Good morning to all of you. It is Saturday, July 13th. I'm Ali Valshii from Chicago four years ago as Donald Trump was preparing to nominate a third person to the Supreme Court.

Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, quote, everything hangs in the balance with this nomination, end quote.

In the years since, the conservative supermajority has handed down decisions that have led to the

curtailing of Americans' personal rights and the remaking of the federal government. And all of that,

as it was happening, an ethical crisis was unfolding involving members of the supermajority on that

court, which has cast doubts about the impartiality of some of the justices and some of the most high-profile

and consequential cases that have ever reached the court. Those twin crises have led to an historic

erosion of public confidence in the Supreme Court, and yet efforts to reform the institution

and efforts to hold the justices accountable for their actions have stalled,

largely due to hyper-partisanship in Congress. It's not for the lack of trying. Lawmakers and

other legal experts have proposed numerous ideas for reform, expanding the court, imposing

term limits, forcing the justices to adopt a binding code of ethics. Task forces and commissions have

even been formed to explore these options and more, but none of these ideas have gained any real

traction. But at this point, it can't simply be ignored that the members of the highest court in the

land should be held to the lowest ethical standards. That's the important context to consider

regarding a pair of unprecedented actions taken by Democrats on Capitol Hill this week. On Tuesday,

we learned that Senator Sheldon White House and Ron Wyden have asked the Attorney General Merrick Garland

to appoint a special prosecutor to criminally investigate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

for tax fraud. The following day, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

filed articles of impeachment against Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, citing their failures

to publicly disclose financial income, gifts, and other transactions, as well as their refusal to recuse

themselves from cases in which they may have had a conflict of interest.

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