Why the Jan. 6 committee talked to Ginni Thomas This week, the Jan. 6 congressional committee interviewed the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice for five hours, behind closed doors, about what she knows about the plot to overturn the 2020 election. We don't know much about was said, but we know enough about Virginia "Ginni" Thomas to make an educated guess about why the committee wanted to talk to her. Let's review. Who is Ginni Thomas?: A conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Why the House Jan. 6 committee talked to her this week: Even as the panel members wrap up public hearings, their investigation continues. They've been trying to talk to Ginni Thomas for months. She was texting the White House after Donald Trump lost in 2020, urging Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to find a way to keep him in power. She also was emailing a Trump lawyer who played a major role in trying to get Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory. And she attended part of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.  Ginni Thomas on Thursday on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | What effect if any did she have on events after the 2020 election? It's hard to say without knowing more about what she told the committee. (The committee's chairman did say that she repeated the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.) | Surgeons will engage in countless hours of additional low-risk practice in the metaverse. The impact: patients undergoing complex care will know their doctors are as prepared as possible.
The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real.
| |  | | | | Maybe she was just one of several high-level Trump supporters cheering on his anti-democratic attempts to stay in power. (Many of the text messages she sent to the White House were full of baseless conspiracy theories that would have been at home on pro-Trump online message boards.) Thomas and her husband have denied that she had any influence on what the White House did or how it strategized to use the Supreme Court to help Trump hold on to power. But there is at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. So far, Clarence Thomas been disinclined to recuse himself from cases in which such a conflict of interest might be present. At the very least, Ginni Thomas tried to influence dozens of GOP legislators in Arizona and Wisconsin, sending them emails urging them to (probably illegally) override the popular vote in their states and declare that Trump won. How much power state legislatures have in deciding who won their state's presidential election is an issue the Supreme Court is considering this fall. Is the Supreme Court losing legitimacy?  President Biden and Vice President Harris pose for photos Friday with the justices of the Supreme Court. (Fred Schilling/Supreme Court/AP) | There's a loud debate within and outside the halls of the Supreme Court about this, especially after five conservative justices overturned abortion protections that most of the nation wanted to keep in place. Here are the main arguments about the legitimacy, and thus authority, of the nation's top court. On the left: The court is becoming too political to keep its justice-is-blind reputation Here's liberal justice Elena Kagan lamenting as much last week, as reported by The Post's Robert Barnes: "The court shouldn't be wandering around just inserting itself into every hot-button issue in America, and especially it shouldn't be doing that in a way that reflects one ideology or one set of political views over another." The Supreme Court starts hearing cases again Monday, with lots of potentially contentious cases on issues such as affirmative action, gun rights, redistricting and voting rights. On the right: The losing side is going to hate Here's conservative justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion taking down Roe v. Wade, responding to Kagan: "It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line." And here's Chief Justice John Roberts: "Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court." What the public thinks: That first argument seems to be resonating slightly more. A record 53 percent say they trust the Supreme Court "none at all" or "not very much," and a record high say they think the court is too conservative, according to a new Gallup survey. That's driven largely by Democrats, though. | 
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