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Two Democrats in the US House of Representatives join the chorus calling on Alito and Thomas to reject

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WASHINGTON – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives joined their Senate colleagues on Tuesday in calling on U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to recuse themselves from cases on Jan. 6. They also called on Republicans in Congress to support the adoption of an enforceable code of ethics for all judicial panels.

Representatives Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee, and his deputy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought together fellow progressive Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with experts and advocates for a roundtable discussion on the “ethics crisis” facing the nation’s highest court.

Recent Revelations The many flags sympathetic to the “Stop the Steal” movement flying outside Alito’s home have reignited simmering concerns about the justices’ conflicts of interest in deciding politically charged issues. This year, the justices are expected to rule on issues such as access to the abortion pill and whether former President Donald Trump enjoys immunity from criminal charges over alleged 2020 election tampering.

Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez delivered acute remarks, rebuking decades of legal proceedings, beginning with the 5-4 decision in 2000. Bush vs. Gore which ultimately decided George W. Bush’s victory in the presidential election. The lawmakers went on to discuss recent events, which Ocasio-Cortez described as “almost comical corruption.”

“The Supreme Court in its current form is delegitimizing itself through its conduct,” the New York Democrat continued in her opening statement. “Americans are losing basic rights – reproductive health care, civil liberties, the right to vote, the right to organize clean air and clean water because the court has been captured and corrupted by money and extremism.”

Raskin of Maryland said the “highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards.”

In his opening remarks, Raskin characterized the court as “the judicial arm of the Republican Party,” drawing a line from Bush’s appointments of Chief Justices John Roberts and Alito to Trump’s appointments of conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“Now this right-wing corporate court, carefully designed to destroy Roe v. Wade and combine right-wing religion with unbridled corporate power, is destroying women’s abortion and contraception rights, civil rights, voting rights, civil liberties, environmental rights, workers’ rights and consumer rights, and is entrenching the power of government over the people and the power of corporations over government,” Raskin said.

The roundtable between Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez came less than a week after progressive Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Hank Johnson of Georgia. collected with activists in front of the Supreme Court demanding ethics reform.

On the same day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Posted to X: “As the Supreme Court’s term draws to a close, the left is once again harassing justices who refuse to take orders from liberal senators. The Court should take whatever action it deems appropriate to reprimand unethical conduct by members of its bar. And the justices should continue to ignore this harassment.”

“Keep up the pressure”

Whitehouse told Democratic members of the Oversight and Accountability Committee that Senate Democrats are “working hard to expose the abuses.”

The Democrat from Rhode Island has supported an ethics bill entitled the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which progressive In July 2023, he was removed from the committee along party lines, but did not receive a vote in the plenary.

“We need to keep up the pressure until they join the rest of the government in adopting a real code of ethics with real fact-finding and some ability to check the facts found against the rules,” Whitehouse said.

The bill was introduced following a 2023 ProPublica investigation Insightful that Justice Clarence Thomas received gifts from and traveled with a major Republican donor.

A recent analysis by the watchdog group Fix. The court has shown that the value of the gifts Thomas has received and is likely to have received over the past 20 years far exceeds that of his colleagues.

In May, Whitehouse again urged the court after the New York Times published that an upside-down U.S. flag was hanging outside Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, just days after former Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. The Times later revealed that another flag carried by Jan. 6 insurrectionists was flying outside the judge’s beach house in New Jersey.

Together with Senator Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested a meeting with Roberts to urge Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 attack. Roberts refused, and Alito replied to the senators and declared that he would not submit to the rejection.

“Thank you, Senator Whitehouse, for always flying the flag the right way up,” Raskin said.

The court “will decide all this for all of us”

Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told lawmakers that the court was “behaving in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of separation of powers that are a core feature of our democracy.”

“This is now, as it is every June, crystal clear as the country waits with bated breath to learn if and how the court will overturn large parts of American law,” she continued.

“The questions this year, Shaw said, include whether and how the court might further undermine the ability of agencies to regulate in ways that protect our health, safety and welfare,” as well as key decisions on gun laws.

The court will also decide whether existing laws “will be applied to hold individuals accused of attacking the Capitol, including the former president, accountable,” Shaw said. “And the court asserts that it, and essentially it alone, will decide that for all of us.”

More than two dozen opinions are expected from the Supreme Court by the end of June.

Two decisions are still pending in connection with two cases from January 6 – one of which involves a former police officer who entered the Capitol and Search to drop an obstruction of justice charge. The decision could affect hundreds of cases in which defendants were charged on Jan. 6, as well as the 2020 election interference case against Trump, who faces the same obstruction of justice charge.

The court is also decide whether Trump enjoys immunity from four federal charges alleging that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and knowingly spread false information that incited his supporters to riot on January 6.

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