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Clarence Thomas #wingnut #conspiracy #elitist #mammon news.bloomberglaw.com

US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decried “the nastiness and the lies” he and his wife Ginni have “had to endure” in recent years.

“There’s certainly been a lot of negativity for my wife and I in the last few years,” Thomas said Friday at a conference of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Point Clear, Alabama. “But we choose not to focus on that.”

Thomas was the focus of controversy over Supreme Court ethics in 2023, after reports emerged that he accepted luxury travel via yacht and private jet from billionaire businessman and conservative political donor Harlan Crow without disclosing the gifts publicly. The justice also sold real estate including his childhood home in Georgia to Crow and failed to include those deals in his annual financial disclosures. ProPublica received a Pulitzer Prize on May 6 for its role in uncovering the financial connections.

On Friday, Thomas recounted a conversation with a friend during a walk around his neighborhood years ago. “That’s before they started attacking my friends,” Thomas said. “I hope I still have some.”

Thomas also described Washington as a place where “people pride themselves in being awful.”

“It is a hideous place as far as I’m concerned,” Thomas said.

“It’s one of the reasons we like RVing,” he added. “You get to be around regular people who don’t pride themselves in doing harmful things merely because they have the capacity to do it or because they disagree.”

Texas Republicans #racist #sexist #wingnut news.bloomberglaw.com

The Texas Senate on Friday passed legislation that would end requirements that public schools include writings on women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement in social studies classes.

Among the figures whose works would be dropped: Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King Jr.

It would remove more than two dozen teaching requirements from a new law that bars the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework exploring racism’s shaping of the country.

The bill would remove most mentions of people of color and women from those requirements, along with a requirement that students be taught about the history of white supremacy and “the ways in which it is morally wrong.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who presides over the Senate, said in a statement after the vote that “Senate Bill 3 will make certain that critical race philosophies including the debunked 1619 founding myth, are removed from our school curriculums statewide. Parents want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism.”

“What we’re doing with this bill, we’re saying that specific reading list doesn’t belong in statute,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R).

The bill would prohibit teachers from being compelled to talk about current events or controversial issues, instructing those choosing to engage with students to discuss without “giving deference to any one perspective.”

Speaking on the chamber floor, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D) said the legislation amounts to “tying the hands of our teachers.”

“How could a teacher possibly discuss slavery, the Holocaust, or the mass shootings at the Walmart in El Paso or at the Sutherland Springs church in my district without giving deference to any one perspective?,” she said.