Trump Celebrates Samuel Alito’s Disturbing Loyalty

Donald Trump is praising Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s “courage” for refusing to recuse himself from 2020 election-related cases, as he blames the upside-down flag outside his home on his wife devolving into a fascist mega-Karen in a fight with the neighbors.

Posting to his social media site, Trump showered adulation on Alito:  “Congratulations to United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’ to refuse stepping aside from making a decision on anything January 6th related,” Trump wrote on Truth Social with inexplicable punctuation choices. “All U.S. Judges, Justices, and Leaders should have such GRIT—Our Country would be far more advanced than its current status as A BADLY FAILING NATION, headed by the Worst President in American History, Crooked Joe Biden!”

Alito’s “GUTS” were well obscured in the letter he sent to Senators Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday, where he argued he was faultless because he’s powerless to stop his wife from engaging in conspiracy-addled nonsense.

“As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down. But for several days, she refused,” wrote the yellow-bellied judge. Alito further strained the definition of courage by explaining that the appearance of flags associated with anti-government extremists is simply because “my wife is fond of flying flags.”

Alito positioned the extremist flag and inverted U.S. flag—both incredibly niche for the average flag lover but intensely prominent among the far right—as part of a rotating selection of flags his wife loves, including “college flags, flags supporting sports teams, state and local flags, flags of nations from which the ancestors of family members came, flags of places we have visited, seasonal flags, and religious flags.”

“I was not familiar with the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag when my wife flew it,” Alito claimed, saying his wife “may have mentioned that it dates back to the American Revolution, and I assumed she was flying it to express a religious and patriotic message.” This coming from a man who is evidently neither capable of reeling in his untethered wife nor doing a basic Google search, while still being allowed to make monumental decisions about our civil rights.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be openly bullying President Joe Biden after the latter rejected a Republican effort to sanction the International Criminal Court.

Netanyahu told the Sirius XM radio program The Morgan Ortagus Show in an interview set to air Sunday that he was “surprised and disappointed” that Biden would not be supporting sanctions against the ICC, according to Politico. The publication obtained a clip of the interview, which took place on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the White House said it would reject the GOP-led effort in Congress to reprimand the ICC after its chief prosecutor filed warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and top Hamas leaders—a startling reversal of previous statements from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“The United States said that they would, in fact, back the sanctions bill,” Netanyahu said. “I thought that was still the American position because there was bipartisan consensus just a few days ago.”

“Now you say there’s a question mark, and frankly I’m surprised and disappointed,” Netanyahu told host Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokesperson under Donald Trump.

While Biden previously called the ICC’s move “outrageous,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that “sanctions on the ICC are not an effective or appropriate tool to address U.S. concerns.”

Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leadership have little to gripe about, as the country has enjoyed nearly unceasing diplomatic and military support from the Biden administration since its brutal assault on Gaza began in October, after a Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Israel’s latest assault on displaced Palestinians in Rafah hasn’t resulted in any policy changes, despite gruesome images of charred and burned civilians—and a new report that the bombs used were made in the United States.

While shocking, Israel’s new offensive is a continuation of what experts have described as war crimes from Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leaders, who recently said that their war could last another seven months. If Netanyahu and co. aren’t getting the message from the ICC or international protests to stop adding to the conservative estimate of more than 36,000 Palestinians killed, perhaps Biden needs to stand up to Netanyahu’s humiliation and take a more concrete step: ending weapons shipments to Israel.

Barbara “Barby” Balmaseda’s career as a Republican operative finally hit a new despicable milestone: The former intern for Marco Rubio, volunteer for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign, and ex-director of the Miami Young Republicans was indicted by a grand jury last week for participating in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to newly available court documents.

A D.C. grand jury convened earlier this month indicted Balmaseda on all five charges presented to them, which include felony and misdemeanor charges of obstruction of an official proceeding (the certification of the 2020 election) and entering restricted grounds.

“We look forward to presenting a vigorous defense on her behalf as we have entered a plea of not guilty,” said Balmaseda’s attorney, Nayib Hassan, in a statement to the Miami New Times. Hassan also represented Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who was sentenced to a whopping 22 years in federal prison—the longest sentence related to the Capitol riot to date.

Balmaseda was arrested in December, days after an FBI warrant was requested for her arrest—which came nearly two years after internet sleuths identified her inside the Capitol on January 6 alongside Proud Boys—and after a Vice City Proud Boy who attended the Capitol riot confirmed anonymously to the Miami New Times that “Barby was there.”

The subsequent FBI investigation into Proud Boys who attended the Capitol turned up texts from Balmaseda on the phone of convicted Proud Boy and Miami-Dade GOP committee member Gabriel Garcia, including a text sent two days after the Capitol riot where Balmaseda allegedly texted Garcia, “Hey! Good morning! You left a hat and a gas mask in Adolfo’s car, I also have your sunglasses in my purse and you have my taser.”

Three years after the January 6 Capitol riot, more than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes, according to AP, as sleuths and the federal government continue to identify participants. Balmaseda’s long-awaited indictment is a reminder that the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.

Donald Trump’s representatives are not happy about a new report from The Daily Beast of Trump allegedly bragging about sleeping with adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

On Tuesday, an unnamed celebrity athlete told the publication that Trump was boasting about his affair with Daniels during the 2006 celebrity golf tournament in which Daniels and Trump met.

The athlete said that those who heard Trump’s boasts could hear him saying he had slept with Daniels, according to the article.

“It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, and added that Trump encouraged other celebs to try to have sex with Daniels, which the athlete described as “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”

Perhaps even more damning, the anonymous athlete also said he received phone calls from strangers asking him about the tournament shortly before the 2016 elections—around the time that Daniels’s hush-money payment was being determined.

The Daily Beast reached out to the Trump campaign for comment, who blamed President Biden.

“The Biden campaign is in freakout mode and will try anything to cling to power,” said Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung. “Crooked Joe Biden is a failed president trying to distract from his disastrous tenure. Publishing lies, rumors and innuendos are the hallmarks of losing campaigns and desperate failing media outlets trying to stay afloat. It’s time to Make America Great Again and re-elect President Trump.”

Every political campaign will say that it’s important to stay on message, but blaming the Biden campaign for this type of bad news doesn’t refute the allegations at all. Trump has denied ever having sex with Daniels and didn’t testify himself, possibly because he couldn’t refute any of the accounts from the defense’s witnesses while under oath, making the campaign’s statement seem even more hollow. Besides bragging about sex with Daniels, Trump was also cheating while playing golf, according to the anonymous athlete—a claim that surely irked Trump just as much.

Trump is on trial for allegedly paying off Daniels to cover up their affair before the 2016 election, and is awaiting a verdict from the jury after closing arguments concluded Wednesday. He faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a law on Wednesday that has the potential to limit the ability to observe and record police activity.

Louisiana House Bill 173 will create a 25-foot buffer zone between civilians and police officers who are “lawfully engaged in the execution of [their] official duties,” stripping away possible accountability measures in the event of police brutality.

“No person shall knowingly or intentionally approach within [25] feet of a peace officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties after the peace officer has ordered the person to stop approaching or to retreat,” the law reads.

While the distance may not seem unreasonable, human rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that the law is a massive breach of the U.S. Constitution and the public’s First Amendment rights.

Similar, less restrictive laws have been struck down in other states. In 2022, a legal challenge brought by 10 media organizations and the ACLU against Arizona House Bill 2319 effectively ended a law requiring an eight-foot buffer zone between observers and police, with a federal court noting that it “fails to see how the presence of a person recording a video near an officer interferes with the officer’s activities.” The ACLU also sued Indiana last year for enacting a nearly identical law, which the organization argued had criminalized the “public’s most effective tool for shining a light on police misconduct.”

But restricting police transparency wasn’t the only right-wing policy win in the slew of bills Landry signed Tuesday. The governor also signed into law Senate Bill 276, reclassifying abortion drugs such as misoprostol and mifepristone as Schedule IV drugs under the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act. Despite calls from doctors who argued the anti-abortion law would make prescribing the drugs more difficult in critical health emergencies, Landry insisted that the policy would serve as a “protective measure” to ensure the safety of the women of Louisiana, reported The Advocate.