas urged then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to do everything he could to keep Biden from being inaugurated.

And in March 2022, her series of text exchanges with Meadows became public knowledge thanks to some bombshell reporting in the Washington Post by Robert Costa and Bob Woodward — the veteran journalist/author who is also famous for his bombshell reporting on Watergate with Post colleague Carl Bernstein during the 1970s.

Woodward, like Bernstein and former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks, has said more than once that Nixon’s crimes during the 1970s pale in comparison to Trump’s scandals. And more than a few Trump critics have commented that the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the fact that a U.S. Supreme Court justice’s wife wanted presidential election results overturned was more disturbing than Watergate.

Ginni Thomas’ text exchanges with Meadows show her to be an aggressive promoter of the Big Lie, Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voter fraud. But according to Richard Hall, a reporter for The Independent, Thomas’ interview by the House Select Committee revealed that her knowledge “wasn’t very deep” when she bought into Trump’s Big Lie. The committee recently released its 845-page final report.

In an article published on December 30, Hall explains, “Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas, admitted that she was not aware of any specific evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election at the time she personally lobbied senior White House officials to overturn the results. In an interview with the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a transcript of which was released on Friday, Ms. Thomas said that she ‘wasn’t very deep’ in her knowledge of specific voter fraud allegations at the time of her lobbying effort, but instead, ‘was basing what I believed off of people I trusted and news that I trusted.’”

That transcript, according to Hall, “provides new detail on how” Ginni Thomas “used her access” to “Donald Trump’s inner circle” to “influence the White House to reject the results of the presidential election.”

Text exchanges with Meadows that were obtained by the committee and reported by Woodward and Costa show the degree to which Ginni Thomas was all in for the Big Lie. In a November 10, 2020 text, for example, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife told Meadows, “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

On September 29, 2022, Ginni Thomas was interviewed by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a committee member. Raskin tried to determine what motivated her belief in the Big Lie, and she told him, “I can’t say that I was familiar at the time with any specific evidence. I was just hearing it from news reports and friends on the ground, grassroots activists who were inside of various polling places that found things suspicious.”

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming also questioned Ginni Thomas to confirm what she had told Raskin. And she replied, “Right. I know. I wasn’t very deep; I admit it.”

Ginni Thomas has maintained that she doesn’t discuss her work as an activist with Justice Thomas. But Hall reports that the committee asked her “about an exchange with Mr. Meadows in which she appears to suggest that she spoke with her husband, Justice Thomas, about the election.”

In one of her text exchanges with Meadows, she mentioned “a conversation with my best friend.”

Ginni Thomas told the committee, “It looks like it was my husband” but said she had “no memory of the specifics” and went on to say, “My husband often administers spousal support to the wife that's upset. So, I assume that that's what it was…. He had no idea that I was texting Mark Meadows about the election.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Texas Appeal Over Voter ID Law

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Texas Appeal Over Voter ID Law

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Texas seeking to revive the state’s strict Republican-backed voter-identification requirements that a lower court found had a discriminatory effect on black and Hispanic people.

The justices let stand a July 2016 decision by a lower court that found that the 2011 Texas statute ran afoul of a federal law that bars racial discrimination in elections and directed a lower court to find a way to fix the law’s discriminatory effects against minorities.

There were no noted dissents from the high court’s decision not to hear the case from any of the eight justices, but Chief Justice John Roberts took the unusual step of issuing a statement explaining why the case was not taken up, noting that litigation on the matter is continuing in lower courts.

Roberts said that although there was “no barrier to our review,” all the legal issues can be raised on appeal at a later time.

The law, passed by a Republican-led legislature and signed by a Republican governor, had been considered one of the strictest of its type in the United States. It was challenged in court by the U.S. Justice Department under former President Barack Obama, civil rights groups and individual voters.

Critics including the Obama administration had said the Texas law and similar statutes enacted in other Republican-governed states were tailored to make it harder for minorities including black and Hispanic voters, who tend to support Democrats, to cast ballots. Backers of these laws have said they are necessary to prevent voter fraud, despite little evidence of such fraud.

The seven types of government-issued identification permitted under the law as proof of identity included a driver’s license, a concealed handgun license, a military ID card and a U.S. passport but not state university ID cards or identification issued to obtain welfare benefits.

A special 15-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-6 that the Texas law had a discriminatory effect and violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act. The judges were divided differently on other parts of the ruling.

The appeals court directed a federal district court to examine claims by the plaintiffs that the law was actually intended to be discriminatory, rather than merely having a discriminatory effect.

A hearing on that part of the case was scheduled for Tuesday but has now been delayed following a request from President Donald Trump’s administration. While Obama’s administration had backed the challenge to the Texas requirements, the Trump administration could change course.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office launched the appeal, said he was disappointed by the court’s action.

“Texas enacted a common sense voter ID law to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and we will continue to fight for the law in the district court, the Fifth Circuit, and if necessary, the Supreme Court again,” Paxton said in a statement.

Challengers of the Texas law have said that up to 600,000 people would be unable to vote if the law were fully in effect because of the large number of voters who lack the limited types of permissible identification.

After the appeals court ruling, Texas and the plaintiffs struck a deal for a short-term remedy to be used for the November 2016 election.

The Texas law is one of several passed by Republican legislatures since 2010. A similar law in North Carolina was struck down by a federal appeals court in July 2016.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Will Dunham)

IMAGE: U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Obama Starts Interviewing Candidates For Supreme Court Vacancy: NPR

Obama Starts Interviewing Candidates For Supreme Court Vacancy: NPR

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has started to interview candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month, National Public Radio reported on Tuesday, citing sources close to the process.

Among the interviewees are Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; Judge Sri Srinivasan of the same court; Judge Paul Watford of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco; Judge Jane Kelly of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis; and U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who serves in Washington, D.C., NPR reported.

The first three of these individuals are considered the leading contenders, NPR said.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch earlier on Tuesday asked not to be considered as a nominee, the Justice Department said in a statement. Lynch had been rumored to be under consideration.

The process of filling the spot that was held by Scalia, one of the court’s most conservative justices, has ignited a partisan battle in Washington.

Republicans who control the U.S. Senate do not want to see the court shift ideologically to the left and have said they will not hold a vote on Obama’s nominee. All appointees by the president to the Supreme Court are subject to approval by the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the winner of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh and Julia Edwards; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama carries a binder containing material on potential Supreme Court nominees as he walks towards the residence of the White House in Washington February 19, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Supreme Court Sides With Lesbian Over Parental Rights

Supreme Court Sides With Lesbian Over Parental Rights

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned an Alabama judicial ruling that had refused to recognize a gay woman’s parental rights over three children she adopted with her lesbian partner and raised from birth.

The court took the relatively unusual step of reversing the Alabama Supreme Court without hearing oral arguments in the case. Cases are decided in that fashion when a lower court ruling is considered to be particularly counter to Supreme Court precedents. None of the eight justices dissented.

The adoptive mother, identified in court papers as V.L, said she was overjoyed with the ruling.

“When the Alabama court said my adoption was invalid and I wasn’t their mother, I didn’t think I could go on. The Supreme Court has done what’s right for my family,” she said in a statement.

The court said in an unsigned opinion that the Alabama court was required to recognize the woman’s parental rights because they had been legally endorsed by a court in Georgia.

The ruling said the Alabama court’s interpretation of the law was “not consistent” with prior Supreme Court decisions. Under the U.S. Constitution, state courts are required to recognize judgments issued by courts in other states.

The Alabama Supreme Court, led by outspoken conservative Chief Justice Roy Moore, has a history of hostility to gay rights. For example, it dragged its feet in implementing the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last June legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

The Supreme Court had already intervened in the case once before. In December, the court ordered that the Alabama ruling be put on hold while the woman filed a formal appeal of Alabama Supreme Court’s September ruling.

Lawyers for the woman say the Alabama ruling had “effectively stripped V.L. of parental rights over the children she had raised since they were born.”

V.L. was formerly in a relationship with a woman identified as E.L., who is the birth mother of the three children, a 13-year-old and 11-year-old twins.

In 2007, a court in Georgia granted V.L.’s petition to adopt the children in a move that E.L. agreed to at the time. The couple split in 2011 and disagreed over custody arrangements.

V.L. filed papers in Alabama seeking joint custody. Lower courts ruled in her favor before the state’s high court ruled in favor of her former partner.

The state appeals court said it did not have to endorse the Georgia court’s adoption order. But the Alabama Supreme Court said that the Georgia court did not have jurisdiction to issue the adoption order.

The two women were not married.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley)

Photo: A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington June 8, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria