It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
About 10 percent of all flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport were cancelled due to strikes by ground personnel on Thursday and similar disruption is expected on Friday, a spokesman for airport operator ADP said.
Due to expected demonstrations, he added, road traffic leading to CDG could be disrupted on Friday and recommended that travellers take a train from Paris to the airport.
The spokesman said Orly airport south of Paris was not affected by the walkout, which was called in a dispute over pay and benefits.
With airline traffic returning toward pre-pandemic levels, the hardline CGT trade union and others want serious wage increases to offset galloping inflation, which hit a record high 6.5 percent in France in June. The CGT is demanding a general wage increase of €300 euros per month for all staff.
The workers’ demands come as airlines are struggling to recruit staff after having cut their headcounts massively during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The French aviation authority DGAC has asked airlines to cancel one flight in six on Friday between 7:00am local time (0500 GMT) and 2:00pm. Airport operator ADP expects that roughly 10 percent of flights will be cancelled on Friday.
On Thursday, only ADP workers were on strike, but on Friday staff at airlines, subcontractors and other airport-related companies are expected to join.
A first airport strike in Paris on June 9 – involving 1,500 strikers, according to the CGT – led to the cancellation of 20 percent of flights in the morning at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle.
“Salaries need to go up, not by two or three percent but by 15 to 20 percent,” said Loris Foreman, a ground handling agent at Paris’s main international airport, on the eve of the walkout.
“When you start at 5:00am or work odd hours all the time, this leads to burn-out, and at the moment there are loads of airport staff who are on sick leave for depression,” he added.
Last month, Foreman earned €1,770 net, but he said that does not allow him to live comfortably anymore, with inflation eroding his wages.
He now has to scour supermarkets for promotions on food items - showing three pots of cream in his fridge and a lamb shoulder in his freezer - and never fills his car’s fuel tank to the top, he said.
A strike is a bother for travellers, Foreman acknowledged, but added that he had no choice.
“Yes, we know that we are taking passengers hostage, but we need to make our voice heard and the only way to do that is with a strike,” he said.
Several European airlines and airports have experienced strikes in recent weeks and more travel disruptions are expected next month as airline workers use strong travel demand and staff shortages caused in part by the Covid-19 pandemic to push for higher wages and better working conditions.
Airports in cities such as London, Amsterdam, Rome and Frankfurt have had to cope with flight cancellations and long queues.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)
'American Woman' rocker reunited with stolen guitar... 46 years on
Katie Forster Fri, July 1, 2022
They say you never forget your first love, and after pining for his stolen guitar for almost half a century, Canadian rock star Randy Bachman has finally been reunited with the instrument which an eagle-eyed fan tracked down in Japan.
Bachman, who wrote the original "American Woman" with his band The Guess Who, was in Tokyo for the emotional handover on Friday -- 46 years after his cherished orange Gretsch was snatched from a Toronto hotel.
"Wow," a stunned Bachman said, holding the guitar lovingly and tuning it up on stage before playing in a special concert at the Canadian Embassy.
The 78-year-old told AFP he had been "pretty much devastated" by the theft.
"With that guitar, I wrote many million-selling songs... it was like my magical guitar. And then when it's suddenly gone, the magic is gone."
The rocker bought the now vintage 6120 Chet Atkins model as a teenager in the early 1960s with $400 painstakingly saved up from mowing lawns, washing cars and babysitting.
He had long admired the instrument, spending hours staring at it in a shop window in Winnipeg with his friend and fellow musician Neil Young.
It meant so much to Bachman that he would chain it to hotel toilets on tour. "Everybody in the band made fun of me, but because I worked so hard to get this guitar, I didn't want it stolen."
But in 1976, he entrusted the guitar to a roadie who put it in a room with other luggage while the band was checking out.
Before they knew it, it was gone.
- Some sleuthing and a handover -
Over the decades, Bachman hunted for his Gretsch, which has a small, dark knot in the wood grain on its front, but to no avail -- until a Canadian fan decided to help with the search from his home in 2020.
William Long compared old images of the stolen instrument with new and archived pictures of the model on guitar shop websites around the world.
"Yeah, I'm a sleuth," Long, 58, told AFP. "I was confident I was going to find it. I got the process down so quick -- I went through 300 images of orange Gretches."
None were a perfect match, until he found one on the site of a Tokyo guitar shop with the tell-tale mark.
More searching pointed Long to a Japanese musician called Takeshi, who he spotted playing Bachman's beloved guitar in a YouTube video.
Takeshi, who had always wanted a vintage Gretsch, says he bought Bachman's guitar in 2014 for around 850,000 yen ($6,300).
Long alerted Bachman to his discovery, and the musicians arranged to meet in Tokyo to swap Bachman's original guitar with another of the same type, also made in 1957.
On Friday, at an event held on Canada Day, the pair shared a big hug and then jammed together.
They performed songs including "American Woman", the 1970 hit later covered by US singer Lenny Kravitz, and "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman's other band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Bachman is not the only rock star to be reunited with a long-lost guitar: last year, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page also tracked one down that went missing at an airport decades ago.
But Bachman, who had given up ever finding the guitar after four decades of searching, said he had been touched by Long's "random act of kindness".
"When I was playing it, I looked down and figured -– time has stood still, or 50 years has just flown by really fast," he said.
"I couldn't have written this if I wrote it as a script. Nobody would believe it. But it's true. It's really great."
kaf/jta
Hundreds rally in Sudan day after 9 killed during protests Sudanese anti-military protesters march in demonstrations in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, on Thursday, June 30, 2022. A Sudanese medical group says at least seven people were killed on Thursday in the anti-coup rallies during which security forces fired on protesters denouncing the country’s military rulers and demanding an immediate transfer of power to civilians.
(AP Photo/Marwan Ali)
Fri, July 1, 2022
CAIRO (AP) — Funeral processions turned into anti-military marches and hundreds took to the streets Friday in Sudan's capital, a day after nine people were killed in demonstrations against the country's ruling generals.
The United States and others in the international community condemned the violence in this East African nation, which has been rocked by near-weekly protests since an Oct. 25 coup upended its fragile transition to democracy.
The rallies on Thursdays were the largest seen in months. Sudanese military authorities have met the protests with a deadly crackdown, which has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children.
In and near Khartoum, funeral marches for some of those killed the day before turned into protests while others gathered after Friday prayers at mosques in the country's capital. Online, photographs of the dead were posted, in some cases in an effort to identify them.
The Sudan's Doctors Committee, a medical group that monitors casualties from demonstrations, said security forces shot and killed nine people, including a child, in or near Khartoum during the rallies on Thursday. The demonstrations coincided with widespread internet disruptions. Internet monitors and activists say the government has crippled communications to prevent gatherings and slow the spread of news on days when large protest turnout is expected.
Sudan’s leading pro-democracy groups — Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change and the Resistance Committees — had called for nationwide protest against the coup. The takeover upended the country’s short-lived transition to democracy following the 2019 ouster of longtime autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir.
Since the coup, the U.N. political mission in Sudan, the African Union, and the eight-nation east African regional Intergovernmental Authority in Development group have been trying to broker a way out of the political impasse. But talks have yielded no results so far.
In a joint statement tweeted Friday the three bodies expressed “disappointment over the continued use of excessive force by security forces and lack of accountability for such actions, despite repeated commitments by authorities.”
Thursday’s protests also fell on the third anniversary of a 2019 mass rally that forced the generals to sit down at the negotiating table with pro-democracy groups and eventually sign a power-sharing agreement that was expected to govern Sudan during a transitional period, until general elections were to be held. The coup last October scuttled this arrangement.
Western governments have repeatedly called on the generals to allow for peaceful protests, but have also angered the protest movement for sometimes engaging with the leading generals. Pro-democracy leaders call for the generals to leave power immediately.
“We are heartbroken at the tragic loss of life in yesterday’s protests,” the U.S. Embassy in Sudan said in a statement Friday. “We urge all parties to resume negotiations and call on peaceful voices to rise above those who advocate for or commit violence.”
Pride turns to outrage over abortion ruling as marchers take to US streets
People attending Pride celebrations hosted by LGBTQ+ communities across the United States this weekend expressed outrage at the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion as well as a wave of anti-transgender legislation.
For more than 50 years, LGBTQ+ people and supporters have marched on the last weekend in June to celebrate hard-won freedoms. But now many fear those freedoms are under threat.
Pride parades in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Denver followed protests in some of the same cities decrying the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
“This march is going to have more of a serious tone than celebratory, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all,” said Krystal Marx, executive director of Seattle Pride, which drew thousands of people to its parade on Sunday.
In New York City, throngs of people dressed in rainbow colors cheered as representatives of the abortion rights group Planned Parenthood took part in a parade in Manhattan. The marchers held pink signs that read “Together. We fight for all.”
“Everybody please scream for Planned Parenthood!” an announcer called over a loudspeaker. “We won’t back down!” the crowd responded. The marches commemorate protests that broke out after police raided a gay bar at the Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 28, 1969.
LGBTQ leaders fear the abortion ruling by the court’s conservative justices endangers personal freedom beyond abortion rights. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court might reconsider other precedents, mentioning specifically the rulings protecting the rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy and gay marriage.
“The anti-abortion playbook and the anti-LGBTQ playbook are one and the same. Both are about denying control over our bodies and making it more dangerous for us to live as we are,” Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, said in a statement.
Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling against abortion rights, the LGBTQ+ community’s Pride month jubilation was weighed down by a raft of Republican-backed state laws that specifically target transgender youth.
The measures enacted in several red states bar classroom discussion of gender identity, block access to healthcare to help young people transition, and restrict participation in sports. In Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott has called for prosecuting some gender-affirming care as child abuse, the line from overturning Roe to rolling back LGBTQ+ rights was clear to Patrick Smith, who attended Houston’s Pride Parade.
“The government should stay out of our private lives,” said Smith, who attended the event on Saturday with his partner. “Women went first. I fear what could happen to us too.”
Abortion rights and transgender rights were top of mind at San Francisco’s Pride parade, where people held signs that read “Abort the Court,” “Protect trans youth,” and organizers led a chant of “Get your laws off our bodies.”
“It feels like there’s a cloud over everybody who has a uterus,” said Maya Reddick, a high school student attending San Francisco’s celebration with friends. She held a sign that said “reproductive rights are human rights.”
(REUTERS)
UNESCO inscribes Ukrainian borsch soup as endangered heritage
By AFP PublishedJuly 1, 2022 UNESCO said borsch was an 'integral part' of Ukrainian life -
Copyright POOL/AFP Selim CHTAYTI
The UN’s cultural agency on Friday inscribed the culture of cooking borshch soup in Ukraine on its list of endangered cultural heritage, in a move urged by Kyiv but vehemently opposed by Moscow.
Ukraine considers borshch — a thick nourishing soup usually made with beetroot — as a national dish although it is also widely consumed in Russia, other ex-Soviet countries and Poland.
The culture of Ukrainian borshch cooking “was today inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding” by a UNESCO committee.
The decision was approved after a fast-track process prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the “negative impact on this tradition” caused by the war, UNESCO said.
Kyiv hailed the move, with Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko saying on Telegram that “victory in the borshch war is ours… will win both in the war of borshch and in this war.”
Adding the soup culture to the UNESCO list aims at mobilising attention to ensure it is preserved despite risks to its existence.
The committee noted that the war had “threatened the viability” of the soup culture in Ukraine.
“The displacement of people (poses a threat)… as people are unable not only to cook or grow local vegetables for borshch, but also to come together… which undermines the social and cultural well-being of communities.”
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had slammed the move as a bid to make it belong to “one people… one nationality… This is xenophobia,” she said.
But UNESCO noted that Ukrainian borshch was just a version of a dish popular elsewhere and was essential to daily life in in the country.
“Ukrainian borshch — the national version of borscht consumed in several countries of the region — is an integral part of Ukrainian family and community life”.
ABOLISH SCOTUS
AOC questions legitimacy of Supreme Court and calls Biden ‘historically weak’ on abortion
Sheila Flynn Sat, June 25, 2022
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and challenged president Joe Biden to “step up” on abortion rights.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday forensically laid out, in a Twitter thread, many of the problems she had with Supreme Court judges, calling for Democrats to outline a clearer and more instructional plan for voters on how to codify Roe v Wade – less than 24 hours after the nation’s highest court reversed its 1973 ruling, leaving it up to states to now legislate on abortion.
“Election or not, the Supreme Court has a legitimacy crisis and the public reaffirms it: 75% of the US public reports lacking confidence in SCOTUS, & those numbers were *pre-Roe ruling*” she tweeted Saturday.
She said in reply to another tweet that Mr Biden has been “historically weak on this issue (supported Hyde until ‘19), but now is his chance to step up & grow.”
In addition to highlighting sexual assault allegations against justices and claiming a seat was “stolen,” she wrote that “7 of the 9 justices were appointed by a party that hasn’t won a popular vote more than once in 30 years” and “Several lied to Congress to secure their appointment.”
“In a legitimacy crisis, the solution Biden + Dem leaders must offer can’t just be one of voting, but of statue & authority,” she tweeted, later adding: “The ruling is Roe, but the crisis is democracy ... The President & Dem leaders can no longer get away with familiar tactics of ‘committees’ and ‘studies’ to avoid tackling our crises head-on anymore.”
She called for measures including a restrain on judicial review; the opening of abortion clinics on federal land; court expansion; and the expansion of federal access to and awareness of pill abortion.
To best achieve party goals, she said, Democrats must “be PRECISE with what we need and we will do with that power.
“How many seats does the party need to Codify Roe?” she tweeted. “Dems must SAY THAT. Not just ‘go vote’ or ‘give us $6 to win.’ That is demoralizing, losing, unfocused nonsense.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez insisted that her party must tell voters which seats were needed, in which states and which races, in addition to outlining what the President and Congress would be “ACTUALLY willing+able to do at 52/60 seats?
“Be honest. Details motivate,” the 32-year-old tweeted, urging people to “stop the handwringing and get moving.”
AOC says Supreme Court justices who lied under oath must face consequences for 'impeachable offense'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday called for consequences for justices who "lie under oath."
Ocasio-Cortez was referring to SCOTUS Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
Two senators said the justices assured them they believed Roe v. Wade is law, but both voted to overturn it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said she believes it's an "impeachable offense" for a Supreme Court justice to lie under oath.
Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin said they felt misled by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch during their individual confirmation hearings. The two senators, both pro-choice, voted to confirm Kavanaugh and Gorsuch because they assured them that they believed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion a constitutional right nationwide, was law.
Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, however, voted to strike down Roe earlier this week.
Ocasio-Cortez, speaking in an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press," said she believes the court is facing a "crisis of legitimacy" and justices must face consequences if they lie under oath.
"If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue, without basis," she said, "we must see that through. There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions."
"To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen," she continued. "And what makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court."
Ocasio-Cortez added that she believes that lying under oath is an impeachable offense.
"I believe that this is something that should be very seriously considered, including by senators like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins," she said.
The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked protests nationwide. Since the decision was made public, a slewofprominentindividuals from musician Jack White to lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez have blasted the ruling. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the court's decision, saying on Friday that it's a "devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States."
AOC Says Impeachment Possible
If Supreme Court Justices Lied
Under Oath
Murjani Rawls
Mon, June 27, 2022
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) leaves after speaking to abortion-rights activists in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Court announced a ruling in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in June 24, 2022, in Washington, DC.
During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) stated that she felt impeachment should be considered if certain Supreme Court Justices lied in their confirmation hearings about what they felt about Roe v. Wade, according to Axios. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments come after the Supreme Court overturned the abortion rights case on Friday, and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) both have called the testimony of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh being potentially misleading.
During the confirmation hearings of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, each stated they would honor precedent. Specifically, when asked about Roe v. Wade, Justice Kavanaugh said it was “precedent on precedent.” This was interpreted as meaning if confirmed, he would uphold the right to an abortion because the case protections had stood the test of time. However, as we saw Friday, that didn’t happen. Ocasio-Cortez believes there should be consequences for this.
“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue—without basis, if you read these opinions—rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” the lawmaker said.
“There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” she added.
“I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense,” she added, referring to Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “I believe that violating federal law in not disclosing income from political organizations, as Clarence Thomas did years ago, is also potentially an impeachable offense. I believe that not recusing from cases that one clearly has family members involved in with very deep violations of conflict of interest are also impeachable offenses.”
There has been movement in the House to pass a Supreme Court “code of ethics” that would apply to judges and their employees. It has not been taken up by the Senate yet, primarily because Republicans would never vote for it
Ocasio-Cortez: SCOTUS justices should face consequences for misleading Roe testimony Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that Supreme Court justices should face consequences including possible impeachment for misleading lawmakers about their stances on Roe vs. Wade during confirmation hearings.
File Pool Photo by Andrew Harnik/UPI | License Photo
June 26 (UPI) -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said that members of the Supreme Court who misled Congress about their intentions to overturn Roe vs. Wade should face consequences including possible impeachment.
Appearing on NBC News'Meet the Press, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., cited comments from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, that "several Supreme Court Justices misled them" about their stance on Roe vs. Wade during their confirmation hearings and the lead-up to their confirmation.
"There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions," she said, describing a "crisis of legitimacy" in the high court.
"What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court," she continued.
Ocasio-Cortez also said that Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal law by not disclosing income from political organizations and should have recused himself from cases representing "very deep violations of conflict of interest" due to his and his wife's conservative activism.
She said that both offenses as well as lying under oath are "impeachable offenses."
"I believe that this is something that should be taken very seriously considered, including by senators like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins," she said.
The Supreme Court's decision Friday set off a series of so-called "trigger laws" in which abortion would be outlawed in 13 states, immediately or shortly after the landmark 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday defended her state's law, which allows abortion only when needed to protect the life of the mother, and provides no exception in cases of incest and rape, saying that one tragedy is not "a reason to have another tragedy occur."
"I believe every life is precious ... And we know so much more using technology and science than we did even 10, 15 years ago about what these babies go through, the pain they feel in the womb and will continue to make sure that those lives are protected," she told CBS News'Face the Nation.
Noem added that South Dakota would also invest in resources for women who will now be required to carry their pregnancies to term including mental health counseling and family services.
"I would prefer that we continue to make sure we go forward and that we're putting resources in front of these women and walking alongside them, getting them healthcare, the care, the mental health counseling and services that they should need to make sure that we can continue to support them and build stronger families far into the future as well," she said.
Some states, such as California and Minnesota, issued orders protecting women's rights in response to the decision and the laws that went into effect throughout the nation.
In Rhode Island, Democratic state Senate candidate Jennifer Rourke shared video to social media, which she said showed her Republican opponent Jeann Lugo, an off-duty police officer, punching her in the face during a protest in the state on Saturday.
"Last night, after speaking at our Roe rally, my Republican opponent -- a police officer -- violently attacked me," Rourke wrote alongside the video. "This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office. I won't give up."
Lugo, a three-year veteran of the Providence police department, has been placed on administrative leave and is under criminal investigation, the City of Providence Police Department confirmed in a tweet.
In a Twitter post that was published before he deleted his account, Lugo wrote that he will "not be running for any office this fall," before appearing to close his account.
Before announcing he was dropping out of the race, he told The Washington Post that he found himself "in a situation that no individual should see themselves."
"I stepped in to protect someone that a group of agitators was attacking," he wrote. "At this moment, there's a pending internal investigation and as the facts of the incident come to light, I request that my family and I have privacy."
ABOLISH SCOTUS
Impeaching Clarence Thomas: How Democrats could remove conservative justices
C. Ryan Barber
Protestors filled the streets in response to the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Democrats have increased calls to remove justices in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Justice Clarence Thomas previously faced calls for impeachment in connection with January 6.
Senators have questioned whether Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch lied about their views.
The many controversies and polarizing opinions spilling out of the Supreme Court in recent months have drawn calls for an event not seen in more than two centuries of American history: the impeachment of a sitting justice.
Even before Friday's decision eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, Democrats including Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had voiced support for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-tenured sitting member of the Supreme Court. At the time, the demands for his removal centered on the revelation of more than two dozen text messages Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, exchanged with onetime White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as she sought to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election.
And those calls intensified after Thomas joined with other justices in the Supreme Court's conservative bloc to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion. Other justices are now facing similar calls for impeachment amid questions about whether they misled the Senate during their confirmation proceedings about their views on Roe.
"I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense," Ocasio-Cortez said during a recent interview on NBC's Meet the Press, referring to Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Indeed, eyebrows lifted on both sides of the aisle after the Kavanaugh and Gorsuch joined in the reversing Roe. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who supported Gorsuch's and Kavanaugh's confirmations, said the decision was inconsistent with what the two justices said "in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon."
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said he "trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v Wade was settled legal precedent, and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans."
In his controversial concurring opinion in the abortion case, Thomas argued the Court should also "reconsider" rulings that established rights to same-sex marriage, access to birth control and gay sex.
Amid nationwide protests and anxiety over the potential rollback of those rights, a petition calling for Thomas' impeachment continued to pick up support. The petition, organized in March by the advocacy group MoveOn, had received more than 300,000 signatures.
Thomas on October 26, 2020.Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
How to impeach a Supreme Court justice
The process of impeaching a Supreme Court justice is identical to the more well-tread procedure for removing a sitting president.
First, the House must draft articles of impeachment. The House then needs only a majority, however slim, to impeach a Supreme Court justice or any other federal judge. But a two-thirds majority is required in the Senate to convict.
Given the current political climate — Democrats have the thinnest majority possible, with a 50-50 Senate — it's almost certain that Thomas wouldn't be removed from his lifetime appointment. Republicans are enjoying a significant ideological majority on the Supreme Court, with six of nine justices.
What would be grounds for impeaching Thomas?
Given Ginni Thomas' texts, some Democrats have noted that in January, Clarence Thomas stood out as the only justice to dissent when the Supreme Court rejected Trump's bid to block the release of some presidential records to the House committee investigating the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
Thomas had previously dissented in February 2021 when the Supreme Court turned away election challenges filed by Trump and his political allies. Thomas described the decision to not hear the cases as "baffling" and "inexplicable," saying in dissent that the Supreme Court should have taken the opportunity to provide states with guidance for elections.
Some Democrats in 2019 had clamored for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but no serious impeachment effort in Congress ever materialized.
Samuel Chase in 1811, by the artist John Wesley Jarvis.Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images
Federal judicial impeachments are rare
Federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, have lifetime appointment — their tenures typically ending with retirement or death.
As a Brennan Center for Justice study noted in 2018, the impeachment of federal judges "is rare, and removal is rarer still." The study found that the House had impeached only 15 judges since 1803 — an average of one every 14 years — and only eight of those proceedings resulted in convictions by the Senate.
The history of impeaching a Supreme Court justice requires a more than 200-year reach back into American history.
In 1804, Justice Samuel Chase went down in history as the first — and, so far, only — sitting member of the Supreme Court to be impeached when the House accused him of refusing to dismiss biased jurors and excluding or limiting defense witnesses in a pair of politically sensitive trials.
An official Senate website describes Chase as a "staunch Federalist with a volcanic personality" who "showed no willingness to tone down his bitter partisan rhetoric after Jeffersonian Republicans gained control of Congress in 1801." Then-President Thomas Jefferson backed the impeachment effort.
But in 1805, Chase survived the impeachment proceedings after his legal team — including "several of the nation's most eminent attorneys" — convinced enough senators that the justice's conduct did not warrant removal from the Supreme Court, according to the Senate website. Chase continued serving on the Supreme Court and died in 1811.
In 2010, the Senate voted to convict Thomas Porteous, then a federal judge in New Orleans, after the House impeached him on allegations of bribery and making false statements. Other judges have resigned in the face of threatened impeachment and removal from their lifetime appointments.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, and wife Virginia "Ginni" Thomas arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Donald Trump at the White House in 2019.AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
A text-message brouhaha
Ginni Thomas' text messages were among the more than 2,000 that Meadows turned over to the special House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The messages show how eagerly Thomas promoted and pushed to guide Trump's strategy to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat.
In some of the messages, Thomas elevated the conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, who has since faced sanctions over her lead role advancing Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.
"Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down," Thomas wrote in a November 2020 text to Meadows.
"Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark," Thomas wrote in another message. "The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits."
It is unclear whether the 29 messages — 21 sent by Thomas, eight by Meadows — reflected the extent of their communication.
Justice Thomas faced calls for his retirement or resignation even before his wife's text messages with Meadows became public, as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other media outlets illuminated his wife's political activism.
But the text correspondence brought a new tenor to the pressure on Thomas to step down from the Supreme Court.
In March, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, wrote in a Twitter post that "Clarence Thomas should be impeached."
Ocasio-Cortez threatened Thomas with impeachment if he refused to resign.
"Clarence Thomas should resign," the New York Democrat wrote on Twitter. "If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment."
Meanwhile, other lawmakers have called for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to January 6.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the text message correspondence "raises a serious question about conflict of interest for Justice Thomas."
"To think that he would consider a case where his wife is frequently contacting the chief of staff for the president and giving advice on matters that are going to be ultimately litigated by the court," Durbin told reporters on Capitol Hill. "For the good of the court, I think he should recuse himself from those cases."
Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, called on Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the Capitol-riot investigation and 2024 election because his "conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt."
President Joe Biden, however, declined to call for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from such cases.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it would be up to Thomas to decide whether to recuse himself from cases involving the investigation into January 6, 2021.
In an interview with The Washington Free Beacon, Ginni Thomas said, "Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work."
But in a 2011 speech, Clarence Thomas appeared to link his service on the Supreme Court to his wife's political advocacy.
"We love being with each other because we love the same things. We believe in the same things ... We are focused on defending liberty. So I admire her and I love her for that because it keeps me going," Thomas said.
