Damning Audio Exposes Ginni Thomas’s Real Thoughts on Supreme Court

A right-wing religious rights group is fighting Supreme Court reform, and Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, is secretly one of its top supporters.

The First Liberty Institute has a budget of $25 million per year and calls itself “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

On July 31, the head of the institute, litigator Kelly Shackleford, held a private call with his organization’s top donors and read out an appreciative email from Thomas, according to ProPublica, which obtained a recording.

“YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH,” Thomas’s email read in all caps, Shackleford said. Shackleford added that Thomas also recently met with a First Liberty Institute staffer.

“Great to meet through the meetings today,” Thomas wrote, according to Shackleford. “I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the Supreme Court.”

“Many were so depressed at the lack of response by R’s and conservatives” to recent court-reform proposals, Thomas’s email reportedly continued.

Shackleford told the donors that he saw the email as proof that judges who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight” appreciated the organization’s efforts.

“It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” Shackleford said.

Later, Shackleford attacked liberal Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who supports enforcing ethics reforms on the court, as “treasonous” and “disloyal” and said that an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.”

The conference call came days after President Biden announced his support for Supreme Court reforms, including term limits for the court’s justices and a binding code of conduct. Shackleford attacked these and other proposals in the call, calling them “a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court” led by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases.”

Shackleford and Thomas seem to ignore the fact that her husband’s ethical lapses spurred the calls for judicial reform, particularly the many gifts the justice received from conservative megadonor Harlan Crow that he failed to disclose, including luxury vacations and the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother lives. 

Ginni Thomas, for her part, is a longtime conservative activist who played a suspicious role in the January 6 Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. This latest revelation seems to indicate that she and her husband have no remorse for their ethically questionable behavior.

Senator Lindsey Graham desperately wants Donald Trump to stop hurling lame insults at Kamala Harris. 

In a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday, the South Carolina Republican urged the former president to see the error of his shallow ad hominem attacks.

“Every day that the candidates trade insults is a good day for her because it’s one less day that she has to defend the failures of the Biden-Harris administration,” Graham wrote. “Far more worthwhile for Mr. Trump is his record of success. The road to the White House runs through a vigorous policy debate, not an exchange of barbs.” 

He then laid out the arguments he would use in a debate, comparing Trump’s policies favorably to Harris’s. 

Graham spent a significant portion of his word count bashing Harris, using a pared-down version of the Trump campaign’s talking points, for instance blaming her administration’s federal spending for booming inflation, although it’s not entirely clear that those two things are connected. 

Graham called immigration the “cornerstone of her portfolio” and criticized Harris for her too-little-too-late support for an aggressive bipartisan border bill—ignoring the fact that Trump had ordered congressional Republicans to kill the measure.

Graham also criticized Harris for doubling back on hydrofracking, and being the “last person in the room” with President Joe Biden before he put the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan into action. 

Trump also has been attacking Harris for these issues, but it’s been buried in the torrent of other meaningless comments about bacon and windmills, false claims that Harris had been the leader of the “defund the police” movement, and gratuitous self-praise for being a “great speaker.” And all of that was just in one day. 

While Trump’s avid fans may enjoy his ridiculous comments, Graham seemed not so impressed. 

To be sure, he also spent inches praising Trump, painting him as the strongman on the international stage, though recent descriptions show he was more like a kid whose lunch got taken for nothing. But laced into Graham’s argument was a strong criticism that Trump needs to get serious if he actually wants to win a debate—not just triumph by default.  

Will Trump take any of this to heart? Outlook not so good. Earlier this month, Graham remarked that Trump “the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.” Trump responded with a harsh dismissal of his longtime ally, saying, “Look, I like Lindsey. I don’t care what he says, OK?”

Perhaps Lindsey is hopeful that while Trump doesn’t listen to him, maybe he does read the Times? Not likely? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. 

“Average Joe” J.D. Vance has “no doubt” that he and Donald Trump are going to be elected in November—even as polls show that Vice President Kamala Harris’s “politics of joy” are overtaking them on the national stage.

Speaking with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, the Republican vice presidential pick—who might be best known for his uncanny ability to turn scripted, funny bits into uncomfortable moments that sit and stay with people—brushed off his dismal favorability ratings.

“How do you go to the undecideds at this point, this shrinking pool of people, and convince them that not only are you serious—and you’re seriously smart, but you’re a regular person, I’ve known you for a long time—you’re really fun, you’re really funny, versus the giggle and vibe show that seems to work for a lot of women voters out there?” prompted Ingraham, comparing the Trump-Vance strategy to the Harris-Walz ticket.

“You know, Laura, my approach to this is just to get out there and meet as many people as possible, and I know this is Donald Trump’s approach too,” Vance said. “That’s what I’m going to keep on doing, Laura. I don’t put much stock in the polls, even the polls that show us ahead, and there are a lot of those these days.”

Except, polls seem to consistently show that Harris has either pulled even with Trump or edged ahead.

And actually going out and meeting the American people hasn’t gone so well for Vance. Last week, the Ohio senator had a disastrous P.R. stunt at a donut shop in Valdosta, Georgia, where he couldn’t accomplish one normal human interaction with any of the bakery’s employees. On Thursday, Vance was intermittently booed by a large crowd at the International Association of Fire Fighters conference.

“What I put stock in is the wisdom of the American people, and the fact that if we go out there, make our case, don’t hide behind a teleprompter but get out there and meet people, the American people are going to elect me and Donald Trump,” Vance continued. “I have no doubt about that.”

The son of the late Republican Senator John McCain has criticized Donald Trump for his campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, and announced he plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November.

1st Lt. Jimmy McCain, a 17-year military veteran, told CNN that he changed his voter registration weeks ago from independent to Democrat, and called Trump’s cemetery visit a “violation.”

“It just blows me away,” McCain said. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” whether they wanted to be in Trump’s campaign video or photographs.

“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently—that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country,” McCain added.

McCain also told CNN that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help Harris’s campaign, making him the first McCain family member to leave the Republican Party, even as his mother, Cindy, and sister Meghan have criticized Trump. (In response to her brother’s interview, Meghan McCain said she isn’t voting for Harris or Trump.)

The Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon infamously said that John McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War, and he remained at odds with the Arizona senator until McCain’s death in 2018.

The younger McCain told CNN that Trump’s seeming disrespect for veterans stems from the former president’s lack of military service.

“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves. They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country,” McCain said. “And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”

Harris has secured endorsements from several Republicans opposed to Trump, including elected officials in Arizona, as well as 200 former staffers who worked for President George W. Bush, the late Senator McCain, and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, Trump’s high-profile endorsements from outside of his party seem limited to people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard.

Last month’s tiff between Donald Trump and Joe Rogan over the podcaster’s mock endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was, apparently, no biggie.

In an interview with Lex Fridman released Tuesday, Trump attempted to brush off the “bit of tension.”

“I don’t think there was any tension,” Trump said. “I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.”

Still, Trump insisted that he “likes” Rogan, even if he’s “sort of liberal.” His endorsement of Kennedy—whom Trump described as a “different kind of guy”—supposedly didn’t bother him.

That’s a starkly different tone from the one the Republican presidential nominee took in the immediate aftermath of Rogan’s Uno-reverse endorsement of Kennedy, in which he posted to Truth Social that he was looking forward to Rogan getting “booed” at a UFC tournament.

Attacking Rogan, one of the most popular podcasters in the country with independents and people on the right, was an eyebrow-raising decision for the waning candidate. Trump has rushed to pander to younger audiences in recent weeks in an effort to recoup the younger vote, hitting a youth podcast circuit that included speaking with comedian Theo Von and livestreamer Adin Ross.

Donald Trump just couldn’t back up his outlandish claims about voter fraud during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that aired Tuesday. 

During the 45-minute interview, Fridman asked Trump directly if he felt that Kamala Harris should be challenged more by the press. In response, the Republican nominee started rattling off false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there. They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid, too,” Trump said. Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. 

Later, Fridman tried to delicately ask Trump about what he would say to convince independent voters who were “troubled by what happened in the 2020 election” to vote for him. Fridman specifically referred to Trump’s unsupported claims about widespread voter fraud, and his administration’s alleged fake electors scheme. Despite Fridman’s softball approach, Trump doubled down on his disturbing rhetoric, before quickly swerving off topic.

“I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that. And they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election—you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s gonna get worse, not better,” Trump said. He explained that there were lots of ways to “solve this problem” to prevent noncitizens from voting, including paper ballots, same-day voting, and stricter voter identification.

In reality, there is very little evidence to suggest that noncitizen voting is a major problem in the U.S.  In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. As it happens, the only people concocting a scheme to fake votes in the last election were in Trump’s camp.

“So, uhhhh look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have, coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people, at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country has ever seen it. We have, coming into our country right now, millions of people. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen,” Trump said, seeming increasingly confused as he descended into one of his typical anti-immigrant stump speeches. 

Trump went on to complain about Harris as the “border czar,” which was never her official position, and continued to tout baseless claims that countries from around the world were offloading their people from prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums to the U.S. After about three minutes of Trump’s blatant fearmongering, Fridman tried to ask his original question a different way, so that it might actually elicit a real answer.

“So, a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election. Whether it’s media bias or big tech. Still, the claim of widespread fraud was the thing that bothers people,” Fridman said, but Trump easily bypassed his gentle phrasing.

“Well, I don’t focus on the past, I focus on the future,” Trump said, before diving into a lengthy rehashing of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was, of course, also the past.

Fridman tried one last time to get an actual response from Trump. “Let me just linger on the election a little—a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election? Whether you win or lose,” Fridman asked. 

“Well I hope it’s not a close one. I don’t know how people can vote for someone who destroyed our country,” Trump said, before turning back to immigration. 

The former president’s softball interview with Fridman was littered with several particularly off moments for a low-energy Trump. 

“I get very big audiences, and you know, for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and half and have nobody leave,” Trump bragged at one point. “You know, it’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s an ability.”

Of course, there is some well-documented evidence that plenty of onlookers choose to cut out on Trump’s incoherent speeches early—and even Fox News doesn’t play them all the way through anymore. 

In a softball interview, Donald Trump still couldn’t answer correctly when asked about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a wide-ranging interview with podcaster Lex Fridman released on Tuesday, Trump managed to praise Jeffrey Epstein while also claiming he “never went to his island.”

“He was a good salesman; he was, you know, a hailing, hearty type of guy,” Trump said when asked why he believes so many powerful people were close to Epstein. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands.”

When asked about his “hesitation” on releasing documents related to Epstein, including a his client list, the former president refused to commit but said he’d “take a look at it.”

Trump then immediately began trying to excuse Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his relationship with Epstein.

“Kennedy is interesting because it was so many years ago,” Trump  said, referring to the man who admitted he flew onEpstein’s private plane twice. Trump seemed to justify the list of powerful men being kept secret all this time, adding that releasing the list “endangers certain people.”

Trump has previously waffled on declassifying the Epstein files. In June, he told Fox & Friends Weekend that he would, but he also had hesitations. “I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”

At the end of the Fridman interview, Trump finished on a similar note, eventually saying he’d “be inclined” to release the files. Of course, right-wing media and influencers are already trying to claim the interview is a win. “Trump says he will release the Epstein client list if elected. The Democrat elites are shaking rn,” said Libs of TikTok, ignoring the rest of his words.

Donald Trump can’t use Isaac Hayes’s song “Hold On, I’m Coming” at his rallies anymore thanks to a federal judge in Georgia.

On Tuesday, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, responding to a lawsuit from Hayes’s estate, issued a temporary injunction against Trump using the song “without proper license.” Trump’s campaign has been using the song to close out his speeches this year, including at the Republican National Convention.

As recently as August 9, Trump used “Hold On, I’m Coming” at a rally in Montana, but since then, he’s been using the Village People’s “YMCA,” which he also used in his 2020 presidential campaign. (Not surprisingly, they aren’t happy with Trump using their music either.)

Hayes’s estate hopes to make the measure permanent.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision,” James L. Walker Jr., a lawyer for the Hayes estate, told The New York Times. “Donald Trump has been told he cannot use the music of Isaac Hayes without a license. That was our No. 1 goal. Now we work on the underlying trial and case.”

Trump’s campaign did get one reprieve from the judge: Recordings from previous campaign events where they used Hayes’s song can stay online. But that hardly softens the blow when there’s a long list of artists who don’t want Trump using their music. Just last week, Swedish pop group ABBA objected to Trump using their songs at a Minnesota rally.

Before that, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, the Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler all banned Trump from playing their music for his campaign.

Perhaps Trump ought to stick with artists who actually support him and would want their music played at his campaign events. But then he’d be stuck with Kid Rock, Kanye West, and country music.

Donald Trump’s gaze is turned toward New Hampshire—but possibly for all the wrong reasons.

A top volunteer with the Trump campaign issued an internal message Sunday notifying fellow Trump volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.” That volunteer, Tom Mountain, is reportedly no longer with the campaign.

But Trump couldn’t let the topic of the Granite State pass without attempting to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the mud with him. In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump claimed that New Hampshire was “disrespected” by the fact that Harris “never showed up” during its presidential primary, despite the fact that Harris only became the Democratic nominee a little more than a month ago. Harris also intends to visit New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history.”

Harris has at least a five-point advantage over Trump in New Hampshire, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll published August 19. Still, despite the losing edge—and the Trump campaign’s own internal kerfuffle over it—Trump insisted that New Hampshire’s concerns were still his own.

“I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will!” Trump continued. “To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote TRUMP. Together, we will make your State and America Strong, Safe, and Prosperous AGAIN!”

J.D. Vance’s casual misogyny seems to be a problem that just won’t go away for the Trump campaign.

The Republican vice presidential pick has ardently defended his position that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, deriding Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.” But even some of the most extreme far-right networks can’t get behind Vance’s toxic comments.

In a newly unearthed interview with Newsmax in 2021, the Ohio senator continued to double down on his radical take on childless Americans.

“I realized that we’re being ruled by a childless elite,” Vance said. “It’s not just that they don’t have kids. Of course a lot of people don’t have kids for different reasons. It’s that they’re proud of the fact that they don’t have kids, they think it’s bad if they have kids, they think it’s bad for the environment. They’re proud of their abortions. They shout their abortions from the rooftops.

“That is a dangerous place to live as a country,” he added.

But that didn’t sit right with at least one network host.

“J.D., so I’m curious, I take a little bit of a different stance from you and Steve, respectfully,” said Jenn Pellegrino, referring to her co-host Steve Cortes. “There’s about a quarter of the population that chooses not to have kids. Perhaps some of the hardest-working, most career-driven people that you’ll find.

“Are we not painting this group perhaps with a broad brush? Because not everybody is of that mentality, of not doing it for climate change. Some people just choose a little bit differently,” Pellegrino said. “Perhaps society is changing a little bit.”

But Vance wouldn’t be swayed. “Look, you do not have a future as a country unless you have the next generation,” he said. “So much of what’s going on on the left especially is they’ve become obsessed with the idea that having a kid is an old-fashioned thing.

“If you don’t have kids, who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?” he continued. “Who’s going to care for our elderly? Work the jobs that are necessary? If we don’t have children, then the answer is nobody.”

Watch the exchange below: