The GOP’s desperate attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn the results of the presidential election has attracted powerful support from … states that have yet to come into being, according to a Thursday court filing.
The “states” of New California and New Nevada filed an amicus brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to have the Supreme Court block states that voted for Joe Biden from casting their electoral votes for the president-elect.
The case has pitted Texas and 18 other red states against states that went for Joe Biden, with the ultimate goal of getting the Supreme Court to invalidate Biden’s win.
Paxton’s claims have been described as being divorced from reality and legal precedent, but the addition of two “states” from a polity that has yet to come into being could challenge Paxton to take his claims a step further: if Texas can outweigh Pennsylvania, can New Nevada and New California outweigh their precursors?
It also could offer Paxton a tantalizing opportunity for appeal should he lose the case. A New Supreme Court of the United States could be in the offing, or a New Texas that would replace that of old.
For now, New Nevada and New California are represented by Pahrump, Nevada attorney Robert E. Thomas, III.
From his erstwhile capital of Pahrump, Thomas has been nurturing the fledging state of New Nevada since the 2018 midterms.
According to Thomas’s website for the “New Nevada” State Movement, he began to assemble insurrectionists after being angry about GOP losses in the 2018 midterms.
The movement’s slogan is “What Would You Change, If You Could Do It Over Again?,” a reference to the state slogan as well as being a potential descriptor for the kinds of thoughts in which introspection among the plaintiffs could result.
Armed with that slogan and his website, Thomas has been fighting for nearly two years to divorce Nevada’s rural counties from Las Vegas, leaving the gambling mecca (home to a Trump hotel and top GOP fundraiser Steve Wynn) to wither on the vine as the state’s bucolic heartland presumably unites under the banner of New Nevada.
Thomas channels the Founding Fathers, citing a number of “grievances” that have led him down the path not of secession, but apparently of replacement.
They include impingement on Second Amendment rights, rule by a “rebellious” state government, and “irrational taxation.”
Now, in the Supreme Court brief, Thomas has added New California to his coalition of fake states. He cited the conduct and outcome of the 2020 elections as another grievance spurring his revolution of state replacement.
“An opinion by this Court affirming a national, uniform rule of law reestablishing the supremacy of The Electors Clause of Article II, § 1 of the United States Constitution will resolve some of the complaints causing the establishment of these new States,” the filing reads.
Thomas added that “lawless actions of Governors Newsome California and Sisolak (Nevada) (sic)” had contributed to their own formation.
According to the website and to Thomas’ past public statements, his movements’ particular beef seems to be based on the idea that rural Nevadans should have greater voting power than that of Las Vegas.
“Clark County has a larger population than all the rural counties of Nevada combined,” Thomas wrote. “Thus, what Clark County desires, Rural Nevada must accept, like it or not.”
In the Paxton lawsuit, he apparently saw an opportunity to allay the following harm: “New California State and New Nevada State are suffering under many governmental usurpations, this usurpation by the Executive Branch being one of many.”
The Pahrump Valley Times reported in January 2019 that Thomas was particularly enraged by the 1964 Reynolds v. Sims Supreme Court decision, which held that districts in state legislatures should have roughly equal population.
“This decision created what our Founding Fathers feared; a tyranny of the majority (‘mob rule’),” Thomas told the paper. “Now, large population centers out-vote all the rest of rural Nevada with distressing regularity. That injustice can be corrected by the formation of a New Nevada State.”
As of this writing, the borders of the newly declared states were unclear. Whether they are simply “New California” and “New Nevada” or are “New California State” and “New Nevada State” also remains unclear.
It’s unclear when Thomas began to speak for New California as well as New Nevada.
