Earlier this month, a speech warning about the dangers of politicizing the U.S. Supreme Court was delivered in Utah by an authoritative, insider source, who cautioned that "[a]t some point the institution is going to be compromised." He voiced his growing concern that eventually we could "chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they're going to have civil society."
The next generation should be very, very afraid. The speaker was Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the High Court, and that his words were delivered inside a swank hotel to benefit a foundation run by a partisan Republican who'd played a key role in shifting the court rightward, former Sen. Orrin Hatch, was neither the biggest irony nor the most outrageous.
Less than two weeks later, D.C. journalists Bob Woodward — yes, the Watergate Bob Woodward! — and Robert Costa published a bombshell scoop about a lengthy series of politically explosive text messages that the justice's wife, Virginia, or Ginni, Thomas — well known in the capital as a right-wing activist — sent to Donald Trump's then-top aide, chief of staff Mark Meadows. The messages show that between President Joe Biden's November 2020 election victory and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, Ginni Thomas was aggressively lobbying the White House to overturn the result — a battle that might well have ended up before her husband's Supreme Court.
