Dear MoveOn member,
We took your 1.2 million signatures to the Supreme Court. MoveOn members joined together across the country to channel collective outrage into action by signing the MoveOn petition demanding that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas be impeached. The momentum and support that this petition received was absolutely astounding: In the span of a little over two weeks, more than 1 MILLION MoveOn members added their names to the petition to impeach Justice Thomas.
Together, we sent a message to our members of Congress, and they took notice of our demands! On July 28, MoveOn members organized a petition delivery with more than 300 RSVPs in front of the Supreme Court with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting, MoveOn member Matthew Witten, and Demand Justice Senior Advisor Tamara Brummer from Demand Justice!
“We will not let Clarence Thomas and the illegitimate Supreme Court win and we will not back down. We know what we have to do: expand the court, set term limits, set age limits, and impeach Justice Clarence Thomas.” This is part of what Congressman Jamaal Bowman’s speech said at the petition delivery in front of the Supreme Court.
MoveOn members took action and signed the petition over five months. Justice Thomas has a clear history of outrageous, abusive, and immoral actions like his ties with Big Money's right-wing organizations and the fact that he was willing to use his power as a justice to conceal his wife's active role in Trump's white supremacist-led January 6 insurrection. And in spite of this, Justice Thomas participated in a case regarding Trump's records on January 6 and was the lone justice in an 8-1 ruling who wanted the White House to keep records hidden—including the texts from his wife that were revealed.1
But that’s not all: When the GOP-hijacked Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that Obergefell, Griswold, and Lawrence (the rulings that protect contraception, same-sex sexual intimacy, and marriage equality for the LGBTQ+ community) should be revisited next.2 It’s scary, but not surprising. This has been the Republican’s plan all along.
The journey to garnering more than 1.2 million signatures on this petition was watched across the country. Newsweek covered the petition at several milestones! First, Newsweek wrote the first article about how, in just two days, 150,000 MoveOn members signed the petition. They wrote follow-up articles when the petition passed 230,000 signatures, then 300,000, then when it hit 700,000 signatures just one week after right-wing justices overturned Roe. They wrote another when it hit 1 million signatures three days later and when it hit 1.2 million signatures.3,4,5,6,7,8 Newsweek even reached out to both Justice Thomas and the Supreme Court for comment—ensuring your signatures were noticed at the very top.
Getting press on petitions is a huge way to bring awareness to campaigns, and it wouldn’t have happened without us all coming together to demand accountability. And Newsweek isn’t the only outlet that covered the petition. The Hill, Black Enterprise, Common Dreams, Truthout, Salon, Glamour, Business Insider, even TV news outlets, and many others reported on the petition, too!9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 The momentum that we built together was impressive. Articles about the petition made it to the front page of Reddit TWICE, celebrities and influencers shared the petition on their social media platforms, and hundreds of TikTokers made videos about the petition! There is so much power in collective action.
Here are just a few of the amazing TikTok's shared by creators:
• Click here to watch @blackkout___'s TikTok, which got more than 750,000 views and 203,000 likes.
Will you take one minute and share the recap video of the petition delivery to spread the word?
Together, with your signatures and the petition delivery, we made it clear: Republicans, who have won the presidential popular vote only once in the last 34 years, have engaged in a concerted effort to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing extremist judges who have stripped us of our rights over and over again.
In just the last few months, these extremist judges have ruled that states are required to fund private religious schools; to strike down a gun violence prevention law in New York; that if police fail to inform us of our Miranda rights, we can’t sue them; and that border patrol agents can enter any home within 100 miles of the border with no consequences.16,17,18,19 And Republicans have no intention of slowing down these attacks, so we have to lean into collective action and fight back together.
That's why Matthew Witten, a MoveOn mobilizer, travelled across states to come to D.C. and represent petition signers. Here's what Matthew had to say: "1.2 million of us say that enough is enough, and that it is time for some real accountability for this out-of-control, runaway court. A court that has taken away our rights, taken away our freedoms, and rolled back generations worth of progress. I've watched in dismay my entire adult life at the radicalization of the Supreme Court, with the appointment of one federalist after another completely unbalancing the court to a fundamentalist ideology from Citizens United to Roe v Wade."
This is only the beginning of the fight ahead to expand and rebalance the Supreme Court, pass a binding code of ethics, set term limits for Supreme Court justices, and so much more. And if we keep working together and holding people in power like Clarence Thomas accountable, we can make it happen.
Thanks for all you do.
–Jensine, Nakia, Isbah, Justin, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "Clarence Thomas was the lone dissent in the Supreme Court's January order rejecting Trump's bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel," Insider, March 24, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/161383?t=24&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
2. "Thomas wants the Supreme Court to overturn landmark rulings that legalized contraception, same-sex marriage," NBC News, June 24, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/163991?t=26&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
3. "Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas Petition Jumps 150K in Two Days," Newsweek, June 29, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166340?t=28&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
4. "'Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas' Petition Passes 230K Signatures," Newsweek, June 16, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166341?t=30&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
5. "Petition To Impeach Clarence Thomas Passes 300,000 Signatures," Newsweek, June 27, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166342?t=32&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
6. "Impeach Clarence Thomas Petition Hits 700k Signatures Week Since Roe Ruling," Newsweek, July 1, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166343?t=34&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
7. "Impeach Clarence Thomas Petition Hits 1M Signatures: 'Justice is Needed'," Newsweek, July 4, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166344?t=36&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
8. "Petition to Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas Amasses 1.2M Signatures," Newsweek, July 14, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/164354?t=38&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
9. "Petition calling for Clarence Thomas removal from Supreme Court gets 1M signatures," The Hill, July 6, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166345?t=40&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
10. "Petition To Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas Nets More Than 1 Million Signatures," Black Enterprise, July 19, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166346?t=42&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
11. "Petition Demanding Clarence Thomas Impeachment Reaches 1.2 Million," Common Dreams, July 28, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166347?t=44&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
12."Petition calling for Impeachment of Clarence Thomas Nears 500,000 Signatures," Truthout, June 29, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166348?t=46&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
13. "Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas" petition has nearly 1 million signatures so far," Salon, July 3, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166349?t=48&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
14. "Why People Are Calling for Congress to Impeach Clarence Thomas," Glamour, July 1, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166350?t=50&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
15. "Impeaching Clarence Thomas: How Democrats could remove conservative justices," Business Insider, June 27, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/166351?t=52&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
16. "The Supreme Court Just Fused Church and State — and It Has Even Uglier Plans Ahead," Rolling Stone, June 22, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/163987?t=54&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
17. "Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law restricting concealed carry in major Second Amendment case," CNBC, June 23, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/163988?t=56&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
18. "The Supreme Court Strips Us of Miranda Warnings," The Nation, June 23, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/163989?t=58&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
19. "U.S. Supreme Court insulates federal agents from accountability," Reuters, June 10, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/163990?t=60&akid=331039%2E40999114%2ECjQISv
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