Russian oil products are heading to the crude-rich Persian Gulf as the UAE and Saudi Arabia take advantage of cheap barrels
Phil Rosen – April 17, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Russia Abdulrahman Al-Rassi.Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin
Gulf nations are snapping up cheap Russian oil products while exporting their own crude at market rates.
Saudia Arabia and the UAE have emerged as key storage and trading hubs for Russian products, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Russia is sending 100,000 barrels a day to Saudi Arabia, up from effectively zero pre-Ukraine war, Kpler data shows.
Petro-rich nations in the Persian Gulf are buying discounted Russian oil products as Moscow continues to seek willing buyers while the West shuns the warring nation.
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are using those Russian barrels within their own borders for consumption and refining purposes, while exporting their own products at market rates, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Russian naphtha and diesel sell at discounts of $60 and $25 a ton, respectively, according to the report.
In addition, the two countries, particularly the UAE, have emerged as key trade and storage hubs for Russian oil and fuel. Trading firms import Russia energy to the UAE and re-export it to Pakistan, Sri Lanka or East Africa, the report said.
Kpler data shows Russian oil exports to the UAE more than tripled to 60 million barrels last year. Separate Argus Media data cited by the Journal show Russia now accounts for more than 10% of gas oil stored in Fujairah, the UAE’s main oil-storage center.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is importing 100,000 barrels a day from Russia after seeing effectively zero before Russia war on Ukraine, translating to an annual pace of about 36 million barrels.
US officials have objected to the burgeoning relations between Russia and the Gulf nations. But with Russia’s Urals crude trading at more than a 30% discount to Brent crude, the international benchmark, the arbitrage is particularly attractive.
Moscow has proven capable of navigating Western sanctions and price caps well enough to push oil exports above levels reached before it invaded Ukraine. In the first quarter, Russia’s seaborne crude exports hit 3.5 million barrels a day, compared to the 3.35 million barrels reached in the year-ago quarter.
Meanwhile, Kpler data shows that China and India now account for roughly 90% of Russia’s oil, with each country taking in 1.5 million barrels a day — more than enough to absorb the volumes no longer heading to European nations.
‘He didn’t deserve to get shot’: Good Samaritan who helped Ralph Yarl found him bloody and motionless
Deon J. Hampton and Doha Madani – April 17, 2023
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ralph Paul Yarl, the Black teenager who was shot by a homeowner after having rung the wrong doorbell, was motionless and covered in blood when James Lynch found him unconscious.
“I thought he was dead,” Lynch said Monday.
“No one deserves to lay there like that,” Lynch said. “He hasn’t even begun to live his life yet. He didn’t deserve to get shot.”
Lynch, 42, had just gotten out of the shower Thursday night and was getting ready for bed when he heard shouting outside. He went over to his kitchen window and saw a boy banging on the door of a nearby home.
“I heard somebody screaming, ‘Help, help, I’ve been shot!'” Lynch said, adding the shouting was out of place for the normally quiet neighborhood.
Lynch, a father of three, said he ran outside, jumped his fence and sprinted through a neighbor’s yard and across the street to another neighbor’s driveway to get to Yarl.
James Lynch, 42, who helped Ralph Yarl after he was shot. (Deon J. Hampton / NBC News)
His face and arms were covered in blood, and it looked as if Yarl had been shot in his head near an eye socket.
Lynch’s old Eagle Scout training kicked in when Yarl suddenly came to. Lynch told him, “I’m going to grab your hand really tight.” He checked Yarl’s wrist for a pulse before he asked him his name and age and where he went to school.
Yarl struggled to respond before he spelled his name. Another neighbor came over with towels to help stem the bleeding, and she and Lynch waited with Yarl until paramedics arrived.
Yarl, 16, had been trying to pick up his 11-year-old twin brothers from a friend’s home but had gone to the wrong street and house. His family’s attorneys, Lee Merritt and Ben Crump, said he was shot twice after he rang the doorbell.
Ralph Yarl. (via Ben Crump Law)
A warrant was issued for Andrew Lester, an 85-year-old white man, on charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action, Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson said Monday.
Merritt said the shot to Yarl’s head left him with a critical, traumatic brain injury. He was also shot in the upper arm, the attorneys said.
Faith Spoonmore, his aunt, said on a fundraising page that Yarl had gone to at least three homes before he received help.
Yarl, a student at Staley High School, loves science, takes mostly college-level courses and plays in the school band, according to North Kansas City Schools Superintendent Dan Clemens.
Protests erupted over the weekend in Kansas City, with some people saying Yarl’s race played a role in the situation.
Reflecting on Thursday night, Lynch said he doesn’t consider himself a hero.
“I didn’t do anything but hold a kid’s hand so he wouldn’t feel alone. He had just gotten shot twice; he had a hole in the side of his head,” Lynch said. “That kid is tougher than I am.”
Deon J. Hampton reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Doha Madani reported from New York City.
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)
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) April 13, 2023
Trump has long had starry eyes for dictators and strongmen, and spent much of his presidency cozying up to such leaders ― while at the same time often keeping the staunchest U.S. allies at arm’s length.
He sided with Putin when questioned about U.S. intelligence that found Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election, and boasted that he got along so well with Kim that they “fell in love.”
And just last week, he bragged to Sean Hannity about how he “got along great” with various dictators.
On the flipside, he dismissed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “far left lunatic” and accused French President Emmanuel Macron of being “very insulting.”
The Republican Accountability Project has been releasing videos, ads and billboards calling out Trump and the GOP lawmakers who enabled his lies about the 2020 election and supported the Jan. 6 insurrection.
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.
Unpacking the flawed science cited in the Texas abortion pill ruling
Lauren Weber – April 13, 2023
(Illustration by Emily Wright/The Washington Post)
A Texas judge’s decision to invalidate federal approval of a key abortion drug cites research based on anonymous blog posts, cherry picks statistics that exaggerate the negative physical and psychological effects of mifepristone, and ignores hundreds of scientific studies attesting to the medication’s safety.
The unprecedented ruling last week by U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk contradicted the recommendations of numerous medical groups when it assailed the safety of mifepristone, a two-decade-old medication used in more than half of all abortions in the United States. Another federal judge determined on the same day that the drug should remain available in a swath of states.
Kacsmaryk wrote in his decision that “the lack of restrictions resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life-threatening adverse reactions” and accused the Food and Drug Administration of acquiescing to “the pressure to increase access to chemical abortion at the expense of women’s safety.”
The ruling is the first time a court has suspended a medication’s approval after rejecting the assessment of a human drug by the FDA, considered among the world’s most stringent regulators. The agency says that between 2000, when the drug was approved, and last June, it received reports linking mifepristone to 28 deaths out of the 5.6 million who have used the drug. And in those 28 deaths, the agency said information gaps made it impossible to directly attribute the cause to mifepristone; in some cases, the deaths involved overdoses and coexisting medical conditions.
“If it were just up to the science, this case would be thrown out,” said Daniel Grossman, an obstetrician and gynecologist who directs a reproductive health research program at the University of California at San Francisco. The program, like many mainstream medical groups, supports abortion rights. “We have over two decades of science showing how safe this is.”
In the days since Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the scientific community has raised alarms about increasing legal and political attempts to undermine the science that informs modern medicine. Kacsmaryk, a Trump judicial appointee, is presiding over another lawsuit by anti-vaccine advocates who accuse media companies, including The Washington Post, of colluding to censor their views on coronavirus vaccines and treatments.
In the abortion pill case, an author of a Finnish study cited by Kacsmaryk disputed the judge’s characterization of the research, which the judge summarized as revealing that the “overall incidence of adverse events is ‘fourfold higher’ in chemical abortions when compared to surgical abortions.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit had also highlighted the study, which compared the records of more than 40,000 women in Finland who had surgical or medication abortions in the early 2000s.
The study identified a higher risk of adverse events among patients undergoing medication abortions compared with those who had surgical abortions, but the judge’s analysis neglects a crucial point: Significant complications were extremely low in both groups. In Finland, adverse events largely reflect patients concerned about uterine bleeding associated with medication abortions, said Oskari Heikinheimo, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Helsinki and a co-author of the study.
Heikinheimo said in an interview that the plaintiffs – and now the judge – were purposely misunderstanding his work and overemphasizing “adverse events” despite overwhelming scientific evidence of the drug’s safety and the study itself noting the rarity of serious complications. No one who filed the lawsuit had contacted him to talk about his research, Heikinheimo said.
“The political game has nothing to do with the scientific process,” he said.
Because individual studies often produce conflicting results, the medical community has long relied on a systematic approach known as evidence-based medicine, drawing on accumulated evidence from clinical research to inform their care of patients. Among the hundreds of clinical trials using mifepristone over two decades, more than 400 were randomized controlled studies, which are considered the gold standard of research design.
Kacsmaryk instead peppered his ruling with data from researchers affiliated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based antiabortion group whose website proclaims its mission to “expose the harms of the FDA’s current abortion pill policy that simply ignores the known risks.”
One study by James Studnicki, director of data analytics at the Lozier Institute, found that more than a quarter of women on Medicaid who had used abortion pills between 1999 and 2015 visited an emergency room within 30 days. Critics say the study is flawed because it did not specify the services people received at the ER. Medicaid patients are more likely to visit emergency rooms for routine medical care because they often lack primary care providers.
Studnicki, in an interview, accused abortion rights groups of underplaying the potential complications from abortions involving mifepristone, noting that ER visits are serious matters.
Bleeding is a normal part of a medication abortion, but women will often visit an emergency room as a precaution because they are unsure whether the amount of bleeding is excessive – and because their abortion clinic may be very far away, said Ushma Upadhyay, a UCSF professor and expert in reproductive health and abortion safety.
Upadhyay said the Lozier Institute is known for categorizing any complaint or side effect as a “complication.”
“They blur the lines,” she said. “They’re not using medically endorsed definitions.”
An analysis by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of hundreds of published studies found that “serious side effects occur in less than 1% of patients, and major adverse events – significant infection, blood loss, or hospitalization – occur in less than 0.3% of patients.”
“The risk of death is almost non-existent,” according to the group’s amicus brief, filed jointly with the American Medical Association, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and other medical organizations opposing the lawsuit. Complications from wisdom tooth removal, colonoscopy and Viagra use carry greater risk, they said.
Experts noted that most drugs on the market can cause complications, even death. The FDA, in approving a treatment, weighs the risk of the medication versus the benefit – it does not automatically exclude drugs that have side effects, even serious ones.
“I can assure you that that approval process was both comprehensive and quite thorough and was done according to the standard procedures at FDA,” Jane Henney, who led the agency when mifepristone was approved, said during a news conference Monday. The agency had consulted clinical data, preclinical data and the manufacturing process, among other criteria, she said.
The government’s appeal Monday underscored that “serious adverse events are exceedingly rare, just as they are for many common drugs like ibuprofen.”
But Christina Francis, chief executive of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the drug safety data used by the FDA is flawed because it relies on reporting by abortion providers – which she said was unlikely to capture the full picture of the complications following abortions.
“Those of us on the front lines are seeing women and girls coming into the ER who have been harmed,” Francis said.
Kacsmaryk also cites studies about the mental health of women who have obtained abortions that researchers criticize as misleading.
One concluded that 77 percent of women who had a “chemical abortion” reported a “negative change.” “Thirty-eight percent of women reported issues with anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts because of the chemical abortion,” Kacsmaryk wrote.
Both statistics, according to the footnotes in his ruling, came from a study based on several dozen anonymous blog posts from abortionchangesyou.com. The website is run by the Institute of Reproductive Grief Care.
Adam Unikowsky, a partner at Jenner & Block who has argued before the Supreme Court and writes a legal newsletter, pointed out that the bloggers are a self-selected group that is far from a representative sample of women who have obtained abortions.
“This is roughly like reporting a statistic that ‘83% of people are fans of Judge Kacsmaryk’ without mentioning that the entire sample consisted of posters on JudgeKacsmarykFanClub.com,” Unikowsky wrote in his newsletter.
The judge also referenced another disputed study from 2002 asserting that “women who receive abortions have a 154% higher risk of death from suicide than if they gave birth.”
The study’s authors – including David C. Reardon, an antiabortion activist and associate scholar with the Lozier Institute – say their findings could be explained by “self-destructive tendencies, depression, and other unhealthy behavior aggravated by the abortion experience.” They analyzed California Medicaid records for 173,279 women who had an induced abortion or a delivery in 1989, then linked them to death certificates between 1989 and 1997.
Critics at the American Psychological Association have argued that the California data set is too incomplete to link abortion to a higher risk of death. Reardon defended his work in an interview, claiming “the science is irrefutable.”
“There is no evidence that abortion causes psychological harm to women,” said Brenda Major, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who has led two task forces for the American Psychological Association to analyze studies on mental health and abortion.
But Kacsmaryk chose not to refer to more rigorous studies on mental health that have shown that the most common emotional response after abortion is relief, Grossman said. A well-known study by UCSF researchers of about 1,000 women who sought abortions compared people who received abortions with those who were denied them. The 10-year study found that abortion does not hurt the health and well-being of women and did not increase their rates of depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, on the other hand, was associated with negative health effects.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling pointed to another study that attributes women’s mental health problems directly to abortion. The 2011 meta-analysis by Priscilla K. Coleman, a retired Bowling Green State University professor of human development and family studies, included her own studies that used flawed research methods, said Major and other critics.
Coleman’s methodology and conclusions have drawn repeated criticism from fellow academics who say her research included in the 2011 paper does not distinguish between mental health problems that were diagnosed before an abortion and those that occurred afterward. Coleman, a co-author in Reardon’s 2002 study, did not respond to requests for comment.
The repercussions of Kacsmaryk’s decision reach far beyond the battle over abortion. Mary Ziegler, an expert on the legal history of abortion in the United States at the UC Davis School of Law, said the disregard for FDA expertise could threaten any drug or vaccine that has already received approval.
“It shows you how important courts are going to be in undermining or undercutting the science,” she said.
The Washington Post’s Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.
Politicians are motivated by many things, among them power, fame, idealism, greed — and fear.
The last of these is not to be underestimated. It is a powerful, gut-level force that can strike the most loquacious politicians dumb and make the most attention-hungry suddenly shy. It can cause officeholders or candidates to reverse field on a long-held position almost instantaneously and abase themselves however seems necessary to get to safety.
Republicans at the national level, right now, are scared. You can hear it in their silence on the issue of abortion after a district judge in Texas struck down the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. That decision also came immediately after Republicans lost a key race for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin to a progressive jurist who ran, to a large extent, on abortion rights.
You could say the Republican fight or flight instinct is kicking in, except it’s none of the former and all of the latter.
It’s like the nature show set in the Serengeti when all the gazelle sense lions in the vicinity and freeze in place, their heads in the air on high alert, waiting to make their next move — but pretty certain someone’s getting taken down, no matter what direction they run.
Much of what has happened since Dobbs is what you’d expect after a longstanding national legal regime on abortion is lifted and the states are given the freedom to decide their own policies. There has been a sorting out toward a new political and policy equilibrium, with red and blue states occupying different poles of the spectrum, and purple states up for grabs.
The good news for Republicans is that there are more restrictions on abortion in place than at any time in the last 50 years, and they still took a majority in the House in last year’s midterms, if smaller than expected.
There is broad sentiment for more restrictions than existed under Roe, but location and specifics matter immensely.
In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a six-week ban on abortion in 2019. It went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and Kemp won reelection handily in a race where the Democrat, Stacey Abrams, made abortion a major issue. In Texas, the details differ, but the story is much the same. The GOP-controlled Florida House takes up a six-week abortion ban on Thursday that Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign after it’s passed.
But especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, the issue has been a debacle for the party, and it has suffered notable losses elsewhere, with perhaps more in the offing.
One lesson should be that Republicans can’t just run and hide on an issue that has been of defining importance to their base and that Democrats are going to hammer them on regardless of how they try to minimize it.
Another is that outside of the Deep South, complete bans can’t be defended politically, and the traditional exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother are essential; polling for anti-abortion groups shows that even Republicans and conservatives don’t support prohibitions without the exceptions, which account for a tiny proportion of abortions.
What is required is a meeting somewhere in the middle between an anti-abortion movement that has to embrace incremental change and a Republican establishment that has to be willing to fight.
The Michigan and Wisconsin disasters stemmed from statutes that no one would have written in the post-Dobbs environment. Michigan had a 1931 law still on the books, and Wisconsin’s dated from 1849. These complete bans with narrow exceptions went too far for these purple or blue states, and Republicans were inevitably going to get hurt by their association with them.
In Kansas last year, a ballot measure that said the state’s constitution “does not create or secure a right to abortion” went down to a stinging defeat — the vagueness of the proposal allowed opponents to fill in the picture by arguing it would clear the way for a total ban.
Republicans should be pushing for restrictions that go as far as a state’s voters are willing to accept, and no further, while being absolutely clear about the details. This will require keen political judgment and shrewd tactics, both of which are hard to muster in the midst of a panic.
The other obvious imperative for the GOP is to try to focus attention on the extremism of the Democratic maximalist position on abortion, which is out of step with public opinion (Gallup finds that only 35 percent of people say abortion should be legal with no restrictions). Republican candidates who emerged unscathed on the issue last year had some success in flipping the script this way.
In the current controversy over the abortion pill, that means hitting the Biden administration for attempting an end run around an 1873 law prohibiting the use of the mail to deliver an “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used in an abortion, as a way to undermine abortion restrictions in red states.
While the Republican record fighting ballot measures to guarantee access to abortion is dreadful in the post-Dobbs era — they’ve lost everywhere — they are going to have to do more of it. Emboldened Democrats are getting referenda on the ballot in a number of red states over the next two years. A signature battle will be a vote to write abortion rights into the state constitution in Ohio later this year. If opponents defeat the measure, it will be on the strength of arguments that the amendment will end up making parental consent laws impossible and go further than the pre-Dobbs abortion regime.
Make no mistake: In many places, Republicans are simply seeking to neutralize the Democratic political advantage on the issue and fight to a draw. If this is unsatisfying and discomfiting, it’s still better than the pre-Dobbs context when the politics were easier but it was impossible to get any meaningful restrictions done. Yes, it would have been better if Republicans had spent a little more time during the prior half-century contemplating what they’d do if Roe fell, but here we are.
If there’s one thing that should be clear, it’s that fear — no matter how natural or visceral — is no substitute for careful thought and considered action.
Clarence Thomas’s luxury travel: A threat to the court’s legitimacy?
Mike Bebernes, Senior Editor – April 13, 2023
Scroll back up to restore default view.
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
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
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.
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