RBG’s Family Furious Over Namesake Award For Musk

March 16, 2024 News, Politics

The Washington Post reports:

The family of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and some of the Supreme Court justice’s former colleagues have denounced this year’s slate of honorees for an award that a philanthropic foundation bestows in the name of the liberal icon.

In a statement Friday, the family called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation’s plans to give its “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award” to conservative billionaires Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, among others, “an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother.”

Without specifically criticizing any of the honorees — who also include Martha Stewart, Sylvester Stallone and financier Michael Milken — the Ginsburg family said the foundation “has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.”

Mother Jones reports:

Attaching Ginsburg’s name to Musk, who has amplified racist and antisemitic posts, and Murdoch, whose Fox News purposefully spread Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election and has repeatedly deployed falsehoods to challenge and undermine the values that Ginsburg fought for her entire life, seemed an odd and inappropriate choice. That’s what Ginsburg’s family believes.

According to Trevor Morrison, a former law clerk for Ginsburg, the foundation did not consult Ginsburg’s family about the awardees. He informed Opperman that Ginsburg’s two children, Jane and James Ginsburg, “have indicated to me that, unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored, they very much want their mother’s name to be removed from the award.”

Of note, the chair of the award committee was Oliver North’s lawyer during the Iran-Contra scandal. The chair of the foundation itself, Julie Opperman, is a GOP megadonor.



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