Who Will Protect Us From the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court is at it again! This current season of the American Hunger Games, also known as a Supreme Court session, could be as disastrous for the American people and great for the far-right donor class since Citizens United.

Here to help us make sense of the firehose of corruption coming out of the nation’s highest court is Jesse Eisinger, a senior editor and investigative reporter for ProPublica and author of "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives." Eisinger edited and led the team of journalists who produced several investigations exposing the massive bribes— we mean, the totally unethical and impeachable financial entanglements of Republican-appointed justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The discussion includes why Republicans build war chests to capture our courts for generations and why Democrats continue to have no strategy in response; why the DOJ let Wall Street off the hook for tanking our global economy and what that means for whether Trump and his co-conspirators will also get away with their crimes and corruption, and how to push back against elite criminal impunity in a time of historic income inequality—worse than the Gilded Age.

This week’s bonus episode will answer questions from listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher on Patreon. Andrea will also share some colorful insights from someone who had to work with Russian oligarchs back in the car bomb 1990s in Russia. For our Patreon community, Mark your calendar for the January 18th, 8 pm ET social media workshop to help us get in gear for raising our voices as we head into another make-it-or-break-it election year for our democracy and, therefore, the world

Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to join our community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit 

Show Notes:

Urgent call-to-action from Razom for Ukraine: Call your representative and ask them to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine. More info for taking quick action here: https://www.votervoice.net/RAZOMFORUKRAINE/Campaigns/107413/Respond

How to Volunteer in Ukraine https://www.volunteeringukraine.com/

How to Visit Ukraine https://visitukraine.today/

Make a tax deductible donation to the Berliner Odessa Express https://www.we-aid.org/en/initiatives/berlinodessaexpress/

Short film by Rick Minnich on the Berliner Odessa Express: “We Are Here” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzAsCG--6I

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-other-billionaires-sokol-huizenga-novelly-supreme-court

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority

The Parallax View (Journalistic thriller recommended by Jesse Eisinger) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View

Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court

https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court

It’s Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Ethics Defense

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-koch-network-trips-disclosure-law-scotus

Citizens for Ethics: “Republicans are promising to unleash a whirlwind of 150 subpoenas on allies of Democrats if Senator Durbin moves forward with a subpoena of Harlan Crow in his Supreme Court ethics investigation. That threat just shows how powerful Harlan Crow really is.” 

https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1730195116663394757?t=-epurOECtmwyOyu6rjyEgQ&s=19

New Supreme Court Ethics Code Is Designed to Fail

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-supreme-court-ethics-code-designed-fail

Supreme Court conservatives seem likely to axe SEC enforcement powers

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/29/1215931171/supreme-court-heard-arguments-in-a-challenge-to-the-secs-ability-to-fight-fraud

Behind the Scenes of Justice Alito’s Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Pre-buttal The Journal editorial page accused ProPublica of misleading readers in a story that hadn’t yet been published.

https://www.propublica.org/article/behind-scenes-alito-wall-street-journal-prebuttal-editorial

Supreme Court’s SEC case ruling could ‘upend government as we know it’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYooyPcRNVc

Supreme Court Skeptical of Argument That Could Hobble Consumer Watchdog The justices heard a challenge to the way Congress funded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but seemed persuaded that it was constitutional.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/supreme-court-cfpb.html

Billionaires had a surprisingly bad day in the Supreme Court today

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/5/23989306/supreme-court-wealth-tax-billionaires-moore-united-states-elizabeth-warren