As reports about the financial dealings of Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, dribble out, the country’s institutions of government appear to be stuck. The Supreme Court issued a statement suggesting the justices would change little about their ethics rules — or the lack thereof. Members of Congress have introduced bills that would force the court to adopt an ethics code, but Republican opposition probably dooms the legislation, at least for now.
Yet federal lawmakers can still respond usefully, using their oversight powers to clarify the record, examine how existing judicial transparency mandates are working and, in the process, show that justices who skirt disclosure will at least suffer public scrutiny.
The accounts keep coming. ProPublica reported that Justice Thomas repeatedly failed to disclose the extent of his financial relationship with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, who has bought three properties from the justice and his relatives, took him on numerous luxury vacations and even paid for the justice’s grandnephew to attend expensive private schools.
A Post investigation then found that the conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged to pay Ms. Thomas tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, insisting that no mention of her name appear on any paperwork related to the transactions.
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Lawmakers should probe, firstly, what happened in the Crow matter. What else might Justice Thomas have accepted from Mr. Crow? What was the nature of Mr. Crow’s relationship with Justice Thomas, and how did it develop? This could require testimony from Mr. Crow himself, particularly if Justice Thomas fails to revise his disclosure forms.
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End of carousel- The Biden administration releases a review on the Colorado River.
- The misery of Belarus’s political prisoners should not be ignored.
- Biden has a new border plan.
- The United States should keep the pressure on Nicaragua.
- America’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
- The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
The Biden administration released an environmental impact statement outlining options for cutting use of the Colorado River. Water allocations could prioritize farmers in California based on centuries-old water rights, or involve proportional cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada. The review also included the costs of the status quo.
The administration will likely decide on a course of action by August. As we outlined in an editorial in February, a voluntary agreement between the states is the best option — and a dramatic reimagining of water use is needed thereafter.
Ihar Losik, one of hundreds of young people unjustly jailed in Belarus for opposing Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, attempted suicide but was saved and sent to a prison medical unit, according to the human rights group Viasna. Losik, 30, a blogger who led a popular Telegram channel, was arrested in 2020 and is serving a 15-year prison term on charges of “organizing riots” and “incitement to hatred.” His wife is also a political prisoner. Read more about their struggle — and those of other political prisoners — in a recent editorial.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
Some 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners left that Central American country for the United States in February. President Daniel Ortega released and sent them into exile in a single motion. Nevertheless, it appears that Mr. Ortega let them go under pressure from economic sanctions the United States imposed on his regime when he launched a wave of repression in 2018. The Biden administration should keep the pressure on. Read recent editorials about the situation in Nicaragua.
Inflation remains stubbornly high at 6.4 percent in January. The Federal Reserve’s job is not done in this fight. More interest rate hikes are needed. Read a recent editorial about inflation and the Fed.
Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
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There’s more. Did the other justices’ disclosure forms — or what Justice Thomas himself had thought was necessary to disclose in the past — suggest that Justice Thomas’s lack of transparency on the Crow windfall was unusual? Are congressionally mandated disclosure requirements — or their application, overseen by the Judicial Conference — stringent enough? On that score, it would be useful — and legitimate — for lawmakers to hear from Judicial Conference representatives about how justices’ disclosures are scrutinized, and what guidance was in place before a recent clarification about the need to report private jet travel.
The (latest) revelations concerning Ms. Thomas are trickier for Congress to investigate because they involve not a justice but a justice’s spouse, who faces no formal expectation to disclose publicly her business dealings. Yet the unattractive flow of secret money Mr. Leo apparently directed raises questions about when justices should be expected to recuse themselves because of their spouses’ financial arrangements — and about whether the existing disclosure rules, which don’t mandate revealing underlying sources of income, are adequate. The Leo-directed payments went to Ms. Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, but only through a polling company owned by Kellyanne Conway that was in turn working for a Leo-affiliated group, the Judicial Education Project.
In both cases, Congress has a legitimate legislative purpose in asking questions. If not immediately, at some point Congress might attempt to impose transparency, recusal and other rules on the court.
That prospect, even if seemingly remote right now, should jolt the court into action. The justices owe the public the sort of transparency and ethical adherence that virtually every other part of the government follows — and that, by the way, lower courts observe, too. They should show they will right their ethical ship before lawmakers try to fix it from the outside.