One of the most prolific pro-Russia propaganda channels is run by a US Navy veteran living in Washington
Hannah Getahun – April 16, 2023
US Navy sailors lining up on the USS Carl Vinson.Getty Images
A popular pro-Russia social-media account is run by a Navy veteran, per reports.
Donbass Devushka, whose real name is Sarah Bils, previously claimed to be from Eastern Europe.
The account helped to spread the leaked Pentagon documents that were posted on Discord.
A social-media account that spread misinformation about the war in Ukraine and pro-Russian war talking points was created by former US Navy non-commissioned officer, The Wall Street Journal confirmed in an exclusive interview.
Sarah Bils is a 37-year-old woman in Oak Harbor, Washington, who served at the US Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island until November of 2022, online Navy records show. Bils’ identity was first uncovered by users on Twitter and Reddit, and first reported by an advocacy site mainly posting about the war known as Malcontent News.
Online, however, Bils goes by the name Donbass Devushka, and her account sometimes posts graphic images of the fighting, praises the brutal wing of the Russian military known as the Wagner group, and sometimes celebrates the death of Ukrainian fighters.
Bils told the Journal that 15 other people help her run the account.
The persona has a YouTube channel, a Twitter, and a Spotify podcast with tens of thousands of followers. On the podcast, Bils, who in previous posts claimed to be from Eastern Europe, appears to put on a phony accent.
On the bio of her Telegram — from which she posts dozens of times a day — Bils says the account is “Russian-style information warfare” that’s “Bringing the multipolar world together.” The account, ironically, once posted a screenshot of the popular meme reading “I’ll serve crack before I serve this country” — meant to signify that someone would never join the US military.
The Telegram account was also recently associated with helping to spread four images of the dozens of leaked US intelligence documents that appeared on a Discord server called Thug Shaker Central. Many of these documents contained information on US intelligence gathering on the war in Ukraine. Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old junior-ranking US National Guard airman, was arrested on Thursday and charged on Friday with possessing classified documents pertaining to national security, and possessing national defense materials.
Bils, who had secret security clearances while serving, told the Journal she did not help to leak the documents. The Journal also noted that the documents posted on her channel were altered versions of the Discord documents, but Bils denied that her team had altered them.
“I obviously know the gravity of top-secret classified materials,” she told the publication.
The documents are no longer on the account, but the Donbass Devushka Telegram channel shared a theory on April 13 that the leaks were actually an intentional effort from US intelligence officials and that Teixeira unknowingly carried out their plan.
Insider reached out to emails associated with Donbass Devushka and Bils but did not immediately receive a response.
The US Navy did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Correction: April 17, 2023 — An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Bils’ position in the Navy. She was a noncommissioned officer, not a commissioned officer.
Former Navy NCO running pro-Russian social account under investigation for helping spread classified documents
Michael Lee – April 17, 2023
Former Navy NCO running pro-Russian social account under investigation for helping spread classified documents
A former Navy non-commissioned officer is reportedly the subject of a Justice Department investigation into her role in helping spread classified documents recently leaked online.
Sarah Bils, a 37-year-old former aviation electronics technician in the Navy, is allegedly behind the pro-Russian “Donbass Devushka” social media account that helped classified documents originally leaked by Massachusetts Air Guardsman Jack Teixeira reach a wider audience, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
Donbass Devushka, which translates as “Donbas Girl,” is a series of social media accounts popular on Telegram, Twitter and YouTube that pushed a pro-Kremlin view for an English-speaking audience. Despite presenting itself as being a single Russian blogger, the accounts are run by multiple administrators, including Bils.
The social media accounts and Bils’ role are now the subject of a Justice Department investigation, according to a report from USNI News on Monday.
Bils last served at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island before leaving the service late last year. She reached the grade of E-7, or chief petty officer, during her time in the service, but she left the military as an E-5, or petty officer second class. It is unclear why the former service member was demoted.
The Navy did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
Classified documents allegedly posted to the internet by Teixeira had gone relatively unnoticed until they were picked up by the Donbass Devushka social media account, which boasts a much larger following than the invite-only Discord server that was run by the Massachusetts Guardsman.
From there, the documents were picked up by several large Russian social media accounts, spurring the Pentagon investigation into the leaks.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bils, who had access to classified material in her capacity in the Navy, said the documents were posted to Donbass Devushka by another administrator and later deleted by her.
“I obviously know the gravity of top-secret classified materials. We didn’t leak them,” she told the outlet.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a review of intelligence access and procedures in response to the leaks.
Bils is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Washington state. She joined the Navy in 2009 and completed “A” school at Naval Aviation Technical Training Center in Pensacola, Florida, and first reported to Fleet Readiness Center Northwest, Whidbey Island, in 2011.
Her awards include two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, a Meritorious Unit Commendation, four Good Conduct Medals and the National Defense Service Medal, according to USNI News.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the case.
Over the past two decades, Thomas has been reporting on required financial disclosures rental income from a family real estate company – but the company ceased operations in 2006.
By itself, the disclosure could be chalked up as an inadvertent error. The original company, named Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, was taken over by a similarly named company, Ginger Holdings, LLC.
Here’s what you need to know.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny for accepting lavish trips and other gifts from a Republican megadonor.
Clarence Thomas reported $270,000 to $750,000 from now-defunct company
The original company, a Nebraska real estate firm named Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, was created in the 1980s and shut down in 2006. In its place, a new company, Ginger Holdings, LLC, was created and assumed control of the previous company, according to The Post.
On Thomas’ recent annual disclosure forms, the Supreme Court justice reported income of between $50,000 and $100,000 from Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, the older, now-defunct company, The Post reported. The forms make no mention of the newer company, Ginger Holdings, LLC.
Since 2006, according to The Post, Thomas reported receiving $270,000 to $750,000 from the older company, where it was described on his forms as “rent.”
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has been reporting rental income from a family real estate company that ceased operations more than 15 years ago, The Washington Post reported.
Thomas under scrutiny over relationship with GOP megadonor
Along with his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the two went on multiple vacations funded by Crow over the past two decades, including trips on his superyacht and stays at his private resort. Thomas did not mention the travel on his disclosure forms.
In a statement this month, Thomas acknowledged that he and his wife joined Crow on a number of “family trips” during the more than a quarter century they have known them. He described the couple as “among our dearest friends.”
“Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable,” Thomas said.
He has not responded to requests about the subsequent revelations.
Contributing: John Fritze
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, leave funeral services for the late Justice Antonin Scalia in Washington in 2016.
Gunmen storm Mexican resort, kill 7, including child
Daniel Becerril – April 15, 2023
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Armed men on Saturday killed a child and six others after storming a resort in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, authorities said, in a region increasingly plagued by drug cartel violence.
Footage widely shared on social media showed the aftermath of the attack in a palm-studded resort in the small town of Cortazar, about 65 km (40 miles) south of the Guanajuato city.
It was not clear who was behind the shooting that killed the seven-year-old, three men and three women, Cortazar’s local security department said. One person was seriously injured in the La Palma resort.
But in recent years rival drug cartels have been waging brutal battles to control territory and trafficking routes through the state.
Video taken soon after the attack showed shocked adults and children walking past piles of dead bodies near a swimming pool.
“Heavily armed sicarios arrived and this is what happened,” said an unidentified man, using a word for hired assassins as he filmed at the resort in a video shared on the internet.
Reuters could not independently verify the contents of the video.
“After the attack, (the attackers) fled, but not before causing damage to the resort store and taking the security cameras and the monitor,” Cortazar’s security department said in a statement.
(Reporting by Daniel Becerril; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by William Mallard)
China and India are buying so much Russian oil that Moscow’s now selling more crude than it was before invading Ukraine
Phil Rosen – April 14, 2023
Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
Russia’s exports of crude oil have now surpassed the volumes hit before its invasion of Ukraine.
China and India account for roughly 90% of Russia’s seaborne crude exports, Kpler data shows.
With Europe largely out of the picture, the two countries are each buying 1.5 million barrels a day from Russia.
Russia has been able to navigate Western sanctions well enough to push oil exports above levels reached before its war on Ukraine — and new data suggests that Moscow has China and India to thank for that.
In the first quarter, Russia’s seaborne crude oil exports totaled 3.5 million barrels per day versus 3.35 million barrels in the year-ago quarter, the tail end of which saw the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
China and India now account for roughly 90% of Russia’s oil, with each country snapping up an average of 1.5 million barrels per day, according to commodities analytics firm Kpler,
That’s enough to absorb the shipments that no longer head to European nations, which used to account for nearly two-thirds of Russia’s crude exports. Europe now takes in only 8% of Russia’s oil exports, per Kpler.
“Both China and Russia are taking advantage of discounted Russian crude, benefiting from the sanctions applied on Russian materials by other countries,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, told Insider Friday.
Behind China and India, Turkey and Bulgaria are the biggest buyers of Russian crude.
Even before Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine, China was already a top buyer of Russian crude, importing 25% of its crude from the country in 2021. That’s since climbed to 36%, Kpler data shows.
India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, relied on Russia for about 1% of its total volumes prior to the war, but now buys 51% of its oil from Russia.
The US has led Europe and other Western nations in imposing sanctions and energy price caps on Russia, designed to maintain market flows while curtailing Moscow’s export revenue.
European Central Bank calculations show trade volume between the euro area and Russia has halved since February 2022, with the bloc’s imports of Russian imports seeing particularly steep declines following the bans on coal in August 2022, crude oil in December 2022, and refined oil products in February 2023.
The ECB chart below shows a similar pattern illustrated in Kpler’s data, with Russian seaborne crude exports shifting toward Asian buyers and away from Europe.
European Central Bank, ECB Economic Bulletin
To be sure, the revenue Russia generates from its energy exports has fallen along with the drop in prices, even as volumes remain elevated.
The International Energy Agency said Friday that Moscow’s revenue is down about 43% compared to the same time last year.
But oil prices are heading back up as China’s reopening economy drives demand while OPEC and Russia pinch supplies.
Earlier this month, OPEC+ announced a surprise production cut of over 1 million barrels a day, with Russia extending its 500,000-barrel-a-day pullback through mid-2023.
Clarence Thomas’s luxury travel: A threat to the court’s legitimacy?
Mike Bebernes, Senior Editor – April 13, 2023
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What’s happening
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s friendship with a billionaire real estate developer has come under intense scrutiny following a report last week by ProPublica that details luxury vacations Thomas took part in over the past two decades.
According to the report, Thomas and his wife, Ginni, have enjoyed lavish trips funded by Texas billionaire Harlan Crow “virtually every year,” including global travel on Crow’s superyacht and private jet as well as annual visits to his properties in the U.S. The justice did not report any of these trips in his annual financial disclosures.
Thomas, a staunch conservative who has played a critical role in the Supreme Court’s rightward tilt in his more than 30 years on the bench, released a statement asserting that the trips did not need to be disclosed because they fell under an exception that allows for “personal hospitality from close personal friends.” Legal experts disagree over whether Thomas’s failure to report his travels with Crow violated federal disclosure laws, with some arguing that until recently the rules were too ambiguous to clearly assert that he should have disclosed them.
The Supreme Court is generally left to police itself. Unlike officials on lower federal courts, the nine justices are not bound by a formal code of ethics. Because the country’s founders wanted members of the nation’s top court to be shielded from politics, the other branches of government have little power to influence the court — other than the drastic step of impeachment.
Thomas is no stranger to controversy. His confirmation hearings in 1991 became one of the most heated political fights of the era amid accusations he had sexually harassed a colleague named Anita Hill. He has been a key conservative vote in contentious rulings around equal rights, voting access and abortion. More recently, he faced fierce criticism for refusing to recuse himself from cases that related to his wife’s participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Why there’s debate
Democrats and liberal commentators have roundly condemned Thomas for failing to disclose the extent of his relationship with Crow as well as his willingness to accept such lavish hospitality in the first place. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the justice’s relationship with Crow, who has given millions to fund Republicans, represents an “almost cartoonish” level of corruption and called for Thomas to be impeached. Though there’s no direct evidence that Crow’s generosity influenced Thomas’s rulings, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said his actions were “simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a justice on the Supreme Court.”
Most conservatives have rallied to defend Thomas, arguing that he followed ethics rules as they’re written and insisting that even Supreme Court justices are allowed to have close friends. They also sternly reject the implication that a billionaire could alter a justice’s decision making in key cases by taking him on vacation. Many have accused Democrats of using these trips as an excuse to try to discredit Thomas, who has provided a consistent conservative bulwark against their cause for three decades.
But others say Thomas’s actions, whether or not they constitute actual corruption, bolster the view that the Supreme Court has lost its legitimacy. The public’s faith in the court reached an all-time low last year in the months following its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Critics say Thomas’s actions, and the lack of any accountability for them, feed the perception that the conservative justices are merely an extension of the Republican political movement.
What’s next
Durbin said last week that the Senate Judiciary Committee will act in response to the ProPublica report. It’s unclear what steps he and any other members of Congress will take. The scandal has also revived calls for Congress to establish an official ethics code for the Supreme Court, but similar efforts in recent years have fizzled due to lack of bipartisan support.
Perspectives
This is exactly what real corruption looks like
“Corruption is much more than a cartoonish quid pro quo, where cash changes hands and the state is used for private gain. Corruption, more often than not, looks like an ordinary relationship, even a friendship. It is perks and benefits freely given to a powerful friend. It is expensive gifts and tokens of appreciation between those friends, except that one holds office and the other wants to influence its ideological course. It is being enmeshed in networks of patronage that look innocent from the inside but suspect to those who look with clearer eyes from the outside.” — Jamelle Bouie, New York Times
Justices can’t be expected to be lifelong hermits
“Supreme Court justices are allowed to have friends, even if a particular friend is rich and a particular justice is conservative. Clarence Thomas has written a lot of important Supreme Court opinions during his three decades on the bench. I recommend that we spend our time addressing those and leave his personal life to him.” — Scott Douglas Gerber, The Hill
Crow’s money gives him influence that regular people could never imagine
“Crow may not have bought Thomas’s vote, but he sure paid for hundreds of hours of face time. … If you’re a rich Republican friend of the Crows, you had an opportunity to plead your case to the justice. I didn’t. Women … didn’t. Parents of children who were murdered at school because of Thomas’s interpretation of the Second Amendment didn’t. Crow doesn’t invite those parents to his private resort when the justice is around.” — Elie Mystal, The Nation
Democrats want to dismantle the conservative court by any means available
“This non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
The country’s most powerful judges shouldn’t have lower ethical standards than regular workers
“While librarians and teachers and FDA inspectors and lawyers turn down water bottles and bagels, Thomas says yes to all this? Are those pesky ethics and rules just for the little people, too? It’s demoralizing, fuels cynicism, and corrodes trust in public institutions.” — Terri Gerstein, Slate
Partisanship makes it impossible to have a real conversation about the issues at play
“There is little doubt that interpretations of Thomas’s ethics fall quite neatly into red and blue camps. … If your guy does something, it’s unprecedented corruption. If my guy does it, it’s a trivial lapse. See: sex scandals of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.” — Mona Charen, The Bulwark
Thomas’s actions represent a lapse in judgment, not a major scandal
“Thomas was wrong not to disclose apparently free, luxurious trips as a guest of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. He should amend the record, apologize for the lack of disclosure, pledge to observe disclosure rules more scrupulously in the future — and then move on. Thomas’s nondisclosures are an ethical lapse. They are not, however, major sins.” — Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
The lack of any real guardrails for justices poses a threat to the court’s legitimacy
“Ultimately, what’s even more troubling than his behavior is the fact that the Supreme Court does not have its own code of conduct, even though there is one that applies to other federal judges. And if the high court doesn’t take the steps to adopt one on its own, Congress should act swiftly to pass legislation requiring justices to adhere to ethical standards.” — Julian Zelizer, CNN
The country’s legal system will collapse if the public doesn’t believe it’s legitimate
“The Supreme Court has no army or police department that can enforce its rulings outside its walls. … For the sake of the institution and its legitimacy, the justices need to display respect for the trust that should go with the lifetime appointments they have been given — or they will continue to see an erosion of public faith.” — Editorial, Washington Post
The myth of an independent judiciary is long dead
“The unspoken assumption is that, by definition, Supreme Court justices cannot be unethical, partisan cynics. It is an absurd, self-serving mythos propagated by legal elites who have earned the American people’s abhorrence. Thomas’s ethical quagmire exposes the Supreme Court’s self-mythology for the lie that it is.” — Max Moran, The American Prospect
The most worrying thing is that Republicans see nothing wrong
“One singularly unethical justice might be a containable problem. But Clarence Thomas is not seen by conservatives as an embarrassment they’re stuck with. To the contrary, they celebrate him as their moral beacon.” — Jonathan Chait, New York
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Photo illustration: Jack Forbes/Yahoo News; photos: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images , Alex Wong/Getty Images, Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.
Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica
April 13, 2023
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.
The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.
The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.
A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.
The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. That space is blank.
“He needed to report his interest in the sale,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer now at the watchdog group CREW. “Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets.”
Thomas did not respond to detailed questions for this story.
In a statement, Crow said he purchased Thomas’ mother’s house, where Thomas spent part of his childhood, to preserve it for posterity. “My intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice,” he said. “I approached the Thomas family about my desire to maintain this historic site so future generations could learn about the inspiring life of one of our greatest Americans.”
Crow’s statement did not directly address why he also bought two vacant lots from Thomas down the street. But he wrote that “the other lots were later sold to a vetted builder who was committed to improving the quality of the neighborhood and preserving its historical integrity.”
ProPublica also asked Crow about the additions on Thomas’ mother’s house, like the new carport. “Improvements were also made to the Thomas property to preserve its long-term viability and accessibility to the public,” Crow said.
Ethics law experts said Crow’s intentions had no bearing on Thomas’ legal obligation to disclose the sale.
The justice’s failure to report the transaction suggests “Thomas was hiding a financial relationship with Crow,” said Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis who reviewed years of Thomas’ disclosure filings.
There are a handful of carve-outs in the disclosure law. For example, if someone sells “property used solely as a personal residence of the reporting individual or the individual’s spouse,” they don’t need to report it. Experts said the exemptions clearly did not apply to Thomas’ sale.
The revelation of a direct financial transaction between Thomas and Crow casts their relationship in a new light. ProPublica reported last week that Thomas has accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including private jet flights, international cruises on the businessman’s superyacht and regular stays at his private resort in the Adirondacks. Crow has long been influential in conservative politics and has spent millions on efforts to shape the law and the judiciary. The story prompted outcry and calls for investigations from Democratic lawmakers.
“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends,” Thomas wrote. “As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips.” Crow told ProPublica that his gifts to Thomas were “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”
It’s unclear if Crow paid fair market value for the Thomas properties. Crow also bought several other properties on the street and paid significantly less than his deal with the Thomases. One example: In 2013, he bought a pair of properties on the same block — a vacant lot and a small house — for a total of $40,000.
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 07: Tourists move through the plaza in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building April 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. According to a ProPublica report published Thursday, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas failed to include in his financial disclosures that for decades he was treated to luxury vacations by Texas real estate magnate and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
In his statement, Crow said his company purchased the properties “at market rate based on many factors including the size, quality, and livability of the dwellings.”
He did not respond to requests to provide documentation or details of how he arrived at the price.
Thomas was born in the coastal hamlet of Pin Point, outside Savannah. He later moved to the city, where he spent part of his childhood in his grandfather’s home on East 32nd Street.
“It had hardwood floors, handsome furniture, and an indoor bathroom, and we knew better than to touch anything,” Thomas wrote of the house in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
He inherited his stake in that house and two other properties on the block following the death of his grandfather in 1983, according to records on file at the Chatham County courthouse. He shared ownership with his brother and his mother, Leola Williams. In the late 1980s, when Thomas was an official in the George H.W. Bush administration, he listed the addresses of the three properties in a disclosure filing. He reported that he had a one-third interest in them.
Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 1991. By the early 2000s, he had stopped listing specific addresses of property he owned in his disclosures. But he continued to report holding a one-third interest in what he described as “rental property at ## 1, 2, & 3” in Savannah. He valued his stake in the properties at $15,000 or less.
Two of the houses were torn down around 2010, according to property records and a footnote in Thomas’ annual disclosure archived by Free Law Project.
In 2014, the Thomas family sold the vacant lots and the remaining East 32nd Street house to one of Crow’s companies. The justice signed the paperwork personally. His signature was notarized by an administrator at the Supreme Court, Perry Thompson, who did not respond to a request for comment. (The deed was signed on the 23rd anniversary of Thomas’ Oct. 15 confirmation to the Supreme Court. Crow has a Senate roll call sheet from the confirmation vote in his private library.)
Thomas’ financial disclosure for that year is detailed, listing everything from a “stained glass medallion” he received from Yale to a life insurance policy. But he failed to report his sale to Crow.
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 07: United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Crow purchased the properties through a recently formed Texas company called Savannah Historic Developments LLC. The company shares an address in Dallas with Crow Holdings, the centerpiece of his real estate empire. Its formation documents were signed by Crow Holdings’ general counsel. Business records filed with the Texas secretary of state say Savannah Historic Developments is managed by a Delaware LLC, HRC Family Branch GP, an umbrella company that also covers other Crow assets like his private jet. The Delaware company’s CEO is Harlan Crow.
A Crow Holdings company soon began paying the roughly $1,500 in annual property taxes on Thomas’ mother’s house, according to county tax records. The taxes had previously been paid by Clarence and Ginni Thomas.
Crow still owns Thomas’ mother’s home, which the now-94-year-old continued to live in through at least 2020, according to public records and social media. Two neighbors told ProPublica she still lives there. Crow did not respond to questions about whether he has charged her rent. Soon after Crow purchased the house, an award-winning local architecture firm received permits to begin $36,000 of improvements.
People hold signs decrying U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in front of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, U.S. April 13, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Crow’s purchases seem to have played a role in transforming the block. The billionaire eventually sold most of the other properties he bought to new owners who built upscale modern homes, including the two vacant lots he purchased from Thomas.
Crow also bought the house immediately next door to Thomas’ mother, which was owned by somebody else and had been known for parties and noise, according to property records and W. John Mitchell, former president of a nearby neighborhood association. Soon the house was torn down. “It was an eyesore,” Mitchell said. “One day miraculously all of them were put out of there and they scraped it off the earth.”
“The surrounding properties had fallen into disrepair and needed to be demolished for health and safety reasons,” Crow said in his statement. He added that his company built one new house on the block “and made it available to a local police officer.”
Today, the block is composed of a dwindling number of longtime elderly homeowners and a growing population of young newcomers. The vacant lots that the Thomas family once owned have been replaced by pristine two-story homes. An artisanal coffee shop and a Mediterranean bistro are within walking distance. Down the street, a multicolored pride flag blows in the wind.
In Wisconsin, a big win for liberals and a warning for the GOP
Mike Bebernes – Senior Editor – April 9, 2023
How Wisconsin’s new liberal supreme court could rule on abortion rights, redistricting
What’s happening
On Tuesday night, while most of the political world was still focusing on the indictment of former President Donald Trump, a liberal candidate secured a major win that arguably suggests more about how future national elections may go than anything that happened in that New York City courtroom earlier in the day.
In Wisconsin, a liberal judge, Janet Protasiewicz, decisively defeated her conservative opponent, Daniel Kelly, and secured a seat on the state’s Supreme Court in a race widely considered to be the most important election of 2023. Protasiewicz’s victory will give liberals a majority on the Wisconsin court for the first time in 15 years. This potentially offers them the opportunity to strike down a 19th-century law banning nearly all abortions and to redraw congressional maps that have allowed Republicans to dominate the Wisconsin Legislature, despite the near 50-50 split of voters in the state.
Although the contest was nonpartisan on paper, it had all of the markings of a traditional campaign. Democrats and Republicans rallied intensely behind their preferred candidates, spending a combined $42 million on the race — nearly three times the previous record for any state Supreme Court election. Protasiewicz campaigned heavily on abortion and democracy reform, while Kelly attempted to portray her as “soft on crime.”
In another high-profile race Tuesday night in Chicago, the progressive candidate, Brandon Johnson, beat the conservative Democrat Paul Vallas in the race to become mayor of the nation’s third-largest city. These two victories come five months after Democrats overcame predictions of a “red wave” in last year’s midterm elections by winning key Senate, House and governors’ races across the country.
Why there’s debate
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will probably have a significant impact on politics in the state, but many political observers say it also serves as a strong bellwether of the political dynamics in the country ahead of next year’s critical presidential election cycle.
Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum say the result should be a flashing red warning light for Republicans about the dangers they face in 2024. They argue that Protasiewicz’s win shows that the dynamics that fueled the GOP’s lackluster showing in the midterms — most notably opposition to Trump and backlash to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning abortion protections established in Roe v. Wade — are still swaying swing voters. Many also make the case that Republicans have little hope of pivoting away from such unpopular positions because of the intensely pro-Trump and anti-abortion views of the party’s core voters.
There are also practical implications of the new liberal majority on Wisconsin’s top court that could benefit Democrats. If the court throws out the state’s gerrymandered district map, which is strongly biased in the Republicans’ favor, that could help Democrats gain a handful of seats in the House of Representatives and tip the balance in the state Legislature in their favor. Some legal experts add that having Protasiewicz on the bench, rather than an ally of Trump, like Kelly, dramatically reduces the chances that a GOP-backed legal effort to challenge the state’s results in the next presidential election would be successful.
Other observers are wary of making too many predictions based on a single, off-year election, with more than 18 months to go before the presidential election. They argue that the types of voters who turn out for a state Supreme Court race don’t necessarily reflect the voters who will turn out next November, especially if Trump himself is on the ballot. It’s also possible, some add, that abortion may not be as potent an issue for Democrats in the future, because the question may largely have been settled in most states by the time voters head to the polls.
What’s next
Protasiewicz is scheduled to be sworn in in August, and the court is expected to quickly take up challenges to both the state’s centuries-old abortion ban and its gerrymandered district map. There has been some speculation that Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate may attempt to impeach Protasiewicz to prevent her from tipping power in the court, but the party’s leaders have insisted that is not going to happen.
Perspectives
Republicans’ refusal to abandon unpopular positions means the losses will keep coming
“Republicans were, after all, warned. Again and again. On Trump and abortion, but also on guns, moral Grundyism, and their addiction to the crazy. Yet despite all the red blinking lights — and they are flashing everywhere — the GOP simply smacks its lips and says, ‘This is fine.’ More, please.” — Charlie Sykes, Bulwark
The GOP has time to stem its losses on abortion if it’s willing to moderate on the issue
“The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. … Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
An obscure, off-year court race can’t tell us much about how national elections will go
“The supreme-court election is a big win for the Left, but it would be foolish to suggest it means Wisconsin won’t be a competitive state in 2024. Turnout in 2023 was significantly higher than in a typical supreme-court election but significantly lower than in the November 2022 midterm elections or the 2020 presidential election.” — John McCormack, National Review
Democratic strength in Midwest swing states narrows the GOP’s path to the White House
“These gains in turn will further energize progressives and elect more Democrats in a virtuous circle. It is hard to imagine any Republican presidential candidate carrying Wisconsin in 2024, and that pattern is likely to hold in other key Midwestern states.” — Robert Kuttner, American Prospect
Unique circumstances made abortion more central in Wisconsin than it will be in most other contests
“The answer seems to be that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, but only in some circumstances. When a campaign revolves around the subject — as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did this week and voter referendums in Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan did last year — abortion can win big even in purple or red states. … But there is not yet evidence that abortion can determine the outcome of most political campaigns.” — David Leonhardt, New York Times
The GOP’s MAGA base is driving the party straight toward disaster in 2024
“The GOP nominee will have most likely endorsed a national abortion ban (or at least draconian abortion restrictions in their own state) to make the party’s primary voters happy. … If messaging about defending abortion rights and democracy commanded a sizable majority in this highly polarized, blue collar-heavy swing state, it may well continue constituting Kryptonite to MAGA — all the way through 2024.” — Greg Sargent, Washington Post
The messages that have helped the GOP win in the past may not work today
“Away from the Trump circus, it certainly feels like a shift is happening. The go-to Republican scare tactics – Socialism is coming! Crime is rampant! The family is under attack! – aren’t working. And when the face of your party becomes the first former president ever indicted, the old ‘party of law and order’ line falls a bit flat.” — Rex Huppke, USA Today
The result should inspire Democrats to proudly stand up for progressive policies
“For Democrats, there is a lesson here. When they run on protecting abortion rights, they tend to win. When they shy away from messages that are central to their party’s identity — for instance, by tacking to the center with tough-on-crime policies — their record is much more mixed. … In much of the country, voters don’t want Republican-lite candidates. They want Democrats who act like Democrats.” — Alex Shephard, New Republic
Abortion fights may be largely settled by the time the presidential election comes around
“Abortion might be legal in Wisconsin by the 2024 election. I think that’s actually quite likely. So, you know, abortion as a motivating issue might not be there for some voters.” — Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, FiveThirtyEight
A liberal majority on Wisconsin’s court will counter the GOP’s efforts to subvert democracy
“A redrawn map could put two or three GOP-held seats in Congress in play for Democrats. … The actual winner of the 2024 Wisconsin presidential election will all but certainly receive the state’s electoral votes.” — Christina Cauterucci, Slate
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
Clarence Thomas accepted luxury gifts from GOP megadonor for decades without disclosing them: report
Sarah Elbeshbishi and Josh Meyer – April 6, 2023
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury gifts from a prominent Republican donor for more than 20 years without disclosing them, possibly violating a law that requires justices, judges and members of Congress to disclose most gifts, according to a new report.
ProPublica reported Thursday on a series of lavish trips Thomas has taken over more than two decades, which have been funded by billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
This investigation comes as the nation’s high court fends off requests for a code of ethics, which would likely address similar instances.
The disclosures are the latest ethics controversy to dog Thomas, who also has faced tough questions about his incomplete financial disclosure forms and appearances at other political gatherings of wealthy conservative donors and influencers.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, his wife, also has come under scrutiny for her back-channel efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
Thomas accepted luxury gifts without disclosing them, according to report
Thomas has accepted lavish gifts from the billionaire Dallas businessman nearly every year, which had included vacations on Crow’s superyacht and trips on the billionaire’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet as well as a week each summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, ProPublica reported, citing flight records, internal documents and interviews with Crow’s employees.
The report also found that flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration and FlightAware suggests that Thomas makes “regular use” of Crow’s jet, noting that Thomas used the private plane for a three-hour trip in 2016.
Thomas’ frequent trips to Crow’s private lakeside report, Camp Topridge, in the Adirondacks in upstate New York has also subjected Thomas to Crow’s extensive guestlist of corporate executives and political activists.
Thomas vacationed with executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major GOP donors, a leader of the American Enterprise Institute during a July 2017 trip, according to ProPublica.
What did Thomas, Crow say?
Thomas didn’t respond to ProPublica’s request for comment, but Crow in a statement said he and his wife’s “hospitality” to Thomas and his wife “over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”
Crow, in his statement, also emphasized that he has never asked Thomas about any pending or lower court case, nor has Thomas discussed one, adding that “we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue” nor is aware of “any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence” Thomas.
Renewed calls for code of ethics
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a longtime advocate for more transparency and accountability on the Supreme Court, issued a series of tweets following the ProPublica story saying it underscores why an overhaul of court ethics laws and requirements is urgently needed.
“A picture worth a thousand words,” Whitehouse said, including a painting in his tweet from the ProPublica report that allegedly hangs at Crow’s Adirondacks resort, Camp Topridge. It shows Thomas smoking cigars with Crow and other prominent conservatives.
Whitehouse outlined some of the connections between those in what he calls “the ‘cigar boys’ painting,” saying one of them, Leonard Leo, runs a “constellation of front groups” whose goal is to secretly influence the High Court.
As one example, Whitehouse said that an organization called the Judicial Crisis Network “raised anonymous money in checks as big as $17 million to fund political ads for (Supreme Court justices) Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.”
“The donor(s) who funded ads to help Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network front group pack the Court, and the donor’s(s’) business or interests before the Court, have never been disclosed,” Whitehouse said.
“This secrecy is toxic and wrong,” he added. “The Court should not protect it any longer, and the Judicial Conference should look diligently and with urgency into this mess of front group briefs.”
Whitehouse, a lawyer and former top federal prosecutor, is a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees Supreme Court nominations.
The least accountable part of the U.S. government?
Gabe Roth, executive director of the non-partisan group Fix the Court, said the ProPublica story “leads to a conclusion we’ve all come to expect: the Supreme Court is the least accountable part of our government, and nothing is going to change without a wholesale, lawmaker-led reimagining of its responsibilities when it comes to basic measures of oversight.”
Roth said the disclosures in the report underscore that ‘personal hospitality rules’ adopted by the judiciary last month do not go far enough, and that Supreme Court and lower courts need to adopt “the same, if not stricter, gift and travel rules than what members of Congress have.”
“That means a judicial ethics office to pre-approve sponsored trips, no matter who — even a ‘friend’ — is footing the bill, and judges and justices should be required to file a report within 30 days of their return listing the names of other guests and the dollar amounts for every mode of transportation taken, plus lodging and meals.”
Roth also called on Thomas to update his disclosure reports “for every year he took a private plane, as it appears that such luxurious travel has never been included under the ‘personal hospitality exemption.’”
Tennessee GOP lawmakers expel two Democrats, spare one over gun control protest
The two expelled Democrats, both Black men, were two of the youngest members of the House. The other Democrat not expelled, a white woman, believes race played a role in their dismissal.
Marquise Francis, National Reporter – April 6, 2023
The majority-Republican Tennessee House voted to expel two Democrats and spared a third Thursday afternoon after the trio of lawmakers led a protest on the House floor last week to demand action on gun control in the wake of the latest deadly school shooting in Nashville last Monday that claimed the lives of six people, including three children.
State representatives Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, both Black and two of the youngest members of the Legislature, were voted out of the House with vote tallies of 72-25 and 69-26 respectively, while Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a white woman, was spared by one vote with a vote tally of 65-30.
It takes two-thirds of the House to officially expel a member and Tennessee House is made up of 75 Republicans and 23 Democrats, with one vacancy.
When asked what made the difference between her outcome and those of her former colleagues, Johnson told a group of reporters shortly after her vote that “it might have to do with the color of our skin.”
Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, right, receives a hug from Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, on the floor of the House chamber after a resolution to expel Johnson from the legislature failed Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Johnson also vowed to do everything in her power to fight to get the jobs back for her colleagues.
The trio of Democrats — who in recent days have gained notoriety as the so-called Tennessee Three — said they understood that they were breaking decorum when they approached the podium last week with a bullhorn chanting, “No action, no peace!” They were echoing the sentiments of thousands of students, parents and community members they had met with earlier that day, many of whom were still present and shouting from the gallery above the chamber, having grown impatient as the majority GOP House worked through various pieces of legislation, but none addressing guns.
The Democrats had expected consequences for their actions, they admit, but had no idea it would cost them their jobs.
Republicans on Monday introduced legislation to expel the three Democrats for “disorderly behavior,” with GOP House Speaker Cameron Sexton likening the public display to an “insurrection.”
“What they did was try to hold up the people’s business on the House floor instead of doing it the way that they should have done it, which they have the means to do,” Sexton said on “The Hal Show Podcast” the evening of the outburst. “They actually thought that they would be arrested. And so they decided that them being a victim was more important than focusing on the six victims from Monday. And that’s appalling.”
Sexton did not return Yahoo News’ request for comment.
Protesters in the gallery of the Tennessee state Capitol on Monday demanding action on gun reform. (Seth Herald/Getty Images)
When Johnson joined her two former colleagues in boisterous chants for gun reform on the state Capitol’s House floor last Thursday during a recess between bills, it was largely because she knows firsthand about the trauma that plagues, even at times consumes, an individual after experiencing a school shooting.
In the wake of the latest deadly school shooting in Nashville last week that claimed the lives of six people, including three children, Johnson recalls her own school shooting experience in the state fifteen years prior.
The Democratic lawmaker was a teacher more than a decade ago at Central High School in Knoxville when in 2008 a student fatally shot a 15-year-old classmate during a dispute. As those unsettling memories returned with this most recent tragedy, Johnsons said she felt silenced by the majority Republican-led House for not formally bringing a gun control discussion to the floor — so she and two others took it upon themselves.
“As an educator who’s been in a school when there was a school shooting, we have to [make] this issue paramount,” Johnson, who represents Knoxville, told Yahoo News, recalling the psychological aftermath that the 2008 shooting had on the community. “It was a trauma-filled day and a sad day – and we lost a life. It had a serious effect on students.”
Republicans also stripped the lawmakers – who represent the state’s largest three cities with about 80,000 constituents each – of their committee assignments and revoked building access.
‘Chilling effect across the country’
Ahead of the expulsion votes, Johnson believed the move would have sweeping ramifications across the rest of the country.
“This is going to have a chilling effect across the country, especially in red states,” she said. “It’s going to scare people from talking about real issues. … [Republicans] thought they would take this opportunity to take these respected voices in the state away and didn’t take a second to think about what they were doing.”
Pearson, who was elected to his seat in January, claims that Republicans in the state House are “silently complicit to gun companies,” which is leading to an “erosion of democracy.”
“There were thousands outside wanting us to stand up,” Pearson told Yahoo News. “I come from a community that [deals with gun violence regularly]. We want action so we don’t have this issue. This is indicative of the silencing.”
Former Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, delivers his final remarks on the floor of the House chamber as he is expelled from the Legislature on Thursday. (George Walker IV/AP)
Leaders from across the country have also echoed this sentiment.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre slammed Tennessee Republicans for taking swift action on the Democrats’ protest, but failing to address legitimate solutions that could prevent another school shooting.
“The fact that this vote is happening is shocking, undemocratic and without precedent across Tennessee and across America, our kids are paying the price for the actions of Republican lawmakers who continue to refuse to take action on stronger gun laws,” Jean-Pierre said during Thursday’s press briefing.
Guns remain the leading cause of death for children and adolescents under the age of 19 since surpassing car accidents in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021 alone, firearms accounted for nearly one in five deaths of children.
“I’m not excusing yelling out of turn on the House floor,” Murphy tweeted Tuesday. “Civility still matters in politics. But expulsion is an extreme measure of last resort, not the first step when someone breaks the House floor rules. And the double standard tells you everything you need to know.”
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty)
Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the impending expulsion “infuriating and anti-democratic.”
Jones, who at 27 is one of the youngest members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, told CNN Wednesday that the move to expel him and his colleagues is “morally insane.”
“It’s very concerning and it represents a clear and present danger to democracy all across this nation that should trouble us all,” he said.
But some critics are cautious to overstate the effects of an expulsion. Thomas Goodman, an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Law at Rhodes College in Memphis, believes there are ways to be disruptive within the confines of procedure.
“I fear this could lead to a chilling effect on other Republican-led states, possibly deterring the voicing of dissident opinions in states where abortion laws and gun control policy do not neatly align with the majority’s views,” Goodman said in an email to Yahoo News. “But why limit it to Republican-led states? What about the potential for Democratic-majority states to act in similarly abusive ways?”
“Democrats in other states could continue expressing their opinions and offering dissent, but through mechanisms that do not disrupt parliamentary procedures, within acceptable parliamentary channels,” he said.
Concerns of a double standard
The move to expel the three Democrats has also raised concerns of a double standard within the Republican-controlled State House that in recent years declined to take action against a member accused of sexual misconduct and another facing an indictment for violating federal campaign finance laws. Another unidentified Republican member of the House allegedly urinated on a colleague’s chair.
“Evidently these are not expulsion-worthy displays of unethical behavior or lack of decorum,” Carrie Russell, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University told Yahoo News in an email, while duly acknowledging that a move like this “signals that dissent and protesting against the stated agenda, regardless of the context, will procedurally engender the most extreme measures – rendering their seats vacant and removing the ability of the voters in the states’ most diverse districts to receive representation in the halls of government.”
Protesters gather outside the Tennessee State Capitol to call for an end to gun violence and support stronger gun laws after a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. March 30, 2023. (REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo)
Since the Civil War, just two other members of the House have been expelled for much more egregious actions. Most recently, in 2016 then-Rep. Jeremy Durham, a Republican, was removed from the House over allegations of sexual misconduct with at least 22 women. Prior to that, in 1980, then-Rep. Robert Fisher, a Republican, was expelled after being convicted of soliciting a bribe in exchange for attempting to prevent pending legislation from going through.
Because of these serious infractions in the past leading to expulsion, political experts say a move to remove legislators for protesting out of turn would set a troubling precedent.
“Expulsion directly removes a duly elected official. It takes the decision out of the hands of the electorate,” Susan Haynes, an associate professor of political science at Lipscomb University in Nashville, told Yahoo News, adding that expulsion in this circumstance, “lessens the threshold for what qualifies as an expellable offense.”
“Neither the Tennessee Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution specifies what constitutes an expellable offense, so there is significant ambiguity there, but if we make this a political decision and weaponize the process, it sets a dangerous precedent,” she said.
Tennessee State Troopers block the stairwell leading to the legislative chambers Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Jana Morgan, a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and co-author of the book Hijacking the Agenda: Economic Power and Political Influence sees two possible results from an expulsion that could result in contrasting outcomes.
“Expelling these legislators would immediately strip thousands of Tennesseeans of elected representation in the state Legislature, and the expulsion proceedings could work to silence the voices that these members aimed to amplify,” Morgan told Yahoo News. “At the same time, the ripple effects from this expulsion effort could actually galvanize the supporters of the Tennessee Three as well as gun control advocates across the state and country.”
Fanning the flames of heightened frustrations, on Monday, Republican Rep. Justin Lafferty allegedly assaulted Jones as he held his phone to film on the House floor as community members in the gallery above the House floor chanted “fascists”.
Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville), speaks to a group made up of mainly high school students during their sit in to demand answers on what representatives plan to do on gun reform in the state of Tennessee, at the Cordell Hull State Office Building a week after the mass shooting at The Covenant School, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. April 3, 2023. (Nicole Hester/USA Today Network via REUTERS)
Johnson called the incident an example of “privilege” at work. But beyond the infighting and tense exchanges in the past week, she says, what’s most frustrating is the fact that real human lives are at stake. Having been in elected office off and on for a decade, Johnson said she’s seen the decay of bipartisan work for the greater good.
Dating back to when she was first elected in 2013, Johnson recalls a time when, “We were on both sides of the aisle, but we would get along. Now there’s a meanness with this new class even more. It’s concerning and we are moving further and further away from democracy.”
Republicans push back
Still, Republicans appear to be holding their ground.
Republican Rep. Gino Bulso, who sponsored Johnson’s expulsion, said during an appearance on the conservative Daily Wire podcast on Wednesday that the trio’s actions warrant their discipline.
“They voluntarily disqualified themselves from further service,” Bulso said. “Rather than comply with their oath to the Constitution and comply with the rules, they decided to go outside of the House and effectively shut it down. And so what we’re simply doing is recognizing that they’ve voluntarily chosen to put themselves outside the House and formally expel them.”
Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, sees some lingering questions for the state House’s ultimate voting body.
“The key question is whether the lawmakers are being punished for their actions or their speech,” he said. “If no one has ever been expelled for comparably disruptive behavior in the chamber, there’s a strong argument that they’re being punished for their speech, which would violate the First Amendment. … This has the feel of retaliation for criticism directed at House members.”
Protesters stand in the house gallery as the House starts its morning session while protesters gather at the Tennessee State Capitol building to call for gun reform laws and to show support for the ‘Tennessee Three’ Democratic representatives who are facing expulsion Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville, and Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis on April 6, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Seth Herald/Getty Images)
As for expectations ahead of Thursday’s votes, Pearson thinks this is likely his last week as an elected official. But the work, he says, never stops.
“I expect the majority of those people to expel us in an attempt to expel us [as people], but you can’t silence us,” he said. “We are going to continue to do the work to not be silenced.”
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