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In what activist Sherrilyn Ifill called a crisis in which everyone needs to start treating it as such, more stunning revelations have surfaced over lavish gifts accepted and not previously disclosed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Now, Democratic lawmakers are taking to social media to demand Thomas step down. The calls for his resignation come after another shocking investigative report by ProPublica.
The revelation has again ignited a firestorm of outrage and ethical concerns. “Justice Thomas has brought shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court with his acceptance of massive, repeated, and undisclosed gifts,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted on the social media platform now known as X.
“No government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately.”
The damning ProPublica report exposed that Justice Thomas received a minimum of 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, numerous VIP passes to sporting events, and two lavish resort stays, all financed by billionaire backers, during his tenure on the bench.
The report argued that Justice Thomas may have violated legal requirements by failing to disclose these extravagant travels and luxury engagements.
ProPublica reported that Thomas, typically “perched in the skybox at sporting events, had at least two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
“This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount,” the report asserted.
ProPublica continued: “While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises, and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.” Politico noted that at least four other House Democrats also called for Thomas’ resignation, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Bill Pascrell (D-N.J), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.).
“Unprecedented. Stunning. Disgusting. The height of hypocrisy to wear the robes of a #SCOTUS and take undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from your decisions,” Jayapal posted on X. “Resign.”
Democrats in the Senate have attempted to push legislation that would reform the Supreme Court’s ethical guidelines to increase transparency.
That bill passed committee but is unlikely to get through a full Senate.
“I said it would get worse; it will keep getting worse,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who helped spearhead the bill, said on X in response to the report.
“The latest ProPublica revelation of unreported lavish gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas makes it clear: these are not merely ethical lapses,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin wrote on X.
“This is a shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires.” Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica.
Earlier this year, ProPublica revealed Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow’s generosity toward Thomas, including vacations, private jet flights, gifts, the purchase of his mother’s house in Georgia, and tuition payments.
The new report said the New York Times also noted revelations about wealthy business people Thomas met through the Horatio Alger Association, an exclusive nonprofit. Among them were David Sokol, a former top executive at Berkshire Hathaway, and H. Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who turned Blockbuster and Waste Management into national goliaths.
ProPublica pointed out that The Times reported that Thomas gives access to the Supreme Court building for Horatio Alger events.
Such access costs at least $1,500 in donations per person.
According to ProPublica, Thomas once complained that he sacrificed wealth to sit on the court.
“The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” he told the bar association in Savannah, Georgia, in 2001, “but it is worth doing for the principle.”
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Last month, many African Americans lauded President Joe Biden’s action in establishing a national monument in tribute to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. A chorus of cheers now will resound from the Native American population with his designation of a new national monument near the Grand Canyon to protect lands sacred to Indigenous people.
On Tuesday, Biden spoke at the Historic Red Butte Airfield in Arizona prior to signing the proclamation and visiting the Grand Canyon. What he proposes will place a permanent ban on new uranium mining claims in the area that covers nearly a million acres.
“Our nation’s history is etched in our people and our lands,” the president said. “Today’s action is going to protect and preserve that history, along with these high plateaus and deep canyons.”
The announcement comes after a yearslong effort and is part of Biden’s trip to shore up his presidential campaign on climate change and the economic challenges facing Americans in the West.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold the position, said the plan was “historic.”
“It will help protect lands that many tribes referred to as their eternal home, a place of healing and a source of spiritual sustenance. It will help ensure that indigenous peoples can continue to use these areas for religious ceremonies, hunting, and gathering of plants, medicines, and other materials, including some found nowhere else on Earth,” Haaland said. “It will protect objects of historic and scientific importance for the benefit of tribes, the public, and for future generations.”
According to the announcement, the national monument will be named Baaj Nwaavjo l’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument. This designation follows a proposal drafted by Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition and means “where tribes roam” in Havasupai, and “l’tah Kuvkeni” translates to “our ancestral footprints” in Hopi.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, putting a different spin on the notion that the monument was a campaign gambit, said, “We’re going to continue to do our jobs and continue to talk about it … And the hope is that we’ll get our message out. We’ll see, I think, Americans start to feel and see what it is that we have been able to do in Washington, D.C.”
The shuttering of the Navy Yard Boys & Girls Club––which serviced the Downtown Brooklyn, Navy Yard, and DUMBO neighborhoods––has led to a broad dispersal of the children who used to attend the site.
The building at 240 Nassau Street now stands closed and empty. The commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield has been contracted to accept proposals from developers and organizations interested in purchasing the location, which is directly across the street from NYCHA’s Farragut housing projects.
For now, the children who took part in Clubhouse activities are off attending summer programs at Fort Greene’s P.S. 067, at the Farragut Community Center, and even at the nearby The Church of The Open Door. There weren’t exactly enough spots in the varied summer programs for all the former Clubhouse kids to go to, so some kids have spent most of their summer close to home. With fall quickly approaching, the next challenge is to find out where former Clubhouse kids will be able to go for afterschool and extracurricular services.
“The idea of what is yet to come is very scary,” community activist Samantha Johnson acknowledged, “because there won’t be any community-focused space. As gentrification and other things start occurring, we’re finding ourselves in complete battles for spaces and services when we’re in a very ‘rich’ area, so to speak, that has an image of having resources. But when you’re in the middle of NYCHA residences and you’re in the middle of developers, who wins?” Johnson points out that the Clubhouse building was not only a space for neighborhood children, it had also become a community resource. There were pantry services, and it had a meeting space: It was a facility that catered to people of varied ages.
The loss of the space for the children is the most obvious, but everyone is going to notice the difference. With the former building available to be sold or leased out, a new owner could renovate the property or completely demolish and redevelop it.
Dorian Muller, a former Farragut resident who remains concerned about his former neighbors, was the first to raise the alarm about the closing of the Navy Yard Clubhouse. He remembers playing basketball there when he was a child. “So that’s why I said to myself that I was fighting for this Boys & Girls Club,” he said. “I didn’t ask nobody no questions; I didn’t start to talk about I’m going to fight. I just said, ‘Listen everybody, I’m fighting whether you’re going to walk with me or not.’
“You know, we lost a daycare center in Farragut to a federal halfway house,” Muller added, referencing the conversion of the former Farragut Tenants Day Care Center at 104 Gold Street into a 161-bed halfway house for federal prison parolees. “And you know why we lost that? It’s because we’re poor: Poor people lose everything. It’s because the downtown area is very inviting. And once you had 9/11, everybody wanted to live in that 11201 and that 11205-area code. These are some of the richest and most expensive area codes right now, even though we got people that’s in poverty across the street from the DUMBO area.
“It’s called DUMBO now, but when I lived there, it was called the Dots, with big rats. It smelled like eggs, and we just used to throw rocks against the dirty water.”
The trauma of gentrification
The Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Foundation is selling the Navy Yard Clubhouse because it faced hundreds of child sexual abuse lawsuits filed under the New York State Child Victims Act (CVA) against a former Foundation volunteer; claims were that the volunteer abused children beginning in the year 1948 and continued doing so up until 1984.
The Foundation filed for Chapter 11 restructuring in June of 2022 to save itself and said it found it could get the most money to pay those claims against them by selling their Navy Yard Clubhouse. The building could be sold for between $15 to $25 million.
This past July 28th, the Foundation announced that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court had accepted its reorganization plan, and it will be able to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“The confirmation of our plan is a significant step that puts us on a clear path to emerge from the reorganization process and continue serving New York City’s most vulnerable communities for decades and generations to come,” Tim McChristian, executive director of the Madison Foundation, said in a press release. McChristian said he hopes Foundation abuse survivors will be able to “continue to heal from the harm they suffered,” and he promised that Madison would continue “to support our community as one of the longest-serving providers of afterschool programming and youth development programs in underserved communities in New York City.
“We are highly optimistic that the Department of Youth and Community Development will approve our ability to continue to provide afterschool programs in the new school year at a local school to be determined,” he added.
With the Navy Yard Clubhouse shuttered, fears are that the former building could become yet another luxury rental. Since 2004, more than 20,000 new apartments have been built in the Downtown Brooklyn area where, according to the apartment listings site RentCafe, monthly rents now average $4,048 a month.
“In terms of gentrification, nobody deals with people having to move out, nobody deals with the trauma,” The Church of The Open Door’s Rev. Dr. Mark V.C. Taylor expressed to the AmNews.
He said the situation echoes the many times Black people are mistreated and damaged by the larger society, but nothing is done about it. There is little reflection on the pain that’s been caused. “So, a lot of times, when services are lost, when churches are closed, nobody deals with the trauma, nobody even asks about it.
“What is really so … I don’t even know the right words to describe it: crazy, insidious. What is so striking about the situation is that one person’s actions are impacting a whole community institution and impacting all of the kids, not only who have come but who will come.”
Samantha Johnson had helped form the ad hoc Farragut Fort Greene Coalition to try to save the Navy Yard Clubhouse. Now she says the Coalition is thinking about the future: “We’re thinking about what it means to have transparency and accountability in our community. We’re thinking about how we build this out to where the Coalition is a central source for information and how do we deal with issues in the community like loss of spaces, community-based work, and therapy. We’re really focused on the Boys & Girls Club right now, but we don’t know if we’re going be talking about another community center in the next few years, you know, we don’t know what we might be doing. So, our Coalition is very intentional about trying to get information out to the best of our ability.”
