On one level I'm fairly certain that anyone who has been paying attention is aware of the intimate connection between the American political right, reactionary federal judges manipulating the law to install a Christian nationalist political order, "counterrevolutionary" think tanks and activist organizations, and fascist billionaires funding this whole anti-democratic shitshow. By that same measure however, it's certainly fair to ask if a wholly complicit mainstream media is paying attention to any of this at all. Which isn't to say that they haven't reported on these connections, but rather to point out that after doing so, corporate media has largely relegated discussions about this ominous situation to background noise and normalized it as "accepted reality." Despite this effective "blanket of boredom," evidence of these interconnected relationships in the larger American fascist movement continues to emerge on a regular basis; and independent or non-profit media outlets like ProPiblica are still reporting on them, even if mainstream for-profit media refuses to stay on the case.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ginni-thomas-email-scotus-ethics-reform-first-liberty-institute

Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against Supreme Court Reform: “Thank You So, So, So Much”

"Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

Recording of a July 31 call between First Liberty Institute leadership and donors to the organization Credit:Obtained by ProPublica and Documented

On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)"

I think it's easy enough to get the gist of what's going on here from the lengthy quote I published, but the key points to acknowledge here are the wife of a Supreme Court justice, who we know is in the pocket of a far right billionaire looking to stack the courts with fascist judges who are enabling the installation of a permanent Christian nationalist order in American society, is actively thanking a far-right religious liberties organization looking to fight court reform on behalf of those same fascist judges on the take, and that organization is openly talking about how judges who aren't down with their program are "treasonous." Which is pretty funny given that First Liberty Institute is fighting to preserve the right to bribe judges, and Ginni Thomas herself was intimately involved in Trump's January 6th, 2021 coup attempt in the wake of Biden's election victory in 2020.

On some level I understand the temptation to say "big deal, any fool can see that they're working together." As a counterpoint however, I think folks are vastly overestimating the general public's grasp of the bigger picture here. The media as a whole isn't diving into these relationships anymore, and the average American certainly isn't reading ProPublica on the regular. The fact is that the more we dig, the more we uncover a whole spider web of relationships, sympathies, and coordination between far right extremist organizations, reactionary activist groups, "counterrevolutionary" think tanks, billionaire nazis, the federal judiciary, and the (extremely) right wing portion of the US political class. This inbreeding and cooperation clearly exists on a level that makes Smedley Butler's exposure of the "Business Plot" conspiracy in 1933 look like a Sunday picnic. What we're watching here is a well-funded, highly coordinated, and completely mainstream plot by establishment actors all across the American right to effectively install a fascist political, legal, and economic order in America, against the will of (most of) its citizens, while corporate media simply shrugs.

Well, this one is not going to be a popular read for "rules and norms" institutionalists in our society.

As anyone who has been following the 6-3, fascist high Supreme Court's bribery scandal, blatant judicial overreach, and attempts to dismantle the legislative state on behalf of "friendly" corporate actors will know, the highest court in America clearly has a corruption problem (in addition to its aforementioned "run by actual fucking fascists" problem.) As this recent Pro Publican investigation reveals however, American judges acting for their own interests, without the slightest regard for the ethical problems that presents, is apparently a ubiquitous problem in the entire US judiciary branch, and not merely confined to corrupt SCOTUS minions like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.

Even When Big Cases Intersect With Their Families’ Interests, Many Judges Choose Not to Recuse

"Last year, ProPublica exposed how Thomas and Alito took trips funded by billionaires but failed to properly disclose them. In 2021, The Wall Street Journal found at least 131 judges broke the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest. And in 2020, Reuters identified thousands of judges who broke the law but remained on the bench.

A ProPublica analysis found a lack of transparency regarding conflicts plagues federal and state courts where loose rules, inconsistent enforcement and creative interpretations of guidelines routinely allow judges to withhold potential conflicts from the parties before them.

In an examination of more than 1,200 federal judges and state supreme court justices, ProPublica, in partnership with student journalists at Boston University, found dozens of judges, including both Republican and Democratic appointees, who chose not to recuse when facing potential appearances of impropriety involving familial financial connections. Ethics experts say that the judges’ interpretation of the rules may often lie within the letter of the law, but at the expense of its spirit."

Look, I understand that for legal reasons "ethics experts" and the fine folks are Pro Publica are required to give these self-interested judges every benefit of the doubt and avoid messy terms like "corrupt fuckmuppet bozos." But given that suing a random social media blogger like me would simply draw more attention to the story, I'm not really under that sort of obligation. This story is riddled with blatant examples of judicial corruption:

"In Florida, a state Supreme Court justice presided over a gambling case in which a Native American tribe sought to protect billions in betting revenue. During the proceedings, the tribe made an unusually large campaign contribution to the justice’s wife, a state legislator. The judge later helped form a court majority that struck down the constitutional challenge, protecting the tribe’s business.

In Minnesota, a federal judge heard an antitrust case against a corporation that was a major client of the public relations firm owned by his wife. He went on to dismiss the case, in the corporation’s favor.

And in both Ohio and North Carolina, state supreme court justices rejected calls from ethics watchdogs to recuse themselves from multiple cases involving a parent who is a powerful state politician."

Is it fair to point out, as the authors of this piece do, that the rules governing this sort of judicial behavior in much of the country are a complete fucking joke and enable this sort of corruption? Sure. But the reality that American judges can get away with this kind of crooked shit doesn't make it any less corrupt, it merely reveals that our whole damn legal system is corrupt too. The fact that it takes familial relations and a couple extra steps for corporate actors and interested parties to essentially bribe judges to rule in their favor, doesn't alter the reality that we're talking about second-hand bribery here.

I'm not a lawyer, and they don't pay me the big bucks to solve problems like this, but what I can say with all confidence is that "justice to the highest bidder" is in fact no justice at all.