Overview
- At a University of Texas event marking the Declaration’s 250th, Justice Clarence Thomas said progressivism seeks to replace the Declaration’s core ideas and teaches that rights come from government rather than God.
- Thomas linked progressivism to figures like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao, arguing those regimes opposed the natural rights the Declaration describes.
- The event was hosted by a UT unit funded in part by billionaire Harlan Crow, who attended, and Thomas publicly thanked him, renewing focus on prior reports of Crow’s paid trips, tuition support, and help purchasing a home for Thomas’s mother.
- Left-leaning outlets and commentators criticized the speech as inflammatory or hypocritical, while City Journal defended it as a substantive argument about the Founding and the Progressive Era’s challenge to constitutional structure.
- There has been no announced discipline or recusal, and the fallout now centers on judicial norms, perceived conflicts of interest, and what this means for public trust in the Court.