Ketanji Brown Jackson KBJ

primary 9 24 on scotus reform

note rubber glue (how much of that is See they do it too so not only are they corrupt, they are hypocrites, not to be trusted morally deficient; how dare they accuse real patriotic americans of wrongdoing

SEE DISSENT ~ BRET KAVA

see AAF oppos research

FIRST 1ST CIRCUIT appeaLS

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14TH AMEND

AN 6 26

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision striking down President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive orderin an opinion that was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. However, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued her own concurrence that targeted Justice Clarence Thomas by name.

After 31 pages of Roberts walking through the long history of birthright citizenship in the law, Jackson wrote a response to the dissent that Thomas penned along with Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

"Despite his longstanding endorsement of a 'colorblind' Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to 'freed slaves such as Dred Scott,' post, at 56, and those who shared with them certain characteristics ... It is for this reason, he says, that 'children who were born in the United States but [to parents] not domiciled here' are not entitled to claim birthright citizenship. ... But that narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the history of its ratification. Even worse, Justice Thomas’ telling elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery."

She goes on to allege that Thomas has a "myopic treatment" of the 14th Amendment.

"The Amendment caused a paradigm shift in the trajectory of our Nation; the teacher who scolds a student for bullying a classmate hopes the student learns the broader lesson of treating everyone with kindness, not just that one kid," she says.

She even went so far as to add an extensive footnote of cases "denied by this court" that refers back to Thomas' slavery argument.

"It is common ground that the Fourteenth Amendment was 'enacted ... with the one pervading purpose of securing equal citizenship for the freed slaves.' Also true is the fact that this Court 'has time and again denied Americans that promise.'"

Her footnote for that comment reads: "I suspect, though, that Justice Thomas and I disagree about when and how that promise has been denied by this Court. My list is long (and sadly only getting longer)." She cited 11 separate cases, the most recent of which refers back to a decision earlier this term in *Louisiana v. Callais.*

Jackson closes by saying, "Thankfully, a majority of the Court remembered this today, and has dutifully preserved the most basic animating principle of our Nation’s founding — that all human beings are created equal — once more."

Bill Shein called it a "blistering concurring opinion/takedown of Clarence Thomas's dissent."

Northwestern University School of Law Professor Paul Gowder said, "Justice Jackson knows what's up." He later added, "God bless Justice Jackson actually talking about what the Black folks who won the clause had said and done."

Loyola University School of Law Professor Justin Levitt wrote, "Justice Jackson is absolutely on fire in her birthright concurrence, unloading on the dissent not only for their votes in this case, but its apparent inconsistency with most of the 'colorblindness' jurisprudence of the past few terms."

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duck 3 26 MAINE SUPERPAK

Search Assist

The case "Dinner Table Action v. Schneider" involves a challenge to a 2024 Maine law that imposed a $5,000 cap on contributions to super PACs, which was permanently enjoined by a U.S. District Court in 2025. The case is now on appeal to the First Circuit, KBJ with amicus briefs filed by organizations like the Brennan Center and Campaign Legal Center arguing for the constitutionality of the law to prevent corruption.

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AN 1 26

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent in a case involving mail-in ballots where she needled her conservative colleague, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Last year, Kavanaugh penned an opinion giving more leeway to immigration agents by claiming that they rarely take American citizens into custody, and if by mistake one is taken, they're released very quickly.

Slate legal reporter and analyst Mark Joseph Stern noticed that in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, Jackson added an interesting citation in footnote eight.

"Contemporary commentators predicted that our decision in Lyons would close the door to 'a broad range of analogous lawsuits' aimed at systemic misconduct and abuse on the part of law enforcement," Jackson wrote, referencing the necessary information. "That prediction proved accurate. Today, courts routinely rely on Lyons to deny plaintiffs standing to seek injunctions against future police behavior. See, e.g., J. W. ex rel. Tammy Williams v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ., 904 F. 3d 1248, 1267 (CA11 2018) (per curiam); Shain v. Ellison, 356 F. 3d 211, 216 (CA2 2004); Whitfield v. Ridgeland, 876 F. Supp. 2d 779, 787– 788 (SD Miss. 2012)."

The final citation she mentioned was the direct attack.

"See also Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U. S. _, _ (2025) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring) (slip op., at 4) (concluding that, under Lyons, Latino plaintiffs who were 'stopped for immigration questioning allegedly without reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence' lacked standing to seek an injunction)."

"She isn't letting this one go," commented Stern.

"I’m trading this now and it’s making my day better," The Nation's legal analyst Elie Mystal added on BlueSky.

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immunity 6-3

the Supreme Court justices who dissented to Monday's ruling on former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim called it a mockery of the Constitution that reshapes the institution of the presidency.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented to Chief Justice John Roberts ruling that Trump was entitled to absolute immunity for actions carried out in his official capacity as president — but not all presidential actions were official.

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AN 12 25

On Monday morning, December 8, the U.S. Supreme Court listened to oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter — a case dealing with President Donald Trump's ability, under the U.S. Constitution, to fire employees of independent government agencies.

Trump and his allies, in the case, are promoting a far-right legal doctrine known as the Unitary Executive Theory — which claims that presidents have total control over who can be fired in the federal government. But opponents of the Unitary Executive Theory vehemently disagree, arguing that Congress has the ability to create agencies that are independent from a president's executive powers. One of those opponents is Rebecca Slaughter, who is arguing that Trump had no right to fire her from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) because of the independence she enjoyed.

During the December 8 hearing, Solicitor General John Sauer was aggressively grilled by the High Court's three Democratic appointees: Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. And MS NOW's Lisa Rubin offered, emphasizing that Kagan was essentially accusing Trump of trying to carry out an "enormous power grab." VID]

Rubin told Cabrera, "This concept of a unitary executive…. has gained currency among political conservatives," adding, "Certainly, it's not a legally conservative theory because it is a gigantic enlargement of executive power. That's not how legal conservatives have traditionally thought, but that is what's going on here."

According to Rubin, the "liberal justices" are "playing out the consequences of the logic being employed by the (Trump) Administration, which is (that) this isn't just about the FTC."

Rubin told Cabrera, "I want to read to you something that Justice Kagan said in her discussion with the solicitor general, John Sauer, because I thought it got to the heart of what this is really about…. The idea was that the president was supposed to do the executing, but he wasn't supposed to do the legislating…. In other words, in Justice Kagan's view, this is a power grab by the president… That, according to Justice Kagan and the other liberals on the Court, is an enormous power grab with real consequences for our country."

Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler, also on the panel, predicted that the High Court's GOP-appointed justices will "almost certainly" rule in Trump's favor and "say the president has the authority to fire the FTC commissioner."

"This outcome is virtually certain," Butler told Cabrera and Rubin — who agreed with him that the outcome in Trump v. Slaughter is a "fait accompli" and that the GOP-appointed supermajority will reject the arguments of Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson."

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omg 6 25 an neutered judic on natl injunction

dissent soto and kbj

What the Supreme Court did was far more dangerous than ending birthright citizenship

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rww

07/16/2025

Peter Montgomery

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans while voters were in the process of removing Trump from office in 2020. Barrett cemented the right-wing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, gave Trump virtually complete immunity for lawbreaking he commits as president, and has generally backed Trump’s assault on the rule of law and the federal government. But all that hasn’t been enough for MAGA hardliners.

Earlier this year, far-right commentators were furious that Barrett did not back Trump 100 percent of the time. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in January, right-wing judicial activist Mike Davis viciously attacked Barrett, repeatedly saying she had her “head up her ass” and calling on her to resign.

After Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts voted in March not to immediately overturn a judge’s ruling overturning Trump’s freeze on nearly $2 billion in foreign aid work that had been approved by Congress and already performed, MAGA activist Mike Cernovich denounced her as “evil” and a “DEI hire,” the latter charge echoed by MAGA influencers Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec. Davis went back on Bannon’s show to repeat his vulgar “head up her ass” comment.

In April, when Barrett partially joined more liberal justices’ dissent over Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants to a gulag in El Salvador, the right-wing hate poured in, with Trump’s online pal “catturd” calling her a “commie” and “an ungrateful POS.”

In recent high-profile cases, Barrett has sided with the rest of the MAGA justices to allow mass firings of federal employees and limit federal judges’ ability to halt lawbreaking policies, including Trump’s assertion that he can by executive order overturn the 150-year-old doctrine of birthright citizenship.

Those votes encouraged right-wing radio host John Frederick to ask MAGA lawyer John Eastman this week whether Barrett is “finally coming around.”

“Well, I think there are a lot of plays going on here,” Eastman responded. “One,” he said with a chuckle, “I think she and her family were being threatened. That was serious. I think as a new justice she’s wanting to make sure that everybody knows she’s her own person, so that was serious.”

Eastman said Barrett has “come around” because “the left has gone so far off the rails” with injunctions against Trump administration actions. He said “the greater the absurdity the more she realized that she needed to join” the MAGA majority.

“These judges who disagree with the agenda that the American people voted for don’t have any authority to block the agenda that the American people voted for unless it’s clearly unconstitutional, and it is not.”

Of course, right-wing legal groups had no issue with nationwide injunctions against Biden administration policies, and in fact actively pursued them. Eastman and the Court’s MAGA justices seem to have discovered a new constitutional doctrine now that judges are ruling against Trump’s policies.

Eastman complained that Democrats in the Senate would block any effort to strip federal courts of their jurisdiction over whole classes of cases and that therefore “it’s up to the Supreme Court to get control of the lower courts under its authority.”

Eastman went further in his criticism of the Court’s liberal justices. When Fredericks asked if Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has written powerful dissents, is “becoming a clown,” Eastman suggested that she has been a clown since her confirmation hearing. Even worse, he accused the dissenting justices who defended the constitutional doctrine of birthright citizenship of using “an old Nazi propaganda tactic” by repeatedly noting that it is long-established law.

Eastman said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the Supreme Court will adopt his opposition to birthright citizenship—and overturn more than 150 years of precedent—when it takes up the substance of the issue during its next term.

Eastman, long associated with the hard-right Claremont Institute, was disbarred in California for what judges have deemed his unethical actions in helping Trump try to subvertthe 2020 election. Eastman helped challenge results in swing states and promoted a strategy to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Eastman helped Trump rile up the crowd at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

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AN 725

NO LNX

Here's the real reason Republicans hate the middle class

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) looks on, on the day he meets with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz along with other Senators, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Thom Hartmann July 02, 2025

A Pew poll published last week finds that 59 percent of Americans say the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that cuts taxes for billionaires and raises them for working-class people — and was passed by the Senate on Tuesday — “would hurt lower-income people and 51 percent think it would hurt middle-income people.”

And they’re right. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill will measurably reduce the income and spending power of low- and middle-income people while giving a ~$4 trillion gift to the morbidly rich.

Americans have figured this out: according to a Fox “News” poll published last week and reported by Newsweek:

“Only 38 percent favored the bill, while 59 percent opposed it, a 21-point gap against the bill. About half of all voters believed the legislation would be detrimental to their families, and just a quarter thought it would deliver any benefit.”

So, why would Republicans want to further reduce the size and wealth of America’s middle class?

Turns out, there are two good reasons that answer that question.

The first and simplest is that ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court made it legal for billionaires and big corporations to bribe politicians, the GOP has done the bidding of the morbidly rich to the exclusion of everybody else.

And there’s considerable truth to that argument. The Court opened that door with their Buckley and Bellotti decisions in the late 1970s, laying the foundation for Ronald Reagan’s war against unions and working people and his so-called “Reagan Revolution” on behalf of the wealthy.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out in the Diamond Alternative Energy v EPA case that was decided on June 20 and made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to challenge environmental regulations:

“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens. … Our ruling will no doubt aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act. … I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests. …“For some, this silence will only harden their sense that the Court softens its certiorari standards when evaluating petitions from moneyed interests, looking past the jurisdictional defects or other vehicle problems that would typically doom petitions from other parties. This Court’s simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of the rights of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others — will further fortify that impression. …

“The Court’s remarkably lenient approach to standing in this case contrasts starkly with the stern stance it has taken in cases concerning the rights of ordinary citizens. … The Constitution does not distinguish between plaintiffs whose claims are backed by the Chamber of Commerce and those who seek to vindicate their rights to fair housing, desegregated schools, or privacy. But if someone reviewing our case law harbored doubts about that proposition, today’s decision will do little to dissuade them.”

But while it’s true that Republicans have been naked toadies for rich people and big corporations for a century, there’s a larger reason why Trump and the GOP are working so hard to immiserate and impoverish working class Americans.

That reason has to do with something called “modernization theory.”

Back in 1959, one of the inventors of modernization theory, Seymour Martin Lipset, famously wrote:

“The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.”

Lipset argued that industrialization led to unions and higher wages, which in turn funded higher-education opportunities and urbanization, which both grew a larger middle class. As people’s material conditions improved, Lipset noted, their focus shifted from survival issues like food and shelter to more aspirational elements like democratic values, civil and human rights, representation in government, and the rule of law.

In other words, the wealthier the middle class becomes, the more it will demand a vibrant democracy and a government that represents its interests.

On the other hand — and here is the GOP‘s real goal — if you can do away with or diminish the wealth and political power of the middle class, you can more easily loot the government and act exclusively in the interest of the morbidly rich.

As Barrington Moore noted in his book Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: “No bourgeois [middle class], no democracy.”

In 2003, researchers Carles Boix and Susan Stokes found strong evidence that wealthier countries are more likely to be democracies, and once established, democracies are far more stable in richer nations. Similarly, in their bookEconomic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy", Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson prove that when economic growth empowers new classes (especially the middle class), those groups will demand political reforms.

Using examples including South Korea, Taiwan, Eastern Europe, and Tunisia, multiple cross-national studies using World Bank income data and Freedom House democracy scores show a strong correlation between per capita income and democratic governance; as people become wealthier they more vigorously demand a small-d democratic political system.

This happens because middle class people have economic security, giving them the time and energy to demand their rights; want property protections, honest courts, education, and fair governance; and typically have relied on meritocratic systems (education, hard work) to achieve their status instead of using corruption or inherited wealth and privilege.

By 1981, the American middle class was at its peak because of a 74 percent top personal income tax bracket, a 50 percent top corporate income tax rate, a strong and healthy social safety net, cheap healthcare (because hospitals and insurance companies were required to be nonprofits in most states), and free or near-free college.

Democracy was also arguably at its peak; for the previous 40+ years Congress had passed, one after the other, bills that primarily benefitted average working people and the middle class. Voting was easy, women and minorities were empowered, and we led the world in education and innovation.

This is not, however, what many wealthy oligarchs want, particularly those who become politically active.

Instead of democracy, they want government to protect their wealth and privilege to the exclusion of “the rabble.”

Instead of paying the cost of a government large enough to guarantee the emergence and sustenance of a middle class, they want tax cuts and subsidies for their businesses. Instead of rights for average people, they want police and courts that will, as Justice Jackson noted, focus instead on their unique wants and needs.

When Reagan came into office in 1981 about a third of American workers had good union jobs, meaning that about two-thirds of all American families lived good middle-class lives on a single paycheck (because the union jobs established the wage and benefits floor for non-union employers who had to compete with them for workers).

That was the year the GOP declared war on working-class people because, in the estimation of the Nixon- and Reagan-era Republicans, our democracy had gotten out of hand.

Workers were demanding good pay and benefits; women, racial, and gender minorities were demanding equal rights; and students demanded an end to the war in Vietnam.

Conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley saw these demands as symptoms of a “cultural decay” caused by working class people having more wealth and leisure time than they were “intellectually and culturally capable of handling.”

So, in 1981 the GOP set about dismantling the American middle class with their so-called Reagan Revolution.

The result is that today only about 45 percent of Americans are in the middle class, and it takes two jobs to establish that same lifestyle; since Reagan took office fully $50 trillion has been transferred from the homes, savings, and retirement accounts of working class people into the money bins of the top 1 percent.

As the social scientists cited above found, when the middle class shrinks below a certain threshold its demands for democracy are replaced by populist demands for, essentially, revenge.

“Who did this to us?” is the battle cry, and the GOP’s ready answer — first emerging in the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh, going on steroids in the 1990s with Fox “News,” and pounded on by Donald Trump ever since he first came down that escalator in 2015 — is, “It’s the immigrants, Black people, uppity women, college students and professors, and the union bosses.”

MAGA — particularly its white racist base — bought it hook, line, and sinker, leading us to a massive tax-cut bill, court decisions that screw working people and the environment, and an explosion in hate crimes and politically inspired violence.

The bottom line is that the GOP opposes democracy because it interferes with and complicates their very well paid efforts to suck up to — and legislate on behalf of — the morbidly rich. And they disdain the middle class (but love the uneducated poor) because the larger the middle class the louder come the demands for fairness in the distribution of the common wealth and democracy.

So, the next time somebody asks you why Republicans hate the middle class, let them know that, “It’s the democracy, stupid!”

NOW READ: The 'cracks' are showing: Behind the battle for who leads the GOP when Trump is gone

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One sitting Supreme Court associate justice is now publicly coming out against President Donald Trump's attacks on the federal judiciary — without mentioning the president by name.

Politico reported Thursday that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, addressed "the elephant in the room" during a judges' conference in Puerto Rico. She said that threats to impeach Article III judges solely because they issued rulings that conflict with a president's wishes is a direct threat to the American system of government.

“The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate,” Jackson said. “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

The liberal jurist received a standing ovation for her remarks, in which she urged her colleagues to have "raw courage" when carrying out their duties. Politico reported that Jackson spoke about the attacks on judges for roughly 18 minutes.

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"I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service," she said.

Trump and his supporters have specifically called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered deportation flights carrying 238 Venezuelan immigrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to be turned around until the issue could be fully litigated. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) even submitted articles of impeachment against Boasberg to the House Judiciary Committee. Chief Justice John Roberts (who was appointed by former President George W. Bush) spoke out against the impeachment threat, though like Jackson on Thursday, did not specifically mention Trump's name.

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," Roberts wrote. "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

Click here to read Politico's full article.

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ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

[JUDGE SHOPPING?] NOPE SCOTUS

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)

After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.

Ginni Thomas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

First Liberty Institute did not directly respond to ProPublica and Documented’s questions about the recording. Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”

The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed.

On the donor call, Shackelford voiced strong opposition to various court reform proposals, including the ones floated by Biden, as well as expanding the size of the court. All of these proposals, Shackelford said, were part of “a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court.” This effort was led by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases,” he said.

This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” She later wrote, “The nation’s eyes are on you now. … Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.” (Thomas said in 2022 she regretted sending the inflammatory messages to Meadows.)

Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, faced scrutiny for flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The flag flew outside the Alito home as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear a case related to the 2020 election. (Samuel Alito told The New York Times he had no role in flying the flag. He said his wife did it in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”)

The push to change how the court functions grew after a series of ProPublica stories showed that wealthy Republican donors have showered Thomas and Alito with free gifts and travel that they failed to disclose. Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas amended past disclosure reports, and the Supreme Court adopted the ethics code, its first ever.

Thomas and Alito have said they weren’t required to disclose free flights or hospitality from friends.

First Liberty has been at the forefront of a decades-long and successful effort to expand the First Amendment rights of religious groups, even as those interests can collide with other constitutional principles like maintaining the separation of church and state or providing equal protection for protected classes.

In the last several years, First Liberty has notched big victories. In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives ruled in favor of several Maine families represented by First Liberty and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, when it struck down the state’s ban on using public funding to pay for religious schooling.

Days later, the six conservatives ruled again in favor of a First Liberty plaintiff — in this case, a former football coach at a Washington state public high school who had been fired for praying on the field after games. The conservative majority said the coach had been wrongly removed from his job, a decision hailed by religious groups and criticized by some experts who said it would now be more difficult for public schools to keep education separate from religion.

First Liberty has also represented a bakery in Oregon whose owners refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing their religious beliefs; religious groups that opposed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and nearly three dozen Navy SEALs and military members who refused to be vaccinated for the virus on the basis of their faith. In all the cases, First Liberty’s plaintiffs won partial or full victories in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.

Shackelford, who is First Liberty’s president and CEO, has led the group for nearly three decades. His influence extends into the broader conservative movement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former First Liberty attorney, once called Shackelford a mentor. Shackelford has served as vice president of the Council for National Policy, an umbrella group that brings together conservative leaders and deep-pocketed donors.

He also works closely with Ziklag, the secretive network of ultrawealthy conservative Christians that aims to “take dominion” over every major sphere of influence in American culture. According to internal Ziklag newsletters obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Shackelford has participated in Supreme Court prep sessions and appeared on strategy conference calls organized by the group.

On the July 31 donor call, Shackelford kept the focus squarely on the mounting calls to reform the Supreme Court. In addition to Biden’s proposals, several groups, including prominent liberal legal outfits, have proposed other changes including term limits and stronger ethics guidelines. And earlier in July, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law said it had received a $30 million gift from the private-equity investor Jim Kohlberg to create a new project that will “seek reform of the Supreme Court.”

Shackelford described all of this — Kagan’s speech, Biden’s announcement, the $30 million donation — as if it was a coordinated effort. “They’re doing everything in their power,” he told the donors. “They’re hitting from every direction.” The “extreme left,” he explained, was “upset by just a few cases, but that’s all they need to say, ‘We’re ready to totally’ — they would call ‘reform’ or ‘restructure’ the court — but almost everything they propose would actually destroy the court.”

He aimed his fiercest criticism on the donor call at Kagan. “That is incredible, somewhat treasonous, what Kagan did,” Shackelford said. “The chief justice rules the court. They’re trying to keep the other branches’ hands off of them. And then you’ve got Kagan from the inside really being somewhat disloyal and somewhat treasonous in what she’s doing.”

Shackelford accused ProPublica of being part of a campaign to “delegitimize or get rid of the court.” He said that the ethics lapses unearthed by ProPublica’s reporting were “false” and “baseless,” even though they helped spark the creation of a new ethics code and led to Thomas filing new financial disclosure forms, in effect admitting that he had failed to disclose certain gifts.

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on Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit brought by the states of Louisiana and Missouri and several social media users alleging that the Biden administration has been unconstitutionally pressuring social media platforms to remove or censor conservative content.

During the hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised concerns about the plaintiff’s apparent intention to use the First Amendment to “hamstring” the government’s ability to respond to harmful or dangerous misinformation in “an environment of threatening circumstances.”

This line of questioning elicited a from MAGA cultist pastor Shane Vaughn, who repeatedly derided Brown Jackson, who is Black, as “Judge Jumanji Jungle Lips.”

“I can’t even believe that that stupidity rolled from Jumanji’s jungle mouth,” Vaughn said. “It’s a Jumanji jungle now on the Supreme Court.”

“From now on, her name is Judge Jungle Jumanji,” he continued. “See, the problem is Jumanji Jungle, Judge Jumanji Jungle Lips, the problem with it is this — because what’s coming out of her lips is monkey sense, not common sense! It’s jungle monkey sense pouring out of your liberal lips and you are a curse to this nation. You are a rodent in our republic!”

After putting a photo of Brown Jackson on the screen, Vaughn declared, “There’s Judge Jumanji Jungle Monkey Lips pouring out monkey mess in the republic.”

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Just last month, Vaughn was at Mar-a-Lago to attend an event with former President Donald Trump.

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https://thedemlabs.org/2022/04/19/republican-dark-money-group-smears-reputations-of-women-nominees-of-color/

no lnx pix

Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.

DEMLABS BLOG

April 19, 2022

Republican Slime Machine targets Biden Nominees - especially women of color.

"The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees" - Jane Mayer, New Yorker

"The American Accountability Foundation (A.A.F.), which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color.As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women."

Who are the people running the 'slime machine'? Who funds them? How is the AAF treated as a nonprofit? Follow the dark money behind the smear campaign with this network map.

Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.

Share this Power Map freely with this link or as a GIF

Racist, misogynist attacks

"When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker

Desperately pursuing dirt

"The A.A.F. has taken the practice to extremes, repeatedly spinning negligible tidbits or dubious hearsay into damning narratives. The group recently deployed its unorthodox methods, Politico has reported, while “desperately pursuing dirt” on Lisa Cook, the nominee for the Federal Reserve. Cook, who has been a tenured professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University since 2013, has attracted bipartisan support. Glenn Hubbard, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush Administration, has said, “Cook’s talents as an economic researcher and teacher make her a good nominee for the Fed, adding to diversity of perspectives about policy.”

In college, Cook won a Marshall Scholarship. She subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and served as a staff economist on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also held appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at various regional Federal Reserve banks. The A.A.F., though, has portrayed her as unqualified, andsuggested that her tenure at Michigan State is undeserved." - New Yorker

Politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity

"An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees. When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker

Follow the dark money - Relationship map: https://embed.kumu.io/be295fbf0ae354739c97174ddb255144#untitled-map/political-character-assassination

All in the family

"Meadows’s son, Blake, an associate attorney at the Georgia law firm Foster, Foster, & Smith, appears to be involved with C.P.I., too: his name appears in a lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the A.A.F. against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Matthew Buckham, the A.A.F. co-founder, also has a Trump connection: he worked at the White House during his Administration, in the personnel office. (His father, Ed Buckham, is chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene.) New Yorker

Russian connection

"Ed Buckham, the recently appointed chief of staff for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Today, Buckham handles a congresswoman who proudly attends “white supremacist, antisemitic, pro-Putin” rallies, as Congresswoman Liz Cheney characterized them, and has become renowned for touting conspiracy theories about how the California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. On Thursday, when the House of Representatives voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus, Greene, not surprisingly, was one of eight Republicans who voted against it.

Buckham’s ties to Russian interests date back 25 years to 1997—before Putin came to power—when he served as an aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. This was the heyday of “Casino Jack” Abramoff, the lobbyist-conman who took on pay-for-play clients ranging from the Choctaw Indian tribe of Mississippi to the Kremlin with a panache made for Hollywood. At the time, Buckham, in addition to his job with DeLay, oversaw a lobbying outfit called the U.S. Family Network, which presented itself as a public advocacy group but was really a vehicle funded largely by clients of Jack Abramoff." - New Republic

TakeAway: Follow the dark money funding Republican smears on highly qualified Biden nominees based on their race and gender. Does such a group deserve nonprofit exempt status?

Deepak

DemLabs

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https://www.alternet.org/ketanji-brown-jackson-2659452193/

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162 yr sent AA woman

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an 12 22

Wednesday, December 7, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case Moore v. Harper — which deals with partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina and a far-right legal idea known as the independent state legislature (ISL) theory. The ISL, in its most extreme version, argues that only state legislatures should have any say in how elections are governed in individual states — not governors, not judges, not state supreme courts.

Critics of the ISL have been stressing that totally removing a state’s executive and judicial branches from the equation is anti-checks and balances and anti-democracy. It remains to be seen how the High Court will ultimately rule in Moore v. Harper, but legal writer Joe Patrice, in an article published by Above the Law on December 7, stresses that some of the best questioning during the oral arguments came from President Joe Biden’s appointee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Going into this morning’s oral argument on Moore v. Harper,” Patrice explains, “it didn’t really seem like free and fair democratic elections had much of a future in this country. If one were so inclined, the smart money said the Supreme Court would functionally cancel democratic elections…. Across hours of oral argument, Justice Jackson asked the most succinct and ultimately damning question that might save the day. Or at least minimize the impact.”

During the oral arguments, Jackson obviously had a problem with the idea of excluding a state’s executive and judicial branches from governing elections.

The Biden appointee told her colleagues, “I guess I don’t understand how you can cut the state constitution out of the equation when it is giving the state legislature authority to exercise the legislative power.”

With that comment, Patrice argues, Jackson showed just how “absurd” the ISL is.

“She actually asked this question in different phrasings a few times, but it’s really the only question anyone needs to answer,” Patrice explains. “If state constitutions create state legislatures, then how can state legislatures violate state constitutions? It ceases to be a constitutionally ordained legislature at that point!”

Patrice continues, “It’s a chicken and egg problem — except it’s more like which came first, the chicken or my dinner tonight — with a single obvious answer. If the state constitution sets guardrails of voting rights and the proper deference required to courts and the executive, then the legislature can only work within that. The GOP argued that, because the word ‘Legislature’ is in the U.S. Constitution, it elevates state legislatures above the constraints of their own state laws for this purpose, but no one — original or otherwise — ever entertained that idea. Indeed, it would be absurd to think the Framers, at the time, intended to dictate to the states how their governments should function. ‘Legislature’ is whatever the state chooses to create with all the checks and balances attendant to its own laws — just like it’s been for over 200 years.”

Patrice also praised attorney Neal Katyal, who gave the High Court justices aggressive oral arguments against the ISL.

“At the top of Katyal’s argument,” Patrice notes, “he cited the two centuries of election law and declared that it would be ‘a whole lot of wrong’ if ‘Legislature’ meant what the GOP asked for as opposed to how Justice Jackson posed her question…. Make no mistake, Chief Justice Roberts is on record buying into a watered-down version of this theory and will, after today’s battering, probably cobble something together that shields Republican legislatures without straining the outer bounds of basic notions of constitutional governance.”

Patrice adds, “But whatever compromise the conservatives try to mold will remain haunted by Jackson’s straightforward question. Which came first, the state constitution or the state legislature? It’s the constitution. It’s always going to be the constitution.”

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an 5 22

A ruling handed down by the right-wing United States Supreme Court on Monday that strips convicted felons of the opportunity to present evidence in federal court that they had ineffective counsel is facing ferocious condemnation by legal experts.

The 6-3 majority decision in Shinn versus Ramirez and Jones, authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, denied the petitions of two death row inmates in Arizona – David Martinez Ramirez and Barry Lee Jones – to submit proof that their attorneys had failed them at trial. Martinez and Jones argued that as a result, their Sixth Amendment rights to due process and habeas corpus were violated.

Because their appeals were denied at the state level, Thomas declared that Ramirez and Jones had no legal standing to sue federally.

“[O]nly rarely may a federal habeas court hear a claim or consider evidence that a prisoner did not previously present to the state courts in compliance with state procedural rules,” Thomas wrote.

"Such intervention is also an affront to the State and its citizens who returned a verdict of guilt after considering the evidence before them," he said. "Federal courts, years later, lack the competence and authority to relitigate a State’s criminal case."

The Court's three liberal jurists dissented.

"This decision is perverse," Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor opined on behalf of the minority."It is illogical: It makes no sense to excuse a habeas petitioner’s counsel’s failure to raise a claim altogether because of ineffective assistance in postconviction proceedings ... but to fault the same petitioner for that postconviction counsel’s failure to develop evidence in support of the trial-ineffectiveness claim."

She said that "the Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”

Numerous legal experts concurred with Sotomayor, stressing that Monday's precedent-reversing ruling guts the 6th Amendment.

"You can't meaningfully enforce the Sixth Amendment in a state post-conviction proceeding unless you have an ounce of seriousness about the lawyer they are getting in that forum," University of Texas Law Professor Lee Kovarsky tweeted. "And since representation in state post-conviction proceedings is a national embarrassment, it means that it's not a really useful site of Sixth Amendment enforcement."

Kovarsky expanded upon what that means for defendants.

"You can have your claim decided on the merits in federal court, but you cannot INTRODUCE EVIDENCE to prove that claim," he said. "There's a million ways to pick this opinion apart, but here's a simple one. If you get to federal court with incontrovertible evidence of innocence, you can disable procedural bars but that evidence can't be considered on the merits. Your modern Supreme Court, people."

Read his thread below [twt]

university of Texas Law Professor and CNN contributor Steve Vladeck noted that "Thomas holds that habeas courts can't expand the record to take new evidence showing ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel."

Leah Litman, an associate professor of law at the University of Michigan, agreed.

"It's bad," she Tweeted. "If the state appoints you a lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective at your trial; and then appoints you ANOTHER lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective to argue your trial lawyer was ineffective ... you're screwed. This is just a horrific decision that will close the Martinez exception that allowed litigants to enforce the 6th amendment right to counsel."

Others were far less cordial in her critique.

"HOLY. SHIT," New York City Public Defender Eliza Orleans said. "This decision effectively ensures that innocent people will remain imprisoned. This is radical. This is horrifying. This is extremely scary."

Commercial litigator Akiva Cohen pointed out the obscure insidiousness embedded within Thomas' annotations.

"I don't think I've ever been angrier about a footnote. Context: this is in a SCOTUS decision holding that a state prisoner on death row can be executed because of his appellate counsel's negligence, because district courts CANNOT 'forgive' the forfeiture due to that negligence," he said. "I mean holy fuck. 'Oops, sorry your lawyers suck, but it would cost too much to make sure you're actually guilty before we electrocute you'??"

Slate correspondent Mark Joseph Stern was equally as outraged.

"The Supreme Court's second and final opinion of the day is an absolutely atrocious 6–3 ruling in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, a habeas case. I will say more but this decision effectively ensures that innocent people will remain imprisoned," he tweeted. "The Supreme Court has previously said that habeas petitioners can bring ineffective assistance of counsel claims for the first time in federal court. But today, it says they *can't develop evidence to support these claims.* In doing so, it turns that 'right' into an illusion."

Stern added that "everything about Thomas' opinion is repulsive."

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:{an 4 22

As Democratic lawmakers worked to finalize the confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a number perplexing events took place in national political theater this week. One of the most pivotal moments centered on Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison’s attack on Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) following the Republican senator's suggestion that Jackson is a Nazi sympathizer, per The Washington Post.

Harrison described Cotton as a “maggot, infested man” while collectively calling out the Republican Party and labeling it a political party “built on fraud, fear, and fascism.”

Almost immediately after Harrison made the remarks, the Republican National Committee (RNC) fired back with a response. But instead of criticizing the Democratic official for his charge about the party, the RNC focused more on his remarks targeting Cotton. In a newly published op-ed, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank highlighted the seemingly odd argument from the party.

"Interestingly, a statement from the Republican National Committee taking offense at the 'maggot-infested' charge did not dispute the “fraud, fear and fascism” formulation," Milbank wrote. "As your self-appointed fact-checker, I have therefore examined the merits of the accusation."

So, Milbank decided to discuss those three keypoints as he highlighted how they factually relate to the Republican Party. In reference to fraud, Milbank highlighted the irony Republicans' claims of fraud as he noted the evidence of fraud that has been uncovered actually proves it was likely committed by members of their own party.

"The 'big lie' about a rigged election, accepted by two-thirds of Republican voters, has spawned new frauds about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines (leading to sharply higher death rates in heavily Republican counties) and the promise, touted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of the deworming drug ivermectin to treat covid-19; an exhaustive new study finds the drug useless," he wrote.

He went on to offer an example of the type offearmongering Republicans are responsible for invoking. "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)," Milbank highlighted, "said people like Ketanji Brown Jackson become public defenders because 'their heart is with the murderers.' Cotton said Justice Robert H. Jackson 'left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.'”

Milbank also noted recent remarks made by Ohio Senate Republican candidate J.D. Vance. In a recent ad, hesaid, “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Assessing Republican lawmakers' opposition to a resolution in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Milbank explained how their perspective aligns with fascism. "Sixty-three House Republicans — 30 percent of the caucus — voted against a resolution this week affirming unequivocal support for NATO as authoritarian Russia attacks democratic Ukraine," he wrote.

On another note, he added, "A Republican National Committee resolution, never rescinded, refers to the Capitol insurrection not as an authoritarian attempt to overthrow democracy and keep the defeated Trump in power but as legitimate political discourse.' And Trump expresses regret he didn’t march to the Capitol with the insurrectionists."

He concluded, "Is the GOP 'a party built on fraud, fear, and fascism'? Certainly, not all Republicans think this way. But too many others are subverting democracy, cavorting with white nationalists, spreading racist fears and fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment for political opponents and the media. For them, the jackboot fits."

an 3 22

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), like many other Republican lawmakers, has made this week’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings for justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson into more of a political circus than a professional inquisition.

From subtly misogynistic insinuations the blatantly racist remarks, Republican lawmakers have been deeply criticized for their treatment of Jackson.

Now, The Daily Beast's Matthew Fuller is offering an unfiltered breakdown of all that has transpired this week. At one point during the 200th episode of The Daily Beast podcast, "The New Abnormal," Fuller joined the panel to speak with the show's co-host Andy Levy as they rehashed the Republican senator's bizarre behavior.

Fuller, who bluntly describes Republican lawmakers' actions as "the full-flavored version" of “straight racism," weighed in with his reaction to the grotesque displays during the confirmation hearings.

"I think I expected it to be maybe a little bit more coded, a little bit more dog whistle-y," Fuller said. "'Certainly, I knew that they were gonna bring up stupid things like critical race theory. I didn’t expect the line of attack to be just so overtly racist, with false suggestions that 'Jackson is soft on crime, she’s soft on child pornographers' even though her sentencing practices were well in line with the average sentences people were getting.'”

Fuller went on to express concern about the bigger problem as he noted the real reason for Republican lawmakers' antics during the confirmation hearings.

“But the broader issue,” Fuller explains, “is Republicans know Democrats have all the votes. At the end of the day, I'd be very surprised if Jackson is not confirmed, and confirmed with probably a couple Republican votes. They know that, and the hearing is just about scoring points, which is why you see Cruz giving his speech and then checking his Twitter mentions. This isn’t about actually moving people. This is about raising money. This is about adding to their own clout. And it’s been frankly a pretty disgusting confirmation.”

how much is (legit? felt?) fear and how much devil term cudgel // commie?

stop steal and coup fueled by qanon wingnuttery? that in turn spawned by (russian) disinfo?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/gop-qanon/

Over the last few years, QAnon has slowly infiltrated the Republican Party, replacing its traditional conservative values with far-right conspiratorial theories that have nothing to do with reality.

Now, NY Mag's Jacob Silverman is explaining how QAnon has practically overtaken the Republican Party. While the radicalized beliefs were previously verbalized among factions of the political party, Silverman notes how those beliefs are progressively becoming more mainstream.

"QAnon’s adherents tend to espouse some selection of bizarre beliefs from the conspiracist’s buffet that includes accusations of pedophile politicians eating children, secret political tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, a great bloodletting, and Donald Trump swooping in to free us from evil. One day. Or maybe the day after. The prophecy is flexible, which is why it has evolved and endured."

Explaining the timeline of the political party's downward spiral, Silverman noted how the actions of Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, are an example of the radical shift in Republican values and belief systems.

"The latest exemplar of the GOP’s descent into anything-goes nuttery is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a well-connected conservative activist who recently admitted to attending the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C.," he writes. "Ginni’s right-wing beliefs have long been known, but leaked texts between her and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed Thomas’ commitment to overturning the election, based on an apparently sincere belief that Joe Biden had stolen the presidency. She encouraged Meadows to help put a stop to Democratic perfidy. 'The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,' went one message to Meadows, encouraging him to stand strong."

Silverman is also highlighting Republican lawmakers' latest actions that signal the party's shift toward more extremist beliefs.

"The signs of the Republican slide towardfull epistemic crackup are all around us," Silverman writes. "One can see it everywhere lately, not only in the 'why do you want to hurt children?'-type questions hurled by Republican senators at Jackson, but also in the revanchist anti-LGBTQ laws being introduced in Texas and Florida and in fearful talk of teachers 'grooming' children on Fox News. Theginned-up moral panic, centered around the child exploitation themes that helped give life to QAnon, is now a regular part of Republican political rhetoric."

an 3 22

Dark money groups have silently influenced election campaigns for many years but now some are complaining because it appears the tables have turned. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks from political action committees (PACs) raising concerns about U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown.

On February 4, the Judicial Crisis Network released an ad that included a voiceover that said:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s “justices were to uphold the Constitution, to be above politics. Now, that legacy is being tarnished by secret money from liberals … a record amount of dark money, over a billion, put them [Democrats] in office, so they will put up an Arabella judge, a liberal activist, a Biden rubber stamp." [twt?]

then, on February 25, American Rising Squared tweeted, “Dark money groups, including Demand Justice, have been pushing Ketanji Brown Jackson for a SCOTUS spot for over a year. Once again, Joe Biden delivered for dark money groups and their wealthy donors.”

While it's not surprising that Republican conservatives are sounding off about the possibility of a Black woman joining the Supreme Court, Kessler highlighted the real problem with the groups' complaints: hypocrisy. According to Kessler, the same group complaining about Brown is actually funded by dark money themselves.

"What do the Judicial Crisis Network and American Rising Squared have in common?" Kessler asked, adding, "They are both 'dark money' groups complaining about the influence of dark money — when it comes from the other side of the political spectrum."

Offering facts about both groups, Kessler explained the pipeline funding both organizations.

He wrote:

"The conservative Judicial Crisis Network works to fill judicial vacancies across the country, including in state supreme courts and appellate courts. It received $17.9 million in 2016 and $17.1 million in 2017 from an undisclosed donor (or maybe two). It then turned around and used that money (and other contributions) to fight against the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 ($7 million) and for the nominations of Neil M. Gorsuch ($10 million), Brett M. Kavanaugh ($10 million) and Amy Coney Barrett ($10 million)."

Kessler also noted the problem with American Rising Squared and its own hypocrisy. "American Rising Squared’s tweet at least just focuses on Demand Justice," Kessler wrote. "But still, it’s another example of a conservative dark money group complaining about dark money."

He concluded with his take on the level of hypocrisy expressed between both organizations. "We can only marvel at the hypocrisy of these attacks. Perhaps the point is that only liberal dark money is a bad thing," Kessler wrote. "But if these groups are going to air such complaints, they need to disclose they engage in the same practice of collecting huge sums of money without revealing donors. They earn an upside-down Pinocchio — which is ordinarily for flip-flops — for their hypocrisy."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/judicial-crisis-network/discredited-dark-money-group-behind-baseless-claim-bidens-scotus-nominee

no lnx twt beck pow

Discredited dark money group is behind the baseless claim that Biden’s SCOTUS nominee is a “left-wing dark money” puppet

WRITTEN BY CYDNEY HARGIS

PUBLISHED 02/25/22

Earlier this month, the right-wingJudicial Crisis Network (JCN) launched a baseless smear campaign claiming President Joe Biden’s eventual Supreme Court nominee would be supposedly “payback” in a dark money conspiracy.Now that the nominee has been announced as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, this false narrative is being directed by JCN at the judge, and starting to spread among Republican politicians and right-wing media figures.

The Judicial Crisis Network is a widely discredited right-wing judicial advocacy organization founded in 2005 that supports the confirmation of conservative judges and has repeatedly lobbed dishonest attacks against Democratic judicial and executive nominees in an attempt to derail their confirmations. The dark money group has also served as a messaging enforcer in service of Republican nominees, most notably former President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court justices. As recent reporting has confirmed, it is an integral part of the well-funded conservative activist ecosystem that has dedicated itself to packing the federal judiciary with extremist right-wing reactionaries.

On February 3, JCN launched a $2.5 million ad buy claiming that whomever Biden nominates to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s Supreme Court seat would be a “huge payback” to a philanthropic consulting firm for a “record amount of dark money spent” by progressive groups to help elect Biden and Senate Democrats. JCN’s original ad baselessly claimed that Biden and the Senate were bankrolled by these social impact advisers, which was revised after the firm sent defamation letters to stations airing the ad pointing out that it “has not donated to any political campaigns — and, as a corporation, is legally barred from doing so.” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino has nevertheless relentlessly pushed the wild claim on Twitter, and turned it against Judge Jackson on the morning of February 25.

Minutes after Biden formally announced Jackson’s historic nomination on Twitter, some Republican politicians and conservative media figures began repeating JCN's smear in an shameless effort to smear her as a supposedly corrupt choice: [beck]

Judicial Crisis Network’s line of attack about “dark money” is not new. Jackson faced similar questions during her confirmation process to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2021. She made it clear during the hearing that she does not “rule with partisan advantage in mind,” nor does she “craft [her] decisions in order to try to gain influence.” Jackson was confirmed with bipartisan support, including from Republican senators still serving today.

Judicial Crisis Network’s and right-wing media’s dishonest attempts to claim that Jackson was nominated merely because of “dark money” interests are nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to derail the first Black woman nominated to the Court and ignore the fact that Jackson is extremely qualified for the job. During her career, Jackson clerked for three federal jurists including Breyer, served as a public defender, and sat on both the district court and court of appeals in D.C.

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-says-ketanji-brown-jacksons-nomination-part-effort-humiliate-and-degrade

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/tucker-carlson-2656832200/