The Supreme Court has adopted its first-ever code of ethics, the justices announced Monday. The move comes in the wake of increased scrutiny into Justice Clarence Thomas‘ close relationship with Nazi-obsessed billionaire and GOP donor Harlan Crow, including gifts and trips funded by Crow that Thomas failed to disclose. The …
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Can you trademark a joke about the former president’s dick? This critical constitutional question may soon be decided by the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the honorable justices of the highest court in the land will hear arguments in the case of Steve Elster, an attorney and activist, who attempted to …
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a challenge to its landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas has some thoughts. The 1964 ruling established limits on public officials’ ability to sue on grounds of defamation, as well as the need to prove a standard of …
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Dianne Feinstein has died at the age of 90. Given the intense focus during her final years on whether she was wrong to stay in the Senate when it appeared she was no longer able to do the job, it’s easy to forget what a forward-thinking trailblazer she was. In …
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Clarence Thomas attended donor events hosted by the billionaire Koch brothers — whose organizations and legal projects regularly appear before the Supreme Court. According to a report from ProPublica, the Supreme Court justice has appeared at least two summits hosted by the wealthy conservatives, one of which had been previously …
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Twenty years ago, Arian Simone was a college student in Tallahassee, Florida, trying to scrape together money for a small mall-based boutique called Fabulous. “I started to notice that a lot of investors didn’t look like me,” Simone, a Black woman, tells Rolling Stone. “I made a promise to myself …
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The morning Amherst College announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed it was ending admission preferences for legacy students, alumni group chats lit up. As one Amherst grad characterized it at the time: “I’ve received about 40 texts from aggrieved rich white people since 8 a.m.” Privately, some graduates of …
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A bankruptcy agreement that would have shielded the former owners of Purdue Pharma from civil lawsuits and liability related to their marketing of the opioid OxyContin was temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The agreement would have granted the Sackler family, the former owners of Purdue Pharma, what …
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It’s been a rough year for anyone who may have believed Clarence Thomas was a paragon of ethics on the Supreme Court. ProPublica has reported extensively on how conservative megadonor Harlan Crow has been funding the justice’s lavish lifestyle for decades, heightening concerns over outside influence on the work of …
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Last month, when the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution by considering applicants’ race in the admissions process — thereby ending affirmative action programs nationwide — Scripps News brought on two people for a heavily-moderated debate on the issue. One was …
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