this week. And her return will hardly help Senate Democrats clear the 60-vote threshold required to actually pass legislation that would force the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger code of ethics. But Feinstein’s returnsent to Crow and his holding companies Monday seeking information about other undisclosed “gifts, transactions, and items of value” he exchanged with Thomas.
Without Feinstein or any support from Judiciary Republicans, Democrats had no real way to compel Crow to deliver those answers. But with her vote, Democrats can subpoena him, as Durbin suggested he would do if Roberts failed to respond to the inquiry by the May 22 deadline he set. “Everything is on the table,” Durbin told CNN, describing Democrats’ efforts to “gather the evidence” about Thomas’s apparent ethical breaches. “I’m not ruling out anything.
That's good news. Democrats may not have the votes right now to save the Supreme Court from itself. But they have the power to illuminate just how desperately in need of reform it is—and to lay bare their Republican counterparts’ culpability in the mess. “The American people must be able to trust our Supreme Court,” as Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat