On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Clarence Thomas discloses more private jet travel amid ethics reform pressure

USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze puts Justice Clarence Thomas' disclosure about more jet travel in context. Plus, Sen. Mitch McConnell's doctor clears him to continue working, Proud Boys member Joseph Biggs gets 17 years in prison for the Jan. 6 attack, USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub explains why new advancements mean multiple myeloma is no longer a death sentence, and a dog repeatedly escaped a Michigan animal shelter and snuck into a nursing home. They adopted him.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Friday, the 1st of September 2023. Today, Supreme Court disclosures as the conversation around ethics reform rolls on. Plus, Sen. Mitch McConnell has been cleared to continue with his schedule, and a blood cancer is no longer considered a death sentence.

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas yesterday disclosed more travel paid for by GOP megadonor, Harlan Crow, last year. The disclosure comes amid pressure for ethics reform on the high court. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze for the latest. Hey there, John.

John Fritze:

Hi.

Taylor Wilson:

So John, what did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas disclose yesterday?

John Fritze:

Thomas filed his annual disclosure report. He actually filed it a few weeks back and it was made public just now. And there were a few trips on there that were paid for by Harlan Crow, who's the GOP megadonor who's been at the center of all the controversy with Thomas. These three trips, two to Texas for conferences, were paid for by Crow and involved private jet travel, and a third trip to Crow's lodge in the Adirondacks.

In some ways, the trips themselves are of course interesting, although they are part and parcel with what we've seen in some of the past reporting around this travel that's been paid for by Crow. What might be more interesting is some of the efforts that Thomas made to explain it. In particular, I think, there's been a lot of focus in the fact that Thomas seems to justify one of these trips to Texas, the use of a private jet, by saying that, "Well, look. There was heightened security involved after the major abortion decision leaked last year. There was a lot of anger about that." People were showing up at the Justice's house to protest. And so Thomas seems to be suggesting that based on that, he felt it was a wiser course to take this private jet trip paid for by Harlan Crow than to fly commercial or some other way. And then in another instance, he talks about an unexpected ice storm that he said required him to take the private jet back to the Washington area from Texas, after speaking to a group in Texas in February.

Taylor Wilson:

And John, what did his attorney say about so-called weaponized ethics allegations?

John Fritze:

I think the first thing, just to back up for a second, his attorney - the fact that a Supreme Court justice has an attorney and is speaking out like this is pretty unusual and should be noted. I don't think I've ever seen it before. And what we have as a multipage statement from this attorney who's representing Thomas, arguing that the criticism is political. That these complaints that have been raised against him and this news coverage that has been raising questions about some of this travel is politically motivated, and based on Thomas's ideology as a conservative.

I think it's worth just pausing there for a second and noting that Thomas has amended his report here and he, in his own words, is acknowledging omissions, which he says were inadvertent. But the fact that he has changed these disclosures and he's got a couple of pages of explanation here on this report, that's pretty unusual. And I think it at least demonstrates that there were some problems with his earlier disclosure reports.

Taylor Wilson:

And Justice Samuel Alito also filed his disclosure report. What did we learn in his filing?

John Fritze:

Far more perfunctory, I think is the word I used in the story. Alito's report is more like what we expect to see from these reports. Some travel paid for by law schools. In particular, I think the most notable one was a Notre Dame trip in Rome. This is a trip, by the way, that everybody knew about a little after the fact. But we did eventually find out about this trip and that Justice Alito gave an address in Rome. It was newsworthy because he was pushing back on criticism of the abortion decision, which he was the author of. And so the fact that Notre Dame paid for this trip is not a huge surprise.

The difference with Thomas is that a lot of these trips are not official. They involve vacations and in other instances, we didn't really know about these trips beforehand, let alone who was paying for them.

Taylor Wilson:

John, you were on earlier this week talking about how this idea of ethics reform on the high court appears to have stalled. Will these disclosures have any effect on getting the ball rolling again?

John Fritze:

I think I was skeptical that these disclosure reports on their own would prompt a new discussion. I'm not so sure now. I think that first of all, there's an awful lot of explanation here. I think reporters such as myself are going to be looking into a lot of these allegations that are leveled, both in Thomas's statement and in the lawyer statement, looking into a lot of the factual positions taken. And so it could lead to additional reporting and it could lead to additional questions.

I think as has happened with ethical issues on the court for some time now, folks on the left are going to say that this is not satisfactory and doesn't really solve anything. And folks on the right are going to say that Thomas did nothing wrong. And so I don't know that this changes the dynamic for Congress, but it could at least raise the scrutiny level or keep the pressure on in some ways for those of us looking into these trips and these outside entanglements with the justices.

Taylor Wilson:

John Fritze, always great insight for us from the Supreme Court. Thank you, John.

John Fritze:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Sen. Mitch McConnell's doctor cleared him yesterday to continue working with his schedule. Dr. Brian P. Monahan wrote in a note that the 81-year-old senator has experienced occasional lightheadedness from dehydration and a previous concussion. He wrote the note after McConnell froze on Wednesday at a press conference in Kentucky. It was the second time in several weeks that he had to pause taking questions at a press conference and receive assistance from aides. President Joe Biden said yesterday that he spoke with McConnell by phone and that the Republican leader was again, his old self.

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Proud Boys member Joseph Biggs was sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison for his role in the seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in the White House. It's the second longest sentence yet related to January 6th, 2021, but it's less than the 33 years prosecutors had proposed. Biggs helped lead Proud Boys at the Capitol, made it inside to the Senate chamber and posted on social media that the riot was a warning shot to the government, according to a sentencing memo from prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said he aimed for the sentence to deter future violence and protect the public from another attack like January 6th. He also sentenced another Proud Boys leader yesterday, Zachary Rehl, to 15 years in prison after he was also convicted of seditious conspiracy. Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups were convicted of being leaders of the insurrection when thousands of rioters fought police outside the Capitol and then rampaged through the building.

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The blood cancer multiple myeloma was once considered a death sentence. But thanks to major advancements in recent years, it's now highly treatable. I spoke with USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub for more. Howdy Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Hello.

Taylor Wilson:

So starting here, for folks who may not know, what is multiple myeloma?

Karen Weintraub:

So it's a type of cancer of the plasma cell. Plasma is part of the blood and it's involved in immune functions. So when you get cancer, it can crowd out the healthy cells and wreak havoc.

Taylor Wilson:

And what advances are we seeing in how this disease is treated?

Karen Weintraub:

It has always been considered a fatal disease. Well, it has been transformed in many cases into a chronic disease, into something you can live with for a long time. And the hope is that it will soon be a curable disease. Basically, there are now so many different types of treatments that people can go from one to the next to the next and live for many years. One doctor was telling me that for a 75-year-old, he can keep them going long enough that they will have a normal lifespan and probably die of something else. For somebody who's younger, again, he can keep them going long enough that hopefully a cure will come within their lifetime. And it may be that one of the drugs or a combination of the drugs that we have at this point will be a cure for many or most people. But we just haven't figured out the exact sequencing of those treatments yet to bring that about.

Taylor Wilson:

And I mean, what's some of the science behind these advances that we're seeing?

Karen Weintraub:

It's a combination of things. Some of the therapies are understanding the molecular activity, what genes got messed up in these cancers, or what's going on at the level of the tumor. Some of them are what's going on at the level of the immune system and helping amp up the immune system to fight off the cancer. And then again, as some combination seems to be effective as well.

Taylor Wilson:

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma. announced this week. What's his prognosis and will these new treatments help him?

Karen Weintraub:

So obviously everybody's course is different. I can't predict what will happen to him, but again, this is not a death sentence anymore. It certainly was 15, 20 years ago. Now there's a possibility that he could live out a normal lifespan, certainly one hopes that he will.

Taylor Wilson:

And Karen, this really feels like a success story. What lessons can be taken to help advance other cancer treatments?

Karen Weintraub:

Yeah, so there's maybe not direct lessons in the sense of the same treatments might not exactly work for other cancers. The immune therapies that were invented for leukemia and lymphoma are the same ones that are being used, slightly different targets, for multiple myeloma. So the learnings have gone from one blood cancer to another. This sequence of events here is what's happening actually in a number of cancers and will hopefully happen in a lot more, which is coming up with enough treatments to keep people alive, to turn diseases into chronic rather than acute problems, crises. Keep people alive long enough and sequence treatments enough, improve the quality of those years, the years that people do get, and then eventually, hopefully these combinations and treatments will become a cure.

One other key point, I think, is that not all of these treatments are available to everybody. A lot more people could be effectively treated if they had access to these treatments. Some of them are very expensive. Some of them just require a lot of expertise and specialization that may not be available to people, say in rural areas or people without good insurance. And so it's very important for patients to get access to specialists, and for these drugs to be made available to people who may not have the financial resources.

Taylor Wilson:

Karen Weintraub covers health for USA TODAY. Thanks Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

After a heavy week of news, we wanted to ring in this Labor Day weekend with a brighter story. So let's go to Michigan and the story of a dog who found a home.

He'd had enough of being at the animal shelter, so Scout the dog climbed over a fence, then another, crossed a busy highway, and ended up on the couch inside of a nursing home. A nurse there found him, called the shelter just down the road, and they discovered that Scout had escaped. The sheriff then came and returned him to the shelter. But a few nights later, on that same couch in the nursing home lobby, there was Scout. He'd somehow again scaled a 10-foot chain link fence, then another six-foot fence, and finally that same scary highway without getting run over, all to find the same couch as before, to make himself at home for the night. A call was made, and he went back to the shelter. When it happened a third time, the nursing home had a decision to make, and they adopted him.

Nowadays, Scout has free rein at Glacier Hill, the nursing home where he kept showing up, and delights the 20 or so seniors who live there. He even knows how to get into their rooms by jumping up and using his paw to pull down door handles. And he knows which residents keep dog biscuits in their walkers for him. Earlier this year, the nurses held a fundraiser in Scout's honor. They raised money for the shelter that brought Scout in off the street and later to them. You can read more of Scout's story with a link in today's show notes.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Special thanks to Cherie Saunders. If you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with another episode of 5 Things.

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