DL Open Thread: Friday, April 7, 2023

They Can’t DO This In America–Except They Did:

Tennessee’s House of Representatives on Thursday expelled two Democratic members who participated in a gun control protest following the mass shooting at a Nashville grade school. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson have been stripped of their titles and legislative responsibilities, an extraordinary development in the GOP-led effort to punish them for their involvement in the demonstration. A vote to oust Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson narrowly failed.

It was unclear why Johnson, who is white, was allowed to stay in office while two of her Black colleagues were expelled, but Johnson suggested that “it might have to do with the color of our skin.”

The 72-25 vote to expel Jones comes days after the deadly mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where a shooter used an AR-15 rifle to kill six people, including three nine-year-oldchildren. In the wake of the shooting, Johnson, Jones, and Pearson led chants from the House chamber floor to demand action on gun control. 

Johnson, who survived a school shooting in 2008, told Mother Jones’ Garrison Hayes: “I don’t want that to happen to anyone else ever again. We can absolutely do something. We are the only country that has this situation. Why are we ignoring this?”

Is it pointless to emphasize that the blatantly-racist gerrymander that disenfranchises minorities in Tennessee could only have come about with the eviscerating of the Federal Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court?

This is an obscene act.  How do we counter it?  First, we can make sure that the two ousted representatives are reelected.  With Tennessee, of course, footing the bill for the special elections.

This raises a question about the ‘No Red State’ boycott.  The citizens of Nashville and Memphis are the ones who have been disenfranchised.  Should those cities be exempt from such a boycott? Honestly, I’m asking, because I haven’t figured out an answer.

Is Any American More Entitled Than Clarence Thomas?  He’s engaged in blatant conflicts-of-interest almost since the day he was elevated to the Supreme Court by a cowardly Senate.  As has his lobbyist wife. In a real country instead of a banana republic, he would have been removed from office several times over.  Instead, we’re likely to get more bleating about ‘a high-tech lynching’.:

In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”

“When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” said Canter, now at the watchdog group CREW. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”

Can charges be brought?  If so, do you think he’d recuse himself if the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court?  Me neither.

State-Mandated Genital Inspections?  Merely one more phrase that never occurred to me. Until now:

On Wednesday, Kansas Republicans finally passed an aggressive ban on transgender people participating in girls’ and women’s youth and collegiate sports. This law could lead to state-mandated genital inspections of some athletes.

The new law bans trans girls and women from playing sports at school starting in kindergarten. The Kansas State High School Activities Association said only three trans girls participated in school sports this year. The new law does not ban trans boys from playing sports and goes into effect on July 1.

Advocates have been asking how exactly schools were supposed to determine which gender a child was assigned at birth, but at a hearing for the bill in February, state Rep. Barb Wasinger, who sponsored the bill, said that enforcement would happen through “sports physicals.”