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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 9 months

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As multiple work stoppages continued across the United States, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Thursday introduced legislation that would enable striking workers to qualify for federal food aid.

Called the Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023, Fetterman's bill would amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to ensure that striking workers aren't excluded from receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In addition, the bill would preserve food stamp eligibility for public sector workers who are fired for striking and clarify that any income-eligible household is entitled to SNAP benefits even if a member of that household is on strike.

"Every union worker who is walking the picket line this summer needs to know that we have their back here in Washington," Fetterman said in a statement. "The union way of life is sacred. It's what built Pennsylvania and this nation. It is critical for us to protect workers' right to organize, and that includes making sure they and their families have the resources to support themselves while on strike."

"As chair of the Nutrition Subcommittee and an advocate for the union way of life, this bill is just plain common sense," he added. "I'm proud to introduce this bill that will eliminate the need for workers to choose between fighting for fair working conditions and putting food on the table for their families."

Workers typically forgo pay when they exercise their right to walk off the job in pursuit of higher wages and better conditions. Although union strike funds sometimes provide workers on the picket line with a stipend, it is less than their regular income.

Under existing law, striking workers and their households are ineligible to receive SNAP benefits unless they already qualified for food stamps prior to withholding their labor. This gives employers significant leverage over employees who can only endure economic hardship for so long. By repealing the current restriction on striking workers securing SNAP benefits, Fetterman's bill would help restore some balance to the struggle between capital and labor.

"It's good to see lawmakers attempting to correct the wrongs of the past by reinstating a benefit for striking workers that never should have been taken away in the first place," said International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O'Brien. "Congress should never pass laws that punish American workers and hopefully this amendment is a repudiation of that practice."

O'Brien spent the past several weeks preparing 340,000 United Parcel Service (UPS) warehouse workers and delivery drivers for what would have been the second-largest work stoppage at a single employer in U.S. history, trailing only a 1970 strike of 400,000 General Motors workers. Although a UPS strike has likely been averted after the logistics giant and the Teamsters reached a tentative five-year contract agreement on Tuesday, Fetterman's proposal comes amid a nationwide wave of ongoing and potential labor actions.

"The United Auto Workers have mirrored the Teamsters' militant stance, blasting CEOs ahead of their own contract negotiations slated for later this year," The Intercept reported Thursday. "And the truckers union has staged trainings in dozens of cities for a strike that could shut down shipping from coast to coast. In California, meanwhile, thousands of hotel workers organized with Unite Here are already on strike, along with tens of thousands of Hollywood writers and actors belonging to the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, respectively."

The walkout of 160,000 writers and actors, who are fighting for improved remuneration and attempting to safeguard unionized jobs threatened by artificial intelligence-induced automation, is perhaps the most well-known of the current strikes.

Earlier this month, an anonymous studio executive admitted to Deadline that "the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses," drawing widespread condemnation, including from star actor Ron Perlman.

The Food Secure Strikers Act is designed to counteract the delay tactics that bosses rely on to crush workers.

"Workers who make the difficult decision to go on strike are coming together to lift the standard of living and gain more respect for all working people," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA). "They are prepared to make sacrifices—but going hungry should not be one of them. The Food Secure Strikers Act of 2023 will help ensure that when striking workers stand in solidarity for better working conditions and wages they can receive SNAP benefits so they don't put themselves and their families at risk."

The legislation is co-sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 10 Senate Democrats, including Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.). A companion bill was unveiled in the House by Democratic Reps. Alma Adams (N.C.) and Greg Casar (Texas).

It is also endorsed by numerous unions and anti-hunger organizations, including the Teamsters, NEA, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the Food Research Action Center, and Hunger-Free America.

"We need to get rid of the anti-union provisions in our code that starve striking workers," said Casar. "We're seeing workers exercise their rights across the country by going on strike to demand better wages and working conditions. That's why our bill, the Food Secure Strikers Act, is more important now than ever. We need to stop starving strikers, and ensure all working families are able to make ends meet."

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kp777 · 1 year

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By Thom Hartmann

Common Dreams

March 31, 2023

The Republican Party's most dangerous grift today has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It's leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift.

Whenever there’s another mass- or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers.

But the GOP’s ability to exploit any opportunity that comes along — regardless of its impact on America or American citizens — goes way beyond just fundraising hustles.

When Jared Kushner was underwater and nearly bankrupt because he overpaid for 666 Fifth Avenue and needed a billion-dollar bailout to cover his mortgage, his buddies in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) blockaded American ally (and host to the Fifth Fleet) Qatar until that country relented and laundered the money to Jared through a Canadian investment company.

Just this week, after Trump deregulated toxic trains leading to a horrible crash and the contamination of East Palestine, Ohio, Steve Bannon — already charged with multiple fraud-related crimes and then pardoned by Trump — showed up this week to hustle $300+ water filters to the people of that town.

The grift is at the core of the GOP’s existence, and has been since Nixon blew up LBJ’s peace talks with the Vietnamese in 1968 and then took cash bribes from the Milk Lobby and Jimmy Hoffa in the White House while having his mafia-connected “plumbers” wiretap the DNC’s offices at the Watergate.

— Republicans successfully fought the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices for decades; in turn, Big Pharma pours millions into their campaign coffers and personal pockets (legalized by 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— Republicans beat back Democratic efforts to stop insurance giants from ripping off seniors and our government with George W. Bush’s Medicare Advantage privatization scam; in turn, the insurance companies rain cash on them like an Indian monsoon.

— Republicans oppose any effort to replace fossil fuels with green energy sources that don’t destroy our environment; in turn, the fossil fuel industry jacked up the price of gasoline into the stratosphere just in time for the 2022 election (and you can expect them to try it again in 2024).

— Republicans stopped enforcement of a century’s worth of anti-trust laws in 1983, wiping out America’s small businesses and turning rural city centers into ghost towns while pushing profits and prices through the ceiling; in turn massive corporate PACs fund ads supporting Republican candidates every election cycle.

— Republicans authored legislation letting billionaires own thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets; in turn the vast majority of those papers (now half of all local papers are owned by a handful of rightwing New York hedge funds) and stations all run daily news and editorials attacking Democrats and supporting the GOP.

— Republicans Trump and Pai killed net neutrality so giant tech companies can legally spy on you and me, recording every website we visit and selling that information for billions; in turn, major social media sites amplify rightwing voices while giant search engines stopped spidering progressive news sites.

Newspeak — George Orwell’s term for the grift where politicians use fancy phrases that mean the opposite of what people think they mean — has been the GOP’s go-to strategy for a half-century.

Richard Nixon, for example, promised to crack down on drugs, but instead used that as an excuse to crack down on anti-war liberals and Black people. Instead of an economic grift, it was a political grift.

As Nixon‘s right hand man, John Ehrlichman, told reporter Dan Baum:

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.“

The grift is a recurrent theme through Republican presidencies in the modern era.

Ronald Reagan told us if we just destroyed America’s unions and moved our manufacturing to China and Mexico, great job opportunities would fill the nation.

He followed that up by promising if we just cut taxes on the morbidly rich, prosperity would trickle-down to the rest of us.

Reagan even assured us that raising the Social Security retirement age to 67 and taxing Social Security benefits would mean seniors could retire with greater ease.

All, of course, were grifter’s lies. Republican presidents since Reagan have continued the tradition.

George W. Bush called his program to make it easier to clear-cut America’s forests and rip roads through wilderness areas the “Healthy Forests Initiative.”

His program to legalize more pollution from coal-fired power plants and immunize them from community lawsuits (leading to tens of thousands of additional lung- and heart-disease deaths in the years since) was named the “Clean Air Act.”

Bush’s scam to “strengthen” Medicare — “Medicare Advantage” — was a thinly disguised plan to privatize that program that is today draining Medicare’s coffers while making insurance executives richer than Midas.

Donald Trump told Americans he had the coronavirus pandemic under control while he was actually making the situation far worse: America had more deaths per capita from the disease than any other developed country in the world, with The Lancet estimating a half-million Americans died needlessly because of Trump’s grift.

Jared and Ivanka cashed in on their time in the White House to the tune of billions, while Trump squeezed hundreds of millions out of foreign governments, encouraging them to illegally pay him through rentals in his properties around the world.

Other Trump grifts — most leading to grateful industries or billionaires helping him and the GOP out — included:

— Making workplaces less safe — Boosting religious schools at the expense of public schools — Cutting relief for students defrauded by student loan sharks — Shrinking the safety net by cutting $60 billion out of food stamps — Forcing workers to put in overtime without getting paid extra for it — Pouring more pollution from fossil fuels into our fragile atmosphere — Gutting the EPA’s science operation — Rescinding rules that protected workers at federal contract sites — Dialing back car air pollution emissions standards — Reducing legal immigration of skilled workers into the US from “shithole countries” — Blocking regulation of toxic chemicals — Rolling back rules on banks, setting up the crisis of 2023 — Defenestrating rules against racially segregated housing

While Nixon was simply corrupt — a crook, to use his own term — in 1978 when five Republicans on the Supreme Court signed off on the Bellotti decision authored by Lewis Powell himself, giving corporations the legal right to bribe American politicians, the GOP went all in.

Ever since then, the GOP has purely been the party of billionaires and giant corporations, although their most successful political grift has been to throw an occasional bone to racists, gun-nuts, fascists, homophobes, and woman-haters to get votes.

Democrats at that time were largely funded by the unions, so it wasn’t until the 1990s, after Reagan had destroyed about half of America’s union jobs and gutted the unions’ ability to fund campaigns, that the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton was forced to make a big turn toward taking corporate cash.

Since Barack Obama showed how online fundraising could replace corporate cash, however, about half of the nation’s Democratic politicians have aligned with the Progressive Caucus and eschewed corporate money, returning much of the Party to its FDR and Great Society base.

The GOP, in contrast, has never wavered from lapping up corporate money in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate socialism.

Their most dangerous grift today, though, has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It’s leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Bannon’s grift in East Palestine is the smallest of the small, after his being busted for a multi-million-dollar fraud in the “Build the Wall” scheme and others, but is still emblematic of the Republican strategy at governance.

When all you have to offer the people is a hustle, then at the very least, Republicans figure, you should be able to make a buck or gain/keep political power while doing it.

#republicans #gop #grift #common dreams

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progressivemillennial · 3 months

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I would call Blinken's assertion lacking in credibility.

#politics #us politics #progressive #war #foreign policy #israel #palestine #free gaza #gaza #common dreams #antony blinken #ethnic cleansing #genocide #ceasefire #ceasefire now #humanitarian crisis

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curatorofthisdigitalmorass · 5 months

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In 'Toothless PR Stunt,' Supreme Court Publishes Ethics Code With No Enforcement Mechanisms

In the wake of a series of high-profile scandals surrounding the relationship between right-wing justices and billionaires, the U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it had formally adopted a new Code of Conduct.

The 14-page code is based on requirements for lower court judges, and most of the rules it outlines are not new, the court said. Watchdog groups have been widely critical of the new document, which does not stipulate how the conduct it promotes will be enforced, with the Revolving Door Project labeling it a "toothless PR stunt."

"This unenforceable public relations document serves absolutely no purpose other than to permit the media to revert to pretending that our unaccountable and unethical Supreme Court retains legitimacy," the project's executive director Jeff Hauser said in a statement.

#us politics #common dreams #the supreme court #merica

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disillusioned41 · 2 years

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JAKE JOHNSON May 11, 2022

A new investigation published Wednesday reveals that some of the largest fossil fuel corporations in the world—from Exxon in the U.S. to Gazprom in Russia to Aramco in Saudi Arabia—are planning or currently operating nearly 200 "carbon bombs," massive oil and gas projects that could unleash 646 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions and doom efforts to rein in planetary warming.

"They are destroying your future. They are doing it deliberately. They have been doing that for decades."

Research shared exclusively with The Guardian ahead of its formal publication identifies at least 195 "carbon bombs" that are either in the process of being built or already in place across the globe as scientists warn that fossil fuel use must be quickly phased out to prevent catastrophic climate outcomes.

Led by Kjell Kühne from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, the research specifically defines carbon bombs as "projects capable of pumping at least 1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes," The Guardian noted in its detailed report on Wednesday.

Around 60% of the projects are already producing oil and gas, the research found.

"Projects identified include the new drilling wells springing up in the Canadian wilderness as part of the vast Montney Play oil and gas development, and the huge North Field gas fields in Qatar—named in the study as the biggest new oil and gas carbon bomb in the world," The Guardian reported.

"According to the research," the newspaper continued, "the U.S. is the leading source of potential emissions. Its 22 carbon bombs include conventional drilling and fracking, and span the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the foothills of the Front Range in Colorado to the Permian Basin. Together they have the potential to emit 140 billion tonnes of CO2, almost four times more than the entire world emits each year."

Greenpeace, an international climate advocacy organization, warned in response to the new reporting that "while governments dither and discuss, fossil fuel companies are charging full speed ahead with 'carbon bomb' projects, pushing us ever closer to an irreversible tipping point."

"We need action now," the group wrote on Twitter.

The Guardian's investigation comes as the oil and gas industry is under growing scrutiny for exploiting Russia's deadly war on Ukraine to drive up prices and rake in record profits. Fossil fuel giants have also been lobbying aggressively for new pipelines and other infrastructure projects that would advance Big Oil's long-term interest

As the newspaper observed, global energy chaos stemming from Russia's invasion has had the effect of "further incentivizing bets on new fields and infrastructure that would last decades."

"ExxonMobil has the largest of these climate-busting investment plans at $21 million a day through to 2030, followed by Petrobras ($15 million), Chevron and ConocoPhillips (both $12 million), and Shell ($8 million)," The Guardian reported. "Freeing the world from the grip of fossil fuels is made far harder by huge ongoing subsidies for the fuels, making them far cheaper than their true cost when the damage they cause is included—especially air pollution, which kills 7 million people a year."

"The G20 group of leading economies pledged in 2009 to phase out the subsidies," The Guardian added, "but little has been achieved."

#Common Dreams #us politics #climate change #big oil #oil industry

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rodgermalcolmmitchell · 6 months

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Four reasons why federal deficits are absolutely necessary for economic growth

Every day, U.S. dollars are created by federal government spending and by private sector lending. And every day, dollars are destroyed by federal taxing and by private sector loan repayment. Because private sector loans eventually are repaid, they do not permanently add dollars to the economy. By contrast, federal spending seldom is balanced by federal taxes — the government runs deficits almost…

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#big lie #Bobby Kogan #Center for American Progress #Common Dreams #Debt-to-GDP Ratios #Jon Queally #monetary sovereignty

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arthropooda · 8 months

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Workers who wish to vote on forming a bargaining unit will no longer be held up by rules that were put in place in 2019 by Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration, as the panel passed a regulation on Thursday that the board chair said represented a return to a "basic principle" of labor protections.

The NLRB's new regulation restores protections put in place in 2014, which ensured union elections would be held swiftly.

Under the new rule, the board said it "will meaningfully reduce the time it takes to get from petition to [union] election in contested elections and will expedite the resolution of any post-election litigation."

The changes include:

Allowing pre-election hearings to begin more quickly and making them more efficient;

Distributing election information to employees more quickly; and

Requiring NLRB regional directors to hold elections at "the earliest date practicable," eliminating a 20-day waiting period.

#Twitter #X #Uaw #Rule #Union #Litigation #Common dreams #News

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seriousbusinessforhumans · 1 year

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#Common Dreams #child care #biden executive orders #care economy #good things #things biden did #2023

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o-the-mts · 1 year

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It’s really that simple.

#trump #insurrectionists #white supremacy #common dreams

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Wednesday that would require the Pentagon to return a portion of its enormous and ever-growing budget to the Treasury Department if it fails another audit in the coming fiscal year.

The Audit the Pentagon Act, an updated version of legislation first introduced in 2021, comes amid mounting concerns over rampant price gouging by military contractors and other forms of waste and abuse at an agency that's set to receive at least $842 billion for fiscal year 2024.

"The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades. That is absolutely unacceptable," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement as he unveiled the bill alongside Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

"If we are serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively," said Sanders, "we have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has never passed an independent audit."

In December, the Pentagon flunked its fifth consecutive audit, unable to account for more than 60% of its $3.5 trillion in total assets.

But congressional appropriators appear largely unphased as they prepare to raise the agency's budget to record levels, with some working to increase it beyond the topline set by the recently approved debt ceiling agreement. Watchdogs have warned that the deal includes a loophole that hawkish lawmakers could use to further inflate the Pentagon budget under the guise of aiding Ukraine.

Late Wednesday, following a lengthy markup session, the House Armed Services Committee passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which proposes a total military budget of $886 billion. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was the only committee member to vote no.

A huge chunk of the Pentagon's budget for next year is likely to go to profitable private contractors, which make a killing charging the federal government exorbitant sums for weapons and miscellaneous items, from toilet seats to ashtrays to coffee makers.

"Defense contractors are lining their pockets with taxpayer money while the Pentagon fails time and time again to pass an independent audit. It's a broken system," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a co-sponsor of the new bill. "We need to compel the Department of Defense to take fraud and mismanagement seriously—and we need Congress to stop inflating our nation's near-trillion-dollar defense budget."

"Putting the wants of contractors over the needs of our communities," he added, "isn't going to make our country any safer."

If passed, the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would force every component of the Defense Department that fails an audit in fiscal year 2024 to return 1% of its budget to the Treasury Department.

A fact sheet released by Sanders' office argues that "the need for this audit is clear," pointing to a Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq report estimating that "$31-60 billion had been lost to fraud and waste."

"Separately, the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that the Pentagon could not account for $45 billion in funding for reconstruction projects," the fact sheet notes. "A recent Ernst & Young audit of the Defense Logistics Agency found that it could not properly account for some $800 million in construction projects. CBS News recently reported that defense contractors were routinely overcharging the Pentagon—and the American taxpayer—by nearly 40-50%, and sometimes as high as 4,451%."

Further examples of the Pentagon's waste and accounting failures abound.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report concluding that the Pentagon can't account for F-35 parts worth millions of dollars.

Earlier this week, as The Washington Post reported, the Pentagon said it "uncovered a significant accounting error that led it to overvalue the amount of military equipment it sent to Ukraine since Russia's invasion last year—by $6.2 billion."

"The 'valuation errors,' as a Pentagon spokeswoman put it, will allow the Pentagon to send more weapons to Ukraine now before going to Congress to request more money," the Post noted.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a supporter of the Audit the Pentagon Act, said Wednesday that "taxpayers can't keep writing blank checks—they deserve long-overdue transparency from the Pentagon about wasteful defense spending."

"If the Department of Defense cannot conduct a clean audit, as required by law," said Wyden, "Congress should impose tough financial consequences to hold the Pentagon accountable for mismanaging taxpayer money."

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kp777 · 1 year

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By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

April 6, 2023

One observer urged congressional Democrats to "put Republicans on the record supporting this level of corruption, and make the corrupt judiciary a campaign issue."

Progressives on Thursday urged congressional Democrats to immediately push for investigations and impeachment proceedings after bombshell reporting by ProPublica revealed that right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been taking luxury trips funded by a billionaire Republican megadonor for more than 20 years without formally disclosing them—a likely violation of federal law.

The investigative outlet reported Thursday that "for more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year" from Dallas-based real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

According to ProPublica, Thomas "has vacationed on Crow's superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow's Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow's sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow's private resort in the Adirondacks."

"These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas' financial disclosures," the outlet noted. "His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress, and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said."

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who is now with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ProPublica that the justice "seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations."

"When a justice's lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust," said Canter. "Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink."

The luxury trip revelation is just the latest scandal for Thomas, who has faced mounting scrutiny over the past year for alleged ethics violations, including his decision not to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 presidential election despite his wife's direct involvement in efforts to overturn the results of that contest.

"Democrats should force an impeachment vote of Justice Thomas on the House floor," Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch argued Thursday in response to the ProPublica reporting. "It won't pass, obviously, but put Republicans on the record supporting this level of corruption, and make the corrupt judiciary a campaign issue."

It's unclear how House Democrats would go about forcing an impeachment vote given GOP control of the chamber. Republicans have repeatedly defended Thomas as he's faced backlash over his failure to recuse from election-related cases.

Brian Fallon, executive director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, said in a statement Thursday that the Senate—which is narrowly controlled by Democrats—"cannot let this extraordinary display of corruption and lawbreaking go unanswered."

"Senate Democrats cannot force Thomas to resign or give him the impeachment trial he clearly deserves, but they can hold hearings to further expose Justice Thomas’ apparent lawbreaking and the Republican justices' deep ties to far-right donors," said Fallon. "As long as we are stuck with a Supreme Court made up of corrupt idealogues in the pocket of far-right donors, the American people deserve to know the truth."

ProPublica stressed that "the extent and frequency of Crow's apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court."

"Crow's access to the justice extends to anyone the businessman chooses to invite along," the outlet reported. "Thomas' frequent vacations at Topridge have brought him into contact with corporate executives and political activists. During just one trip in July 2017, Thomas' fellow guests included executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors, and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank."

The outlet noted that a painting of Thomas at Topridge—Crow's private lakeside resort in upstate New York—shows Thomas "in conversation with Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee and a vocal advocate of ethics reform on the high court, wrote on Twitter that ProPublica's reporting "cries out for the kind of independent investigation that the Supreme Court—and only the Supreme Court, across the entire government—refuses to perform."

"It's not just the undisclosed gifts of hospitality, it's the undisclosed company of political operatives—particularly Leonard Leo, the operative who helped the billionaires capture the court," Whitehouse continued. "Who were Thomas' companions on these free undisclosed vacations, and what interests did those undisclosed companions have before the court? The question is obvious."

"All of this needs robust investigation," the senator added, "and it's the chief justice's job to make sure that occurs."

#clarence thomas #u.s. supreme court #judicial ethics #impeachment #u.s. congress #call to action #propublica #common dreams

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