Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) praised Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Wednesday for exposing what he called a “billionaire-funded scheme” to pack the court with “billionaire-agreeable justices.”
“What's up with Justice Jackson? She started making her mark and speaking out early, and some of her dissents are so pointed (that Justices Elena) Kagan and (Sonia) Sotomayor don’t even join them,” Whitehouse said in a social media post on X. “The far right is out for her, and even Republican justices are getting snarky.”
Jackson was the lone dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday that allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with its efforts to purge thousands of government employees. While Jackson is typically joined by the court’s two other more liberal justices, she stood alone in her decision Tuesday, something Whitehouse highlighted as being needed in what he called unordinary times.
“What if we are in a time when a billionaire-funded scheme has spent decades trying to pack the Court with billionaire-agreeable justices, so as to ‘capture’ the court in the sense of ‘regulatory capture’ or ‘agency capture’ – and what if the billionaires have finally succeeded?” Whitehouse wrote.
“Justice Jackson has begun looking at patterns, and noticing what types of parties tend to win, and which tend to lose. She has noticed procedural discrepancies. She has begun looking at interests, motives, and connections. She’s begun to point behind the curtain at what ‘collegiality’ obscures.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices, particularly Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have been involved in a number of controversies over receiving gifts.
For 20 years, Thomas accepted luxury trips worth millions of dollars from real estate investor Harlan Crow, including flights on Crow’s private jet and yacht, and stays at Crow’s resort and elite clubs. Alito has also accepted luxury trips and gifts, with both justices failing to disclose said gifts for years.
Whitehouse argued that those behind what he described as the “billionaire-funded scheme” to control the Supreme Court to the benefit of the wealthy were “undeniably twitchy” and fearful of Jackson being on the court, and for good reason.
“The schemers have much more to fear, and they know it,” he wrote. “As best I can tell, (Jackson) is being true to herself, true to her oath, and true to her native land.”
