On the morning of Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the protest demanding that Congress overturn the election, then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. She has not posted since.
For background, Ginni Thomas is a conservative lobbyist and avid Trump supporter who campaigned for him. She also routinely spreads fringe conspiracy theories on Facebook. She recently posted: “No one, and I mean no one, has done more to harm America than the Democrats.”
Here, for instance, is a characteristic Ginni Thomas post. She has repeatedly (and falsely) warned that George Soros is funding a sweeping conspiracy against Donald Trump and the United States government.
In July, Ginni Thomas shared this post from a Facebook group flagged for promoting anti-vax conspiracy theories, including the false claim that Bill Gates would use the COVID vaccine to kill people.
Ginni Thomas also led a campaign to identify and oust federal employees whom she deemed disloyal to Trump. She met with the president at the White House to provide him with a list of names she compiled. nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/…
Ginni Thomas is often treated like a joke because she continually spouts deranged conspiracy theories. But there's nothing funny about a sitting justice's spouse endorsing a protest meant to overturn an election—hours before it became an insurrection. slate.com/news-and-polit…
Wow: Ginni Thomas appears to have deactivated or deleted her Facebook page. Truly never thought I’d see the day. lawandcrime.com/high-profile/g…
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Note that the Florida constitution already provides explicit protections for the "right to privacy." For decades, the Florida Supreme Court held that this guarantee protected access to abortion. The conservative majority just overturned all those precedents.
Sorry, the six-week ban will take effect in one month, not immediately.
The Supreme Court's third and final opinion of the day is in Pulsifer v. U.S. In a 6–3 opinion, Justice Kagan reads the First Step Act's safety-valve provision narrowly, to prevent many defendants from obtaining relief. Gorsuch, Jackson, Sotomayor dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Today's decision in Pulsifer will be a grave disappointment to many, many individuals seeking relief under the First Step Act from harsh mandatory minimum sentences. It shrinks the law's safety valve by reading the word "and" to mean, in effect, "or." Unfortunate in my view.
In his dissent, Gorsuch explains how the majority effectively rewrites this provision of the First Step Act to make relief far more difficult to obtain. It really does require verbal gymnastics to get there. But six justices did. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
The five-justice majority's opinion in the Trump ballot removal case has a lot of ambiguous language that leaves many questions unresolved. How you read that language, of course, determines how far you think the majority goes to dismantle the insurrection clause. It's debatable!
I tend to think the three liberals are correct that "the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office."
Reading the opinion that way, you easily see how it forecloses any enforcement of the insurrection clause.
But if you want to read the majority opinion more generously—in a way that contradicts what the three liberals claim it says—you certainly can. Such is the nature of ambiguous judicial language.
I agree with @gtconway3d that in some key ways, the opinions just don't line up.
If you double click where it says "JJ." at the top, then copy and paste it, that line reads: SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.
And if you do a control-F search for "SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part," it highlights that same line.
It looks like the liberals' opinion was originally styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sotomayor, but got changed to a concurrence in the judgment authored jointly by all three liberals. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
I see that the copy-paste approach doesn't work on every computer, but the control-F approach should.
🚨The Supreme Court overturns the Colorado decision removing Trump from the ballot, holding that only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause against federal candidates. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Despite the unanimous outcome, the reasoning is deeply fractured. The three liberal justices are furious that the majority went too far, attempting "to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office." supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
To summarize:
All justices agree on reversing the Colorado Supreme Court.
Five justices say only Congress can enforce the insurrection clause.
The three liberals say Colorado can't go it alone, but reject the majority's sweeping holding.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are legally children is worse than a lot of coverage implies. The majority and the chief justice suggest that EVEN IF the Alabama legislature attempts to re-legalize IVF, the state constitution will forbid it. slate.com/news-and-polit…
Instead, the Alabama Supreme Court—and, more explicitly, Chief Justice Parker—laid out an altered version of IVF to protect the dignity of "extrauterine children" (i.e., embryos).
For IVF to remain legal in Alabama, doctors will have to violate the standards of care and subject patients to inferior treatment opposed by all legitimate health care providers.