 Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, I'm Amy Goodman. Fox News has agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion voting systems in the largest media defamation settlement in history. The 11th hour deal was finalized just hours after a Delaware jury was sworn in, and as opening statements were expected to begin, Dominion had sought $1.6 billion in damages from Fox for promoting lies about its voting machines being rigged against Trump in the 2020 election. Dominion CEO John Poulos called the settlement historic. Throughout this process, we have sought accountability and believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading lies. Truthful reporting in the media is essential to our democracy. Fox News is not required to apologize or admit they knowingly lied to their viewers as part of the settlement. It also means the network's biggest stars and chair of Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, will not have to take the stand. Evidence unveiled during the discovery process revealed host Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson knew the election fraud claims were false. Fox still faces other lawsuits over its pro-Trump lies, including a $2.7 billion defamation suit from another election technology company, Smartmatic. Dominion has also sued other news networks and high-profile Trump associates, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and my pillow CEO, Mike Lindell. A 24-hour ceasefire in Sudan has fallen apart, as military air strikes rain down on Khartoum's main international airport on the fifth day of fighting today, while paramilitary shot at the Sudanese Army jets in response. At least 185 people have died so far as the UN warns the conflict has created a humanitarian catastrophe. The civilian population has been increasingly cut off from essentials, including power, food and health care. This is a Sudanese activist and humanitarian worker who fled the capital Khartoum. No one can buy their daily needs. Military clashes continue during the night, so it is not recommended to go out to buy your needs. It is dark. Power is off. It is dangerous, because the fighting parties cannot figure out if you are civilian or a militant. I believe this robinon is like hell for people in Sudan. Aid workers continue to face violent attacks with reports of sexual assaults, and doctors without borders compounded in Niala. The capital of South Darfur was raided by armed men. Residents describe the terror and chaos of wars they grapple with dwindling supplies. At one point, you'll find yourself praying a lot to really be saved throughout this, and the country to be saved throughout this. And then at other times, you're too lost in what's happening around you. Are you going to be okay? Are your friends going to be okay? Your family, your neighbors, even the people you don't really know, but you see around in the streets, you know? President Biden signed an executive order Tuesday, directing almost all federal agencies to implement new measures to make child care and elder care more affordable and accessible. The order is intended to improve care without congressionally approved legislation or extra funding after Biden failed to deliver on his pledge of universal pre-K and fully covering child care for low-income families. Biden blamed Republicans for continuing to push cuts for social programs, including as part of the ongoing dispute over the debt ceiling. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from temporarily replacing Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is recovering from shingles on the Judiciary Committee. The prolonged absence of the 89-year-old Feinstein, who is retiring at the end of her current term, has stalled the confirmation of Biden's judicial nominees and prompted some members of her party to call for her resignation. In Tunisia, police arrested opposition leader Rashid Anuchi and raided his Inata party's headquarters in the latest crackdown and critics of President Kaiz Syed. Syed has been accused of carrying out a legislative coup after he dismissed the government, declared rule by decree, and vowed to rewrite Tunisia's constitution in 2021. This is Anuchi speaking just two days before he was detained. Tunisia, without Inata party and without political Islam, without the left or any of the components, is a civil war project. This is a crime, in fact. And therefore, those who welcome this coup cannot be Democrats. In other news from Tunisia, clashes broke out between morning protesters and police at the funeral of professional soccer player Nizar Asawi, who died last week after setting himself on fire in what's been described as a protest against the police state. Prior to his death, Asawi decried the police for accusing him of terrorism after a dispute with a fruit vendor over the price of bananas. In Syria, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in the first high-level Saudi visit to Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. This comes as Syria's Arab neighbors are discussing its possible return to the 22-member Arab League and other ways of bringing the war-torn nation out of isolation. Meanwhile, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are moving forward on restoring their country's ties with plans to reopen embassies more than two years after the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt lifted a blockade on Qatar. Indonesia's military chief denied claims by the West Papua National Liberation Army that it killed a dozen Indonesian soldiers this weekend during a failed Copasas operation to rescue a New Zealand pilot taken hostage by the pro-independence fighters. Indonesia says only one soldier was killed while four others were missing. The attack has raised fears of a massive retaliation by Indonesian forces in West Papua, where protests for independence have been met by bloody repression by the Indonesian army. The European Parliament approved major reforms to strengthen and accelerate the EU's climate goals. This includes a plan to charge polluters on Europe's carbon market for all of their emissions and add shipping emissions to the market. The change is expected to cut emissions by 62 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The EU would also start levying high carbon imports. This is European Parliament President Roberta Metzola. These laws will put a price on the carbon we produce, and it means that the most polluting industries will have to increase their emission reduction targets. It will also put a price for non-EU producers, providing a level playing field so that we will not leave our industry at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their external competitors. Germany shut down its last three nuclear reactors Saturday after decades of debate and organizing by anti-nuclear activists. This is Jürgen Tritten, a lawmaker from the Green Party. The introduction of this technology, the introduction, was a historical mistake, and today we remedy this mistake. The long-anticipated move came as only a partial victory for environmental activists as Europe's largest economy has ramped up its coal production to make up for the loss of nuclear power and the energy crisis spurred by the Ukraine war. Anti-nuclear activists also noted there's still no definite plan for storing all the highly toxic nuclear waste from Germany's decommissioned plants, which must be securely stored underground for one million years. Here in New York, Holtec International, the owner of the decommissioned Indian Point Nuclear Facility, set its pause plans to dump one million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River. The plan provoked community outrage from residents and environmentalists. Tritium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, cannot be filtered out of water and has been linked to cancer. And in more news from New York environmental groups are blasting Democratic Governor Kathy Hockel over her nomination of Caitlyn Halligan to the New York State Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Halligan represented Chevron as a pursued racketeering charges against the human rights lawyer Stephen Donziger, who successfully sued Chevron on behalf of Ecuador and Amazonian indigenous people for massively polluting their ancestral land with oil. In a statement, the grassroots group Public Power New York said, quote, It's time for Hockel to pick a side. Does she stand with corporate polluters or with environmental justice communities here in New York and across the world? They asked. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by democracynow, co-host Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. The New York Times is reporting the Biden administration's repeatedly ignored or missed warnings about a surge of migrant children as young as 12, working in factories across the United States. The Times reports, quote, At least five health and human services staff members filed complaints and said they were pushed out after raising concerns about child safety, unquote. One of the HHS staffers told the New York Times, quote, I feel like short of protesting in the streets, I did everything I could to warn them. They just didn't want to hear it, she said. In February, The Times published a blockbuster report about child labor based on accounts by over 100 unaccompanied migrant children, mostly from Central America, who describe grueling and often dangerous working conditions, including having to use heavy machinery being subjected to long hours and late-night shifts at facilities that manufacture products from major brands and retailers, like Hearthside Food Solutions, the makers of Cheerios, Fruit of the Loom, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, J Crew, Free Delay, and Ben & Jerry's. Others were forced to work as cleaning staff at hotels at slaughterhouses, construction sites, car factories owned by General Motors and Ford in serious violation of child labor laws. On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas was grilled about the Biden administration's response to forced child labor. This is Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. You're not going to take any responsibility for the indentured servitude and exploitation of children that is happening on your watch a moment ago. You were crowing about the fact that you treated children so well, and yet we find tens of thousands of children who are forced to work as slaves because of your policies and you turn around and blame a prior administration. Mr. Secretary, this is par for the course for you. You do it every time you appear before this committee. You do it every time you appear before Congress. I for one am sick and tired of it, and thousands of children are in physical danger. Sure, because of what you are doing. You should have resigned long ago, and if you cannot change course, you should be removed from office. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're joined now by Hannah Dreyer, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The New York Times. Her new investigation is headlined as migrant children were put to work U.S. ignored warnings. Dreyer's earlier piece was headlined alone and exploited migrant children worked brutal jobs across the U.S. Hannah Dreyer, welcome back to Democracy Now! We had you on for your first blockbuster exposé showing children as young as 12 working across the United States. Now you're reporting that the Biden administration knew about this, not only knew about this and didn't do anything, they actually did do something. They pushed out those within the administration who were raising alarms. Can you talk about what you found? It's great to be with you, Amy. And yeah, just as you say, people were punished for bringing this to the attention of their supervisors. People say that they were fired, they were demoted. I spent a year talking to children who came to this country and are working in the most exploitative conditions in factories and slaughterhouses. I found these children in every single state in this country. And so, after that story came out, I began asking, how could it have been that the Biden administration didn't know about this? And what I found was that, actually, they were given evidence, they were given warnings. There was sign after sign that this was happening for two years. And the administration really didn't spring into action until just last month. And Hannah, I was particularly struck by the information about Susan Rice, the White House head of domestic policy, and her reaction to the reports that there were problems in terms of how these children were being treated. Could you talk about that? Because Susan Rice has been a person who has been in every Democratic administration of the last 30 years, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden. Right. Susan Rice is a hugely important figure, and she is Biden's top point person on immigration. So it's not, you know, some junior staffer at the White House who maybe got a warning one time and it didn't get, you know, channeled in the appropriate way. What I found was that Susan Rice's team was told about this again and again. And the kind of evidence we're talking about are clusters of children found to be working in different parts of the country repeatedly in these very industrial jobs. So these are children making car parts. These are children using caustic chemicals and acids to scrub a chicken plant. And those messages got to Susan Rice's level. Memos, airing concerns about these issues, got to Susan Rice's level. Her team was told, going back to, you know, the summer of 2021, that people were very worried about this. And what the White House has basically said as well, maybe we saw these signs, but we didn't put it all together. What their response has been is sort of a lack of curiosity or a lack of conscientious thinking to realize that if we're seeing kids in all these different places who are doing these jobs, maybe there is a larger trend here. Maybe there's thousands of these kids out there. Well, they did put it together sufficiently to force out five Health and Human Service staff members. Did you talk about some of those staff members and the alarms that they raised? These are the people who are running the Unaccompanied Minor Program for Health and Human Services. One of the women who I spoke with, Jalen Swalag, she helped build this program. She started working for the government in 2010, right when we first started to see these waves of children coming over. And she was in charge of this program for years and years. She was the highest official running the program when Biden took over. And what she says is she raised alarms. We've seen her emails where she's saying something catastrophic is going to happen and pleading with somebody to pay attention. When her emails went unanswered, she went to Congress and she talked to Congress staffers and said, again, I'm really worried about what's happening here. These children are in danger. And she was pushed out. She was one of five people who I spoke to who filed complaints, who showed me their emails where they're saying, you know, something really wrong is happening here. And they say that instead of being listened to, they were demoted. And people just did not want to hear these warnings. I wanted to turn to the White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who was speaking on Tuesday. I want to state that ORR is dedicated—this administration moves swiftly to crack down on violators and are more vigorously vet—now, more vigorously, vet sponsors of unaccompanied minors, DOL and HHS, launch a new task force to heighten cooperation and better share information. We also called on Congress to provide the resources this administration has long requested to help us crack down on companies that exploit children for labor. The actions we've taken since February make clear that we will continue to investigate and hold companies accountable, but we also need Congress to provide the resources we need to enforce. And we have been very clear, again, DOL, HHS has taken actions, but we need Congress to also give DOL and HHS the resources that they need to broaden these actions that they've put forward. So that's the White House response. If you could respond to that, and particularly talk about who is responsible for what. I mean, we saw this dramatic confrontation between Senator Hawley and Alejandro Mayorkas, who is head of Homeland Security. Talk about what Homeland Security is responsible for. He was particularly angry that Mayorkas was blaming the Trump administration for separating children. But Homeland Security is responsible for what HHS is responsible for. And tell us more about these whistleblowers who made clear time and again what was happening. And we're not just not listened to, as was just pointed out, but we're pushed out one after another after another. So, in fairness to the Biden administration, they have taken rapid action after our first story came out a month ago. And the Department of Labor is really ramping up the way that they're going to try to go after these companies that exploit migrant children. And Health and Human Services has also taken some steps. What's been just so shocking to me is that these steps were not taken earlier. And one dynamic that people often point out is that a lot of this came in response to the crisis at the border where children were coming in in record numbers right when Biden took office. And a lot of them were sort of languishing in Customs and Border Protection jails, because there wasn't enough room in the shelter system to take them in. And so there was wall-to-wall coverage of children sleeping on the floor, children under those tin blankets. And the Biden administration was really getting slammed on why are these kids languishing in jails? I thought you were going to take care of them. And so there was all this pressure in the administration to move those kids out quickly, because it was so visible when they were ending up sleeping on the floor or sleeping in these terrible conditions. And what happened after that with all these kids working was much less visible. You know, nobody's going to go and have a big newsreel about children who are working in the poultry plant, because you can't get in there. And so it was sort of a trade-off, as it's been explained to me, between this very visible crisis where kids weren't moving out of the shelters quickly enough and this hidden crisis where kids are now working these terrible jobs and often sort of languishing in debt bondage. And that's just part of this dynamic that sort of comes up again and again. The agencies that are responsible here are really Department of Labor and Health and Human Services. I know Mallorca's has been getting questioned about this, I think sort of as a proxy for the Biden administration. But the agency that is, you know, in charge of migrant children is Health and Human Services. It's not like the regular immigration system. Children go to this different agency that's supposed to be a child welfare agency. And it's Health and Human Services that's then responsible for releasing them to sponsors and protecting them from trafficking and exploitation. Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you about, the role of Health and Human Services, because obviously we can understand the pressure that the Biden administration was under to get children out of the detention facilities. But then the responsibility had to fall on the agency that kept seeing one or another individual repeatedly offering to sponsor children, to monitor and check up what these sponsors were actually doing with the children. So wouldn't that fall largely on Health and Human Services? Yes, that is Health and Human Services. And these staffers who had to try to connect children with sponsors and move them out of shelters tell me that to them this often felt worse than even during, you know, child separation under Trump. The people who work in this agency, they're mostly Democrats. They mostly are in this work because they really believe that migrant children are important and want to watch out for them. And they say that they felt this huge pressure to just get kids out of the shelter, to send them to whoever, to send them to people who had already sponsored multiple children. I spoke with one of these workers in Texas who said that just in two weeks doing this job for Health and Human Services, she found six cases where children were being sent to people who said that they were intending to put the children to work or who had already sponsored other kids who were not their relatives. She flagged the case of one 14-year-old who was being sent to a non-relative, and she said, I'm really worried about this kid. I think this kid is being trafficked. I think this kid is going to have to pay off some kind of debt. And as far as we can tell, nothing ever happened. I caught up with that kid two years later, and sure enough, he was put to work. He had to drop out of middle school. He had to pay his own rent. He had to pay off thousands of dollars in debt, and he was just completely on his own, even though his case had been flagged by a whistleblower. Finally, Hannah, we just have 30 seconds. What were you most shocked by in reporting the second exposé? I just could not believe that this wasn't flagged earlier. I mean, with something this widespread—thousands and thousands of children—you want to believe that people at the highest level of government are going to pay attention when they're shown evidence of the worst kind of child labor exploitation. Hannah Dreyer, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The New York Times, will link to your new investigation as migrant children were put to work, U.S. ignored warnings, and your previous piece, a lone and exploited migrant children work brutal jobs across the U.S. Coming up, a rare victory in the immigrant rights movement. As a judge rules, longtime organizer Jean Montreville will no longer be at risk of deportation to Haiti, ending a decades-long saga. Stay with us, back in 30 seconds. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan González. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we turn now to a rare victory in immigration court that unfolded here in New York yesterday, in a case we have followed for more than a decade. On Tuesday, an immigration judge ruled that Jean Montreville, a Haitian immigrant longtime activist, will no longer face deportation after he'd been targeted for his activism for years by immigration and customs enforcement. Under President Trump, Jean was deported to Haiti in 2018. He was given a second chance in 2021, when Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted him a pardon for two drug convictions that were 30 years old, which ICE had used as a pretext to deport him. ICE gave Jean the opportunity to seek to reopen his case and regain his legal immigration status. In a rare move, he was allowed to return to the United States on a 90-day special parole, but the threat of deportation continued to hang over his head until yesterday, when the decades-long saga came to a close. In a courtroom packed with supporters, the judge told Jean, I want you to know I see the good in you, too. For more, Jean Montreville joins us himself alongside Alina Doss, part of his legal team and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, NYU School of Law. We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Jean, we spoke to you in Port-au-Prince when you were deported to Haiti. Now, as you sit in a New York studio, can you describe what this victory feels like? What it meant to you yesterday and what actually happened in that courtroom? Amy Goodmore, and thank you for having us again. And it was huge for me. It was amazing. I was so happy, the feeling of knowing that I no longer faced deportation and now having opportunity to stay here with my children. This case has always been me staying with my kids. I love my kids. My kids love me. I think yesterday, also, the judge sent a message to the government, you can't silence someone just because they're speaking against the government. And I'm so happy, we were so happy yesterday and my team at NYU, they did excellent jobs. My kids were there. The people from my church, Justin Memorial Church, all my supporters, we were so happy. I mean, unbelievable feeling. And, Gene, could you talk about how important it was for the people to be there in the courtroom to show your support, to demonstrate that to the judge, how this is part of the strategy of groups like Families for Freedom and your work in the past with the new Sanctuary Coalition? Yes. I mean, it was extremely important. The judge even mentioned that in his decision how much support is that I had in the courtroom, even called out one of my biggest supporters, Jane Toohal. She was in the courtroom and the judge explained that the letter that she wrote to him moved the judge about me, Family for Freedom, we're there, the director, Jenny called my ex-wife were there, my kids, I had people from other churches that were there, Juan Carlos was there and the support from the community was largely important. We had two rooms full with people and I think the judge recognized that how important it was for me to have all these people who love me, who has been supporting me for the past 20 years. I mean, it was a huge victory, I like to take my legal team from NYU, Ms. Alina Diaz and her staff, I mean, they did excellent jobs and I'm so grateful. Jane, let me ask Alina Das, I think we last had you on when you were pregnant, Alina, you were about to give birth, but you were right there standing with Jane. So in 2021, Jane is allowed back into the United States. He had sued for being banished, basically deported for his immigrant rights activism under Trump. There's a couple of threads of legal cases here involving Jane. Can you lay out these cases? It's also just amazing that it's your students who argued the case yesterday. Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Amy. And certainly, I know I speak for the entire NYU immigrant rights team, including Yulanda Loy and Gabriella McPherson, who represented Jane at the hearing yesterday. We are just so honored to be standing in solidarity with him and his incredible family in Judson Memorial Church. But you're right, there has been so much that has been poured into Jane's case. We've been inspired by his incredible voice, his leadership through Families for Freedom and the New Sanctuary Movement in New York City. It has really helped thousands of immigrants. So it was really an honor for us to step in where we could. When Jane was deported in 2018, it was part of a widespread pattern of retaliation by immigration and customs enforcement against immigrant rights activists. They were targeted. They were silenced through their detention. And some, like Jane, were deported. We knew this was wrong, and so we joined Jane and his church and family and community to file a lawsuit to sue the government to say that it's simply not right. It's against his First Amendment rights and due process rights under the Constitution to silence him for his activism through a retaliatory deportation. And we litigated that for many, many months. And thankfully, after President Biden came into office, ICE was willing to settle the case, returning Jane to the United States. I'm trying to right this one of many, many wrongs that we've seen under, across different administrations. So it was thrilling for us to be able to see that after this 30-year fight that Jane has led, that he's been just searching for this one fair day in court that we were finally able to be there. But we know, because Jane has taught us this, that there are many more people who have also faced retaliation, who face retaliation to this day, and that we hope that this is the first of many such victories. And could you talk about, Alina, the role of the drug war in several administrations now, using the criminal legal system as a tool to deport people from the United States, especially black immigrants and people from the Caribbean? Absolutely. Anti-blackness is a core part of the foundations of immigration law. There is a very specific reason that immigration law uses the criminal legal system to funnel people into deportation. It basically doubles the unfairness of both systems. And so the war on drugs in the 1980s in particular was where we saw people who were facing the harshest penalties, like Jane, for involvement in drug offenses, also then facing the harshest penalties of mandatory detention, mandatory deportation, without even being able to explain your case. You know, Jane really tried to present all of his factors, all of the reasons why she should be able to stay in this country with his family, but it took 30 years for him to get that hearing and a tremendous amount of community mobilization. It was the community that really made sure that this happened, and that is part of the legacy of the war on drugs. I think Jean's son, who testified at the hearing yesterday, Josiah Montreville, said it best when he said that this is a double punishment. It is inherently unfair for Mr. Montreville to have suffered this much, for his family to suffer this much, because of the war on drugs, after he had already been harshly punished under that system. And can you talk about the role, Lena, of the Virginia Governor Ralph Northam in pardoning Jane, the significance of that? Yes. Well, Jean and I talked about this yesterday at the hearing. Jean was in Haiti when Governor Northam gave him the pardon. And it was an incredible moment for Jean. I think it is a recognition of the importance of second chances, the importance of redemption. It's a value that our justice system has often forgotten, and that was a rare moment of victory. It was something that Jean, Jeanne Cawthon, and the entire team at Judson Memorial Church fought for for many, many years. And it's important to recognize that people at all levels of government have a responsibility to exercise their power to make sure that we can find justice. For people like Jean, who've been through so many years of injustice, there is so much that people can do if they're willing to exercise that power for good. And Jean, now that you've finally gotten this 30-year saga behind you, what are your expectations or hopes for what you expect to do in the future? Well, I'm 54 years old. I'm about to start a new life. And my family, my sons. I mean, just be able to be with my kids. My son, Jisai, he actually, my right now in college, my daughter has been as graduated, I still have a 16-year-old, sophomore in high school. I want to see my kids progress, and I want to be there alongside of them, you know, take them to school, make sure they stay out of trouble, and be responsible, human, and pay responsible human beings, you know? It's so hard. This case has always been about the separations of families. I didn't like it the fact that years ago, the government used to just break those down and separate families. I think now my kids and myself, we do have a bright future ahead of us. I'm planning to, you know, work with them, stay with them, continue to support them. Do you see citizenship on the horizon, Jean? I'm sorry, Amy. Do you see citizenship on the horizon? Well, I think so, you know, and then last night I got home, I was taken aborted because there's this question that's been in my mind for so many years. Jean, why are you fighting to stay in this country knowing the way should be as and all they have done to me? And now you want to become a citizen? Last night I thought about it. But, you know, I like, I do like the Biden administration. As you know, Haiti right now is in turmoil. Haiti has gotten 10 times worse since I left Haiti just over a year ago. The whole country is running by gangs, remember? And just in January 6th, Joe Biden finally recognized that and give the Haitian opportunity to come over here without having a visa. If you have someone here that can apply for it to support you financially, they get approved to come over here and apply for political asylum. I think me myself, to answer your question, Amy, I would really like to settle myself in this country. I've been here for almost 40 years. This is the only country that I know. I don't want to think about going back to Haiti. So I probably will have my citizenship won. But as you know, I have to apply for it. Hopefully I will save it. Well, Jean Montrevelle, longtime Haitian immigrant activist, welcome home. And Alina Doss, part of the legal team for Jean and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law. Thanks so much for being with us. Coming up, we'll look at the growing controversy around Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Stay with us. And this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We look now at the growing calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to step down or be impeached, a second damning pro-publica report on his relationship with Republican mega donor Harlan Crowe has revealed that in 2014, Thomas and his family sold a house and two vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia to Crowe for around $130,000, but never disclosed the sale, which appears to be a violation of the 1978 Ethics and Government Act. CNN reports Thomas' mother lives in the home owned by Crowe rent-free, but she's reportedly responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance. On Sunday, The Washington Post reported Thomas has, for years, claimed rental income from a Nebraska real estate firm that shut down in 2006. It's also been reported previously that, in 2009, Crowe gave half a million dollars to a conservative lobbying group founded by Thomas' wife, Ginny Thomas. CNN reports Justice Clarence Thomas now intends to amend his financial disclosures in light of pro-publica's other recent bombshell investigation, detailing unreported luxury trips Harlan Crowe lavished on Thomas over two decades in apparent violation of the law requiring justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts. Thomas frequently vacationed at Crowe's Resort in the Adirondacks of New York, where a painting on the walls depicts Clarence Thomas sitting with four other men, including Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. Thomas never reported any of the free trips as gifts. In addition to being a major benefactor for Thomas and the GOP, Crowe is also an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. He's got a signed copy of Mein Kampf, that's right, signed by Hitler. Paintings by Hitler, Nazi medallion, swastika-embossed linens, and a garden filled with statues of 20th century dictators. For more, we're joined by Justin Elliott once again, reporter for pro-publica. Their new follow-up report headline, Billionaire Harlan Crowe bought property from Clarence Thomas that justice didn't disclose the deal. Justin, welcome back to Democracy Now! I mean, your initial report has unleashed an avalanche of reporting and investigations and calls for Clarence Thomas to be impeached or to step down. He says he's going to amend his disclosure forms. Can you talk about the latest findings? Yeah, you know, for our first story, both Thomas and Harlan Crowe put out statements about the luxury travel saying we're very close friends. These were family trips, they both used the word hospitality. We subsequently learned and reported that there was actually a direct business deal, a real estate deal between the two men, so actual money flowing from Harlan Crowe to Clarence Thomas. What we found is that around a decade ago, Crowe bought a house and two vacant lots that were owned by Clarence Thomas and some of his relatives down in Savannah, Georgia. You know, as you mentioned, the house that Crowe bought is actually the house where Thomas's elderly mother was living and apparently still lives, which puts Crowe in the extremely unusual position of being the landlord to the mother of a sitting Supreme Court justice. Although it's actually not clear if landlord's the right term here because CNN has reported that Crowe is not charging her rent. So there's all kinds of exceedingly unusual financial entanglements between this billionaire political donor and the Supreme Court justice. And Justin, what about this claim that they've been long time friends? What were you able to find out about how Thomas and the Bill and Harlan Crowe first met and how their friendship developed? Yeah, you know, so I think they actually are friends, but it turns out that at least according to Crowe, they met back in the mid-1990s. So this was after Thomas was on the court. They weren't like college roommates or something like that. They actually apparently met at a conservative political conference and Crowe gave an interview at the Dallas Morning News a couple of days ago in which he says that they actually first met when Crowe offered Thomas. It turns out a private jet ride on Crowe's jet. From Washington, D.C. to Dallas. And apparently they they hit it off on the jet. So that's what we know about about how it started. So from the start then, the Thomas was accepting an essence of undisclosed gifts from Crowe. Yeah, I mean, you know, I have personally never been on a private jet, but I've learned a lot about them. And, you know, these things, I mean, Crowe's current jet. It's a particularly nice private jet. It's a global 5000 Bombardier. If you were to charter one of these on the open market, you'd be paying $15,000 per hour per flight hour. So yes, these are extraordinarily expensive flights. And it's obviously not a not exactly a normal situation to offer somebody you just met a private jet ride. But again, I mean, Clarence Thomas was a Supreme Court justice at the time. So I think that probably goes a long way to explaining why this happened. And can you talk about Ginny Thomas, Clarence Thomas's wife, the connection here and the financial connections with Harlan Crowe? I mean, they're getting more than a half a million dollars her lobbying group. That's right. So I think one of the other really intriguing financial connections here between Crowe and the Thomas family is related to Ginny Thomas. So it actually came out around a dozen years ago that Ginny Thomas was running a small tea party group nonprofit political organization and it came out that that none other than Harlan Crowe was pretty much the sole funder of that group that was paying Ginny Thomas's salary, which I believe was on the order of $200,000 a year. So essentially through this kind of pass through organization, Crowe's money was ending up in the pocket of the Thomas household. Following that reporting around a dozen years ago, there was sort of another round of previous round of questions about this. But and we don't really know what has happened since then. Partly actually thanks to the Supreme Court, as you know, the whole regime of disclosure of political spending and giving to groups has really fallen apart. And there's there's anonymous dark money flowing all over the place. So it makes it very difficult as a reporter to figure out where money is flowing and from who. But, you know, we're still reporting on all this. And just as Thomas has claimed that Crowe has no business before the Supreme Court. But for those who do not know of our of our audience, who do not know Crowe, who is he and what would be his interest in being able to have this friendship with Thomas? So Crowe is a real estate billionaire who was born into a very successful Dallas real estate family. And it is true that Crowe has has not had. He's not been a litigant in a case at the Supreme Court. It turns out the Supreme Court doesn't actually take that many cases every year. So there's very few people and companies that are actually have a case at the court. But the court regularly takes up matters that affect the real estate industry, that the real estate trade groups that Harlan Crowe helps fund is involved in some of those cases, filing briefs and that kind of thing. But I think the larger issue is that Crowe has a whole set of ideological interests related to the court. He's a funder of a number of groups that specifically push conservative legal theories groups like the Federalist Society. He's on the board of a number of think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute that do a range of work on a range of issues, but among them issues related to the Supreme Court advancing conservative legal theories. So it raises the question and we don't really know the answer at this point of whether Crowe and sort of his other friends who he's bringing on some of these trips with Justice Thomas are having any influence on the justice. And, you know, even shifting a Supreme Court justice's thinking a little bit on an issue, if that ended up in an opinion, I mean, it could have just enormous consequences for basically all of us. Well, Justin Elliott, I want to thank you for being with us. Reporter for ProPublica, we will link to your reports. This is democracy now. For more on the calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to step down or be impeached in light of the recent revelations, we're going to look at a historical reference when 54 years ago a Supreme Court justice was forced to quit for behavior, arguably less egregious than Thomas's. That's the headline of an op-ed in The New York Times by Adam Cohen, lawyer, journalist, former member of the New York Times editorial board, author of Supreme Inequality, the Supreme Court's 50-year battle for a more unjust America. Adam, you write that Justice Abe Fordis' departure from the court in 1969 is both a blueprint for how lawmakers could respond today and a benchmark of how far we have fallen. Can you lay out this history? Sure. It is really the most on point parallel we have historically. And one thing that's important to note is that what Abe Fordis did is in many ways much less bad than what Clarence Thomas did. The amount of money was much smaller. He took $20,000. And as you mentioned, and as Justin mentioned, Clarence Thomas, the amount of island hopping and free plane rides over a 20-year period is staggering, probably well into the millions. So the dollar amount was different. But also, Fordis gave the money back, which is something that Clarence Thomas has not done. So we have a much smaller scandal in many ways. And what was striking is the bipartisan response that there was in 1969. Fordis ended up resigning from the court, not because Republicans were out to get him, and he was a liberal Democrat, but because Walter Mondale, who was in the Senate, demanded that he resign. He's one of his biggest supporters in the Senate. Senator Tidings from Maryland demanded that he resign. He was afraid that he would be impeached by a Democratic Congress. And what's really striking also is that this is at a time when there was a Republican president, Nixon. So Democrats were doing this even though they knew that they might, quote, lose the seat, a liberal being replaced by a conservative. But these Democrats were so concerned about the integrity of the court, and they kept saying, what matters is that the public have faith in the court. We're not seeing that at all today. Where are the Republicans who are coming out in favor of Thomas stepping down, or Thomas doing anything, really, because of the integrity of the court? We don't have that kind of bipartisanship anymore. And could you also talk, Adam, about how the media have responded to this case of Fox News is filled void by locating, quote, an expert to declare that the story about Justice Thomas is politics, plain and simple. That's exactly right. Yes, the media has, right, the conservative media have defended Clarence Thomas. And as you said, they found an expert who doesn't seem like much of an expert to say that it's not a big deal. But also, just where are the voices of Chief Justice Roberts, for example, right? I mean, we saw last year, when there were leaks of that abortion ruling a year ago, the Chief Justice immediately launched an investigation. We have to get to the bottom of this. What's going on in the court? Why is he not saying that now? Why is it a much bigger deal that there were leaks of an abortion ruling, which conservatives were upset about, compared to Clarence Thomas apparently ignoring ethics rules for years? Where is the Chief Justice in this? We're not hearing from him at all. And why has the Supreme Court been able to get by so for so long with essentially no ethics requirements? That's exactly it. It's the least accountable part of government we have. There is a judicial code of ethics that's quite, I wouldn't say strong, but it's a reasonable code. But it doesn't apply to the Supreme Court. It applies to lower court judges. Why does it not apply to the Supreme Court? Why do we not have, as I said, investigations internally? Even the liberal justices could be talking out now. If they think that Clarence Thomas is breaking the law, I think they have a duty to say something. So there's really no one holding them accountable. The body that would be doing it is the one real check on the Supreme Court is impeachment. But right now, the House is in the control of Republicans, so they're not doing anything. There have been calls from the Senate, which does have a Democratic majority, for an investigation. Maybe that will happen. But this is a broken system, and many people are using this Clarence Thomas scandal to say, you know, we've gone on too long without an actual ethics code that applies to the justices. And Congress should pass one now. Adam, you wrote a book on the Supreme Court called Supreme Inequality. The Supreme Court's 50-year battle for a more unjust America. Can you relate the ethics scandal that Clarence Thomas is facing today to the theme of your book? Yeah, it's a great point, Amy. So what I argue in the book is that we think of the Supreme Court as being a force for equality and fairness and all that. But if you actually look back to the last 50 years after Nixon packed the court with conservatives, it's actually been a force for protecting rich people for increasing inequality. So in areas like campaign finance, where they have struck down all these often good laws that Congress passed trying to regulate the amount of money from rich people going into politics, in education, where they've ruled in favor of inequality and funding, and on and on and on. So that has been the theme. We've had a court that for 50 years has been really fighting for rich people over poor people. That's only gotten worse in the last few years, because now we have this six to three conservative majority. So it's worse than it's ever been. This is very strongly related because think about when you have corruption, we have financial corruption. When you have justices taking free trips for 20 years, you know, the public have referred to it as island hopping. Who is giving that? That's being given by billionaires, people like Crow, right? Welfare recipients who might have business before the court, they can't afford to give the justices these luxury vacations. Student loan debt holders right now, there's a big case before the Supreme Court, if you're in heavy student loan debt, you're not able to, you don't have a yacht to take Clarence Thomas on. So this is yet another way in which the balance is tipped in favor of the powerful and the wealthy. And when we talk about this friendship, as Justin was saying, it's a friendship between Crow and Thomas that was made after Thomas became a justice. So you have to wonder about that. But you also have to wonder, if Clarence Thomas started down pulling in favor of poor people, welfare recipients, took liberal positions, would he continue to get these luxury vacations? I would say not. One of the reasons he's getting them is because, I would argue, it seems to me, that Crow likes what he's doing on the court. So this is a way to put one more big thumb on the scale in favor of wealthy people before the court. So it's very ideologically corrupting. And Adam, Harlan Crow, for all of his power within the Republican Party, we learn he has this Nazi collection, swastika embossed linens, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, so a Hitler embracing, you know, mega-millionaire, if not billionaire. Your thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean, obviously, he has said he's just interested in these historical artifacts, and he's not in any way a Nazi. That's his position. Look, I want to accept that on one level, but on the other hand, I just know that it would creep me out so much to have Hitler's signature, you know, in my home. And beyond that, I just wouldn't go out and buy it. I mean, these are, you know, these are really artifacts of something so horrible that, what is the draw? I mean, I don't know. We'll have to take him at his word, but it gives me the willies, honestly. Well, we're going to leave it there. Adam Cohen, lawyer, journalist, former member of the New York Times editorial board, will link to your New York Times guest essay. Fifty-four years ago, a Supreme Court justice was forced to quit for behavior arguably less grievous than Thomas's. Adam Cohen is also author of Supreme Inequality, the Supreme Court's 50-year battle for a more unjust America. That does it for our show. Democracy Now! Produced with Renee Phelps, Mike Berkley, and Augusta Mosire-Rhodes, Nermeen Shea, Maria Teresena, Tammy Warren, Uttarina Nadura, Sam Elkoff, Tame Maria, Studio John Hamilton, Robbie Carran, Hanima Sundan, Jason Lopez, our executive director, Julie Crosby, I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales.