Tangle - A Supreme Court ethics bill.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

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Starting point is 00:01:52 Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Supreme Court ethics, and more specifically, a bill recently proposed by Senators Angus King and Lisa Murkowski. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that we could breach the debt ceiling by June 1st. Shortly after the warning, President Biden called House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to set up a meeting about Republicans' debt ceiling bill. Number two, Senator Ben Cardin, the Democrat from Maryland, says he will retire in 2024. And Governor Jay Inslee, the Democrat from Washington, said he won't seek re-election

Starting point is 00:02:40 for a fourth term. Number three, State representative Zoe Zephyr, the Democrat, is suing Montana and its House Speaker after being barred from House floor debates. Number four, Jeffrey Hinton, who pioneered artificial intelligence, retired from Google and then spoke out about the dangers of his creations. Number five, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis countersued Disney World after the company filed a lawsuit alleging he was targeting them and infringing on their constitutional rights. It reads like the pages of travel and leisure. An exclusive resort in upstate New York, island hopping around Indonesia via yacht, rides on a private jet, luxury vacations for a sitting Supreme Court justice, all provided by billionaire GOP mega donor Harlan Crow, a longtime friend to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Politico reports today that just nine days after Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate to our nation's highest court, Neil Gorsuch got an offer. The chief executive of one of the nation's biggest law firms, Greenberg Trorig,

Starting point is 00:03:56 bought this ideal fishing getaway. Gorsuch reported making somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 from that sale, but federal disclosure records show Gorsuch never disclosed the identity of the purchaser. In the last few weeks, calls for a Supreme Court code of conduct have grown louder. On Wednesday, Senators Angus King, the Independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, and Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska, introduced legislation that would require the court to appoint an official to examine conflicts and public complaints. The bill, the Supreme Court

Starting point is 00:04:31 Code of Conduct Act, was hailed as a bipartisan proposal. The bill is the latest legislative effort to try to get the court to better police itself and increase transparency. All other federal courts operate under a central ethics code administered by the Judicial Conference of the United States, which notes that a judge should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities. Members of the court have argued they follow the same standards that apply to other federal judges, though the lack of a binding code has been a point of contention. Recent reports, including a ProPublica piece on Justice Clarence Thomas receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of free gifts and travel from Texas billionaire

Starting point is 00:05:10 Harlan Crowe, have intensified focus on the lack of a code of conduct. Last week, Politico also reported that Justice Neil M. Gorsuch had sold a vacation property to the chief of a major law firm that has frequently had cases before the court. Justice Gorsuch left blank the field in the disclosure form naming the identity of the buyer. Subsequent reporting, however, has called into question whether the sale would constitute an ethics violation, even under stricter circumstances. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, the Democrat from Illinois, asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify on the court's ethics rules, but Roberts declined, telling Durbin that it is exceedingly rare for a chief justice to give such testimony

Starting point is 00:05:50 and citing the importance of preserving judicial independence. King and Murkowski's bill would require the court to establish a code of conduct in the next year, publish the rules online, and designate an official who tracks public complaints and violations. The bill would also require a way for people to report potential violations, and those violations would be made public online. Americans have made clear their concerns with the transparency or lack thereof coming from the Supreme Court and its justices, Murkowski said. It is critical the public has full faith that their institutions are functioning, including the judicial branch. Other proposals have also popped up in recent weeks. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse,

Starting point is 00:06:28 the Democrat from Rhode Island, advanced a bill that would require the court to adopt the same ethics rules as Congress, and Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, has proposed legislation that would allow the Judicial Conference of the United States to create a specific ethics code for the court. Recent polling suggests confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low, with just 25% of Americans saying they have a great deal or a lot of trust in the Supreme Court. Today, we are going to break down some arguments about a potential ethics code from the left is saying. Many on the left support a code of conduct and argue that the Murkowski-King bill is the bare minimum.

Starting point is 00:07:22 Some say it's wrong the Supreme Court is subject to less formal scrutiny than any other institution. Others criticize Republicans for refusing to even address the damaging reporting on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In Bloomberg, the editorial board said few institutions are subject to as little formal scrutiny as the Supreme Court. In theory, members of the court are subject to the same financial disclosure rules as other high-level federal officials. Yet, with no one empowered to enforce those rules but themselves, the justices have all too often seemed to be above the law. The situation increasingly feels untenable, the board said. Take Harlan Crowe's relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas,

Starting point is 00:07:59 who is hardly the only justice to engage in behavior that is, at best, ethically ambiguous. Justices across the ideological spectrum have been accused of failing to make pertinent financial disclosures, accepting a dubious blandishment, rejecting well-founded calls for recusal, engaging in questionable political and financial activity, and much else that would raise the eyebrows of any reasonable observer, the editor said. All other courts have a central ethics code, In HuffPost, Jennifer Bendery criticized Republicans who were fine with there being no formal code of ethics. Democrats asked Chief Justice Roberts to come up with a formal code of conduct for the court, and if he won't, they have a bill that will.

Starting point is 00:08:46 But that's a stark contrast to Republicans, who have almost unanimously retreated into silence or scoffed at the idea that Congress should do anything to serve as a check on justices' behavior. There's only one GOP senator backing any ethics reform to the court, Lisa Murkowski. HuffPost asked GOP senators what they think of Murkowski's bill. The question isn't just pertinent because Thomas has been accepting luxury gifts almost every year for more than 20 years from billionaire Harlan Crowe and not disclosing them, or because Thomas sold his ancestral home to that billionaire and didn't disclose it, or because that billionaire

Starting point is 00:09:19 has had financial interests before the court the entire time, or because Neil Gorsuch failed to disclose that he sold property for more than $1 million to the chief executive of a law firm that routinely has business before the court. It's pertinent because every federal judge in the country has been governed by a written code of conduct since 1973, except the nine justices on the nation's highest court. In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent said finally a bipartisan response emerges. Congress has abdicated its oversight role when it comes to the courts, which has led some court watchers to believe this neglect has helped encourage Supreme Court justices such as Clarence Thomas to disregard any sense of propriety. The new King-Merkowski

Starting point is 00:10:00 bill poses a fresh test to lawmakers. Will they find the will to do even cursory oversight, if only to restore public confidence in our highest judicial institution as it careens from one legitimacy crisis to the next? This bill would require the court to impose an ethical code upon itself. Congress would not determine what that code would be or levy punishments. It would merely require that the court engage in meaningful self-policing and that it be visible to the public, Sargent said. The proposal seems designed to circumvent the objection that Congress imposing rules on the court would violate the Constitution's separations of power, and it would be hard to argue this bill crosses that threshold.

Starting point is 00:10:38 If anything, one could argue this wouldn't go far enough. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right oppose the legislation, saying Democrats are trying to undermine the court's legitimacy. Some say such oversight would do more harm than good, blurring the separation of powers between the branches of government. Others argue there are already rules and procedures in place to punish justices if necessary. In the Washington Post, Jason Willick said this legislation would do more harm than good. The bipartisan scheme would undermine the separation of powers and fuel the ongoing campaign to discredit the judiciary. The plan amounts to a new internal compliance bureaucracy foisted on the court by Congress.

Starting point is 00:11:35 The court is already politically accountable, as any justice can be impeached with a majority vote in the House and removed with a two-thirds vote in the Senate. While federal prosecutorial guidelines say a president can't face indictment, there is no such limit on protecting justices. In other words, justices are subject to corruption laws like any other public official, and they're subject to removal from their posts in the only way the Constitution allows, impeachment, he said. The court also adopted the disclosure and financial regulations that apply to all federal judges. This legislation isn't really about an obscure statement of ethical principles, he wrote. It's about interfering with the Supreme Court. Even if it were adopted, the complaint would inevitably be that justices are not sufficiently accountable, and pressure for new enforcement mechanisms would continue.

Starting point is 00:12:18 In National Review, Ed Whelan criticized the confused clamor over Supreme Court ethics. There is a false premise that the Code of Conduct is binding on lower court judges. As Russell Wheeler has been explaining for a long time, the Code of Conduct says only that it is designed to provide guidance to judges. It acknowledges that many of its provisions are necessarily cast in general terms, and judges may reasonably differ in their interpretation. Those who want this code applied to the Supreme Court might want to explain the difference it would have made over the past several decades. Federal statutory law already imposes and has long imposed exactly the same recusal obligations on a

Starting point is 00:12:55 Supreme Court justice that it imposes on a lower court judge, including the obligation to disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza

Starting point is 00:13:35 cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. The recusal provisions in the Code of Conduct mirror the federal statute, Whelan said. On the downside, the Code of Conduct exposes federal judges to all sorts of abusive complaints, like Demand Justice's outrageous attack accusing then D.C. Circuit Judge Thomas Griffith of stepping down for a bribe when he retired to care for his very ill wife.

Starting point is 00:14:26 In the New York Post, Glenn H. Reynolds said we are being lectured on ethics by scoundrels. The Supreme Court has ruled against the left on guns and abortion and is expected to strike down affirmative action any day now. Thus, it must be delegitimized in any way possible, Reynolds said. There was a bogus ProPublica story claiming Clarence Thomas' vacations with a rich friend, Harlan Crowe, are unethical. Crowe had no business before the court, and Supreme Court justices have always been allowed to have friends. Chief Justice Fred Vinson played poker with President Harry Truman. Politico then got into the game with a hit at Neil Gorsuch for the sale of a house he held a share in for less than the asking price to a

Starting point is 00:15:05 Democratic donor, which transaction the justice reported, Reynolds said. None of these stories would make headlines if the court were still reliably leftist. Remember that people who deploy the appearance of impropriety standard are generally trying to create appearances which they intend to use in ways that are themselves unethical. Alright, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So as many of you know, I showed my cards on this a few months ago when I wrote an opinion piece in Tangle making the case that we needed a Supreme Court code of conduct. But now that we have an actual piece of legislation to address, that opinion felt worth revisiting and refining. Perhaps because it challenged my

Starting point is 00:15:55 own opinion so directly, I thought Jason Willick's piece under what the right is saying was the most thought-provoking of all. Willick made several very, very strong points. One, the justices are already operating under the threat of indictment, impeachment, and public scrutiny. Two, it doesn't take much imagination to see how a bill like this could degenerate into a partisan circus, with activist groups orchestrating anonymous partisan complaints and stirring up fevered speculation. And three, even Biden's left-leaning Supreme Court commission warned that such a system would be open to abuse. Willock also made a rather obvious point, that more than anything, this push is coming from progressives now because they know how power works

Starting point is 00:16:35 and they want the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, to be diminished. Without the numbers to impeach justice, it is interested in creating a bureaucracy that can delegitimize a given justice. I think this is, on the whole, a fair read of the politics of the moment. The only problem with Willick's piece, and it's a big one, is that he doesn't address what exactly we're supposed to do with the current situation. The political piece on Gorsuch really does read like a fluffy hit piece to me, so I understand Glenn Reynolds' piece under what the right is saying, which essentially hand-waved the journalism about all conservative justices, including Clarence Thomas. Reynolds has a great point with Gorsuch, but it's not that convincing

Starting point is 00:17:15 on the whole. I actually do think it is a very big deal that a Supreme Court justice like Clarence Thomas is taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of free vacations, gifts, and housing from a rich conservative activist over two decades, even if they are best friends. It would still be a big deal even if they were family, just as it's also a big deal that his wife appears to have been scheming with activists to overturn election results. It's a bigger deal that he didn't report them, and it's an even bigger deal, still, that he may have had a good argument for not being required to. Also, while it's true Crow never had a case before the court, an argument commonly employed to Thomas's defense, Bloomberg News reported that the court declined to hear a case linked to Crow's family firm. So it's not a totally clean separation. Of course, the whole point of the ethics codes for

Starting point is 00:18:01 other courts is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Thomas used very poor judgment, and it's not just him and it's not just conservatives. Justice Sotomayor has become infamous for violating judicial codes of conduct with overtly political and biased comments in public. In 2011, she also failed to disclose payments from a public university for 11 rooms at an expensive hotel for her and her family. Every justice on the court, save the newest, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has some questionable ethics behavior to account for. Is this Murkowski-King bill the answer? I'm not 100% sold, but it seems like a good starting point. It addresses the separation of powers concerns by allowing the court to create its own Supreme Court-specific code of conduct. It gives the court a path to set up the infrastructure

Starting point is 00:18:46 to manage complaints. And aside from being a proposal passed by Congress, it would amount to the court policing itself in just a little bit more of a transparent and open way than it does now. Russell Wheeler, who is no conservative, argued convincingly that this bill might not cause any practical changes to the court.

Starting point is 00:19:03 Maybe he's right. But with the trust in the court at an all-time low, even something that creates a little bit more bureaucracy in exchange for a bit more faith in our institutions would be a trade-off I'd take. And if the bill isn't perfect as is, guess what? We can change it. That's what Congress is supposed to do. Willick, Whelan Wheeler, and others all make strong cases that a new system to monitor the court might infringe on the separation of powers and cause more problems than we have now. But none of them make the case that our current scenario is tenable or acceptable,

Starting point is 00:19:33 which is the heart of the issue. It might be true that the King-Merkowski bill isn't perfect, or that this push to scrutinize the court is a left-wing political power play. But it's also true that our current Supreme Court justices are acting unethically with impunity. What we have now is neither sustainable nor acceptable. So I'll line up behind the folks who are trying to make some changes, especially those working across party lines.

Starting point is 00:20:00 All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Bonnie in Bozeman, Montana. Bonnie said, when President Trump and daughter Ivanka traveled to China, Ivanka secured 16 trademarks for her company from China. She traveled with her dad and completed personal business on this trip, using her father's political influence to wrap up the deal. How is the ethics of Hunter Biden's position on the board of a Ukrainian oil company different? Both use their father's influence for personal gain, yet we hear nothing

Starting point is 00:20:29 about Ivanka's deal traveling at taxpayers' expense with the Chinese. I think both are unethical, but probably common with other political leaders who use their influence for the benefit of their children. So, Bonnie, it isn't different. One of the funny things that happens anytime I write about anything is that I inevitably get, well, what about the other guy on the other team who did this too? I've gotten this a lot recently since we've written about Hunter Biden a few times. So many left-leaning voters write in and say, well, what about the Trump children? And my answer is pretty simple. Donald Trump isn't the president.

Starting point is 00:21:03 The Trump kids and Hunter Biden are separate stories, and I don't think it's necessary to reference one anytime you write about the other. But for the record, yes, I think we have just as much evidence of Trump's kids profiting off their dad's presidency as we do of Hunter Biden profiting off his dad's vice presidency. Hunter Biden got a job he was eminently unqualified for and was paid an absurd amount of money to perform it, and it's no secret why. He shopped around his dad's influence all over the world to try and land deals with foreign companies. Trump's kids gallivanted all over the world while their dad was president, attempting to leverage his celebrity status and power of his office to land major deals for the Trump Organization and for themselves. They did basically the same

Starting point is 00:21:45 exact thing, if not more egregiously. Perhaps the biggest difference is that a personal laptop containing all their personal communications and photos didn't fall into the hands of a hostile media outlet. Both represent highly unethical actions, and neither should be dismissed or ignored. And this is why I laugh basically anytime I see Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump attack Hunter Biden over leveraging his family name for personal gain, which is literally the entire Trump brand. So yes, Hunter bad. Trump kids bad. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. Two bills restricting abortion failed to become law in South Carolina and Nebraska, despite both states having Republican dominated legislatures. In South Carolina,

Starting point is 00:22:33 a near total abortion ban failed to pass by one vote, 22 to 21. And in Nebraska, a bill proposing a ban on abortions at six weeks of pregnancy also fell one vote short of the 33 needed to break a filibuster. Abortion will remain legal in both states until 22 weeks of pregnancy. In South Carolina, all five women in the state filibustered the bill with speeches on the House floor. Many political observers believe the backlash the GOP has faced from abortion restrictions played a significant role in the reluctance of Republican legislators to pass new bans. Axios has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description.

Starting point is 00:23:13 All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court was 56% in 1988, the highest percentage on record. The percentage of Americans who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court in 2022 was just 25%, the lowest percentage on record. The percentage of Americans who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court in 2020 was 40%. The percentage of Democrats who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court in 2022 was just 13 percent. And the percentage of Republicans who said that

Starting point is 00:23:51 was 39 percent. In 2016, the percentage of Democrats who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence was 42 percent. And in 2016, the percentage of Republicans who said that was 27 percent. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Few things are better than a classic American diner, and that's doubly true when it's doing good deeds. An establishment in East Bay, California is offering anyone who is hungry a free breakfast, no questions asked. Colin Duran, the owner of Homemade Cafe, had the idea after watching people come by to panhandle or ask customers for extra food. My reaction was, hey, if you guys are hungry

Starting point is 00:24:32 or need a food, we'll feed you, Duran said. When the pandemic hit and food insecurity skyrocketed, Duran decided to make his unusual policy official, calling it the Everybody Eats program. To qualify, all you have to do is grab a coupon from the diner bulletin board and find a seat. There was a small concern in the back of my mind official, calling it the Everybody Eats program. To qualify, all you have to do is grab a coupon from the diner bulletin board and find a seat. There was a small concern in the back of my mind that if it got well known, it would be difficult to deal with a high volume of meals or keep up

Starting point is 00:24:53 with everything, he said. But I figured if I'm going to get myself into trouble, I'm going to get into good trouble. CBS News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. CBS News has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

Starting point is 00:25:25 Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel

Starting point is 00:26:14 a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported of town is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - A Supreme Court ethics bill.

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