Chief Justice Roberts Kicks Democrats in Teeth Over Alito

Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday rejected a request by Democratic senators to discuss Samuel Alito’s impartiality following concerns about a pair of January 6–aligned flags that had been spotted flying at two of the justice’s residences.

In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Roberts claimed that “the format proposed—a meeting with leaders only of one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the court—simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.”

The rejection follows a similar shutdown by Alito himself, who issued a letter to the pair on Wednesday stating that he would not recuse himself from lawsuits relating to the 2020 presidential election—specifically, Trump v. United States—and claiming that his impartiality had not “reasonably” come into question.

Alito was accused of compromising the court’s impartiality after a “Stop the Steal” upside-down U.S. flag was spotted at his house in Arlington, Virginia, and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag—a Revolutionary War symbol adopted by Christian nationalists—was seen flying at the justice’s New Jersey vacation home.

Alito has attempted to wipe his hands of both incidents, blaming the controversial messaging on his wife, whom he described as “fond of flying flags.” Her “reasons for flying the flag are not relevant” to his ability to weigh in on the immunity case, he said in his letter to Durbin and Whitehouse.

But Democrats aren’t letting up on the issue, digging up alternative pathways to hold Alito to account that don’t rely on his having the final say. In a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin argued that the executive branch could still step in to challenge the judiciary’s ethics.

“The U.S. Department of Justice … can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and [Clarence] Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law,” Raskin posited.

“This recusal statute, if triggered, is not a friendly suggestion,” Raskin continued. “It is Congress’s command, binding on the justices, just as the due process clause is. The Supreme Court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices. Ignoring it would trespass on the constitutional separation of powers because the justices would essentially be saying that they have the power to override a congressional command.”

The Trump campaign is predictably resorting to the boss’s tactics amid new allegations that he used a racial slur to refer to a Black contestant on The Apprentice—and that it was caught on tape.

Responding to the bombshell claims by former Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt, originally published in Slate, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung launched into a tirade on Twitter on Thursday.

“Prove it, bitch,” Cheung wrote.

“You can’t, because it’s a fake and bullshit story your dumb ass is peddling because Biden is hemorrhaging support from Black Americans.”

There’s no evidence to suggest that Pruitt, who was until this year bound by a nondisclosure agreement, is lying about Trump’s use of the n-word, or about his rigging the show so that Kwame Jackson lost in the finale of the series’s first season. But it is very much on brand for the Trump campaign, and for Cheung, an apparent “virtuoso at mimicking his boss,” in particular, to reflexively dismiss the story as “fake and bullshit.”

The Biden campaign, while not exactly “hemorrhaging support,” is struggling to retain the Black support on which Biden rode to the Democratic nomination, and eventually the White House, in 2020. According to a New York Times poll, Biden is winning only 63 percent of support from Black registered voters in a one-on-one race with Trump, down from the 92 percent of Black voters who supported him in 2020.

Meanwhile, Trump, who recently spoke at a rally in the South Bronx, is making a play to appeal to Black voters. It is unlikely that dismissing credible allegations of racism online is part of that plan. But when the only tool the campaign has is a hammer, everything, even the candidate’s reported use of racial slurs, looks like a nail.

Samantha Power used to be a vocal opponent of genocidal action—until her government underlings began resigning in mass protest over the Biden administration’s continued support for the war in Gaza.

At least 19 internal dissent memos have circulated within the U.S. Agency for International Development, where several employees have left their posts over the administration’s refusal to address the atrocities in Gaza. One now former senior adviser, Alexander Smith, cited an environment in which specific people “cannot be acknowledged as fully human.”

Smith told The Guardian that he was given a choice to resign or be fired after his presentation on child mortality among Palestinians was canceled by the agency’s leadership. He resigned on Monday.

“USAID has always prided itself on our programs supporting democracy, human rights, and rule of law,” Smith wrote to Power in a leaked letter obtained by the publication. “In Ukraine, we call for legal redress when people are victimized, and name perpetrators of violence.… We boldly state ‘Slava Ukraini’ in peppy promotional videos.

“When it comes to the Palestinians, however, we avoid saying anything about their right to statehood, the abuses they’re currently suffering, or which powers have been violating their basic rights to freedom, self-determination, livelihoods, and clean water,” he wrote.

But Power was not always so complicit in state-sponsored violence. In fact, her tacit support for the Biden administration’s actions appears to run directly against her own ethical code. The book sleeve of A Problem From Hell, Power’s examination of America’s silent response to genocide in the twentieth century that won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction (among other awards), advertises the former ambassador’s stance on government employees who fail to protect the people.

“Samantha Power poses a question that haunts our nation’s past: Why do American leaders who vow ‘never again’ repeatedly fail to marshal the will and the might to stop genocide?” the jacket asks.

Representative Lauren Boebert’s chances of being reelected are not looking good, according to a poll commissioned by one of her Democratic opponents, Ike McCorkle.

Boebert chose not to run in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, the seat she currently occupies, to get more favorable odds in a more conservative district after a very narrow win in 2022. The district she chose, Colorado’s 4th, is supposed to be the most reliably Republican one in the state and was recently vacated by the retiring Ken Buck.

But McCorkle, one of three Democrats vying for the seat and a former Marine, leads Boebert 41 percent to 27 percent in the poll, with 33 percent undecided. In contrast, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden 45 to 35 percent in the 4th district, with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. getting 6 percent and 14 percent undecided.

It hasn’t been a great term in office for Boebert since being barely reelected. She missed crucial votes, feuded with fellow far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, was called out by President Biden for celebrating a bill she opposed, and then there’s her inappropriate behavior at a theatrical performance of Beetlejuice, captured on video. Her reelection campaign hasn’t gone well, either, as she bombed in a debate with other candidates and is struggling to win over her district’s Republican voters. She’s lost support from her existing supporters, including volunteers. Everywhere she goes, the Beetlejuice heckling follows.

She’s been trying to demonstrate her Trump bona fides, showing up to support him at his hush-money trial, but if polling is accurate, it doesn’t appear to be helping her chances to stay in office. Not only does she have to win over Republicans and escape the June 25 primary, but it appears that even Democrats have a shot at defeating her.

Donald Trump and his supporters are upset over the instructions given to the jury in his hush-money trial.

Judge Juan Merchan issued instructions to the 12-person jury that they had to reach a unanimous verdict on each of the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Overall, they must agree that Trump used some unlawful means to interfere in the 2020 election, according to Merchan, but they don’t need to agree on which means it was.

“Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were,” Merchan instructed.

This was either misunderstood, or too much to handle for Trump and his supporters.

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump complained, “IT IS RIDICULOUS, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND UNAMERICAN that the highly Conflicted, Radical Left Judge is not requiring a unanimous decision on the fake charges against me brought by Soros backed D.A. Alvin Bragg. A THIRD WORLD ELECTION INTERFERENCE HOAX!”

Trump’s political allies also echoed his sentiments.

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.