Ginni Thomas Is a Victim of Donald Trump’s Alleged Crimes

Consider the following hypothetical: Suppose Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s husband happened to be a well-known crypto advocate and an early investor in Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX. As you may have heard, the exchange collapsed, and SBF was recently convicted of criminal fraud; he intends to appeal. Now suppose that the case ends up before the Supreme Court.

Under those circumstances, is there any question that Justice Jackson would need to recuse herself from the case? After all, her husband could be either a co-conspirator or a victim. Either way, he — and she, by extension — has an interest in the outcome of the prosecution.

Florida Bill Would Ban Communities From Flying LGBTQ Pride Flags

New legislation offered by a Republican lawmaker in Florida could bar local governments and their offices from flying LGBTQ Pride Flags.

House Bill 901, authored by far right Rep. David Borrero (R), does not directly state that it is targeting Pride Flags in particular, but critics have pointed out that Borrero and other GOP lawmakers attempted to pass similar legislation earlier this year, and that his public statements strongly suggest that LGBTQ flags are the likely targets of the bill.

Elon Musk Reinstates Alex Jones’ Account On X

Elon Musk reinstated notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ account on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday amid the billionaire’s continued loss of advertisers on the platform.

“Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform? Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk, who owns X after buying the social media platform for $44 billion last year, said in a post on Saturday. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”

‘Plain historical falsehoods’: How amicus briefs bolstered Supreme Court conservatives

Princeton Professor Robert P. George, a leader of the conservative legal movement and confidant of the judicial activist and Donald Trump ally Leonard Leo, made the case for overturning Roe v. Wade in an amicus brief a year before the Supreme Court issued its watershed ruling.

Roe, George claimed, had been decided based on “plain historical falsehoods.” For instance, for centuries dating to English common law, he asserted, abortion has been considered a crime or “a kind of inchoate felony for felony-murder purposes.”

‘Go fuck yourself!’ Elon Musk tells fleeing advertisers

Elon Musk has a message for advertisers who have left X en masse amid accusations of unchecked antisemitism on the social media platform: "Go fuck yourself."

“If somebody has been trying to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself,” Musk said during an animated interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday.

Musk has faced criticism over the spread of disinformation and hate content on X since he bought the company formerly known as Twitter. That culminated in an advertiser exodus in recent weeks, as posts about the Israel-Hamas war spread.

Elon Musk hurls defiant, profanity-laced retort at fleeing advertisers

Elon Musk has issued a defiant and profanity-laced message for the advertisers who pulled money from X in recent weeks amid a backlash over his endorsement of an antisemitic tweet and reports of increased hate speech on the platform.

Video of the interview, which was widely circulated, showed that Musk said, “Don’t advertise,” on Wednesday during an on-stage interview at an event in New York. “If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”

‘Go F**k Yourself:’ Elon Musk Tells Companies That Have Paused X Ad Buys To Leave

Elon Musk told companies that have paused ad buys on X to “go fuck” yourselves, saying an ongoing boycott would likely “kill the company” but the world would judge who was at fault.

“If somebody’s going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself,” Musk said during the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

He then seemed to call out Disney CEO Bob Iger by name after the company was one of many to pause its ad spending.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's New Book Reads Like 1 Thing, Says Searing Guardian Review

A new book by far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) “duly reads like an audition for the No 2 slot on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket,” according to a scathing review published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Venom, score-settling, fiction, self-absolution, self-aggrandizement. Greene’s book, ‘MTG,’ has it all,” former Justice Department attorney Lloyd Green wrote in the critique, published Sunday.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Warning On ‘Normal vs. Crazy’ Gets Flipped In Viral Video

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ (R) warning about the future of America is flipped back on Republicans in a new viral video from the MeidasTouch Network.

The 77-second clip begins with Sanders ― who during her two-year tenure as Donald Trump’s White House press secretary was repeatedly called out for falsehoods ― telling a crowd that: “The truth is, it’s not even a question anymore between right and left. It is normal vs. crazy.”

Mike Johnson Once Said Only God Gives Authority for Presidents to Take Office

At a Baptist church in Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana in 2019, the then-relatively unknown House member preached on his beliefs on the relationship between the Christian God and the government. In an unearthed video recording, highlighted by Accountable.US in research provided exclusively to Truthout, Johnson hailed his conviction that God, and no one else, gives presidents and the government authority.

“Donald Trump was allowed to become the president by God,” Johnson said in his April 28, 2019 address to the First Baptist Church Haughton. “So was Barack Obama. So was every previous President. This is real clear right here, if you believe the Bible as I do, it says God allows this. He chooses and creates and lifts up some and allows others. But He’s sovereign and He’s in control.”

Danielle Smith Says the Darndest Things

Last week Danielle Smith was interviewed by Matt Galloway, the host of CBC’s The Current. Listening to her, I was reminded of Art Linkletter’s show Kids Say the Darndest Things. Unfortunately the things Smith said weren’t funny.

Here’s a sample.

Leaving CPP

Smith said Alberta is entitled to 53 per cent of the Canada Pension Plan’s assets and that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s number of 16 per cent was pulled out of the air.

Clarence Thomas May Have Had A Quarter-Million Dollar RV Loan Forgiven: Senate Inquiry

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas never paid back the full amount of a quarter-million-plus loan that financed his high-end RV, according to an investigation by Senate Democrats.

A report that Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee released on Wednesday found that the Supreme Court justice, who has been the subject of multiple ethics questions this year relating to gifts from wealthy friends and associates, “never repaid” a friend’s $267,230 loan in full after using the money to purchase a high-end Prevost Marathon Le Mirage XL RV in 1999. 

Clarence Thomas failed to fully repay $267,000 loan for luxury RV, inquiry finds

The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas failed to repay much – or possibly all – of a “sweetheart deal” to borrow more than $267,000 to buy a luxury motor home, a Senate committee found.

The existence of the $267,230 loan, made by the businessman Anthony Welters in 1999 and forgiven in 2008, was first reported by the New York Times. On Wednesday, the Times quoted Michael Hamersley, a tax lawyer and congressional expert witness, as saying “‘this was, in short, a sweetheart deal’ that made no logical sense from a business perspective”.

Twitter Gave Us an Indispensable Real-Time News Platform. X Took It Away

I first began using Twitter, now X, after the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, when I could not find my family. I was in Washington, D.C. Within days of the earthquake, hundreds of volunteers, using a crisis-mapping platform called Ushahidi (Swahili for “witness”), began logging calls for help via cellphone texts and Twitter, putting them on a map and sending that information to search and rescue teams. I only found my family because Facebook and Twitter worked even when their phones and email did not.

Saskatchewan Joins Alberta in Backing Government Law-Breaking

I’ve been away, and I’m a little jet-lagged, but it seems to me that we’ve just seen the first use of the Alberta Sovereignty Act. 

By the government of Saskatchewan.

On Monday, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced provincial gas utility SaskEnergy won’t collect or submit the federal carbon tax on natural gas used to heat homes starting on Jan. 1.

Senate Democrats Want To Subpoena Harlan Crow Over Ties To Clarence Thomas

Republican Texas billionaire Harlan Crow could soon receive a subpoena to produce information about his relationship with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the Judiciary Committee steps up its ethics probe into the high court.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), who chairs the panel, and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), who heads a subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights, on Monday announced they would hold a vote to authorize subpoenas for Crow, conservative legal activist Leonard Leo and GOP donor Robin Arkley II.

Florida orders universities to ‘deactivate’ pro-Palestinian group

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.

In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a “crack down” on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups” like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October. Florida, under Republican presidential candidate DeSantis, has staunchly supported Israel during the ongoing war and was monitoring college protests that have since ignited.

Adidas chief exec: Kanye West ‘didn’t mean what he said’ with antisemitic comments

Bjørn Gulden, chief executive of Adidas, has lamented the end of the company’s lucrative partnership with Kanye West, saying, “I don’t think he meant what he said,” regarding the rapper’s antisemitic comments in October 2022.

West, who has changed his name to Ye, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he was “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE … You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda”. On Instagram, he posted a screenshot of a conversation with Diddy, where he wrote: “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” Ye had caused further anger earlier that month by including T-shirts with the slogan White Lives Matter in a Yeezy fashion show in Paris.

Viktor Orbán’s pet university is all about propaganda – I know, I was there

Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), the conservative Hungarian educational institution funded by Viktor Orbán’s rightwing government, has been expanding internationally. It opened a centre in Brussels, bought a university in Vienna and has plans for new branches in other western European cities, including London.

I did a fellowship with MCC in Budapest last year and am concerned about the institution’s expansion. Its views are closely aligned with those of Orbán, and it funds academics who disseminate Orbán’s positions. In a way, it serves to extend his influence across Europe and beyond.

‘A marriage of convenience’: Why the pushback against a key spy program could cave in on progressive

An unlikely coalition of progressive and hard-right conservative lawmakers came together this year to push for overhauling a powerful government spying authority. But as the time approaches to take action, cracks are starting to show.

Republicans and Democrats who have backed each other’s ideas in hearings and collaborated on working groups are starting to stake out different positions about what reforms are really needed for the program, which allows government spies to snoop on the emails and other electronic communications of foreigners abroad.