Who is popular today?

By acting as if Thomas has done nothing wrong, chief justice John Roberts looks pathetic and enabling of unethical behaviorAfter ProPublica and other news organizations exposed one damning revelation after another, it has become unarguably clear that Clarence Thomas is hugely corrupt, has brazenly and repeatedly violated disclosure laws and has shown utter contempt for the most elementary ethical standards. It’s deeply troubling that so few of our political leaders have called for the obvious moral response to this ever-widening scandal: Thomas should resign.There’s been far too much shilly-shallying about all this. It’s not nearly enough to call on Thomas to belatedly comply with disclosure laws or to repay Harlan Crow, the billionaire rightwing activist who has showered $1m in favors on Thomas and his family. Thomas’s myriad violations are too serious, his contempt for ethics and conflict-of-interest rules too blatant, for us to accept half measures or slaps on the wrist. He has disgraced the court. It is time for him to go.From 2003 to 2007, Thomas repeatedly failed to disclose that his wife, Ginni, was paid $686,589 by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which often files amicus briefs to the court.In 2008 and 2009, Thomas failed to disclose that Crow paid roughly $100,000 in private school tuition for a grand-nephew Thomas was raising.In 2011 and 2012, Thomas failed to disclose at least $80,000 in payments to his wife that Leonard Leo – the leader of nationwide efforts to install conservative judges – had secretly arranged to be paid by an organization that filed amicus briefs to the supreme court.In 2014, Thomas failed to disclose that one of Crow’s companies paid $133,363 for three Georgia properties owned by Thomas and his family.For at least two decades, Thomas has taken free luxury travel and vacations from Crow on yachts and private jets (valued at more than $500,000) – and repeatedly failed to disclose those favors.Even though Ginni Thomas repeatedly texted Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to urge more aggressive efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and January 6. Indeed, Thomas was the only justice to back Trump in a case in which all the other justices rebuked Trump and backed releasing White House records about the January 6 attack.Steven Greenhouse, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is a longtime American labor and workplace journalist and writer, and the author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor Continue reading...