(And why should the wife of a Supreme Court justice NOT be doing this?)
In the weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent a barrage of text messages imploring President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote, according to a person with knowledge of the texts.
In one message sent in the days after the election, she urged the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a web of conspiracy theories that Trump supporters believed would overturn the election. …
The Supreme Court justice and his wife battled for years for a more conservative America. New reporting shows how far she was willing to go after Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
… Trump insisted, without evidence, that fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative groups rushed to rally behind him. The council stood out, however, not only because of its pedigree but also because one of its newest leaders was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a longtime activist in right-wing circles. She had taken on a prominent role at the council during the Trump years and by 2019 had joined the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 under a provision of the tax code that allows for direct political advocacy. It was C.N.P. Action that circulated the November “action steps” document, the existence of which has not been widely known. It instructed members to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors: “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities during a time such as this.”
Such a plan, if carried out successfully, would have almost certainly landed before the Supreme Court — and Ginni Thomas’s husband. In fact, Trump was already calling for that to happen. In a Dec. 2 speech at the White House, the president falsely claimed that “millions of votes were cast illegally in swing states alone” and said he hoped “the Supreme Court of the United States will see it” and “will do what’s right for our country, because our country cannot live with this kind of an election.” …
(AP) — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced Friday that he plans to vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court, likely assuring the confirmation of President Joe Biden’s nominee.
Manchin was a key vote to watch because he has bucked his party on some of its top domestic priorities. But Manchin has backed all of Biden’s judicial nominees so far, and he said he would continue to do so in the case of Jackson, who would become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
“I am confident Judge Jackson is supremely qualified and has the disposition necessary to serve as our nation’s next Supreme Court Justice,” Manchin said in a statement.
Manchin’s announcement indicates that Jackson will have the support of all 50 Senate Democrats. That would guarantee her confirmation, as Vice President Kamala Harris could break a tie.
Even as the path clears for Jackson to join the court, Democratic hopes of securing significant Republican support for her nomination appear to be fading. …
Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, emphasized this week that the central bank he leads could succeed in its quest to tame rapid inflation without causing unemployment to rise or setting off a recession. But he also acknowledged that such a benign outcome was not certain.
“The historical record provides some grounds for optimism,” Mr. Powell said.
That “some” is worth noting: While there may be hope, there is also reason to worry, given the Fed’s track record when it is in inflation-fighting mode.
The Fed has at times managed to raise interest rates to cool down demand and weaken inflation without meaningfully harming the economy — Mr. Powell highlighted examples in 1965, 1984 and 1994. But those instances came amid much lower inflation, and without the ongoing shocks of a global pandemic and a war in Ukraine.
The part Fed officials avoid saying out loud is that the central bank’s tools work by slowing down the economy, and weakening growth always comes with a risk of overdoing it. …
i don’t think i had any control over what my wife thought and said. are you suggesting that Thomas should control what his wife thinks and says? .. be held responsible for it?
After a month of intense fighting near Kyiv, some Russian military units are withdrawing through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to Belarus to regroup, the Ukrainian military said Sunday, suggesting the Russian army was using the site of the defunct reactor for logistics.
Lingering radiation from the 1986 nuclear disaster poses only modest health risks, although those may be rising for Russian troops positioned in the area as dozens of small wildfires in the surrounding forest were spreading radiation in smoke.
The Ukrainian military’s statement about the partial pullback of Russian troops toward Chernobyl came as another sign that the Russian attack on Kyiv, the capital, has largely stalled in chaotic, inconclusive battles raging for weeks now in several mostly destroyed suburban towns.
There was no way to independently confirm the Ukrainian statement, but it was consistent with what Western intelligence agencies have said about the fighting to the northwest of Kyiv.
The Ukrainian military said an unspecified number of units of Russia’s 35th Combined Arms Army, a Russian military term for a large formation, were being pulled back to regroup after suffering losses in the fighting. It said several units were pulling back to the Chernobyl area and then crossing into Belarus, about 10 miles away. It is possible, the statement said, that after the regrouping and strengthening of the units, they will be redeployed in a renewed effort to encircle Kyiv.
That effort has in any case not wholly halted. On Saturday, Boyarka, a satellite town outside Kyiv to the south of Russia’s former front lines in the area, was shelled for the first time.
Five people were hospitalized, according to the town’s mayor.
“Russia can plan its attacks on us, but we are also getting ready, and I can say that it will not be easy for them here,” Oleksandr Zarubiv, the mayor, said in a telephone interview. …
Ginni Thomas Pressed Trump’s Chief of Staff to Overturn 2020 Vote, Texts Show
NY Times – March 24
(And why should the wife of a Supreme Court justice NOT be doing this?)
The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas
NY Times magazine – March 22
Joe Manchin says he’ll back Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court
Boston Globe – March 25
The Fed Bets on a ‘Soft Landing,’ … but a bumpy one is possible.
NY Times – March 25
i don’t think i had any control over what my wife thought and said. are you suggesting that Thomas should control what his wife thinks and says? .. be held responsible for it?
well, i guess if they are conservatives
i guess these guys know their business, but it doesn’t look to me like this is a classical wage-push inflation.
despite what Samuelson said about seventies inflation. and that took a hell of a long time and much pain to tame with high interest rates.
i called it the Reagan recession, the one that it was morning in America after… are you better off than you were last year?
Ukrainians say Russians are withdrawing from Kyiv area to regroup in Belarus
NY Times via Boston Globe – March 27