This extraordinary profile of Clarence and Ginni Thomasโhe a Supreme Court justice, she among other things an avid supporter of the January 6 insurrectionโis a masterclass in everything from mustering archival material to writing the hell out of a story:
There is a certain rapport that cannot be manufactured. โThey go on morning runs,โ reports a 1991 piece in the Washingtonย Post.ย โThey take after-dinner walks. Neighbors say you can see them in the evening talking, walking up the hill. Hand in hand.โ Thirty years later, Virginia Thomas, pining for the overthrow of the federal government in texts to the presidentโs chief of staff, refers, heartwarmingly, to Clarence Thomas as โmy best friend.โ (โThatโs what I call him, and he is my best friend,โ she later told theย House Select Committee to Investigateย theย January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.) In the cramped corridors of a roving RV, they summer together. They take, together, lavish trips funded by an activist billionaire and fail, together, to report the gift. Bonnie and Clyde were performing intimacy; every line crossed was its own profession of love. Refusing to recuse oneself and then objecting, alone among nine justices, to the revelation of potentially incriminating documents regarding a coup in which a spouse is implicated is many things, and one of those things isย romantic.
โEvery year it gets better,โ Ginni told a gathering of Turning Point USAโoriented youths in 2016. โHe put me on a pedestal in a way I didnโt know was possible.โ Clarence had recently gifted her a Pandora charm bracelet. โIt has like everything I love,โ she said, โall these love things and knots and ropes and things about our faith and things about our home and things about the country. But my favorite is thereโs a little pixie, like Iโm kind of a pixie to him, kind of a troublemaker.โ
A pixie. A troublemaker. It is impossible, once you fully imagine this bracelet bestowed upon the former Virginia Lamp on the 28th anniversary of her marriage to Clarence Thomas, this pixie-and-presumably-American-flag-bedecked trinket, to see it as anything but crucial to understanding the current chaotic state of the American project. Here is a piece of jewelry in which symbols for love and battle are literally intertwined. Here is a story about the way legitimate racial grievance and determined white ignorance can reinforce one another, tending toward an extremism capable, in this case, of discrediting an entire branch of government. No one can unlock the mysteries of the human heart, but the external record is clear: Clarence and Ginni Thomas have, for decades, sustained the happiest marriage in the American Republic, gleeful in the face of condemnation, thrilling to the revelry of wanton corruption, untroubled by the burdens of biological children or adherence to legal statute. Here is how they do it.
In a decrepit house in Sรฃo Paulo lives a woman who many people call a bruxa (the witch). As a blockbuster Brazilian podcast recently revealed, Margarida Maria Vicente de Azevedo Bonetti is wanted by U.S. authorities for her treatment of a maid named Hilda Rosa dos Santos, whom Margarida and her husband more or less enslaved in the Washington, D.C. area:
In early 1998โ19 years after moving to the United Statesโdos Santos left the Bonettis, aided by a neighbor sheโd befriended, Vicki Schneider. Schneider and others helped arrange for dos Santos to stay in a secret location, according to testimony Schneider later gave in court. (Schneider declined to be interviewed for this story.) The FBI and the Montgomery County adult services agency began a months-long investigation.
When social worker Annette Kerr arrived at the Bonetti home in April 1998โshortly after dos Santos had movedโshe was stunned. Sheโd handled tough cases before, but this was different. Dos Santos lived in a chilly basement with a large hole in the floor covered by plywood. There was no toilet, Kerr, now retired, said in a recent interview, pausing often to regain her composure, tears welling in her eyes. (Renรช Bonetti later acknowledged in court testimony that dos Santos lived in the basement, as well as confirmed that it had no toilet or shower and had a hole in the floor covered with plywood. He told jurors that dos Santos could have used an upstairs shower but chose not to do so.)
Dos Santos bathed using a metal tub that she would fill with water she hauled downstairs in a bucket from an upper floor, Kerr said, flipping through personal notes that she has kept all these years. Dos Santos slept on a cot with a thin mattress she supplemented with a discarded mat sheโd scavenged in the woods. An upstairs refrigerator was locked so she could not open it.
โI couldnโt believe that would take place in the United States,โ Kerr said.
During Kerrโs investigation, dos Santos recounted regular beatings sheโd received from Margarida Bonetti, including being punched and slapped and having clumps of her hair pulled out and fingernails dug into her skin. She talked about hot soup being thrown in her face. Kerr learned that dos Santos had suffered a cut on her leg while cleaning up broken glass that was left untreated so long it festered and emitted a putrid smell.
Sheโd also lived for years with a tumor so large that doctors would later describe it variously as the size of a cantaloupe or a basketball. It turned out to be noncancerous.
Sheโd had โno voiceโ her whole life, Kerr concluded, โno rights.โ Traumatized by her circumstances, dos Santos was โextremely passiveโ and โfearful,โ Kerr said. Kerr had no doubt she was telling the truth. She was too timid to lie.ย
Republicans have long blamed crime on Democrat-run cities, and now (MTG-run) Kevin McCarthy's Congress is trying to intervene in Washington D.C. local politics with a bill that would dictate penalties on crime. But in fiery remarks made on the floor yesterday, Rep. โ Read the rest