Samuel Alito Is Mad You Can’t Be Bigoted Toward Gay People Anymore

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is complaining that people who oppose homosexuality were being unfairly branded as bigots, despite that being a dictionary definition of bigotry.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a case about whether it is legal to exclude potential jurors based on their religion. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Jean Finney, who is lesbian, against her longtime employer, the Missouri Department of Corrections, for workplace discrimination and retaliation due to her sexuality. During jury selection for the trial, which Finney won, her lawyer asked the judge to remove three jurors who had expressed beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. Finney’s lawyer argued their religious beliefs would bias them against LGBTQ people.

The state of Missouri appealed the decision, arguing that the jury selection process had been discriminatory on religious grounds. An appeals court sided with Finney, ruling the jurors had been eliminated due to their beliefs about homosexuality, not because they were Christians. Missouri appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which declined Tuesday to hear the case.

In a statement, Alito said he agreed with the decision not to hear the lawsuit, but warned he felt the case was a harbinger of greater danger.

The appeals court ruling “exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges,” Alitio wrote, referring to the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized marriage equality.

“Namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government,” he said. “The opinion of the Court in that case made it clear that the decision should not be used in that way, but I am afraid this admonition is not being heeded by our society.”

For what it’s worth, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “bigot” as “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” That kind of sounds like someone who believes that gay people will go to hell.

Conservatives have been blatantly trying to chip away at marriage equality in recent years, including the far-right members of the Supreme Court. After overturning Roe v. Wade, Alito’s fellow extreme Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to “revisit” other rulings, including Obergefell and Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down bans on contraceptives for married couples.

In the waning hours of Donald Trump’s presidency, his mind wasn’t lingering on the violent insurgency he had helped perpetuate on January 6, his fake elector scheme to overturn the general election results, or the transfer of power to his successor, Joe Biden. Instead, according to former administration officials, Trump’s mind was consumed by one thing: Snoop Dogg.

“Well, fuck him,” Trump moaned, according to administration officials interviewed by Rolling Stone.

Just hours before Biden’s inauguration, old tensions between Trump and Snoop D.O. Double G had resurfaced, nearly eviscerating the “love and respect” that the two had developed over the second half of Trump’s term while working together on executive clemency for federal prisoners, according to the magazine. That included clemency for one of Snoop’s close friends, Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris, who had been refused several appeals in his decades-long sentence on cocaine trafficking–related and attempted murder charges.

But certain administration staffers were skeptical of the president’s sudden soft shoulder on criminal reform, and worked instead to compile a report on the mud that Snoop had slung at the president in the first half of his term, including a music video in which Snoop performed a symbolic execution on a Trump clown, and 2018 comments from the rapper that derided the president and his sycophantic followers as “racist.”

In an instant, the report squashed any good will with the temperamental leader of the free world, ushering in a phase that a former White House official simply described as “chaos.” On January 18, 2021, Trump instructed his aides to remove Harry-O’s name from the clemency list and to toss his paperwork as punishment for Snoop’s past burns.

It took the work of activists, Snoop’s team, and some of Trump’s closest aides to quell the tirade via unreleased documentary footage from the free Harry-O campaign showcasing some of Snoop’s recent, more positive comments on the former game show host. It seemed to work.

On January 19, 2021, Harris got word that he’d be a free man.

“That’s great work for the president and his team on the way out,” Snoop Dogg reportedly said during a call, according to a January 20, 2021, article from Rolling Stone.

But all has not been forgotten—or forgiven. The prolific West Coast rapper has not endorsed Trump in his 2024 race for the White House, and “those close to him say they would be stunned if he ever did,” the magazine reports. Still, some cards have been left on the table. In an interview published by London’s Sunday Times, the rapper repeated himself: “I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump.”

E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer has warned that they could sue Donald Trump a third time, because apparently owing $88.3 million isn’t enough for the former president.

Trump owes Carroll the massive amount for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s and then defaming her twice when denying the assault. Trump is apparently unable to accept his fate, most recently insisting at a rally on Saturday that he doesn’t know who Carroll is.

When asked Monday night about his comments, Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley appeared to hint that a third lawsuit was possible.

“We’re watching, we’re listening,” she told MSNBC. “We had really hoped that, as I think the jury found, that $83 million would maybe be enough to convince him to keep E. Jean Carroll’s name out of his mouth. Apparently, he showed us this weekend that he really cannot control himself and that maybe it wasn’t.”

Carroll revealed in her 2019 memoir that Trump raped her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She subsequently sued him twice: The first lawsuit was for the assault and for posts he made about her on social media in 2022. Last spring, a jury unanimously found Trump liable of sexual abuse and defamation, and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million in damages.

The second lawsuit, which went to trial in January, was over Trump’s allegations in 2019 that Carroll had made up the rape allegation to promote her book. And then, hours after he was found liable for sexual abuse, he went on CNN and repeated comments about Carroll that had just been deemed defamatory. The jury in that case awarded Carroll a total of $83.3 million in damages.

Trump has said he will appeal the rulings, and his lawyers have launched a desperate and so far unsuccessful bid to have the cases thrown out. But more than anything, Trump appears hell-bent on getting Carroll to sue him a third time for the exact same thing. Just minutes after the most recent verdict was handed down, Trump continued to share negative posts about Carroll on Truth Social.

The widow of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, on Tuesday was temporarily banned from X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, for reasons still not clear.

On Monday, Yulia Navalnaya shared a powerful, nine-minute video accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of killing her husband and of hiding the body in an effort to wait for the poison to disappear. Navalnaya pledged to continue her husband’s fight.

“They are cowardly and meanly hiding his body, refusing to give it to his mother and lying miserably while waiting for the trace of” poison to disappear, Navalnaya said, according to a translation by SkyNews.

But less than 24 hours later, she was booted off the platform. X did not cite a reason for her dismissal other than “violating the X rules,” though her dismissal came after the company’s private owner, Elon Musk, spent a year aggressively insisting the platform be a bastion of free speech, to the point of allowing white supremacists and antisemites to run freely.

By Tuesday morning, and after pressure from her political allies, Navalnaya was back online.

Navalnaya has long skirted the political spotlight that came with being the family of one of Putin’s greatest dissidents, but her husband’s death four days ago inside the country’s notoriously brutal Arctic Polar Wolf penal colony has suddenly rocked that reality. In a video posted to the platform, Navalnaya urged other Russians to join her and continue to fight back against the Russian government.

“In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul,” Navalnaya said. “But I have another half left—and it is telling me I have no right to give up.”

“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny.”

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, called Navalnaya’s accusations “unfounded” and “insolent.”

Gun control advocate David Hogg has found a clever way to capitalize on Donald Trump’s newly launched sneakers.

Trump unveiled the garish kicks, which his fans can find at GetTrumpSneakers.com, on Saturday at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia. If the website name seems a bit awkward, it may be because Hogg quickly snapped up the more obvious choice: ShopTrumpSneakers.com.

Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting and a co-founder of the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives, announced his purchase on Saturday. The URL leads to a page called The Shotline, which Hogg explained allows people to send an automated call to their member of Congress urging gun law reform.

“The twist is the person who makes the call is a victim of gun violence,” Hogg said. The website uses A.I. technology to recreate the victims’ voices for the automated call.

As of Tuesday, almost 72,000 calls have been sent through The Shotline.

“Thank you to team trump for being dumb enough to not pay the $12 for the website,” Hogg tweeted Monday night, celebrating his website’s success. “I’ll give it to you for a small donation of $1 million to March For Our Lives.”

Trump launched his sneaker line the day after he was hit with a $354 million ruling for committing real estate–related financial fraud in New York state. Before he can appeal the ruling, Trump would first have to pay the entire amount plus interest, which could add as much as an additional $100 million.

Not to mention the fact that Trump owes $88.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault and defamation, $400,000 to The New York Times, and thousands of dollars in other legal fees and fines. That’s a lot of sneakers.

Trump has positioned himself as staunchly anti–gun control. Just two weeks ago, he spoke at an event organized by the National Rifle Association. The NRA was a major supporter of Trump during his first term, and the group appears ready for a second act.

The former president swore that if he is elected, he will immediately undo all of the Biden administration’s gun regulations.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump told the crowd, promising that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”