Jasmine Crockett adjusted her microphone, leaned forward, and fixed her gaze on the bench. “Justice Thomas,” she began, her voice deliberate and slow, “do you even recall the names of the Black men whose freedoms you’ve chipped away with your rulings?”

The room fell silent, the tension so palpable it seemed to slice through the air. Clarence Thomas, sitting with his trademark stoic expression, shifted ever so slightly, his jaw tightening at the confrontation.

“Congresswoman Crockett,” he replied, his voice clipped, “you sit in a chamber forged by their blood, their marches, their sacrifices. Yet you wield that power to crush their descendants.”

Jasmine didn’t flinch. She had long since stopped caring about the sharpness of his words. “You interpret the law like it’s written for statues, not people,” she said, her tone cutting through the air like a sharp blade. “The Constitution wasn’t born flawless. It was born with shackles. We broke them. But you, Justice Thomas, you seem intent on polishing those chains and hanging them back on the wall.”

Thomas’s expression remained unchanged, but the room could feel the chill in his voice when he responded. “Emotion doesn’t decide legality. I won’t be swayed by sentiment.”

Jasmine’s eyes never left him. “No, but you’ve been swayed by power, and the cost always falls on us. You call that justice?” Her voice rose, cutting through the murmur of the room like a knife.

The tension deepened as she continued. “If you truly answer to the law, Justice Thomas, then answer this: Why do your rulings so often echo the voices of those who’ve spent decades silencing ours?”

Clarence Thomas’s face remained unreadable, but the silence in the room thickened as the words lingered. Jasmine pressed on, unwavering in her conviction. “You claim to follow the Constitution. Yet, your interpretation always lands hardest on Black communities, on poor families, on those still fighting for the freedoms that seat was supposed to protect.”

He responded evenly, his voice a mask of calm. “I do not tailor my judgments based on race or class. That would betray my oath.”

Jasmine nodded, her gaze never wavering. “Exactly. And that’s the problem. You refuse to see the difference between neutrality and neglect. Neutrality in the face of injustice isn’t impartiality. It’s participation.”

Clarence’s voice grew more stern. “My job is not to pander to public pressure or political guilt. It’s to uphold the written word of the law.”

Jasmine leaned in slightly, her voice steady, but her words landing like a blow. “And what good is that word if it’s used as a sword instead of a shield?”

The room fell silent as her words settled, each syllable cutting through the air with surgical precision. “You treat the Constitution like scripture,” she continued, her voice sharp. “But you skip the chapters soaked in blood—the ones written in back rooms, in cotton fields, in courtrooms where men who looked like us were never meant to win.”

Thomas folded his hands, his face still unreadable. “The Constitution is not a storybook,” he said flatly. “It is a legal framework. My job is to read what’s there, not imagine what’s not.”

Jasmine’s reply was swift and unyielding. “No. Your job is to interpret what was written by imperfect men and apply it to a world still bleeding from their errors. But instead, you treat every word like it was handed down from the heavens—untouchable— even when those words justified slavery, segregation, and second-class citizenship.”

Thomas’s tone tightened, his patience wearing thin. “That’s why we have amendments. That’s why we have a process.”

Jasmine snapped, her voice rising. “But that process fails when the people interpreting it refuse to evolve. You hide behind the letter of the law while ignoring the lives it’s supposed to protect. You read it like it was never wrong to begin with.”

The silence that followed was thick, almost suffocating. Jasmine leaned back, but her eyes never left Thomas. “Your rulings don’t just reflect your interpretation,” she said, her voice low but clear. “They reflect your denial.”

She let the words settle, then continued with the calm of someone delivering the final blow. “You moved past it,” she repeated, his words now her weapon. “Past the marches, past the hoses and dogs, past the schools we weren’t allowed into. Past the reason you were even considered for that bench.”

Clarence Thomas remained unmoved, his gaze fixed forward, but his posture stiffened ever so slightly. Jasmine pressed on, her words sharper now. “You call it moving forward, but what you really did was step over the people still crawling. The ones still catching their breath from the smoke of battles they never asked for but were born into.”

He responded, his voice colder. “I didn’t step over anyone. I rose on merit.”

Jasmine’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward, her voice cutting through the air like a scalpel. “Then why do your decisions sound like they come from someone who believes they never needed the movement that carried them? Why does every opinion read like a warning to others not to expect justice if they look like you?”

Thomas’s voice was firm, but Jasmine’s words hit with deadly precision. “I don’t see justice through a racial lens.”

She leaned in even further, her tone razor-sharp. “No, you don’t see it at all. You turned your back on the mirror because you didn’t like who was staring back.”

Jasmine’s voice dropped lower, steady and unshaken. “You say the law is blind, but Justice Thomas, I wonder if it’s just you who refuses to look.”

Clarence shifted in his seat, but the silence between them was deafening. Jasmine’s words were a storm, unstoppable and relentless. “You’ve made rulings that chip away at the very protections that let a child in Alabama dare to dream of Harvard.” She didn’t pause. “You voted against affirmative action like it was a handout, not a correction for centuries of theft.”

His reply was crisp. “I refused to be defined by victimhood. I earned my place without it.”

Jasmine didn’t blink. “No one’s asking you to be a victim, but we are asking you not to pull up the ladder after you’ve climbed it.”

The room murmured, the tension rising, but Jasmine’s words didn’t soften. “You act like justice means pretending we all started from the same line. But you know better. You lived better, and still, you rule like struggle is an excuse instead of a reality.”

Thomas’s tone became colder still. “My role isn’t to hand out advantages. It’s to uphold equal treatment.”

Jasmine leaned forward slightly, her voice like a knife through silk. “Then stop handing out equality like a gift. It’s a right, and your rulings treat it like a gamble only the privileged can win.”

Her words rang out in the room, sharp and unmistakable, as she drove the final point home: “You speak about colorblind law, yet your decisions read like they’re written with invisible ink—where our stories vanish the moment they hit your desk.”

Clarence Thomas’s expression never changed, but the weight of Jasmine’s words hung in the air, undeniable and inescapable.