Brad and Dan begin by discussing the explusion of two members of the Tennessee legislature - Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson - after they led gun violence protests in the state Capitol. It's a case of systemic racism, a desire to keep young Black leaders in line, and an attempt to squash the voices of peaceful protesters.
In the second segment they break down the bombshell story that Clarence Thomas has been accepting lavish gifts from a GOP megadonor for years.
In the final segment, they discuss the Trump arraignment and what it means going forward.
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Axis Mundy You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
*outro music* Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Here today on a sunny Friday morning for Dan, I'm here with my co-host.
I am Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And in the Northeast, it is sunny today.
And I wasn't sure what to do, Brad, with this sort of flaming orb in the sky that doesn't come out at this time of year.
So it's a little bit strange.
Yeah, and I know you're a creature of the winter, so you're probably melting at the moment.
I think I already have a sunburn.
It was like 70 degrees yesterday and I didn't put on sunscreen, so I'm already in trouble.
Yeah.
All right.
As usual, we've got a lot to talk about, but I'm not going to lie, Dan.
There's weeks here, at this time of year especially, when we do this show early in the morning on Friday and that alarm hits on Friday morning and I'm like, oh man, it's going to be a long day, right?
And then there's days where you're so angry.
And you're so ready to talk that you're almost waiting for that alarm to buzz so you can get up and go discuss something.
And that's kind of how I feel today.
I really dug in last night to what happened in Tennessee.
I mean, I'd been digging in all week, but I really spent most of my night last night just totally honed in on everything happening there.
I want to talk about what happened in Tennessee with the expulsion of two members of the Tennessee legislature, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and then the non-expulsion, the attempted but non-expulsion of the failed expulsion of Gloria Johnson.
We'll get into that.
Bombshell story that hit yesterday, and that's Clarence Thomas taking lavish gifts.
I mean, more money than you and I make in a decade from a GOP donor and what that means and Ginny Thomas and the whole ongoing saga there and what it means for the Supreme Court and its legitimacy.
And then we'll get into, I don't know, Dan, I guess a former president was arraigned this week and I don't know, he showed up in New York and there was some shouting and there was a congressperson across the street who likes attention, who was yelling.
And I guess that happened.
So we'll talk about that too.
And we'll get into it.
So before we do that, I want to say we have two announcements.
One is, sign up for the seminar on Peer-to-Culture White Supremacy with Sarah Mosener.
You'll see all that at our website.
Starts April 27, and it's going to be amazing.
Sarah's just great, and you should really think about doing that if you want to learn more about the history of race and racism or peer-to-culture or both in the country.
The other is something I'm really excited about, and that is our new weekly newsletter.
We have a sub-stack, and that sub-stack's called The Swadge Good News, and you can sign up for that.
The newsletter basically will contain all of the research links, all the reading that Dan and I do throughout the week.
Some of you have asked us, like, how do you guys put together this show?
Basically, Dan receives about 78 emails from me every week that contain articles I think might be good for us to talk about, whether that's articles from The New York Times or The New Republic or Mother Jones or Rolling Stone or, you know, any number of sources.
I mean, and then local sources, The Tennessean and Desiree News.
Uh, all those places.
Dan sends me about 56 emails a week and basically at the, you know, come Thursday, we have to really think through what we want to talk about and how we want to do it.
So.
What this will do friends is give you, uh, uh, all, most of the links we kind of sort through every week.
And if you want to dig deeper into something we talked about, or you want to know about stories we didn't talk about and, um, you want to dig into those, uh, this'll be a somewhat curated set of, of.
of links to, uh, to articles and, and, and journalism and other stuff.
So check out our, um, our, uh, our newsletter, all of you, uh, patrons are going to receive that, uh, many of you have signed up for it already, but, uh, I'm excited about that, Dan, cause I think it gives people a window into kind of our process and, um, uh, a chance to have a curated set of, of, uh, news links that a chance to have a curated set of, of, uh, news links that they can go through without having to kind of maybe check, you know, 18 or 25 different, uh,
So anyway, I'm pretty excited and they'll get to see some of the chaos behind how we do all of this, which may be good or bad.
I don't know what you think.
All right, let's do it.
Let's talk about Tennessee, Dan.
Okay, so There was good news this week.
Let's just not forget that.
And that good news was that in Wisconsin, Janet Protasewicz won her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
I want to say this because I think it's going to come back to us today.
She won as somebody who openly talked about Reproductive rights and gerrymandered districts.
And she ran basically on the openness about those issues.
There was also a big win in Chicago for progressives in the mayoral race.
And I want to come back to both of those briefly in a second.
But what we really need to get into right now is what happened in Tennessee.
So Let's recap.
A couple of weeks ago, there is a mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, and we talked about it on the show, and I'm sure all of you have heard and thought and mourned that event since then.
Now, in the ensuing days, the Tennessee legislature Did nothing.
The Tennessee legislature, the state legislature, is about three quarters Republican and one quarter Democrat.
And in ways that should surprise no one, the three quarters Republican supermajority made no overture toward any kind of gun legislation or gun reform.
I mean, we even talked about a representative from Nashville who said, we're not going to fix it.
Okay.
So what happened on March 30th, and this is at the Tennessean by Vivian Jones and Melissa Brown, is that more than a thousand peaceful protesters rallied around Tennessee State Capitol.
They wanted more restrictive gun laws.
Many made their way in to the Capitol in a demonstration, top Republican lawmakers have likened to an insurrection.
So one of the things we need to get clear is that the Republican supermajority and the leadership in the state legislature in Tennessee have likened this to an insurrection.
Now let's be clear.
And this is from Jones and Brown at the Tennessean.
No demonstrators broke into the Capitol.
No one is arrested or injured and no property was damaged.
Okay.
No one broke in, no one arrested, no property damaged.
Now, what did happen is the legislative business in the House was brought to a halt when three elected Democratic representatives stood at the podium with a bullhorn to lead protesters in the galleries and calls for gun reform.
So, the three, now known as the Tennessee Three, were Justin Jones, who is from Nashville, Justin Pearson from Memphis, and Gloria Johnson from Knoxville.
Um, now once again, I just want to repeat Tennessee Highway Patrol confirms no one arrested, no injuries, no property damage, none of that business.
However, House Speaker Cameron Sexton immediately recessed the chamber when all this happened and halted legislative business for nearly an hour before it resumed and ordered security to clear the house galleries.
So Dan, What happened was is three representatives essentially brought the normal business of the legislature to a halt.
And we're leading protesters calling for gun reform now.
Gonna say it again.
No arrests, no injuries, no one pushing.
No one seemed to have weapons they were trying to use.
No one broke a window.
No one attacked a police officer.
No one attacked a representative.
Okay.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the events on March 30th to, and I'm quoting now, at least equivalent or maybe worse than the events at the U.S.
Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
Okay.
Now, the reaction to this this protest was the call to expel the three members who did this.
OK, so Gloria Johnson is a white woman.
She's about 60 years old.
And then you have Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, who are both black men, and they are some of the youngest legislatures in the country.
I believe Justin Pearson is like 29 at this point, born in 1994.
So these are young black men, right?
at this point, born in 1994.
Okay.
So these are young black men, right?
So the call is to expel them, not to arrest them, not to censure them, not to take them off committees, but to expel them from the legislature, meaning that their districts would temporarily have no representatives, that the people that voted for them would be out of luck and that the people that voted for them would be out of luck and they would have to send new representatives Now, the last expulsions from the Tennessee legislature, Dan, 2016, removal of Representative Jerry Durham,
For sexually inappropriate behavior involving 22 women.
Before that, a lawmaker was expelled in 1980 for soliciting a bribe to kill a bill.
So bribery, you know, and sexually inappropriate behavior with 22 women.
Those are the reasons the last two people were expelled.
And guess what, Dan?
They were the last two expelled since the Civil War.
Okay?
Since the Civil War.
Now, yesterday, uh, the, the vote on expulsion took place and, uh, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee legislature.
Two young black elected officials.
Gloria Johnson was not.
Uh, and when asked about it, um, I'll give you her quote.
She said it might have to do with the color of my skin.
Uh, so Dan, there's a lot to talk about here.
I have like, I have a whole.
Books full of thoughts.
I'll, you know, I'll throw it to you just for a second.
I've been talking a long time.
Do you have initial thoughts on this?
How did this hit you when you saw it?
And, and, you know, what are, what are some just like, you know, rapid fire reactions?
Yeah.
So unlike you, there's so many and they're hard to sort of sort out as you're running through it.
You know, the first thing when the speaker, you know, sort of halts business, clears the gallery, like, okay, like that's a, that's a response that you expect, especially if you're opposed to the people that are doing this.
But then the rest, it goes, you know, sort of full-on nuclear option.
When I first saw the headlines for these about Tennessee lawmakers expelled from the state legislature, at first, like, in my head, I was like, does this mean, like, physically removed?
Like, they called the sergeant of arms and said, remove these people, they're out of order, like, whatever?
Or does it mean, like, expelled, expelled?
Because you kind of can't get your head around it.
You're like, surely they're not going to be this brazen and ridiculous about Basically, a white supermajority of Republicans expelling two notable black members of the opposing party.
Nope, that's what they did.
They kicked them out of the legislature, as you've just highlighted.
I think the things that hit me is, number one, again, I just called it the nuclear option, right?
There are all of these mechanisms that can take place for this.
And usually, if it goes to the extreme of removing somebody from Congress or even a state legislature as well, you've got like investigations and ethics hearings and lots of stuff that for the regular person like you and me is super boring and drawn out and it takes a long time.
This was none of that.
This was just a sort of reaction.
My initial response was the same as the person who wasn't removed that, gee, I wonder why these two figures in particular were targeted and removed.
We talk a lot.
I talk a lot about politics being about feeling, about being perception, about perception, right?
The way that we feel society should be.
And I think that this To me is very clear this notion of like, oh, here are two black men who are just out of place, right?
They didn't belong here to begin with.
We can find coded ways to get around the fact that they're black.
Maybe they're too young or maybe they're too out of touch with Tennesseans or whatever.
But the issue is that they're black and they're here.
And they're vocal and they're out of place and they are, pardon my language, but this is the effect that I think is there.
They're just too uppity.
They're uppity black men and we are going to put them in their place.
And if they won't stay in their place, which is quietly in the chair while we don't do anything about these shootings.
Remember that one of these people is from, he represents Nashville, right?
We're not just going to censure them.
We're not just going to, you know, strip them of committee chairs or the other disciplinary things we could do or chair.
They wouldn't be chairs, but committee positions.
We are going to remove them from the legislature entirely.
It's just another one of these things where, you know, sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.
And I think the issue of race here is the glaring red light flashing that everybody can see.
And I think nobody should underestimate the significance of Representatives from a party that we say constantly, more and more sort of does the quiet part out loud, that is just sort of unleashed and no longer secretive about their aims of what they want for the country, what kind of country they think this is.
It's right there on the surface.
We don't like having black people in our legislature, so we'll just not allow them to be here anymore.
And I think it is, those are my initial reactions.
And it's, I think it is, you know, as straightforward as that.
So just to kind of back up what you said, when Justin Pearson was sworn in to the legislature, he wore dashiki.
And he did so and talked about how wearing that is part of a sign of resistance.
He wears his hair in an afro.
He talks about that being a sign of resistance as well.
And when he wore the dashiki, Dan, he was called out by a middle-aged white state legislature for breaking decorum.
Now, there's no official rules about this, about what you have to wear, but he was told that he was out of line, as you just said.
And then the Tennessee House Republicans tweeted this.
Referencing the bipartisan and unanimously approved rules for house decorum and dress attire is far from a racist attack.
If you don't like rules, perhaps you should explore a different career opportunity.
So that's when he was sworn in.
If you don't like, I mean, it just, everything you just said about being out of line and all this, right?
Okay.
I want to stop.
I want to play a really short clip of Justin Jones, who is a representative from Nashville, one of the members who was expelled.
And his words yesterday were just powerful.
So it's about a 45 second clip.
And let me, let me play that for you.
So today we are brought to here.
Where members are responding in the most extreme measure, not because of what we did, but because by breaking the quorum, we broke the glass of your false power for the world to see.
We broke the glass of this chamber that someone called sacred.
One of the members on the other side of the aisle was in tears and said, I've never seen such a breach of this sacred chamber.
And I thought to myself, that representative has obviously never read history.
Because as it is in this chamber, if you walk around this Capitol, you'll see bullet holes when representatives got into conflict.
You'll see duels take place on this House floor, debating whether people like me should be treated like equal citizens under law.
This is not a temple.
This is a place where we're supposed to wrestle for our democracy and wrestle ideas and give voice to 78,000 constituents each of us represents.
All right, so he talks about in that clip just I think ways, you know, everything we're going to say, Dan, and obviously way more personal and eloquent manner.
And I just coming from that, I want to make a couple of points.
Number one, you just said this, and I think it's worth saying again.
It's a perception of insurrection.
I mean, this guy Cameron Sexton, who's the House Speaker, said that he thought that they basically, I mean, these are his words, they basically tried to take over the House floor and cause an insurrection.
Now, an insurrection is trying to overthrow a government, right?
It's trying to say, we're going to overthrow the government.
We're going to overthrow an election.
Oh, you elected Joe Biden?
Sorry, we're putting in Donald Trump.
Okay, that's what an insurrection is, right?
It's this was a protest.
Now, I know you're like, you're getting very semantic, and I'm actually not.
I'm actually not.
You can protest what a government is doing.
You can disrupt, right, a process.
You can disrupt business.
That is not trying to take away duly elected officials from their offices or You know, hurt them and kidnap them so you can be in office.
That's an insurrection.
To your point, the J6 insurrection was trying to overturn something that the government did or was in the process of doing.
There had been an election.
They are certifying the election.
This is a protest about government in action.
So, I mean, just as you say, people can say it's semantic.
It's not.
It's literally not remotely the same thing that they're trying to do.
In terms of what it is that they're trying to bring about.
Overturning something that the people had decided to do versus trying to symbolically signal to a legislature what they should do.
Very, very different kinds of actions.
I mentioned this before, but if we think about Representative Johnson, not expelled, 60-year-old white woman, asked about it, might have to do with the color of my skin.
Afterwards, Justin Pearson, one of the expelled members, says, you cannot ignore the racial dynamic of what happened today.
Two young black lawmakers get expelled and the one white woman does not.
OK?
So, I mean, I don't, we could ask, and I know there's been people trying to justify this, why Gloria Johnson wasn't expelled and she didn't do what they did or something.
They were all standing up there, Dan, holding a bull.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe she didn't take the bullhorn.
Maybe she was just standing next to them.
So that's what they are going to say.
It's really hard to ignore the racial stuff that you just talked about.
Uh, let's play a clip from, from Justin Pearson himself, who along with Justin Jones is just a powerful, powerful orator.
And he talks in this clip about, uh, being expelled for protesting.
So let's, let's hear that now.
All right.
So in that clip minutes.
We and you are seeking to expel District 86's representation from this house.
In a country that was built on a protest.
In a country that was built on a protest.
You who celebrate July 4th, 1776.
Pop fireworks and eat hot dogs.
You say to protest is wrong because you spoke out of turn, because you spoke up for people who are marginalized.
You spoke up for children who won't ever be able to speak again.
You spoke up for parents who don't want to live in fear.
You spoke up for Larry Thorne who was murdered by gun violence.
You spoke up for people that we don't want to care about in a country built on people who speak out of turn, who spoke out of turn, who fought out of turn to build a nation.
So in that clip, Dan, he says that you are going to expel me for a protest, not an insurrection, not violence, not trying to hurt other people for protest in a country based on protest.
I mean, he's calling them out.
He's like, you want to go down there to the 4th of July and eat hot dogs?
You want to celebrate a protest and then expel me for protest?
Are you serious?
Now, I want to remind everyone that Justin Pearson is a representative from Memphis.
Memphis is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was assassinated 55 years ago this week, April 4th, Tuesday.
That was the 55th anniversary of his assassination.
He was shot in Memphis because why was he there?
He was there for a sanitation worker strike.
He was there to protest.
Okay.
So here's Justin Pearson from the same city, a young black man also protesting.
And I want to remind everyone that Martin Luther King Jr., the day before, the night before his assassination, he gives the mountaintop speech.
And in the mountaintop speech, he says, right, if I were not promised freedom of speech and freedom of religion and the freedom to assembly, I wouldn't expect them.
But I was promised that in the United States.
If I lived in a country like Soviet Russia where I was not promised that, maybe I would not expect it.
And he has this line in that speech where he says, what I was told is in America, you have the right to protest for rights.
And if you have not, if you have not watched the Martin Luther King Jr.
Mountaintop speech, you need to carve out 20 minutes tonight and go to YouTube and watch it, please.
OK.
And he says, I.
Was told America was a place you have the right to protest for your rights.
That's basically what Justin Pearson says in this speech.
A young representative from Memphis, 55 years later on the week that we mourn the assassination of King's death.
Ellie Mistel says, Dan, and I'm curious what you think that there's no need to even teach CRT because no one ever did in the first place in schools, but the Tennessee legislature basically gave everybody a lesson in what if you want to know what CRT is, you know what it is?
You expel the black legislature legislators when they get out of line and you don't let them contribute to your your state's laws and policies.
So when they break decorum, when they don't act in a civil way, you get rid of them.
That's CRT.
Now there's no longer any any voice.
I mean, there are still representatives of color in the Tennessee legislature, but you're getting rid of those who would act in a way that you think is just simply disruptive, right?
I mean, that's just what Ellie Mistel is like right on point there.
It's really something.
One or two more points and then I'll stop.
The Tennessee legislature, Dan, this week decided that they were going to do something.
And they, along with the governor, there's these now these proposals that they're going to arm, have armed guards in every school, that they're going to do things to buff up security and all this stuff.
And what they said, right, is that we cannot control evil, but we can do something.
This goes to so much of what you talk about and it's in the code and legislating evil.
Their, their reactions at first were like, we can't, we can't do anything about gun violence.
It's just, you know, people are mentally ill and what are you going to do?
Right.
And now after all this pressure, it's like, well, we can do something, but guess what?
The something involves nothing to curb putting handheld killing machines in the hands.
Of people in Tennessee, nothing.
So it's all like other stuff.
So it's it's right.
We can do something.
It's just we're not going to do anything about guns.
And I want to just not forget the whole protest was about gun violence.
Justin Jones said in his speech in another part of it, I was protesting for your kids and your grandkids.
You want to expel me?
I was protesting for your kids and your grandkids because they might be The victims of gun violence next time for a generation.
It doesn't matter who you are or where you are in what school you go to.
This could happen to you.
So I was protesting for you.
So here's a man who's protesting about handheld killing machines that are terrorizing schools and other parts of our society.
And the Tennessee legislature filled with Conservative folks, many of whom are Christian nationalists, do not want to do anything to disrupt the flow of guns.
Why?
And I'll just say it again, because we said it like, what, two weeks ago?
The fear of the white Christian nationalists is that they won't have the weapons to put things back in order.
They need to be the ones who have the authority.
They're so afraid that they won't be able to expel you if they need to or use violence to get you back in order.
So they're never going to touch the guns.
They will never touch the handheld killing machines because they need them because they're so scared, right?
Of anyone who shows up with a body or sexuality or a gender identity or a story that is not theirs.
They're so afraid of it.
So they need the handheld killing machines because they need to be able to come for you.
If it's time.
And so, yeah, we can't control evil, but we can do something, but we will never do something is what they're telling you about the handheld killing machines.
I got one more thing to say, but anyway, final thoughts on this.
So just one thing that I can't help think about is they'll have to have special elections now, right, to fill in these kind of things and things that I've read.
Obviously, I don't know the Tennessee Constitution.
I don't know the state law, but nothing prevents these people from You know, running for office again.
I can't help but think that they're likely to be reelected.
I hope that they are.
I can't imagine how fired up their constituents will be.
But I also read somebody who pointed out, who does know the Tennessee Constitution, that apparently you can't be expelled from the state legislature for the same thing twice.
And so I just cannot help but think in the future, like, if they can get back in, like, what does that do?
In principle, they could be as disruptive as they want in certain ways because, again, they've already sort of suffered the nuclear option.
I don't know if any of that will happen.
I'm not advocating going in just to cause trouble, whatever, but I sincerely hope that they are able to run and get these back and return as this kind of voice of conscience of the Tennessee legislature, which won't be able to keep Doing the same thing.
It's one of those of us who are parents know that there's always a risk that if you pull out the biggest disciplinary option first, it doesn't work.
You're kind of out of options.
I have an eye out for that in the future and it hopes that they can come back in and keep doing the work that they went there to do.
Well, you know, people pointed this out last night, but Marsha Blackburn, you better get ready, because I kind of think Justin Pearson or Justin Jones might be coming for your Senate seat.
That's what I, you know, that that could be on the horizon, too, because what just happened is that those who expelled these two young legislators created icons of, you know, the fight against gun violence, and they're not going anywhere anytime soon.
And so you better get ready, Marsha Blackburn, because your seat may not be safe Uh, so Sahil Kapoor tweets last night.
Remarkable how rapidly Tennessee ditched its moderate and not so partisan identity from Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker to Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty in two years.
And I just want to point out some of y'all ask me all the time, like, Hey, what's next for the, the, are we going to have a civil war?
And you know what?
What do you think this is?
It's not a civil war, but this is the little fire.
This is the little rumbling.
Okay.
It's really hard to have democracy.
If two legislatures, three legislatures uphold the business for an hour and they're expelled, it's really hard to have that.
Dan, I think, and this might sound crazy, but I think people might understand me here.
If they would have been arrested for like disorderly conduct or something, I think that would have been a more just outcome here.
Like literally, if you arrest those guys, if you arrest those three people, Johnson, Pearson, and Jones, and just say, all right, you're disrupting the public or something, and you hold them in jail for a night and they pay a fine, I'm almost like, okay, that's probably not, that's going too far.
That's not to me, anti-democratic in the way that it is to expel them from the legislature, right?
So anyway, it happened in two years in Tennessee.
Tennessee is so red, Dan.
It's like, it's so red.
It's hard to even like, and I talked to people there and they're just like, it's hard to see past it.
And it happened in two years.
Okay.
This is how it happens.
We can, we talk about Idaho all the time.
We could talk about what happened in Missouri this week.
We could talk about what happened in Florida.
Uh, we could have, but this is how it happened.
It happened in two years.
So if you think that, you know, a Biden presidency and whatever else is sort of staved off what happened on January 6th, I just, please be, please be aware of that.
And so I think that's something to, to keep in mind.
So.
We should take a break.
I'm going to go take a breath and we'll come back and get into Clarence Thomas.
Be right back.
All right, Dan.
Yesterday, bombshell story.
One that is incredibly unnerving and disappointing.
Perhaps not all that surprising.
What's going on with Clarence Thomas?
Yes, the story is sort of broken by an investigation by ProPublica, but like basically everybody in the world picked it up.
Clarence and Ginny Thomas, for those who don't know, I think all of us know by this point, Ginny Thomas, very, very active, right-wing activist, was involved, had to go speak before the J6 committee because of tweets and things like this.
This has become an issue related to Clarence Thomas, conservative Supreme Court justice for some time, right?
Issues of what, you know, the kinds of conversations that she has with right-wing groups and how this might impact him.
All of this is background.
What came out was, uh, information that, that Clarence and Ginny Thomas received really like high end vacations, private jet trips, different things like this, um, paid for by a GOP mega donor from the Dallas area named Harlan Crow.
And you sort of hinted at this.
I just, you know, I want all of us to sort of put in perspective, like, I don't know how much it costs to have a private jet and fly, you know, across the country or to a different country or something like that, but it's, it's an awful lot of money, uh, That's why most of us don't do it, right?
You're getting ready to get on a plane again for another speaking engagement.
I suspect.
We haven't talked about this, but I'm guessing you're not on a private chat, right?
It's expensive.
Colossal amounts of money.
I am flying Southwest, but I don't think I'll be the only one on the plane.
And I'm not even in the A group.
I think I'm in B or C group.
So you may even have to face backwards.
That's the suffering you'll be doing in those weird seating things that some of the Southwest planes have.
I think I agreed to sit in the fetal position the entire flight for a special price.
In the overhead bin, right?
I am short, so it's not that big a deal, but still, it's a little bit humiliating.
Anyway, go ahead.
Sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
So, they're not that.
They're not riding in the luggage bin, right?
So, colossal expenditures and so forth, and Thomas didn't report the gifts on annual financial disclosures.
And this is one of the things that comes up, I think, a lot of just regular run-of-the-mill people like you and me don't think about, right?
is it's not just their questions of potential conflicts of interest or influence or whatever.
And we find out, and it's shocking, it's that there are procedures and processes in place to report things that could be cause for concern to make them public and so forth.
And Clarence Thomas chose not to do this.
And everything I've read said that this violates the ethics codes for federal officials.
I've also read that Crowe apparently doesn't, this is the person who paid these things, he doesn't have direct connection to cases before SCOTUS at present, but he's deeply involved in GOP politics.
And we know that that affects the court.
We know increasingly, again, quiet parts out loud, as Supreme Court justices increasingly are very clear about this, that they are advocating Uh, the positions of the GOP, they're advocating positions of, uh, the people that, you know, put them there, uh, and so on.
So, and Crowe insists that he never discussed cases with Thomas on any of these trips.
Again, whether that's true or not, I mean, of course you're going to say that, um, but that's not really the point.
The point is that you're receiving massive amounts of money from a highly partisan source When you're dealing with cases that you know are highly partisan in their import, and that's the reason why they're there.
That's why he should have, at the very least, reported these.
I think most observers would say he should not have accepted these, right?
Judicial activists have called for impeachment.
They've said that he should be censured and maybe even impeached.
Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached in history.
I believe it was like 1804 or something like that.
And it would require action by the GOP-controlled House.
That's not obviously going to happen.
So just sort of general takeaways from this, I'll throw it over to you, is number one, It shows Clarence Thomas is still a sleaze and has always been a sleaze.
I feel like that's part of it.
There is this sense that we're like, oh, a Supreme Court justice doing these things.
Remember how Clarence Thomas got to the Supreme Court.
Remember Anita Hill.
Remember everything about this.
There was never really a suggestion that this was a person of tremendously high moral character.
And unfortunately, I think that that's not an expectation we should have just because somebody is on the high court.
And I think it shows that this is still there.
I think not recusing himself or being more open for years about cases that come before the court.
While his partner is advocating on behalf of particular political outcomes and so forth is an issue, it's more of that, right?
I think it shows, and lots of activists have pointed this out for a long time, SCOTUS, the Supreme Court, it does not effectively police itself.
This is an institution
um that has long resisted any kind of insight or excuse me oversight rather from others uh has a history of abrogating this kind of like final you know judicial appeal status that it has and not being able uh to be judged by other organizations and institutions and you know the supreme court as people probably know if you've ever been to dc and you've ever gone there are like pretty unique rules about protesters and freedom of speech and different things ironically at the supreme court and so
This is coming out.
There were issues about the leaks earlier in the year, and they did this kind of internal investigation and found they really couldn't figure out how they happened and things are just very lax.
It just highlights that, that they have these policies in place, but they're not good at sort of imposing them.
Another piece that I want to highlight, though, is also the sort of double standard of this.
At the same time this week, I came across a number of news articles that got picked up by lots of news places that, excuse me, Judge Juan Marchand, who's the judge overseeing Trump, oh my God, Brad, he made contributions to liberal and progressive campaign causes.
He's biased.
He can't be trusted.
Folks, this was in the neighborhood of like $50.
Small donations that he made to different kinds of causes and so forth.
And it hasn't stopped the Trump world and people on the right.
And I would argue even some mainstream news media from trying to raise questions about whether or not Trump is going to get a fair trial.
What does this look like?
This dude gave, he gave $35.
No, it was $15 rather to the Biden campaign.
Biden may be expecting his $15 worth here, folks, right?
The double standard of this, that you have a sitting Supreme Court justice receiving, I don't know the specific numbers, hundreds of thousands, millions in the value of these gifts.
And yet there's almost nothing that can be done about it.
So numbers, numbers of thoughts, huge thoughts, lots of things swimming.
It's my turn to take a breath now.
I'll step down and throw it over to you for your thoughts and impressions on this when, when this broke yesterday or the day before.
Well, let's just be clear.
Thomas is not the only one on the court who may not have tremendously high moral character.
Brett Kavanaugh, the man who yelled, I love, I like beer into a microphone.
Dan, is there a time in your life where you've ever yelled to someone, I like beer, like in an impassioned way?
Not like, hey, Do you like wine or beer at a party?
Someone's like, do you want to?
You know, do you want to?
No, I like beer.
Get me a beer.
I'm saying like in an impassioned.
This defines me.
Anyway, Brett Kavanaugh did that.
And it's because he was being accused, credibly, of sexual assault.
So Thomas, not the only one.
Let's make that clear.
I think one of the gifts I read was one gift alone was half a million.
Um, so that's a lot.
Uh, so we'll just throw that out there.
If you're thinking about it, I would just say in response to the judge mayor shown $15 thing, like what, Hey judges, let's just not give money to campaigns.
What do we say?
I don't care.
Don't give $3.
Don't, don't take a gift of 3 million.
Just don't do it.
Let's just have a society where if you're a judge, you just decide as long as I'm a judge, I'm not going to do that.
I mean, I, I, I think that'd be good.
The double standard case I'd bring up, Dan, would be, let's go back to Wisconsin.
So Janet Protasewicz has run this campaign in a way where she has been very open about like, yes, personally, I am a pro-choice person.
Now, I will rule according to the law, and I will rule according to the case.
Now, that's different than taking gifts.
That's different than saying, hey, I just went on a million-dollar vacation with You know, the leader of an abortion lobby, or I just took half a million, right, from a pro-choice group so that I could go to New Zealand and sail, which is something that Clarence Thomas did.
But what did her opponent say when he lost this week, right?
What did he say?
He said, I wish I could concede to opponent who's worthy, but I don't have one.
It was the most disgusting, sad tantrum of a Middle-aged white man you could imagine I'm sorry it was and you know it was a lot of it was based on the fact that she was willing to say that she as a human being individually is pro-choice so let's let's do it I mean do you What do you want to do, folks, who are going to defend Clarence Thomas?
Do you want to say that, uh, you know, you're totally okay with Judge Janet, Janet Protasewicz?
Are you, you want to throw out that, but say it's totally okay for Thomas to be sitting with somebody who's a mega donor, who says he hasn't discussed any cases with you?
I mean, there's so many ways that you can influence a person, Dan, right?
And there's so many, we're going to run out of time.
There's so many, we could get into how, if you're a rich person, you influence people and you suggest things to them and you, Right.
Just everyone, just go watch this session.
All right.
It's a session.
I would love it if you could send me some sponsorship, you know, perks here.
But you're not.
Just go watch this session.
Watch how like mega rich people just influence the world in ways that you and I could never even dream of, Dan.
So those are my thoughts on this.
And, you know, final ones from you on just Thomas.
And I mean, we haven't even I mean, you did.
But Ginny Thomas is a whole nother part of the story in the way that she raises millions of dollars for various Just a couple more thoughts on this notion of influence.
First of all, to the Ginny Thomas point, why do people give money for Ginny Thomas?
So anyway, off to you.
Just a couple more thoughts on this notion of influence.
First of all, to the Jenny Thomas point, why do people give money for Jenny Thomas?
Why is she effective at raising funds?
I don't know.
Maybe because she's effing married to a Supreme Court justice.
Right?
Like, the whole notion that these are separate things is silly.
But let's think about gifts.
Why do people give gifts?
It's not always an influence.
Sometimes we give gifts because we love and care about somebody.
Cool.
That's not what's going on here, I don't think.
Sometimes we give gifts out of obligation, right?
Like, this time of year we all get the emails probably from, like, you know, daycare providers and the preschools and the school about teacher appreciation and, you know, a kind of end-of-the-year gift and things like that.
Cool.
Maybe it's, you know, the end of the year when you feel like you need to give The people that deliver your groceries, an extra tip, you know, those kind of things.
Okay, cool, right?
We're obliged to.
Maybe you've just got in-laws and they're not people maybe you would choose to have in your life, but they're there.
You get them gifts.
Cool.
That's not what this is.
Gratitude?
Oh, okay.
Now, maybe we're here.
Maybe it's like, hey, you know, Clarence Thomas, we really like the way that you rule in cases.
We really like the decisions that you make.
Keep those coming, right?
And we'll keep some things rolling your way.
There's influence as well as future influence.
It creates that sense of influence and obligation and gratitude.
And, you know, I imagine these perks are really, really nice.
And if you want to keep getting them, just, hey, just keep doing you.
Clarence Thomas, keep ruling in ways that help conservatives and the GOP and roll back rights for people of color and different things like that.
And this is the life you can have.
It's just, it's, it's transparent and obvious to me.
And I, I agree with you.
Yeah.
If you're in the, if you're a public figure representing, yeah, just, just stop with the campaign contributions and donations and things like that.
If anybody asks you why you don't say, cause I don't want to make it look like I'm, you know, going to favor one side or another.
It's really, really simple and straightforward.
It is.
I, yeah, there's this, I don't want, I don't want to turn Jimmy Carter into like this, like the best president we ever had.
He's he, he wasn't okay.
Just period as a president, whatever.
I mean, Dan, maybe one day you and I should just get a six pack of beer and do three hours on how like Jimmy Carter's presidency was.
It could have been way better.
Okay.
I don't know.
We could do that if you want.
But what I do appreciate about Jimmy Carter, and I will always appreciate President Carter, if you're listening, is that he put his peanut farm in a trust when he was president.
He was just like, all right, I have no idea what's happening with the peanut farm.
So when I'm done being president, I will resume.
But it wasn't even like he could check in on it.
He couldn't like maneuver it.
Right.
And when he got done being president, guess what?
The people who like handled it did a bad job and he was like crazy in debt.
Can you imagine, Dan?
I'm like president and then I get voted out of office so that Ronald Reagan, this Be actor can like, you know what I mean?
Show up and be...
It'd be like if, you know, can you imagine being Barack Obama and like someday Kevin Sorbo beat you in a presidential election and just like, oh my God, this guy.
All right.
And then you get out and your whole like family's peanut farm is like underwater and you're in debt.
You're just like, what?
How does this happen?
That's a bad day.
Right?
Like the day you leave office, someone comes up with a folder and it says, yeah, you're like 800 grand in debt.
Sorry.
We didn't do a great job with the peanuts while you were president.
So, all right.
Have a good one.
Um, what's my point?
Hey, why don't can we have something like that in place for the Supreme Court?
Can we have something like that in place for justices?
That makes sense to me.
I don't know.
Anyway, whole nother discussion.
All right.
Let's take a break.
Come back and talk about another former president who was arraigned in New York this week.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, we purposely did this last because we didn't want to just, A, make this the Trump show, B, this is going to be a long process.
You know, the media, I think, John Stewart said this, and I think he's right, that wanted this to be this, like, one-off event and, you know, they need ratings.
So it's like, everyone, you know, let's see what happens when Trump... And guess what?
Trump knew it.
And so the point I'll make quickly before throwing it to you is that Rolling Stone reported this week that Trump could have been arraigned over Zoom.
But guess what?
He chose not to.
And he knew.
And you know, for all of Trump's abject moral failings, Uh, he's pretty good at realizing when he has a moment and this was a moment.
So he's going to fly into New York.
He's going to create a whole storm and, uh, create a whole talking point.
He's going to give a speech at Mar-a-Lago afterward and air all his grievances.
He might go on a tour later and just basically talk about how they've indicted him.
I mean, he's going to make money and, and get attention based on this.
So he knew that and he did it and the media fell for it.
Hand over fist.
Marjorie Taylor Greene shows up looking increasingly like the GOP MAGA mascot who is in a weird, strange protest with like 3,000 media members and like 30 Trump supporters and like 300 anti-Trump people.
Tries to give a speech and basically can't talk because it's so loud.
So it was all bizarre, but I'll just say Trump could have done this over Zoom and he didn't.
And it tells you something about what he wanted out of it, how he's going to move forward, and also what the media fell for.
Takeaways from the Trump arraignment this week.
Yeah, so I have a lot on this.
I'm going to say I'm sort of conflicted and, I don't know, I'm nervous about where this goes, right?
We talked about this, we've been talking about it for weeks, right?
Will Trump be indicted?
In which investigation?
Which ones are, say, biggest in terms of, you know, if we're talking about American democracy, right?
We're talking about the republic, which ones?
And this one isn't.
One of the issues is this, right?
Critics, of course, are saying that Trump was politically targeted by this and so on.
Now, here's where I'm at with that.
This seems like a weird charge.
And I've read people across the political spectrum, lots of different judicial philosophies who have said, if he's not Donald Trump, There is not an effort to get a felony conviction out of what he did.
What do I think is going on?
Here's what I think.
I think you think and I think and lots of people think Trump is corrupt.
He's a lawbreaker.
He's gotten away with it for decades because he has money and wealth and prestige.
I think a huge part of the reason why he's even running for president again is because it gives him At least this window during which he can't be touched for anything that he does and so forth.
And there's a sense in which we're going to get him for something.
He's been slippery.
He's been Teflon coated.
We're going to get him for something.
And we finally think, if we're Bragg, right?
If we're the DA's office, we finally think we got something.
The problem is it feels like kind of a weak something.
And I think it feeds that narrative of political targeting.
And I don't know where that'll go.
But Trump's maximizing that now, as you say, by showing up and going in and so forth.
So why do I say that?
I'm not a legal expert.
You're not a legal expert.
I'm interested in your thoughts on this as we go along.
I've read lots of things from legal experts.
But one of the things that really stands out is that this is a really complicated charge that he's being brought up with.
And so, first of all, paying hush money isn't a crime.
Like, so the actual payments to, you know, keep somebody quiet, that's not illegal.
Falsifying business records is, and this is part of what they're getting them on, right?
That the repayments to Michael Cohen who made the payments to Stormy Daniels were listed as legal fees.
They weren't.
Those are misdemeanors, though.
They're not a felony.
And so what, I guess, in New York, what you have to do if you're going to sort of bump it up to felony status is to say that those misdemeanors were committed with an intent to break another law, right?
And in this case, Bragg is arguing that the other crime was a violation of election law.
The problem is, as critics will say, and again, even some people who I think are not Trump fans will say, the indictment doesn't tell us what Exactly that law was.
It has something to do with campaign finance and election laws, but Bragg's office hasn't said clearly what that is.
I've read analysts who say it's not clear, whatever it was, that this will actually move these up to felony status because you have to show that they did that in order to, with a specific intent, to break this other law, and that could be a tough sell.
No matter what, it's complicated.
I have a hard time understanding it as a non-specialist.
I cannot imagine a jury having to hear all of this and sift through it.
It's apparently a pretty novel legal theory, and it's always risky to try to go after a big target with something that hasn't been sort of tried out before.
And I've read people who've said the fact that we don't know what this is means it's not clear that this is a really strong case.
And so on one hand, I'm concerned that if this doesn't work, It feeds that narrative that he's politically targeted.
And more importantly, if other indictments ever do come from what I see to be the more substantial, critical issues that are rising, the Georgia grand jury looking into election meddling and so forth, then that just emboldens everybody.
It lets everybody in MAGA World and beyond say, see, we told you he was being politically targeted.
And see, here it is again in Georgia, where when it's something big, The judiciary or prosecutors become the boy who cried wolf, right?
They just keep trying and they keep ginning up fake excuses to go after Trump.
So on one hand, I have real concerns about this.
And it goes back to that issue of, you know, sort of why it was this issue.
The Department of Justice chose not to pursue this.
They thought that there wasn't enough there.
That's concerning.
On the flip side, I have also read analysts who say, Bragg is being smart.
He's not required to tell us all the details.
If he did, that just makes it easier for Trump's team to have a million pretrial motions and things to try to dismiss.
It's a cagey move.
He's good at what he does.
He probably has a very strong case or he wouldn't have done this.
So people like me need to stop fretting about this, let it play out, see where it goes.
So I'm really conflicted.
But I have concerns because I've said, the last point I'll make is I've said for a long time, we, a big collective we, people who don't like Trump, we have to stop relying on the hope that somehow the courts are going to fix it, right?
That they are going to fix MAGA World, that they are going to fix what Trump represents.
And it won't.
And I think that there are still people relying on that, hoping for that.
And I think that could be a real problem.
I, yeah, I'm in the same spot and I'll just, I think right now I'm agnostic.
Like I, I don't, I, I, I'm with you.
Every time I read an article that's like, Alvin Bragg is, is actually being really, uh, clever here.
And you know, I, I get another article that's like, you know, this is kind of a weak case.
So I, for me, it's just, we'll see, we'll see what he has and we'll see if there's something here that's bigger.
It's substantial.
It has meat.
I don't know.
What I do know is that, you know, surrounding the case, I already talked about Trump using it for media and money.
Jim Jordan is trying to subpoena Alvin Bragg and other people.
I read that this morning.
I don't have all the details in front of me, but the kinds of ways that GOP and MAGA World is reacting is just to go after Bragg and anyone else.
So that is all going to be written into the complicity of the GOP in the history books.
We'll see what happens here is I think for me what's going on.
All right, we're out of time.
Let's go to reasons for hope.
My reason for hope is back in Wisconsin, where Janet Protasewicz was victorious.
It's the first time in 15 years that the Democrats will have majority in the Supreme Court in Wisconsin.
I can't remember the exact number.
I think it's 13 out of 15 of the statewide elections have gone to Democrats, which shows you that Democrats have a lot of momentum there, and yet they can't win the state legislature because it's gerrymandered.
So Wisconsin just continues to be a place to look for.
Brandon Johnson is Chicago's new mayor.
Brandon Johnson is a progressive.
The outgoing mayor, Lightfoot, Lori Lightfoot, said that a couple months ago he had no chance, and here he is as mayor.
So what's my good news, Dan?
And I just want to come back to the gun violence Protests and the expulsion of Pearson and Jones.
If you run on something, you win.
Democrats, if you're listening, if you run on reproductive rights and you run against gun violence, guess what?
You might win.
Chicago Mayor, Wisconsin Supreme Court.
There's a whole effing generation of people who are 16 to 30 who have lived through gun violence as a reality of going to school in this country.
If you run on that, you run on reproductive rights.
If you fight for something, you might actually get people to follow you, Dan.
I don't know.
So that to me is the good news.
And I don't know if anyone's going to listen or not out there.
If you fight, you might win.
And to me, Wisconsin, Chicago, and we're just going to see what happens in Tennessee.
Cause there's a short term little like white man, you know, victory over here.
Like some guys smoking cigars in a back room.
Like, Oh, we showed those boys what's up.
Well, we'll see what happens in Tennessee.
Cause there's some people who are ready to organize and ready to move.
And you know, Marsha Blackburn better watch her seat.
And we will see what's brewing in Tennessee in the coming months.
So that's my good news.
Go ahead, Dan.
Mine is next door in Michigan, where Gretchen Whitmer just signed a repeal of a 1931 abortion law.
And again, another one of these states that has been a battleground state, that will be a battleground state, where I think really important and good things are happening.
And I think that region, right, is increasingly important and people are aware of it.
Uh, and I think, yeah, a lot of reason for hope, um, in, in places like Chicago and, uh, Wisconsin and Michigan.
So that, that was my reason for hope, um, as we saw that because it reflects a law that came through the state legislature, uh, which, which is now democratically controlled and so forth.
So that was my reason for hope very much for, I think, similar reasons to what you're highlighting in Wisconsin.
All right, y'all.
So we are going to tell you two things before we go.
One, sign up for the seminar.
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There's still some spots, and I'm going to tell you right now, you won't regret it, and it's something that will change your thinking on race, religion, and America's purity culture experience.
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If you want to get the research links that we use every week, then check that out.
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So really appreciate that, Mark, and look forward to working with you in the future.
