The Supremes

[Brisketexan 104,462]

Just to be clear here, scotus rubber stamped something they knew was in the wrong ?

Yes, because on balance - and this is important - that “being wrong” helps the GQP and fucks over minorities. Both of which are more important than the pesky “law” and shit.
That’s how this SCOTUS rolls. I’d think more of y’all would have figured that out by now, but nope. You still think they’re going to act within the old institutional parameters. Stop.

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes, because on balance - and this is important - that “being wrong” helps the GQP and fucks over minorities. Both of which are more important than the pesky “law” and shit.
That’s how this SCOTUS rolls. I’d think more of y’all would have figured that out by now, but nope. You still think they’re going to act within the old institutional parameters. Stop.

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

Hopefully the obama care decision does’t depend on scotus

Edited December 13, 2023 by tx 3 putt

[Mdhorn 5,908]

17 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

The cult of Guns & Jesus is the same cult that owned slaves and succeeded. 

Great lyric, NM.  Somebody needs to use this in their anti-Not in My Town anthem. 

[wildcat09 29,187]

10 hours ago, Gap03 said:

Yeah, it's probably a clear violation, but let's think about it for a few more election cycles, and then ask them to pretty-please fix it and then consider those revised maps for a few more cycles ... fuck these cunts.

Even for Roberts on a voting rights case, this is pretty brazen.

[Francisco 2.0 32,290]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/trump-supreme-court-jan-6.html

 

Quote

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to decide a question at the heart of the federal election-interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and hundreds of prosecutions arising from the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: Can the government charge defendants in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official congressional proceeding?

The decision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps delay the start of Mr. Trump’s trial, now scheduled to take place in Washington in March. The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, which may not arrive until June, will likely address the viability of two of the main counts against Mr. Trump and could severely limit efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence that his supporters committed at the Capitol.

 

Quote

The court’s eventual decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the assault. That would be a devastating blow to the government’s prosecutions of the Jan. 6 cases.

The case the court agreed to hear involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted on seven charges for his role in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors say he assaulted the police as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Like hundreds of other rioters whose actions disrupted the certification proceeding in the Capitol, Mr. Fischer was charged with the obstruction count, formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512.

 

Quote

Mr. Fischer sought dismissal of a part of the indictment brought under the federal law, which was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a statute aimed primarily at white-collar crime.

Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington granted Mr. Fischer’s motion, saying that the law required defendants to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” — a provision that he failed to find in Mr. Fischer’s conduct at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

 

 

Quote

A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Judge Nichols’s decision, ruling that the law “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.” Three Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Fischer, ultimately asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the law had been justly applied to the Capitol attack.

The obstruction charge was never an easy fit in the cases stemming from the storming of the Capitol. When it was passed in the early 2000s, the law was aimed at curbing corporate malfeasance by outlawing things like destroying documents or tampering with evidence.

Defense lawyers representing Jan. 6 rioters argued that federal prosecutors improperly stretched its scope to cover the violence that erupted at the Capitol and interfered with a proceeding in which lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the 2020 election.

The lawyers also took issue with using the charge against people who stormed the Capitol, saying that many were not acting “corruptly” as the law requires because they believed they were protesting a stolen election.

“The statute has been used to over-criminalize the Jan. 6 cases,” said Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Jake Lang, who also appealed his obstruction conviction to the Supreme Court. “Congress never intended that.”

Mr. Pattis said the Supreme Court’s review was “significant” in hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the riot at the Capitol and was also “yet another reason the 2024 cases against Donald Trump should be delayed.”

Two of the four counts in the federal election interference indictment Mr. Trump is facing are based on the obstruction charge. Mr. Trump has been charged with personally obstructing the certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He is also facing a separate count of conspiring with others to obstruct the proceeding.

If the Supreme Court finds that the law does not apply to the mob attack against the Capitol, it could cripple plans by Mr. Smith to pin the violence that took place on Jan. 6 on Mr. Trump.

Recent court papers in the election case have strongly suggested that prosecutors were planning to use the obstruction charge as a way to show the jury graphic videos of the Capitol attack and perhaps even introduce testimony from rioters claiming that they stormed the building on Mr. Trump’s instructions.

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Francisco 2.0

[jimmyjazz 45,512]

I would like the Supreme Court to decide if Travis County can charge me for driving with an expired registration.

[chainsaw 9,831]

4 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I would like the Supreme Court to decide if Travis County can charge me for driving with an expired registration.

[pyrohornIII 4,801]

On 12/12/2023 at 3:44 PM, tx 3 putt said:

Like this will ever happen 😂😂😂

There is no way this douche doesn't identify as white.  Just a well tanned white.   

Fucking Aryan assholes.

['stache 21,743]

He's got revitiligo, the opposite of what Michael Jackson got.

[Js1 85,055]

 

Neat

[Brisketexan 104,462]

1 minute ago, Js1 said:

 

Neat

No worries.  They'll get around to gutting it entirely when the full case comes before them.  Because they pretty much have to, if they're going to follow THEIR OWN FUCKING REASONING in Bruen.

No gun law that does anything other than ban the possession of muskets by negroes (perhaps the only gun law on the books in 1791, when the 2nd amendment was ratified) is permissible.

[jimmyjazz 45,512]

Well, there are multiple states with similar bans, some for several decades (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York).  California's ban is currently in the courts.  I don't know how many others are in good standing.

 

[Gatorubet 30,064]

I furrow my brow with concern just like Susan Collins when they talk about the Framer’s position on gun restriction.

That is because I have an ancestor who lived in Massachusetts, who was appointed by the safety committee of the town on July 6, 1776, to seize the guns of several prominent Tories. You see, even though their neighbors hadn’t done anything wrong - they suspected that they might because they were not approving of the American revolution in public discourse.

 And then my ancestor collected them, scratched the owners’ initials in the stocks for later returns- and gave those weapons to the Berkshire County Militia to use.

Put another way, those engaged in the American revolution had not one problem with the government seizing guns from people if they thought there was gonna be a problem.   

[Js1 85,055]

4 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

Put another way, those engaged in the American revolution had not one problem with the government seizing guns from people if they thought there was gonna be a problem.   

'Take the gun first, go through due process second'

[Gatorubet 30,064]

2 minutes ago, Js1 said:

'Take the gun first, go through due process second'

to be fair to him, there was not a due process clause to violate back then

[Dnaguy 11,740]

Stupid / novice question….
  Are bullets considered arms? 
Lets do what Chris rock said and tax the ever living fuck out of bullets or make buying bullets require a license that would require a Super extensive background check. 

Don’t infringe on a persons right to make their bullets. You can make as many as you want. 

But buying premade, bullets would require  your very cumbersome license or action to make bullets.

Get creative.

[YGIFS 19,449]

1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

I furrow my brow with concern just like Susan Collins when they talk about the Framer’s position on gun restriction.

That is because I have an ancestor who lived in Massachusetts, who was appointed by the safety committee of the town on July 6, 1776, to seize the guns of several prominent Tories. You see, even though their neighbors hadn’t done anything wrong - they suspected that they might because they were not approving of the American revolution in public discourse.

 And then my ancestor collected them, scratched the owners’ initials in the stocks for later returns- and gave those weapons to the Berkshire County Militia to use.

Put another way, those engaged in the American revolution had not one problem with the government seizing guns from people if they thought there was gonna be a problem.   

I appreciate many of your takes on here.  I have a very non-specific accent.  I have lived on both coasts, abroad, the midwest, and Texas.  It is so authoritative and non-specific that I've even gotten voiceover/radio work from it.  But there are two sounds that make my fucking teeth itch.  The Massachusetts accent and the Florida accent.  So though I'd love to get lunch with you sometime, we may also have to fight in the parking lot.  I'm sure you'd win, but at least I won't have to hear that fucking "Chowdas for DeSantis" cringe tone for the 20 seconds it takes me to call the paramedics for myself.

Edited December 14, 2023 by YGIFS

[Gatorubet 30,064]

58 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I appreciate many of your takes on here.  I have a very non-specific accent.  I have lived on both coasts, abroad, the midwest, and Texas.  It is so authoritative and non-specific that I've even gotten voiceover/radio work from it.  But there are two sounds that make my fucking teeth itch.  The Massachusetts accent and the Florida accent.  So though I'd love to get lunch with you sometime, we may also have to fight in the parking lot.  I'm sure you'd win, but at least I won't have to hear that fucking "Chowdas for DeSantis" cringe tone for the 20 seconds it takes me to call the paramedics for myself.

Having lived all over the country as a child, I don’t really have an accent, unless sounding like Tom Brokaw is an accent. 

I would put money on you in the fight though. I have to say, I find a New York City accent to be the least attractive of all.  And I’m not quite sure what a Florida accent is, although you may be hating on people from Ohio.

I will buy you a drink at Mannings. 

[Pescado_Rojo 19,327]

1 hour ago, Dnaguy said:

Stupid / novice question….
  Are bullets considered arms? 
Lets do what Chris rock said and tax the ever living fuck out of bullets or make buying bullets require a license that would require a Super extensive background check. 

Don’t infringe on a persons right to make their bullets. You can make as many as you want. 

But buying premade, bullets would require  your very cumbersome license or action to make bullets.

Get creative.

A good chunk of them would probably blow their trigger fingers off. Modern problems require modern solutions. 

[elfenix 34,167]

5 hours ago, Js1 said:

 

Neat

the state choosing to disarm its own disorganized militia would probably have been completely fine with madison's interpretation of the US constitution.

Edited December 15, 2023 by elfenix

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

This is troubling ….

 

 

[Captainant 27,309]

NYT with some excellent reporting on the Dobbs fuckery and outright lying to the public by the justices

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/supreme-court-dobbs-roe-abortion.html

Quote

 

Justice Ginsburg’s death hung over the process. For months, the court delayed announcing its decision to hear the case, creating the appearance of distance from her passing. The justices later allowed Mississippi to perform a bait-and-switch, widening what had been a narrower attempt to restrict abortion while she was alive into a full assault on Roe — the kind of move that has prompted dismissals of other cases.

The most glaring irregularity was the leak to Politico of Justice Alito’s draft. The identity and motive of the person who disclosed it remains unknown, but the effect of the breach is clear: It helped lock in the result, The Times found, undercutting Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer’s quest to find a middle ground.

...

But sometime before the announcement, Justice Barrett had switched her vote. Just four members of the court, the bare minimum, chose to grant, with Justice Kavanaugh taking the side of Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas. They overrode five colleagues — including all the female justices — who had an array of concerns. The men appeared to be betting that Justice Barrett would ultimately side with them, pushing her into a case she had not wanted to take.

Her reasons for the reversal are unclear. But as a professor in 2013, she had written a law review article laying out the kind of dilemma she faced in spring 2021. “If the court’s opinions change with its membership, public confidence in the court as an institution might decline,” she noted. “Its members might be seen as partisan rather than impartial and case law as fueled by power rather than reason.”

 

The article goes into the discussion on if they'd take the case, but it's fucking striking that on January 8th, 2021 they were debating wether or not to take the case and Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas planned to mislead the public on if they'd take the case that term or not. Gorsuch approved the majority opinion literally 10 minutes after he first received it. They never fucking planned to hear any merits or legal facts. They just wanted to put women in their place. 

Two days after a violent fascist insurrection attempt, they were more worried about taking away women's rights than anything else. Let that shit fucking sink in. 

[atomheartbevo 89,362]

7 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

This is troubling …

If you read the later posts, maybe not

 

[HenryJames 65,868]

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus

 

[TexEx15 17,443]

 

[jimmyjazz 45,512]

What a world:

Quote

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

Hey Clarence, I think I may have identified a problem with your financial situation.

[Nivek 16,807]

What a world:

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

Hey Clarence, I think I may have identified a problem with your financial situation.

[HenryJames 65,868]

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

 

[Satchel 6,908]

Alright, textualists. You’re on the clock.

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

StAtE RigHTs !!!!!

[HenryJames 65,868]

Who knows what the post-Civil War Congress meant?!

[Shut up Lou Holtz 2,003]

Just now, tx 3 putt said:

StAtE RigHTs !!!!!

Seeing the lifeless eyes of a red hat trying to do the mental gymnastics around states rights…. but not for that!!! Christmas with my in laws will be more interesting 

[Biff Tannen 45,477]

On 12/18/2023 at 7:24 AM, jimmyjazz said:

What a world:

Hey Clarence, I think I may have identified a problem with your financial situation.

I went to the Bama game this year and I can tell you $267k was probably the median cost of the fans’ RVs in their RV lot. These are people that by and large live in Tuscaloosa and take their RVs to the lot every home game. They live a few miles from the stadium and still take their RVs to the lot to “tailgate”. This is their life. It was pretty astounding. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Biff Tannen

[jimmyjazz 45,512]

Yeah, I went to the Georgia-Tennessee game in Athens back in the day.  Those Tennessee folks drove in a flotilla of big-ass RVs.

[Biff Tannen 45,477]

7 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yeah, I went to the Georgia-Tennessee game in Athens back in the day.  Those Tennessee folks drove in a flotilla of big-ass RVs.

At least they came from Tennessee to an away game though. The Bama fans live in the god damn town and still take their RVs. Blew my mind. 

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

 

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

 

[Serak The Preparer 3,423]

9 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

Which states rights do you want?

MAGA: "Oh, you know the ones..."

[Bozo_Casanova 26,232]

On 12/15/2023 at 10:16 PM, Captainant said:

NYT with some excellent reporting on the Dobbs fuckery and outright lying to the public by the justices

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/supreme-court-dobbs-roe-abortion.html

The article goes into the discussion on if they'd take the case, but it's fucking striking that on January 8th, 2021 they were debating wether or not to take the case and Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas planned to mislead the public on if they'd take the case that term or not. Gorsuch approved the majority opinion literally 10 minutes after he first received it. They never fucking planned to hear any merits or legal facts. They just wanted to put women in their place. 

Two days after a violent fascist insurrection attempt, they were more worried about taking away women's rights than anything else. Let that shit fucking sink in. 

Miss me yet?

[Balcones 430]

14 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

StAtE RigHTs !!!!!

They took Trump off the ballot for the Republican primary or for the entire state’s general election?

[immamac 42,492]

10 minutes ago, Balcones said:

They took Trump off the ballot for the Republican primary or for the entire state’s general election?

same same

 

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

6 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Which states rights do you want?

MAGA: "Oh, you know the ones..."

In Georgia, Trump argued that he is a federal officer.

In Colorado, Trump argued that he isn’t.
 

😂😂😂

[Bozo_Casanova 26,232]

1 minute ago, tx 3 putt said:

In Georgia, Trump argued that he is a federal officer.

In Colorado, Trump argued that he isn’t.
 

😂😂😂

Schrödinger’s Pussy

[Brisketexan 104,462]

18 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Schrödinger’s Pussy

The way I read that, I am simultaneously both getting laid, and not getting laid.

I'm not sure I like this Schrödinger fella.

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

18 hours ago, Shut up Lou Holtz said:

Seeing the lifeless eyes of a red hat trying to do the mental gymnastics around states rights…. but not for that!!! Christmas with my in laws will be more interesting 

Just tell them this : The Constitution is not a la carte 

[ChiTownDoc 21,091]

On 12/13/2023 at 3:47 PM, pyrohornIII said:

There is no way this douche doesn't identify as white.  Just a well tanned white.   

Fucking Aryan assholes.

Uncle Thomas?  For sure

[tx 3 putt 76,158]

[HenryJames 65,868]

Thomas’ clerks seem like they fucking suck.

Spoiler

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS has filled the legal world with scores of his former clerks, acolytes who have carried forward his idiosyncratic brand of conservatism and rallied to his defense.

Laura Ingraham

 

Fox News host

James C. Ho

 

Federal judge

Gregory G. Katsas

 

Federal judge

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle

 

Federal judge

Neomi Rao

 

Federal judge

David R. Stras

 

Federal judge

Christopher Landau

 

Former ambassador to Mexico

Mark Paoletta

 

Trump administration
“adopted clerk”

Patrick F. Philbin

 

Trump administration

Scott G. Stewart

 

Mississippi solicitor general

Carrie Severino

 

Judicial Crisis Network president

John Eastman

 

Trump adviser

Peter B. Rutledge

 

U. of Georgia Law School dean

John C. Yoo

 

U. Calif., Berkeley, law professor

Mike Lee

 

Senator from Utah
“adopted clerk”

Leonard Leo

 

Federalist Society co-chairman
“adopted clerk”

Taylor Meehan

 

Law firm partner

William Consovoy

 

Law firm partner
(deceased)

 

Cover photograph by Allison V. Smith for The New York Times

 

 

Clarence Thomas’s Clerks: An ‘Extended Family’ With Reach and Power

The Supreme Court justice has built a network of former clerks who share messages, meals and a common vision — wielding influence at universities, law firms and the highest rungs of government.

By Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder

Dec. 24, 2023Updated 9:37 a.m. ET

In late August, amid a rising outcry over revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas had received decades of undisclosed gifts and free luxury travel, a lawyer in Chicago fired off an email to her fellow former Thomas clerks.

“Many of us have been asked recently about the justice,” wrote the lawyer, Taylor Meehan. “In response, there’s not always the opportunity to tell his story and share what it was like to work for him. And there’s rarely the opportunity for us to do so all together.”

Ms. Meehan attached a letter in support of Justice Thomas. Minutes later came a reply. “I just had to jump up right away and say bravo for this,” wrote Steven G. Bradbury, a Heritage Foundation fellow who served in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations. Within days Fox News viewers were hearing about the letter, now signed by 112 former clerks and testifying that the justice’s “integrity is unimpeachable.” Among the signers was the popular Fox host Laura Ingraham.

In turn, the justice’s wife, the conservative activist Virginia Thomas, soon took to the clerks’ private email listserv. “We feel less alone today, because of you all!!! 🙏💕💕💕” she wrote, offering special thanks to the letter’s coordinators and all “who stepped into our fire!!!”

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In the 32 years since Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government.

The former clerks’ public defense of the justice was “unparalleled in the history of the court,” said Todd C. Peppers, a professor of public affairs at Roanoke College and the author of “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk.” “It’s frankly astonishing.”

Image

 

An email sent by Virginia Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of the Supreme Court justice, to a listserv of former clerks.

For Justice Thomas, the letter came at a time of both trial and triumph. He had become the face of long-simmering questions about the high court’s ethical guidelines. But he was also at the height of his influence. The court’s senior justice, he had spent years on the losing side of cases, writing minority opinions grounded in his strict originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Now that former President Donald J. Trump had given the court a conservative supermajority, Justice Thomas was a guiding voice for a new judicial mainstream.

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He was playing a long game, and his former clerks were among its most important players.

The Thomases did not respond to requests for comment, but in a 2008 interview, the justice said, “I tell my law clerks that we’re not writing current events — we’re writing for a much longer period,” adding that his opinions were based on “principles that are locked down and that will be here when the tides turn” in 50 years.

Now the tides have turned, and at least 18 of those former clerks have served as state, federal or military judges, nearly three-quarters of them appointed by Mr. Trump to federal courts, where they have ruled on issues like voting rights and access to the abortion pill. Roughly 10 more served in Mr. Trump’s administration; nearly a dozen made his Supreme Court short lists. Former Thomas clerks have argued, and won, several of the most momentous Supreme Court cases of recent years.

The network also includes a number of “adopted clerks” who never worked for Justice Thomas but are invited to events and receive clerk communications. Among them are high-profile conservatives including Leonard Leo, the judicial kingmaker of the Federalist Society, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Alex Azar, a Trump cabinet secretary.

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Supreme Court clerks are, by definition, the sort of ambitious lawyers likely to wield significant influence in their post-clerk lives. What makes Justice Thomas’s clerks so remarkable, in large part, is their success as loyal standard-bearers of his singular ideology. Indeed, an examination of what the justice and his wife call Thomas Clerk World, based on interviews with people in and around it and a review of private emails and the Thomases’ public statements, shows how meticulously the couple have cultivated the clerk network over the decades.

Image

 

The Thomases at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington in 2021. Mrs. Thomas has been jokingly designated “law clerk emeritus.”Credit...Drew Angerer/Getty Images

It is common for justices to maintain close ties with their clerks, but Stephen R. McAllister, a former clerk who served as the United States attorney for Kansas during the Trump administration, said Justice Thomas was “quite extraordinary in terms of keeping in touch with his clerks, helping clerks and having everyone be in touch with each other.”

The Thomases have tended to their network through monthly lunches at Morton’s The Steakhouse or the Capital Grille in Washington, open to any alumni who happen to be in town. They have hosted clerks and their families at ski resorts and summer retreats, complete with inside jokes stenciled on T-shirts and swag bags with Thomas-themed challenge coins, stress balls and playing cards. The justice has encouraged camaraderie through group screenings of the film version of Ayn Rand’s manifesto of individualism “The Fountainhead” and pilgrimages to the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg.

At the heart of the organizing is Mrs. Thomas — jokingly designated “law clerk emeritus” — who manages the network’s discourse as a sort of den mother. Hers has been a particularly active role for a Supreme Court spouse — overseeing production of a directory with a page for each clerk, as well as the email listserv and a private Facebook group. All of it, she has said, is meant to build “connective tissue across and throughout this amazing community of leaders.”

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Mrs. Thomas, whose right-wing political activism has included involvement in efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election defeat, has insisted that she and her husband operate in separate lanes. But some of her interactions with the clerk network show the degree to which theirs is, in fact, a shared ideological project. She cheered when Mr. Trump appointed members of the Thomas clerk roster as judges: “Thank God,” Mrs. Thomas told an interviewer, rattling off other appointments. “He used to tell them, ‘You’re going to be future leaders, it’s coming your way, you’re going to be next.’ And now they are.” Last year, she encouraged clerks to start an email thread in which participants shared articles celebrating the court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

The network has found its own ways to celebrate Justice Thomas and his legacy. In 1998, one of the justice’s clerks hunted down and presented him with a memento from one of his first Supreme Court opinions: a mounted taxidermy lobster.

When Justice Thomas speaks of his clerks, he tends to refer to them as his “kids.” As he put it in a talk a decade ago at Harvard Law School, “I really love my clerks.”

Image

 

Justice Thomas and his wife hosted a clerk retreat in 2021 at the Greenbrier, a resort in the West Virginia mountains.Credit...

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‘Trying to Train a Pig’

For many years, Supreme Court clerkships were considered largely nonpartisan. Accomplishment — top grades, law review membership, recommendations — rather than ideology was the currency required to win one of the coveted jobs. Aspirants usually worked first for a feeder judge, one of a small group of prominent federal judges with close ties to the justices and track records of sending clerks to the high court. The justices did not uniformly select from Democratic or Republican-appointed appeals court judges, and prospective clerks were expected to apply to all nine of them.

As the country has become more polarized, so, too, have the clerkship ranks. The current justices have overwhelmingly hired clerks from judges appointed by a president of the same party as the one who appointed them.

Justice Thomas has fully embraced the trend. In 2010, The New York Times noted that all 84 of his clerks had trained with Republican-appointed appeals judges, and that pattern has largely continued in recent years.

“I’m not going to hire clerks who have profound disagreements with me — that’s a waste of my time,” Justice Thomas said during an interview in Dallas in 1999. “And someone said that’s like trying to train a pig. It wastes your time and aggravates the pig.”

The justice, like his peers, typically hires four clerks per term, a process he has likened to “selecting mates” for “a foxhole.” He has often said he seeks clerks from modest backgrounds that mirror his own — who haven’t had “the skids greased for them,” aren’t “jerks” and show they have the “horse power” to work long hours. While many of his clerks come from elite law schools like Harvard, the University of Chicago and Yale, he is known for making a point of venturing beyond this pool. He has hired from George Mason University in Virginia and the University of Kansas, both public schools, and church-affiliated schools like Creighton University in Nebraska, where his wife studied law. Justice Thomas has spoken of four locker-room-style hooks on a door in his chambers with a sign reading, “Hang egos here.”

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., who died in 1998, famously said the court operated “like nine separate law firms,” each its own small world with the justice at the center. Justice Thomas eagerly debates cases with his clerks. His clerks help review the thousands of petitions filed each year, summarizing the requests and making recommendations to grant or deny them, and they work with the justice on pending cases. For Supreme Court clerks, the relationships formed with justices are often described as familial, a club membership that lasts a lifetime.

Got a confidential news tip?

The New York Times would like to hear from readers who want to share messages and materials with our journalists. nytimes.com/tips

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Photos in a 2015 Christmas letter of Justice Thomas and his clerks wearing leprechaun hats. He has referred to his close-knit clerks as his “kids.”

The Thomas clerk network began to take shape early in the justice’s tenure on the court. Mrs. Thomas used her grass-roots-organizing skills to set up a newsletter and small discussion group for clerk spouses. The email listserv emerged out of heartbreak. In 2010, Greg Coleman, a former clerk who had served as solicitor general of Texas, was killed in a plane crash. Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Coleman’s widow, Stephanie Coleman, created the Thomas Clerk World listserv so clerks could support one another.

At the Supreme Court, Mrs. Thomas has hosted women’s events and included past female clerks on the guest list. In 2013, she invited several to a luncheon about parenting challenges, headlined by a polarizing speaker: Gayle Trotter, a self-described “liberty-loving and tyranny-hating conservative lawyer” who had just gained notoriety for her congressional testimony that “guns make women safer.”

“Congratulations for being on the IN list!” Mrs. Thomas wrote in an email.

The couple’s view of the clerks as family is on display in their glossy, photo-filled Christmas letters. The 2006 edition mentioned two gatherings of clerks, one of which celebrated Justice Thomas’s first 15 years on the court. “We LOVE this extended family,” the Thomases wrote. The 2015 letter showed the justice — in a leprechaun hat — at a Dallas gathering with his frequent benefactor, the billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow, who had hosted “Clarence’s clerks for meetings, study and fun.” Later that year, dozens of former clerks and their families traveled to Park City, Utah, for one of the network’s retreats — multiday affairs that can include continuing-education courses taught by former clerks, sometimes with appearances by the justice.

As Justice Thomas reached his 30th anniversary on the court in 2021, the Thomases hosted a clerk retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. For one event, the clerks surprised the Thomases with a banner that read “Liberty and Justice (Thomas) for All.” So many people came to the retreat that a group photo was shot from a drone.

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A former clerk inspired by Justice Thomas’s legal philosophy helped to successfully challenge the Voting Rights Act before the court.Credit...Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

 

 

Seeding the Field

As a microcosm of the radiating power of the clerk network, consider the career of William Consovoy.

While studying law at George Mason in the early 2000s, Mr. Consovoy became enamored of Justice Thomas’s originalist judicial thinking — a method of interpreting the Constitution that says judges must apply the Founders’ understanding of the text. After clerking for the justice in 2008, Mr. Consovoy carried that philosophy into battle on some of the signature legal questions of the day. The law firm he helped build before his death last winter, Consovoy McCarthy, has become a boutique go-to litigator for the right.

In 2013, Mr. Consovoy was a key member of the team that successfully challenged a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, a law from the civil rights era aimed at insulating Black Americans from attempts to dilute their voting power. The 5-to-4 ruling in the case, Shelby County v. Holder — with Justice Thomas in the majority — largely gutted the legislation, clearing the way for nine states, mainly in the South, to change election laws without federal clearance. Shock waves from the case are still being felt, including in recent fights over voting maps in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. And last month, another Thomas clerk, David R. Stras, a Trump appointee to the appeals court in Minneapolis, wrote an opinion that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act. The ruling is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Consovoy’s work also built on Justice Thomas’s harsh critique of affirmative action — that such programs stigmatized Black people while providing cover to failures to address the true needs of disadvantaged Americans and discriminated against other applicants. Mr. Consovoy worked on a case challenging race in college admissions, Fisher v. University of Texas, which began in 2008 and twice came before the Supreme Court. The case didn’t succeedin ending affirmative action, but Mr. Consovoy would join conservative groups in mounting another attack, steering two challenges — at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina — to the Supreme Court. With Mr. Consovoy battling cancer, two of his law-firm colleagues argued the cases, both former Thomas clerks. Last June, the court struck down race-based admissions policies, with Justice Thomas in the majority.

At Consovoy McCarthy, five partners are Thomas clerks. Over all, more than a third of the justice’s clerks have become law partners, many helping lead influential firms like Jones Day, Kirkland & Ellis and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

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William Consovoy, who died this year, crafted strategy in the voting rights case and a recent affirmative action case. Five partners in the firm he led are former Thomas clerks, as he was.Credit...Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

While many Thomas clerks have gone on to teach, there are clusters at two schools that are centers of conservative legal scholarship — George Mason’s Scalia Law School and Notre Dame. Justice Thomas, who has co-taught with several former clerks, has been a visiting professor at both schools.

He has filled the judiciary with his disciples, in far greater numbers than Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, recent justices with a similar length of service.

After clerking for Justice Thomas, teaching at Scalia Law and serving in the Trump administration, Neomi Rao was appointed to the federal appeals court in Washington, considered a Supreme Court feeder. In 2019, she cast the lone dissenting vote on a three-judge panel that allowed congressional investigators to seek Mr. Trump’s financial records.

In the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit, James C. Ho is one of the three judges who upheld part of a Texas decision to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. This month, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the challenge to federal approval of the drug. That case follows on the heels of the court’s striking down Roe v. Wade — in a case argued successfully by Mississippi’s solicitor general, Scott G. Stewart, a 2015 Thomas clerk.

When the Trump administration needed conservatives to fill key positions, it pulled from the Thomas network. While they were hardly the only former Supreme Court clerks to sign on, the ideology nurtured by Justice Thomas proved a fit with the administration’s focus on executive power, skepticism of welfare and social benefits and pushback at gun regulation. A second Trump administration would probably again draw on the Thomas clerk roster.

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Justice Thomas hugged his former clerk Neomi Rao at her 2019 swearing-in ceremony at the appeals court in Washington.Credit...Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

Three Thomas clerks — Patrick F. Philbin, John Eisenberg and Kate Todd — became deputy White House counsels. Two more — Heath Tarbert and Sigal Mandelker — held high posts in the Treasury. Steven Bradbury had several jobs in the Transportation Department, including, briefly, acting secretary.

Jeffrey B. Wall, a 2004 clerk and star Supreme Court litigator while in private practice, served as principal deputy solicitor general and then acting solicitor general in the Trump administration, where he argued on behalf of the president’s travel ban and his plan to include immigration status on the 2020 Census.

In October, back in private practice, Mr. Wall argued an admiralty case that focused on a yacht that had run aground. The ethics questions surrounding Justice Thomas were in full flare.

During oral arguments, the justice jokingly asked if the yacht’s engines still worked after the accident.

Later, during his rebuttal, Mr. Wall answered: “Justice Thomas, to your central question, the boat is available for sale online if you have a half-million dollars.”

The courtroom filled with laughter.

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Justice Thomas meeting with his law clerks in his chambers at the Supreme Court in 2002.Credit...David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

 

 

Deploying the Network

In February 1998, Christopher Landau, a Thomas clerk in both the appeals and Supreme courts, wrote to a Virginia man named Angelo Cordova. Mr. Landau was hoping to buy a lobster.

Several years earlier, writing one of his first Supreme Court opinions in a case that dealt with the standard courts should apply when reviewing states’ criminal convictions, Justice Thomas had rejected the appeal of a man who had burglarized the Cordova family’s summer home. Among the stolen items — the crustacean in question, a lobster from the Philippines, preserved, stuffed and mounted.

The Cordovas gladly handed over the lobster, which Mr. Landau presented to Justice Thomas, to his amusement, at a clerk reunion. 

Justice Thomas has frequently said he promises his clerks that they will leave their jobs with “clean hands, clean hearts, and clean consciences.” Over the years, the clerks have not only bestowed tokens of loyalty like the lobster — several clerks also bought him batteries for his R.V. — but defended him and his legacy in trying times. When two Wall Street Journal reporters published a best seller in 1994 detailing sexual harassment allegations against the justice and the politics of his confirmation, two former clerks, Ms. Ingraham and Stephen Smith, defended him in The Washington Post. “The autumnal pounding of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has resumed,” they wrote, adding, “The maligning of him as a person has been both heart-wrenching and frustrating.”

When allegations surfaced in 2016 that Justice Thomas had groped a woman during a 1999 dinner party, his former clerk, Carrie Severino, wrote in National Review, “I look forward to the day when the Left has had enough of trying to destroy this worthy and admirable man.”

In the wake of an HBO series that year dramatizing the confirmation hearings, some members of the clerk network began working on a flattering documentary film and book project, aimed at portraying “the real Clarence Thomas,” in the words of Mark Paoletta, an adopted clerk who helped with the project.

But in recent years, fissures have formed in the network.

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John Eastman, left, a former Thomas Clerk, with Rudolph W. Giuliani at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Credit...Jim Bourg/Reuters

The conflicts came to the fore after Mrs. Thomas and John Eastman, a 1996 clerk, attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Eastman, who spoke at the rally, was a chief architect of the scheme to create slates of fake electors and pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election. (Mrs. Thomas’s broader activism to overturn the election would emerge later.)

In a message to the listserv, first reportedby The Washington Post, Mr. Eastman said he would continue to challenge the election, writing: “Rest assured that those of us involved in this are working diligently to ascertain the truth.”

That provoked a sharp rebuke from Mr. Smith, a law professor at Notre Dame. “If by ‘truth’ you mean what actually happened, as opposed to a false narrative, then I agree,” he wrote. Others spoke up, too.

Mrs. Thomas later apologized. Even as she bemoaned the loss of the election, she wrote, “Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.”

That wasn’t the end of the discussion. After the State Bar of California announced an ethics investigation of Mr. Eastman in March 2022, Wendy Stone Long, a 1997 clerk, wrote to the Thomas network.

“Dear Clerk Family, John Eastman is being put through a sham disbarment proceeding by the bar of the state of California,” she wrote, encouraging fellow clerks to speak out on his behalf and providing a link to donate to his defense fund.

She added a postscript warning the group not to leak the email. “This family was created by Ginni and CT, and you are hurting them more than anyone if you assault the integrity and sanctity of it,” she wrote. “We can disagree over issues, but we are a family, and CT has told us to help each other and look after each other.”