The Supreme Court, whose unelected justices are appointed to lifetime terms, is institutionally undemocratic. For the vast bulk of its history, it has served as a bastion of political reaction—upholding slavery until the slave system was smashed by the Civil War (the Second American Revolution), later sanctioning Jim Crow segregation, safeguarding capitalist property and profits against the working class, and increasingly over the past half-century attacking and dismantling democratic rights.
Since joining the high court in 1991, Thomas has been on its extreme right, playing a key role in discrediting the body—portrayed by the media and the politicians as august and unimpeachable—before the eyes of the working class. In 2000 he was part of the five-member Republican majority which halted the vote count in Florida and stole the presidential election for George W. Bush, the loser of the popular vote. Thomas signed on to an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia that declared the American people had no constitutional right to vote for the president.
He is clearly implicated in the conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election and maintain Donald Trump in power as dictator. He refused to recuse himself from cases relating to the attempted coup of January 6 and its cover-up, despite the fact that his wife, “Ginni,” played a major role in the plot. A leading member of fascistic groups, she worked to convince state legislators in Republican-controlled states that voted for Biden to reject pro-Biden electors and unilaterally approve pro-Trump elector slates. She promoted Trump’s fascist lawyers such as Sidney Powell and repeatedly texted Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urging him to defy the results of the election and do whatever was needed to keep Trump in power. No wonder that Clarence Thomas issued the only dissent in voting to support an attempt by Trump to block the January 6 Committee from accessing Meadows’ text messages.
That committee, dominated by the Democrats, allowed Ginni Thomas to testify behind closed doors rather than in public in order to shield Justice Thomas and conceal his role and that of at least one other justice, Samuel Alito, in the conspiracy.
Thomas voted last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, marking the first-ever action by the Supreme Court to retract a previously established constitutional right, and condemning millions of women and children to poverty and ill health.
-- Barry Grey, "ProPublica documents corrupt relations of Supreme Court arch-reactionary Clarence Thomas with billionaire Republican donor" (WSWS).
