


Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reports.
In a lengthy story published Thursday the nonprofit investigative journalism organization catalogs various trips Thomas has taken aboard Crow’s yacht and private jet as well as to Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. A 2019 trip to Indonesia the story detailed could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered the plane and yacht himself, ProPublica reported.
Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are required to file an annual financial disclosure report which asks them to list gifts they have received.
The former head of a Michigan medical marijuana licensing board has agreed to plead guilty to accepting $110,000 in bribes when he led the panel over a two-year period, authorities said Thursday.
Rick Johnson acknowledged in a signed court filing that he acted “corruptly” when he accepted cash and other benefits to help businesses get licenses.
Charges against Johnson and three other men were announced by U.S. Attorney Mark Totten at a press conference near the Capitol in Lansing.
Johnson, 70, was chairman of the marijuana board for two years until spring 2019. The Republican years earlier also was a powerful lawmaker, serving as House speaker from 2001 through 2004.
A message seeking comment from Johnson’s attorney wasn’t immediately returned.
King Charles III for the first time has signaled support for research into the British monarchy’s ties to slavery after a document showed an ancestor with shares in a slave-trading company, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said Thursday.
Charles takes the issue “profoundly seriously” and academics will be given access to the royal collection and archives, the palace said. The statement was in response to an article in The Guardian newspaper that revealed a document showing that the deputy governor of the slave-trading Royal African Company transferred 1,000 pounds of shares in the business to King William III in 1689.
The research into the monarchy’s ties to slavery is co-sponsored by Historic Royal Palaces and Manchester University and is expected to be completed by 2026.
— The Associated Press