Alito Made Millions on Fossil Fuels But Won’t Recuse From Exxon Case

You see how this looks, right?

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has reportedly gained as much as $2.9 million from his fossil fuel interests since being tapped to join the high court.

Alito’s reported assets—excluding his home and other personal property—grew from $1.1 million in 2005 to between $3.4 million and $8.4 million in 2024, according to federal financial disclosures. During that period, his oil and gas holdings have made him between $390 million and $2.9 million, according to an analysis by Court Accountability, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

And as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a fossil fuels-related case, that brings Alito’s ability to be impartial into question, Court Accountability co-founder Lisa Graves warned.

“You might have real appreciation for how that industry has helped make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second home on the water, or live a [certain] lifestyle,” said Graves, who put together the analysis.

Alito, who is the only Supreme Court justice with holdings in energy companies, has refused to step back from the upcoming petition brought by fossil fuel giants Suncor and ExxonMobil. He previously recused himself from a petition from the same companies in 2023,. The new case will determine whether municipal and state governments can seek damages for decades of Big Oil deception regarding the climate harms these companies knew their fossil fuel products would cause—a make or break decision for Alito’s second stream of income.

Most of Alito’s financial gains came from property in Grady County, Oklahoma, in which his wife, Martha Ann, holds a mineral interest. Alito has reported the value of the plot between $100,000 and $250,000, but Graves noted that one of Alito’s family members had sold an adjacent plot for $800,000, suggesting that the jurist could be underreporting the land’s value.

In 2022, Alito’s wife agreed to lease the plot of land to Citizen Energy, a private oil and gas company. No reporting or public documents indicate that a well has been drilled on this property, but a lease agreement shows that the owners would have received three-sixteenths of the profit from any extracted oil.

“It raises concerns because you have a sitting justice who is hoping to get richer based on oil exploration of this land,” said Graves.

Citizen Energy was later purchased by Validus Energy, in which Elliott Investment Management holds a major stake. Alito previously landed in hot water after he failed to disclose a free plane ride he took from Elliott Investment Management’s founder. The firm also owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor, which are worth more than $3.2 billion, according to Court Accountability.

Alito has major investments in Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF, a high dividend yield fund in which Exxon is the third-largest holding. In 2004, Alito inherited between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Exxon—which he has since sold.

“My view is that you shouldn’t be able to sell a stock just so you can sit on a case, even though that company’s profits have benefited you,” said Graves.

In May, a coalition of watchdog groups—including environmental, civil liberties, and good government organizations—sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation into whether Alito’s refusal to recuse in this case violates federal law.

The court is expected to hear oral arguments on October 5.

Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline doesn’t think she was handed her late brother’s Senate seat, even though she was literally appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster.

On Tuesday, NewsNation’s Ryan Noble asked what Graham would say to people who think that.

“I don’t see it that way, I’m not being handed this seat. I realize that I have to earn voters, so I’m working hard to do that. Like I said, I want to spend the next two weeks getting out to as many places as I can. You know, Lindsey was amazing, I will never fill his shoes. No one can ever fill his shoes, and I don’t just expect it to be handed to me,” Graham said.

The interview came on the same day that South Carolina is holding a special primary election to replace Lindsey Graham as the Republican candidate. His sister was expected to fill a caretaker role instead of running for a full term. Last month, MAGA personalities raged at her decision to run, calling her “idiotic” and one of the “worst congressional creatures.”

President Donald Trump has decided to back Graham, but conservatives say she doesn’t have the credentials or a history of being involved in right-wing causes. Her only political donation on record happens to be to a South Carolina state senator that helped kill an abortion ban, and she neither voted in the 2024 presidential primary nor the 2016 general election.

For once, Trump’s endorsement hasn’t led to the state’s Republicans coalescing behind Graham. None of the candidates in the special election are expected to get 50 percent of the vote, according to The Washington Post, making a runoff election likely. Turnout is also expected to be low, drawing only the most politically engaged voters, and that doesn’t bode well for Graham.

President Trump thinks that supporters of New York City’s congestion pricing policy are “Radical Left Jihadists.”

The president unloaded this cartoonishly bigoted insult in a Tuesday morning post criticizing NYC’s “Pied-a-Terre Tax”—a fee on second properties valued at $1 million or more. He called it a “dangerous political ‘experiment’” and falsely claimed that the policy would drive people out of the city “by the tens of thousands,” which has not occurred at all so far. Then he got to the congestion pricing.

“It’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved. Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty - And then the Radical Left Jihadists charge Congestion Pricing on top of everything else,” Trump wrote. “This doesn’t work in America, and must be stopped, NOW!”

He went on to proclaim that his administration would explore whether “the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster, before it is too late, for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn.”

Trump’s post came just a day after a Staten Island judge temporarily paused the tax law. The pause was blocked that same day.

President Donald Trump’s new executive orders restricting birthright citizenship have been hit with court challenges from the same groups who successfully challenged his earlier attempt.

CASA, Inc. and Barbara (the pseudonym of an anonymous pregnant immigrant) each filed motions in federal court against the Trump administration Tuesday, seeking to halt Trump’s August 6 executive orders targeting “birth tourism” and limiting the Forteenth Amendment’s application.

CASA was supported by the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. Barbara is supported by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, Democracy Defenders, and Asian Law Caucus, who argue that the Supreme Court’s June ruling against Trump’s previous attack on birthright citizenship prevented any “revisions” regarding legal exceptions.

“If the President issues 100 orders seeking to create new exceptions to the sacred guarantee of the Citizenship Clause, all 100 will be equally illegal,” Barbara’s lawsuit states. “And nothing requires this Court to countenance the continued assault on this foundational constitutional principle or issue an endless string of EO-specific injunctions.”

The new order restricting the Fourteenth Amendment tells government agencies not to “issue documents recognizing United States citizenship” to diplomats in the U.S., the children of alleged members of “terrorist organizations,” people who are completing a “commercial transaction” to ensure a child is born on U.S. soil, and certain people born in U.S. territories.

The executive orders were already long shots to survive legal challenges, considering that they’re using many of the same legal arguments that the Supreme Court struck down in June.

In a statement Tuesday, Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, said the White House “is just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.”

“Immigrant communities know that our rights are on the line, especially when the government uses us as scapegoats,” Kohli said. “The Trump administration already lost once, and it will lose again.”

President Donald Trump isn’t done with his ludicrous allegations of vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

White House officials have directed the Department of Justice to consider launching another lawsuit against former U.S. Olympian David Hearn, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The request comes after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to drop the cases against Hearn and three other alleged vandals, after her office discovered evidence that the pool’s loose lining was caused by a “rushed and flawed installation process.”

Even after Pirro walked the president through her trove of exculpatory evidence, Trump has continued to rave about supposedly damning witness testimony and video footage. But the DOJ has been clear: It can’t prove a thing.

A federal judge dropped the charges against Hearn, but said he would wait to decide whether the case was dismissed “without prejudice,” which would mean the Trump administration couldn’t prosecute Hearn for the same crime going forward.

This week, Representative Jamie Raskin—the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee—will formally demand that the Justice and Interior Departments turn over a wealth of documents related to the charging decisions made in this case.