Whether the Democratic Party responds with appropriate fury and action to the revelations that the right-wing activist wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a full-throated advocate of Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out the presidential election results, or allows this moment of crisis and opportunity to pass by, feels different from previous points when the party chose the path of non-confrontation in the face of GOP radicalization. For a member of the Supreme Court to be so closely proximate to the plot to overthrow American democracy not only demonstrates the dangerous scope of that plot, but also focuses public attention on the court’s broader corruption as a partisan enabler of a right-wing authoritarian movement. In one sudden blow, the Democrats have a powerful weapon to energize discussions around the corrupted Supreme Court, and to make the case for Court reforms (expansion, term limits, far stricter ethics rules) that would draw on protection of democracy and the rule of law as their motivation.
Although we don’t have a precise idea (yet) of what Justice Thomas may have discussed with his wife, Ginni, observers like Josh Marshall make a compelling case that it is highly probable he knew of his spouse’s insurrectionary activities, and yet continued to rule on cases directly related to the January 6 coup attempt. Marshall writes that:
You cannot look at these texts and not know to close to a certainty, based on the texts, what is publicly known about their relationship and their history of shared partisan political activism and not know that they not only discussed the matter but that he was on the same page with her. So Thomas himself was also a party to this conspiracy, privy to its actions and goals if perhaps not taking affirmative steps to advance it.
Any hesitation at all among Democratic members of the January 6 committee to question Ginni Thomas would be mind-boggling (it appears Republican Representive Liz Cheney initially opposed the idea, but has consented to request voluntary questioning but not a subpoena). The idea that any sort of deference by proxy is due to Mrs. Thomas is clearly outweighed by the enormity of the offenses that the committee is investigating. Yet, as of today, I have not seen any news that the committee plans to question Thomas; disturbingly, The New York Times reports that committee leaders have now discussed for weeks, without resolution, whether to question Thomas. It’s also relevant that before the Mark Meadows-Ginni Thomas emails showing the latter’s deep involvement in working to overturn the election results were leaked, Thomas had talked down her connection to the events of January 6 — strongly suggesting she understands the political and even legal peril of her true involvement.
The Democrats’ decision on how to pursue the Thomas revelations also feels different from earlier inflection points because it comes at a time when the Democrats’ path to retaining control the House and Senate in November is close to being closed to them. Inflation and a failure to accomplish basic Biden campaign promises, coupled with unrelenting GOP opposition and fear-mongering, has demobilized the Democratic base while rousing Republican voters. The Democrats’ continued insistence on fighting out the November elections mainly on kitchen table issues, when most Americans see the kitchen table a priced 10% higher than last year and not available for immediate delivery, is increasingly masochistic in the face of the GOP’s overt and self-incriminating threats to democracy, which have at least a theoretical chance of galvanizing the Democratic base into voting — if the Democrats choose to make these threats central to their election campaigns (beyond this, of course, prioritizing the fight to save democracy is the right thing to do).
As I’ve said before, keeping public attention focused on the January 6 coup and related efforts to overturn the 2020 election results is essential if the Democrats wish to make the case against the GOP’s broader, continuing turn to authoritarian politics. The horrors of January 6 bring together all the foul strands of right-wing politics — the contempt for democracy, the white supremacism, the embrace of violence — in a way that is easily understood and viscerally felt. It is a skeleton key to explain the array of Republican measures since January 6 — ranging from gerrymandering and racist voter suppression to attacks on women’s and gay rights — that constitute a continuation of the coup attempt by other means, part and parcel of a right-wing movement against the social and political progress of the last several decades.
In a somewhat analogous way, the corruption of Ginni and Clarence Thomas might be employed as a decoder ring for the larger corruption of the Republican Party, beyond simply Donald Trump and his defenders. As Marshall notes in another post, the involvement of Ginni Thomas and other long-time Republicans in the coup attempt suggests that the roots of the anti-democratic animus revealed that day originated not in Trump, but rather the establishment Republican Party itself. If the Democrats can make the case that a conservative icon like Clarence Thomas was coup-adjacent or coup-sympathetic, then they should make it, both for the sake of protecting American democracy and for demonstrating the Republican Party’s essential unfitness to hold power.
The Ginni Thomas revelations are also amplified by the proximity of the November elections since the congressional investigation of the January 6 insurrection will be shut down should Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives. In this way, these latest disclosures raise the stakes of the upcoming election more than ever — if at this late date we are still learning damning evidence about the extent of the right-wing Republican effort to overthrow American democracy, what may we still learn in the coming months and years if the investigation continues? The alternative is chilling, with the GOP in a position to bury the truth and act as accomplices to insurrection, while also turning the investigative powers of Congress into baseless crusades against Democrats in a further abuse of power.