Only One Republican Voted Against Holding Merrick Garland in Contempt

The House voted on Wednesday to hold U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress in a 216-207 vote on party lines. Only one Republican was brave enough to vote against the conservative-fueled order of contempt: Representative Dave Joyce.

“As a former prosecutor, I cannot in good conscience support a resolution that would further politicize our judicial system to score political points,” a statement from the Ohio representative reads. “The American people expect Congress to work for them, solve policy problems, and prioritize good governance. Enough is enough.”

The contempt vote was held after Garland refused to hand over audio of a privileged interview between Biden and special counsel Robert Hur regarding a classified documents case against Biden. Republicans have pursued audio of the interview unsuccessfully as part of their ongoing efforts to catch Biden in a snare.

Biden asserted executive privilege over the recordings, a move which reportedly came at the request of Garland himself. The Justice Department had earlier expressed concerns that releasing the audio would provoke a “frenzy” of deepfakes, or audio recordings falsely attributed to Biden’s interview with Hur used to disseminate false information.

Congress already has transcripts of the audio in question—making this just the latest example of Republicans’ attempt to drum up attacks on Garland and the Biden administration more broadly. Only one GOP representative spotted the obvious political ploy.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a case seeking reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre, the last remaining option for survivors and their family to secure recompense for the deadly attack that continues to haunt the Greenwood community of Tulsa. The court ruled that the last two survivors of the deadly massacre failed to prove that the city of Tulsa—both during and after the white supremacist riot in 1921 in which a racist mob destroyed their neighborhood and murdered more than 100 Black people—violated Oklahoma’s “public nuisance” laws.

In their original filing, survivors Hughes Van Ellis, Viola Fletcher, and Lessie Benningfield claimed the city of Tulsa’s response to the Tulsa Race Massacre caused them to “continue to face racially disparate treatment and City-created barriers to basic human needs, including jobs, financial security, education, housing, justice, and health.” The survivors’ complaint also condemned the city for using the Tulsa Race Massacre, specifically the phrase “Black Wall Street,” to entice tourism to the area. Profits from massacre-related tourism, survivors allege, was not passed on to the community of Greenwood, instead using branding and recognition of the Tulsa Race Massacre to fill the city of Tulsa’s coffers. (Since the original filing, Ellis died at the age of 102.)

Oklahoma law defines a nuisance as “unlawfully doing an act, or omitting to perform a duty, which…annoys, injures, or endangers the comfort, repose, health, or safety of others.” The law also defines a nuisance as an act that “offends decency” or “renders other persons insecure in life or in the use of their property.” According to Oklahoma law, a public nuisance is all of that, but simultaneously impacts an entire community or “any considerable number of persons.”

According to the dismissal issued by Oklahoma Supreme Court judge Caroline Wall, the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre failed to “state a justiciable public nuisance claim under Oklahoma law.” The court also argued that the survivors didn’t have standing for their complaint because the people in charge of Tulsa during the massacre had all “long since passed away,” claiming it was an overreach to extend liability to city officials today for the actions of their predecessors.

“Expanding public nuisance liability to include lingering social inequities from historical tragedies and injustices runs the risk of creating a new ‘unlimited and unprincipled’ form of liability wherein both State and non-State actors could be held liable for their predecessors’ wrongdoing,” the ruling reads.

In a statement to News 9, the City of Tulsa touted policies and development projects undertaken in Greenwood, the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre:

The City of Tulsa respects the court’s decision and affirms the significance of the work the City continues to do in the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities. Through economic development and policy projects, the 1921 Graves Investigation, and a renewed community vision for the Kirkpatrick Heights & Greenwood Master Plan, the City remains committed to working with residents and providing resources to support the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities.

Prior to Wednesday’s dismissal, legal representation for survivors told CNN in April that this appeal was their last shot at possible recompense for surviving the atrocities of the Tulsa Race Massacre. “There is no going to the United States Supreme Court. There is no going to the federal court system,” said Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons. “This is it.”

Senator Mitch McConnell still doesn’t have the courage to confront Donald Trump for his actions on January 6, 2021.

In the Capitol Wednesday, CNN’s Manu Raju asked the Senate minority leader if he planned to confront the convicted felon and presumptive Republican presidential nominee regarding issues between the two over the Capitol insurrection, in a planned meeting with congressional Republicans Thursday. McConnell made it clear that he would not.

“I said three years ago, right after the Capitol was attacked, that I would support our nominee, regardless of who it was, including him,” McConnell said. “I said earlier this year I support him. He’s earned the nomination by the voters all across the country. And of course I’ll be at the meeting tomorrow.”

It’s quite telling that McConnell didn’t mention Trump’s name in his answer. In March, McConnell broke his silence and finally endorsed Trump for president—but only after his last opponent, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race. Less than two weeks after the Capitol insurrection, McConnell criticized Trump on the Senate floor and accused him of instigating the riot.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like.”

But McConnell still didn’t vote to impeach Donald Trump in February 2021, saying that a former president could not face trial in the Senate. In a speech after the vote, he called Trump “morally responsible” for the January 6 riot, called Trump’s actions “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” and noted that Trump was still subject to the country’s laws while out of office.

All of this adds up to a pattern of inaction from McConnell regarding January 6 as well as Trump. McConnell, who plans to step down as minority leader in November, has joined the rest of the GOP in dismissing and ignoring the Capitol riot. McConnell has many personal reasons to turn against Trump, from the former president calling him a “dumb son of a b----” to Trump making racist attacks against his Asian American wife, Elaine Chao, despite Chao serving as Trump’s secretary of transportation. But that would mean McConnell would have to make a moral stand and put politics aside, which is not in his character.

As much as Governor Ron DeSantis would like to be the unquestioned ruler of the Sunshine State, he just doesn’t have that privilege. Executive privilege, that is.

A panel of judges from Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that DeSantis cannot invoke executive privilege to avoid releasing records on his judge selections—not unlike his idol, former President Donald Trump, who has been banking on executive privilege and presidential immunity to shield him from an array of lawsuits. 

DeSantis had mentioned in August 2022 that a group of “six or seven pretty big legal conservative heavyweights” had helped him select state Supreme Court justices. When DeSantis refused to name names, someone filed a records request with his office. His office denied the request, citing executive privilege, so the person anonymously filed a lawsuit to have the records released. 

There is no law establishing executive privilege in Florida, but Leon County Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey still ruled in DeSantis’s favor in February 2023. The plaintiff appealed the court’s decision, and a panel of three appellate judges heard the case last month. Lawyers for the Florida governor again argued that the information was protected under executive privilege, as it related to his constitutional duty to appoint judges, a line of argumentation that could have had major repercussions on the efficacy of public records requests.  

But the panel of judges found that the governor was majorly overplaying his hand. 

“After denying the petition for procedural reasons, the (lower) court unnecessarily considered the merits of the petition and ruled the identities of the legal conservative heavyweights are protected by executive privilege,” wrote Judge Clay Roberts in Wednesday’s ruling. “We expressly decline to rule on the propriety of this ruling as it was irrelevant and unnecessary.” 

Judges Stephanie Ray and Susan Kelsey joined Roberts in his opinion. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that DeSantis will have to comply with the records request. The judges found that the plaintiff’s reason for remaining anonymous was too “vague” and their records request was not specific enough. 

“Appellant broadly requested records between many people during an unspecified period of time. While the records custodian could possibly intuit some contextual parameters, the core information Appellant sought was a list of names Governor DeSantis referenced in a particular interview,” the ruling said. 

The silver lining remains that someone has finally put a check on DeSantis’s power, while he continues to manufacture his voter suppression machine and transform Florida state law into a banner for his culture war. 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene still doesn’t seem to understand how electric vehicles work.

The Georgia Republican introduced a confusing amendment to the 2025 defense budget Wednesday, withholding funding from the electric car industry. But Greene couldn’t seem to specify why that was important.

“My amendment would basically say that no funds should be authorized to or to be appropriated in this act or otherwise made available for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2025, may be used for electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging infrastructure,” Greene said. “My amendment would ensure that no funds are authorized in this year’s NDAA on electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging infrastructure.”

The word salad follows a similar electric vehicle–related gaffe that Greene made during Donald Trump’s Las Vegas rally on Sunday, when she tried—but failed—to make electric cars sound like a problem that’s hurting people’s wallets.

“If you think gas prices are high now, just wait until you’re forced to drive an electric vehicle,” she shouted.

That quip defied explanation, especially considering that not only are gas prices actually down this month, but by design, electric vehicles don’t actually rely on fossil fuels to run and therefore cost less to juice up.

Donald Trump wants to bring Bitcoin mining back to the U.S.—but it’s not entirely clear that he knows what cryptocurrency even is, or how massively its production strains a country’s infrastructure.

“VOTE FOR TRUMP! Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC,” the presidential candidate wrote Wednesday on Truth Social, referring to a “central bank digital currency,” or a digital version of the American dollar.

“Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left,” Trump continued. “We want all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!! It will help us be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!”

But promising to make Bitcoin mining exclusively American wouldn’t exactly be a good thing for the nation, and the very premise of the proposal calls into question whether Trump actually understands what he’s talking about. Mining Bitcoin involves using a decentralized global system of computers to process a blockchain—a long sequence of ones and zeros that effectively translates into a digital public ledger to verify the authenticity of a sale.

Once a Bitcoin is bought and sold, a new line of information is added to the blockchain. Mining Bitcoin requires a computer to solve extremely complex mathematical problems in order to process that chain. In exchange, the miner receives a predetermined amount of the digital currency as payment.

Around the world, Bitcoin miners use approximately 348 terawatt hours of energy (the prefix “tera-” meaning trillions) per year. That means that crypto mining alone consumes more energy annually than most countries in the world use for all residential and commercial activity, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, according to data aggregated by Visual Capitalist.

As it stands, the majority of Bitcoin mining already takes place in the U.S., accounting for 37.8 percent share of the entire network by hashrate (a computational measure of a cryptocurrency’s blockchain). That’s been the case since the summer of 2021, when China—which previously represented 75 percent of the hashrate—initiated a crackdown on the digital asset, fearing that the highly volatile currency could undermine their nation’s monetary system.

Ultimately, Trump’s promise that more crypto mining would make the country “energy dominant” simply doesn’t make sense. Mining Bitcoin doesn’t produce energy, as Trump’s call for “energy dominance” would imply. Instead, it requires a massive but incredibly unpredictable amount of energy to produce.

It’s unclear just how much energy crypto mining consumes, as the cryptocurrency lobby has actually fought hard to keep the industry’s energy expenditures under wraps. In March, the Department of Energy settled a lawsuit brought by Riot Platforms, halting an “emergency survey” that sought to quantify the amount of energy used by crypto miners while agreeing to erase all energy consumption data that had been collected up until that point.

But the infrastructure strain can be pictured in other ways: In August, taxpayers in Texas paid Riot $31 million not to mine in an effort to stave off rolling blackouts and spare the state’s electric grid.

Trump’s promise may, however, benefit a different sector entirely: the fossil fuel industry, which currently accounts for most of the energy creation in the U.S. and, as a by-product, fuels the majority of mining data centers. Approximately 96 percent of Riot’s energy was supplied by fossil fuels, despite the miner’s claims that it supports the use of renewable energy, according to an analysis by WattTime, a nonprofit tech company.

So his new stance on Bitcoin might make sense after all, given how much of an effort Trump has made recently to cozy up to oil and gas executives.

Jared Kushner’s Saudi Arabia–funded investment firm is finally being seriously examined. Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, seeking information about the company’s investments—after it received $2 billion of its $2.5 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden is leading the investigation, noting the peculiarities of nepobaby Kushner’s involvement in business dealings he has next to no experience doing. In a letter Wednesday asking Kushner’s firm to respond to queries about its investors, Wyden wrote:

Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds.

Virginia Canter, former Treasury Department chief ethics counsel, told Salon that Kushner’s shady business dealings with Saudi Arabia, so soon after he and his father-in-law left the White House, raise serious national security concerns. “It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” she said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment.”

Kushner’s firm launched in 2021 and immediately received a majority of its funds from Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, with a whopping 99 percent coming from foreign sources. Kushner defended the flood of cash by pointing out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s fund also invests in Nintendo, Uber, and Microsoft—which is more of an insult to those companies than it is a vouch for Kushner.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

In 2018, MBS oversaw the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s White House paid no mind to the murder, instead releasing a shocking statement expressing support for Saudi Arabia and sowing doubt that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder, despite a CIA analysis finding that was certainly the case. Trump himself has curious ties to MBS, which during his presidency raised concerns of foreign influence.

This isn’t the first time Congress has sought answers about Kushner’s firm. In 2023, the stench of corruption was so putrid, Congress subpoenaed the company over its ties to Saudi Arabia, with even Republican James Comer saying Kushner’s Saudi blood money “crossed the line of ethics.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson has a tendency to think that when things go bad for his party, it’s the product of gross legislative mismanagement, judicial weaponization, and a vast executive conspiracy. But when his party wants to do something, it’s because justice is swift and everything is proceeding according to plan. House Republicans’ efforts to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt are no exception to this trend.

The GOP quest to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to a subpoena was not dampened by any sense of irony, even though the Judiciary Committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan. Jordan famously refused to comply with requests from the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, alongside Representatives Scott Perry, Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, and Mo Brooks.

During a press conference Wednesday, a reporter asked Johnson if he was concerned the run of rogue Republicans would undermine his argument for holding Garland in contempt. Apparently, he doesn’t think the two cases are alike at all.

“Oh, I’m so glad you brought up the January 6 committee. We’ll be talking a lot more about that in the coming weeks. There’s been a lot of investigation about that committee, I don’t think it was properly constituted, I don’t think it was properly administered, and now we know that apparently, some of the evidence was hidden, and some maybe even destroyed,” he said.

“You talk about apples to oranges, there couldn’t be a more clear contrast between that and what we’re talking about here,” Johnson continued. “This is the Judiciary Committee. This is the weaponization committee.” He went on to laud Jordan’s leadership and “extraordinary” work.

With this statement, Johnson makes it clear there are different rules for Republicans in Congress, special exceptions that prevent them from facing the consequences of their actions. Those who break the rules to defend Donald Trump are doing so bravely, while those who break the rules to defend Joe Biden are subject to the most serious condemnation.

Johnson did not elaborate on how he could so casually call the GOP-led committee the “weaponization” committee, a conspiracy theory buzzword Republicans have adopted to discredit the federal government.

Johnson’s logic, or lack thereof, mirrors his untethered reframing of the guilty verdicts of Trump and Hunter Biden. One is evidence of a “two-tiered” justice system; the other, which would disprove it, is a “separate instance” not worthy of consideration in Johnson’s ongoing weaponization case study.

The House Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability Committees had demanded the audio from Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who described the president as a “well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” be turned over by the end of April. Their attempt to obtain the audio was blocked by the White House, which invoked executive privilege. The move summoned the ire of House Republicans, who became set on holding Garland in contempt.

Senator J.D. Vance doesn’t like diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, and he’s sponsoring a bill to ban them from all federal offices and contracting.

On Wednesday, Vance and Representative Michael Cloud introduced the Dismantle DEI Act, which bans all DEI positions in the government and also bans diversity initiatives from receiving federal grant money. The bill would bar school accreditation agencies from requiring DEI in schools, and stop financial agencies like Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange from implementing diversity requirements for corporate boards.

“It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society,” Vance said. “I’m proud to introduce this legislation, which would root out DEI from our federal bureaucracy by eliminating such programs and stripping funding for DEI policies anywhere it exists. Americans’ tax dollars should not be co-opted to spread this radical and divisive ideology—this bill would ensure they are not.”

The bill takes aim at an executive order President Biden issued in 2021 promoting DEI in the federal workforce, and would drastically cut funding to several government agencies, including NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and even the military.

The bill is not likely to gain traction beyond the Republican-controlled House, if it can even get past the narrow GOP majority. Attacking DEI is like catnip for the right wing, and conservative media has been fanning the flames on the supposedly “woke” principles, even going so far as to blame natural disasters on DEI.

The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, and instead it appears more likely that it’s all for show, possibly to help Vance move up on Donald Trump’s short list to be his running mate. Vance continuously professes his loyalty to the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee, even saying that if he was in Mike Pence’s place as vice president in 2021, he would have subverted the 2020 election results to help Trump be reelected. This bill is also a disturbing preview of what Republicans plan to do if Trump wins in November, as the former president has already promised to take on what conservatives think is the “real” prejudice in America: anti-white racism.

The man Clarence Thomas said he once considered like a “son” now says that Thomas doesn’t want much to do with him.

Mark Martin, the grandson of Thomas’s sister Emma Mae Martin, spoke to Business Insider from a jail cell in South Carolina and said that the Supreme Court justice and his wife, Ginni, don’t have a relationship with him anymore, despite being his legal guardians from age 6 to 19.

Martin, who is awaiting trial on drug and weapons charges after he was arrested last summer, benefited from gifts Thomas received from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, which the Supreme Court justice initially failed to include in financial disclosures.

“I haven’t really heard much from them in a long time,” Martin said of his adoptive parents. “I tried to communicate with them a couple of times, but I’ve never gotten any response.”

In 2007, Thomas said in an interview with C-Span that he and his wife were raising Martin, then 16, “as a son.” Martin would attend military prep school Randolph-Macon Academy and Hidden Lake Academy, a residential therapeutic treatment center plagued by allegations of abuse, thanks to Crow, a Randolph-Macon alumnus, paying the tuition at both schools. Thomas did not report these payments on his financial statements.

“I guess they looked into Randolph-Macon Academy because Harlan Crow actually graduated from there, so I guess that was behind their decision to send me there—and then apparently he helped finance the HLA trip, too,” Martin told Business Insider, saying that he didn’t know at the time that Crow paid for his education.

ProPublica reported last year that Thomas had enjoyed luxury vacations on Crow’s dime almost every year, and Thomas failed to report those trips until just last week. In addition, the publication reported on Crow funding the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother still lives as well as Martin’s private school tuition, estimating that the school fees likely exceeded $150,000.

Martin told Business Insider that he enjoyed a privileged childhood, traveling to more than 20 countries and spending summers wakeboarding or waterskiing. He also remembers babysitting Crow’s son when their families went on vacation together. But Martin said that when he began high school, Clarence and Ginni Thomas “just didn’t have time to deal with” him anymore and sent him away to boarding schools. After his freshman year of high school began, Martin said he rarely saw his great-uncle and great-aunt.

According to Martin, he was expelled from Randolph-Macon Academy after his junior year for failing a drug test, and he said the Thomases then sent him back to his mother’s house in Georgia. He said he has rarely heard from them since. Last year, Martin was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and weapons possession. According to Business Insider, Martin’s car was stopped as part of a juvenile-sex-trafficking investigation, but he doesn’t face any charges related to that.

Martin also faces charges pending from 2021 on allegedly trafficking meth and heroin, Business Insider reported, citing arrest records. Martin faces at least 25 years in prison over the drug charges and five more years for illegal gun possession.

“I actually don’t know if they know that I’m locked up—I’m not sure they’d care too much,” Martin said. “I’ve seen—I’ve probably seen them two times, maybe three times, over the last 14 years.”

“I just wish they’d at least communicate with me—get to know my children,” Martin added. “They raised me like another mother and father, so I wanted my children to know who raised me into the person that I became. I want them to be around for that, at least—to see my kids grow up.”

Thomas didn’t respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, but it’s not likely that he would have offered any acceptable justification for his and his wife’s treatment of someone they have referred to as a son. Thomas still refuses to speak about the unethical gifts he has received and adamantly refuses to resign from the Supreme Court despite all of his ethics scandals. Sadly, it seems that Martin’s life has been a casualty of Clarence and Ginni Thomas’s service to the conservative movement.