2023
June
23
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 23, 2023
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Peter Grier
Washington editor

Is it time for the Supreme Court to have a detailed, binding code of ethics?

That’s a question sparked by the recent report from ProPublica that in 2008, Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska on a billionaire’s private jet.

Justice Alito did not report the trip on his financial disclosure. That may have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most such gifts, according to the ProPublica story.

Nor did Justice Alito recuse himself when cases involving businesses of the billionaire, Paul Singer, came before the court. In 2014, justices voted 7-1 in favor of Mr. Singer’s hedge fund in a lawsuit that ultimately netted it $2.4 billion.

Justice Alito has denied that he did anything wrong. In a prebuttal in The Wall Street Journal published prior to ProPublica’s release of the story – an unusual step – he said that the trip was personal hospitality, and thus he didn’t need to report it. He wasn’t aware Mr. Singer had any interest in the cases before the court, he insisted.

There’s been a code of conduct for federal court judges since 1973, but the Supreme Court isn’t bound by it. That should change, say some experts, given the allegations against Justice Alito and recent revelations about gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas from billionaire Harlan Crow.

This isn’t about attacking the court’s conservative majority, some insist. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has not recused herself from court cases involving publisher Penguin Random House, which has paid her millions in book royalties.

“A demand for ethical constraints is not an attack on the Court or any single justice. It is simply common sense,” said the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight earlier this month.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs case eliminated a nearly 50-year-old federal right to abortion. The impact on women of childbearing age has been profound. 

SOURCE:

Guttmacher Institute

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Libkos/AP
A Ukrainian soldier lies on the ground as a tank fires toward Russian positions at the front line near Bakhmut, Ukraine, June 17, 2023.

Western aid is key to Ukraine’s military plans. Now that aid is being put to the test on the battlefield – making the current Ukrainian offensive a possible turning point in the war. 

Moises Castillo/AP
Carlos Pineda, a conservative populist who had been leading in the polls, arrives at the Constitutional Court seeking to reverse a decision that excluded him from the electoral process, in Guatemala City, May 20, 2023. His appeal was denied.

How important is an independent judiciary to democracy? As Guatemala votes, many judges are threatened or in exile, and faith in the system is at record lows.

Podcast

How to fight bullying? Teach the value of kindness.

For one anti-bullying educator, breaking through has meant keeping her focus on a solution, not a problem. For her first reported Monitor story, our writer shifted her own focus: from trying to drive the story to letting her sources unfold it.

The Compassion Solution

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Points of Progress

What's going right

In our progress roundup, advocates in Malawi won the right for children to wear dreadlocks in school. And in Somaliland, after five decades of fighting for the well-being of women and girls, a nurse-midwife wins the Templeton Prize. 


The Monitor's View

Many of the world’s poorest nations have waited nearly two years for this moment. On Thursday, China and many Western countries struck a deal with Zambia to restructure $6.3 billion of the African country’s debt. While certainly good for Zambia – which defaulted on debt repayments during the pandemic – the deal sets a precedent for other nations to rid themselves of repressive red ink.

Most of all, it reflects a triumph in how wealthier countries – especially China – can cooperate to set new norms in debt relief.

Zambia was seen as a test case of whether China, the world’s largest bilateral creditor, would either conform to Western practices of debt restructuring or help shape new ones. Through prodding, patience, and persuasion, the West and China reached an agreement for Zambia that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calls “unique and innovative.”

Even getting China to join in global talks over debt governance has been a triumph. Its various financial bodies have had to adopt new vocabulary and learn to cooperate with each other. “It took enormous courage for anyone on the Chinese side to ‘trust’ an international process that is led by ‘the West’, especially on an issue that China would have to incur huge financial loss in the short term,” wrote scholars Deborah Brautigam and Yufan Huang of Johns Hopkins University in an April paper.

China dropped a demand that the IMF – a key lender of last resort – take a financial “haircut” in granting debt relief. In the end, the deal resulted in Zambia’s debt being rescheduled over two decades with a three-year grace period during which only payments on interest are due. The World Bank may provide Zambia with loans with highly concessional or grant terms.

This deal sets a vital example of cooperation for Africa. Much of the continent would be at high risk if China and the West “decoupled” in trade and investments, according to the IMF. A desire to help the world’s poorest nations turned out to be a unifying moment.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

When we let God, divine Love, impel our thoughts and actions, we’re better equipped to contribute to the world in loving, productive ways.


Viewfinder

Joe Lamberti/AP
Mascots from Philadelphia’s sports teams cross over a repaired bridge on Interstate 95 as the highway is reopened, June 23, 2023, in Philadelphia. The bridge collapsed after a tanker truck crashed underneath on June 11, causing a massive fire. A temporary six-lane roadway will allow traffic to resume on the heavily traveled route while a permanent replacement is built, a task that is expected to take months. The speed with which engineers and work crews rebuilt the roadway – finishing ahead of schedule – was hailed by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a “moment of civic pride for Philly.”
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

We appreciate you coming to the Monitor today. Next week, as part of our ongoing coverage of debates about reparations around the world, we’ll look at a case where $1 billion isn’t enough. The Dakota and Lakota are owed many millions of dollars by the United States government, courts have ruled. But they want the land that was sacred to them for 1,200 years. 

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