Crooked Media - What A Day: Bribeshead revisited

ProPublica just published another bombshell report about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. You know where this is going!
 

• The latest revelations represent the fullest reporting yet on the decades of benefits and undisclosed free gifts Thomas has received, not just from his one friend Harlan Crow, but from a vast network of ultra-wealthy executives and titans of industry. Courtesy of his pals in the one percent, Thomas has regularly been treated to private yacht vacations around the globe, premium suites at sporting events, and round-trip solo transportation via private jet (including at one point a whole-ass 737). Folks, strap in, because this one’s a doozy.
   

• The investigation found that Thomas received at least 38(!) destination vacations; 26 private jet flights (plus eight more by private helicopter!); over 12 VIP passes to professional and NCAA sporting events; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one invitation to an ultra-exclusive golf club. The report reveals a pattern of consistent, knowing violations of judicial ethics, according to seven current and former federal judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans. 
   

• These latest discoveries come on top of the many trips and private-jet flights he received from billionaire Harlan Crow, who also bought Thomas’s mother’s house (where she now lives rent-free) and paid boarding school tuition for Thomas’s grand-nephew, whom Thomas was raising as a son. And on top of the VIP treatment he received from fellow members of the rich guy club, the Horatio Alger Association, a group Thomas rewarded with exclusive access to the Supreme Court building for its rich guy events. Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who for years served on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures said: “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody…I think it’s unprecedented.” We should fucking hope so!

This cadre of billionaire benefactors, unsurprisingly, shares Thomas’s hard-right ideology. 
 

• But their worshiping of Ronald Reagan isn’t the only thing they have in common. According to reports, each of Thomas’s major sugar daddies appears to have met him after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. And with the exception of Harlan Crow, none of their names appear in Thomas’s financial disclosure forms. H. Wayne Huizenga, the late billionaire who made his fortune from the Waste Management and Blockbuster companies, sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to a former flight attendant and chef on the plane. Had Thomas chartered the jet himself, it would have cost at least $130,000 per trip.
   

• These eye-popping numbers heighten the already-urgent concerns and calls for a Supreme Court ethics investigation, and should prompt calls for his immediate resignation. Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire,” adding that taxpayers have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not being bankrolled by wealthy individuals. 

Any reasonable person would look at Clarence Thomas’s lifestyle and conclude that a public servant accepting millions of dollars worth of undisclosed gifts and benefits from wealthy, interested donors is using their public office for private gain. Thomas has complained over the years that he “sacrificed” personal wealth he might have achieved in private practice to serve on the Supreme Court. He told the Georgia State Bar Association in 2001, “The job is not worth doing for what they pay, but it is worth doing for the principle.” We would love to know what principles, if any, he has left.

If you’re like most Americans, your top two concerns are 1. the right to an abortion being taken away by a radical GOP party and, 2. beer getting warm too quickly. The Crooked Store’s Bros For Roe collection can kill both those birds with one stone, and that stone is a koozie. No matter your gender, you can say “hell nah bro” to restrictions on abortion access with Bros For Roe tees, pint glasses, and koozies. Check it out at crooked.com/store.

U.S. consumer prices increased moderately in July, in line with expectations, driven by higher rents and offset by declining cars and furniture prices, according to the latest Labor Department Consumer Price Index report. Core inflation—which measures price increases excluding food and energy costs—saw the smallest uptick in nearly two years. Moderating inflation plus a cooling labor market has supported economists’ view that the Federal Reserve will be able to engineer a “soft landing” for the economy after over a year of recession fears. (Fed Chairman Jerome Powell should also write personal thank-you notes to Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Greta Gerwig for injecting billions of dollars in ticket sales into the U.S. economy.) The overall inflation cooldown may lead Powell to pause interest-rate hikes, since we’ve made so much progress. Food prices ticked slightly upward, though average Americans are still spending considerably more at the grocery store than they were a few years ago. Still, on a macro level, many economists see evidence that the U.S. economy is on pace to reach the Fed’s two-percent annual inflation target.

A wildfire that destroyed the resort town of Lahaina on Hawaii’s Maui island has killed at least 36 people and forced thousands more to evacuate. 

The GOP-led House Oversight Committee will subpoena President Biden and his son Hunter as part of their ongoing fishing expedition. 

Fernando Villavicencio, a candidate in Ecuador’s upcoming presidential election who campaigned against corruption and gang violence, was assassinated at a campaign rally. 

Ukraine announced a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea on Thursday to release cargo ships trapped in maritime ports since the outbreak of the war.

Newly-released police body cam footage from 2021 shows a woman reporting to a police officer that she and her sister were repeatedly groped in an Arizona nightclub by Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn. 

Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. has canceled Black History roundtable appearances in Miami Gardens to defend Florida’s heinous new American History curriculum. Profile in courage!

Disgraced former president Donald Trump will visit the Iowa State Fair flanked by Florida Republicans who endorsed him over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). As always, absolutely unmatched levels of pettiness!

The right-wing media platform PragerU (which falsely labels itself a university, and is not an accredited academic institution of any kind) has gained national attention in the past week since the Florida Department of Education announced it would allow teachers to use the group’s videos as “supplemental curriculum.” The conservative nonprofit’s videos about United States history are offensively revisionist, featuring a cartoon likeness of Frederick Douglass taking a dig at Black Lives Matter, and implying that institutionalizing slavery in our country’s founding documents was ultimately for the best. But PragerU offers children’s “edutainment” videos for more than just “history” lessons; it also produces videos peddling climate-change denialism. PragerU CEO Marissa Streit said, “Young kids are being taught climate change hysteria…and we think that there needs to be a healthy balance.” What does that “balance” entail? The promotion of false ideas about climate change, like that emissions from fossil fuel have nothing to do with it, that wind and solar power pollute the planet and make life miserable, and that people who bravely stand on the side of the fossil fuel industry are fighting oppression. Experts in each field agree that PragerU’s videos distort science, history, gender, and other topics, and now that the nation’s third-largest state has given them the go-ahead, educators fear that the videos will make their way into classrooms in other states soon.

All across the country, powerful political interests are trying to ban drag and prevent people from expressing themselves authentically. This is the latest in a larger wave of attacks on LGBTQ+ people. In 2023 alone, the ACLU has tracked almost 500 bills introduced in state legislatures across the country that attempt to limit the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Sign up with the ACLU today to defend drag and fight back against these senseless and unconstitutional attacks. The LGBTQ community need our support.

The freedom to express ourselves and our gender identity in creative ways fuels artistry across our country and culture–and drag is protected by the First Amendment like any creative expression such as dance, fashion, and music.

Add your name today and help the ACLU protect civil liberties. These attacks cannot go unchecked, and we are using every tool at our disposal to stop them.

Thanks for your support,
Team ACLU

After more than two years of negotiations, the United States and Iran have reached a prisoner-swap agreement to release five imprisoned Americans in exchange for several imprisoned Iranians. The United States will also transfer nearly $6 billion of Iran’s oil money into a bank account controlled by the government of Qatar, previously inaccessible to Iran under current sanctions. 

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion to Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday recommending a jury selection date of December 11, 2023 and a trial date of January 2, 2024 for Trump’s election interference case.