A Great Piece of Journalism

The health of our democracy in the spotlight

A hallmark of great journalism is that it shines a bright light on information that is in the public’s interest but that powerful forces and actors desperately want to remain hidden. 

A perfect example of this came today with a blockbuster investigative report from ProPublica about serious ethical questions concerning Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In a thorough examination of Thomas’s two-decade relationship with billionaire and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, reporters Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski detail a series of trips gifted to Thomas and his wife, Ginni, that on the open market would likely have totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

None of these were disclosed by Thomas, who likes to portray himself as a man of simple tastes. The report notes that in a recent documentary about his life, Thomas stated, “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it.” Let’s just say that none of the trips Thomas took with Crow on his yacht and to his private resort in the Adirondacks resembled a Walmart parking lot. 

It is fitting that this news would drop a day after we wrote about the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The reporting on Thomas shows the utter hypocrisy of those on the political right claiming that progressive judges are the ones undermining faith in our judicial system. 

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts likes to intone on how much he cares for the integrity of the court. But under his watch, the court's standing with the public has dropped precipitously. And he need look no further than his ideological counterparts in the court’s right-wing majority. 

The damage to the court’s reputation has been manifest in a series of rulings that have made a mockery of the ideas of judicial restraint and precedent. These have overturned Roe v. Wade, emboldened unrestricted gun rights, and undermined our representative government through gerrymandered elections. And that’s just the beginning. 

Then there is the personal conduct of the justices, of which Thomas, a hero to the right, is a particularly egregious example. Here he is hobnobbing with rich, powerful interests and not letting anyone know. There he was refusing to recuse himself from a case involving the January 6 insurrection even though his own wife was implicated. It is clear he feels he has no need to defend his actions to anyone. He is completely unaccountable and flaunts it. 

Senate Democrats today called for an ethics code for the Supreme Court. But color us skeptical that anything will change anytime soon. 

This is a time of great tension in the function (or perhaps more aptly, the dysfunction) of our democracy. It feels as if we have been walking a high wire for years. But the tension still increases. In just the last few days, we have seen a state legislator in North Carolina who had run as a solid Democrat switch parties, giving Republicans a supermajority. In Tennessee, Republicans in the state’s House expelled two Democratic representatives who had joined students in protesting inaction on gun violence. And this on top of what we saw in Wisconsin. 

There is also the backdrop of the former president facing numerous strands of legal peril. 

There has always been an element of hardball in politics. There have always been public officials who skirted or crossed the lines of ethics and the law. There have always been judges who had dubious connections. Democracy is always precarious. 

But there is a sense that now the danger is building. Voters are angry. The will of the majority is being undermined on issues like abortion and gun safety. Power is being accrued for its own sake and not to address the needs of the people. 

These are times when we need a fearless press to explain where there is peril and where there is promise around the ability of our nation to regain its footing and thrive. Kudos to ProPublica for its contribution to the health of American democracy.