OH MY GOSH, the Luvahs always slay me!!!
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
25 May 2024
24 May 2024
TELL PRESIDENT BIDEN, "THIS IS A TIME FOR PEACEMAKING -AND THAT STARTS WITH A CEASE-FIRE." 24MAI24
PLEASE sign this petition, share with family and friends and pray for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Add your name to tell President Biden, "This is a time for peacemaking — and that starts with a cease-fire."
Dear President Biden,
As Christians, we demand that the U.S. government use its considerable power to advocate for a cease-fire by Israel in Gaza, including withholding U.S. military weapons. The Israeli government's invasion of Rafah makes this even more urgent.
We grieve with all the families who have lost loved ones and pray for an end to the violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
We unequivocally condemn Hamas’ attacks and inhumane treatment of civilians. We demand the immediate release of all hostages.
We equally condemn the Israeli government’s current bombing campaign, ground invasion, 16-year blockade of Gaza, and longstanding military occupation of the West Bank. We demand that Israel move toward democratic norms and an equitable inclusive society for all.
We call on you and your administration to apply maximum diplomatic pressure to negotiate a cease-fire in order to limit the current war and restrain a wider regional conflict, ensure that sufficient medical aid, water, food, and fuel can reach Gazan civilians, and pave the way for political solutions that provide lasting peace, security, and justice.
As Christians, we are shocked at the disregard by armed actors for the lives and safety of international aid workers and for the protection of holy sites and religious charitable institutions that serve as pillars of communities. As peacemakers, we must honor the image of God in every Palestinian and every Israeli.
Peacemaking calls for both restraint and courageous and concrete actions that de-escalate the current conflict and opens up creative possibilities for durable and resilient peace, security, and justice.
This is a time for peacemaking — and that starts with a cease-fire.
Everything at stake at the Supreme Court 22MAI24
I no longer believe the Supreme Court of the United States ( SCOTUS ) will protect America's civil liberties and civil rights. I fear the First Amendment will be shredded and left in tatters on the courtroom floor. I am afraid of what the future holds for any of us who isn't a White "evangelical christian". This is why I remain a sustaining member of the ACLU knowing my monthly donations allow the ACLU to monitor our government, take legal action to defend our freedom, rights and liberties and keep us aware of the status of the legal situation in our country. Here is an update on the SCOTUS, and you can click on the link to join and / or donate to the ACLU.....
We are just weeks away from hearing the Supreme Court's rulings on cases that could impact every one of our rights – from medication and emergency abortion access to our voting rights and criminal law reform. With so many cases on the docket, it can be easy to lose track of what's at stake. That's why we're breaking down the major cases we're tracking. Check out our recap of what we're waiting on from the Supreme Court this term >> IN ABORTION RIGHTS
IN VOTING RIGHTS
IN CRIMINAL LEGAL REFORM
For more on ALL these cases – and others we're tracking this season – read our latest piece recapping this Supreme Court term.
Supporters like you fuel all of this work and more. So as we hear rulings on these important cases, you'll be the first to know what these rulings mean for our rights, our next steps, and how you can take action too. Thanks for all you do, The ACLU Team | ||||
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Two major cases will determine the future of abortion access. In one, the Supreme Court is considering whether to impose nationwide restrictions on mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion and miscarriage care. In the other, the Supreme Court will decide if emergency care mandates include necessary abortion care – or if politicians can force doctors to turn away pregnant people at the emergency room doors.
South Carolina voters are still awaiting a ruling on their new congressional maps – which we, along with partners, challenged in court for being racially discriminatory. The gerrymandering in this case would shut Black voters out of meaningful representation. The Supreme Court will decide whether to overturn these harmful maps.
The Court will soon decide if cities can criminalize unhoused people with no access to shelter for sleeping outside in public. The case stems from an Oregon city's law punishing people for sleeping outside on a blanket, pillow, or even a cardboard sheet to lie on. The Supreme Court will decide if this is a violation of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Unhoused people should not be fined or arrested for simply existing.
FORTY-FIVE! - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody 20MAI24
Parody of “9 to 5” (music and lyrics by Dolly Parton)
Parody lyrics by Randy Rainbow Vocals: Randy Rainbow Song Produced, Orchestrated, Mixed, Mastered by Michael J Moritz Jr @michaeljmoritz Vocal Arrangement - Brett Boles Piano, Synths - Michael J Moritz Jr Bass - Adam DeAscentis Drums - Billy LaGuardia Guitars - Dylan Kondor Saxes - Ryan Saranich Trumpets - James Canty Engineer - Joe AmadioTrump Shares ‘Unified Reich’ Campaign Video During Lunch Break 21MAI24
Trump Shares ‘Unified Reich’ Campaign Video During Lunch Break
The 30-second video was shared on his Truth Social account while he was on a lunch break from his hush-money trial.
Donald Trump’s Truth Social account has boosted a campaign video that spoke of a “unified Reich” in America if he reclaims the White House in the November election.
The 30-second video, which was finally taken down Tuesday after it remained up for 15 hours despite growing outrage, features a series of headlines predicting “what happens after Donald Trump wins,” with answers like, “Economy booms!” and “15 Million Illegal Aliens Deported.” One headline referenced the “creation of a unified Reich,” using a term meaning “realm” or “empire” that is usually associated with Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in Nazi Germany.
The Biden campaign reacted to the video with alarm on Monday night, with campaign spokesman James Singer accusing Trump of “parroting Mein Kampf” in a statement posted to X.
“America, stop scrolling and pay attention. Donald Trump is not playing games; he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power: rule as a dictator over a ‘unified reich,’” Singer wrote.
Amid the controversy, Trump’s campaign said Trump himself had nothing to do with the video and that it had been inadvertently shared by a staffer while the former president was on lunch break from his hush-money trial in Manhattan on Monday.
“This was not a campaign video, it was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the President was in court,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “the real extremist is Joe Biden” for having supposedly “turned his back on Israel and the Jewish people.”
Trump social media video references 'unified reich'
Former president Donald Trump shared a video May 20 on Truth Social suggesting his reelection would bring 'unified Reich'. Trump’s ‘reich’ video, Biden’s pandemic and political smoke detectors
By Philip Bump
May 21, 2024 at 10:09 a.m. EDT
Mini-gaffes generate social media attention and validate preconceptions.
What first caught my eye in the video that was posted to Donald Trump’s account at Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, was an imaginary newspaper headline celebrating the deportation of immigrants should he win this November’s election.
Below that, a date: 28 July 1914 — 11 November 1918.
You will perhaps notice that a second Trump term would unfold not in the 1910s but the 2020s. If you are particularly attuned to world history, you may also notice that the indicated dates are actually the dates marking the beginning and end of World War I. In fact, you can see a mention of World War I in the background text at upper left; it mentions that the conflict is often abbreviated as “WWI.”
That same text snippet is also visible in the “peace through strength” bit of the video, too.
These are pretty clear hallmarks of placeholder text from stock footage. The advantage of newspapers over video is that you can pack a lot more information into a small space, but this means that those showing newspapers (or magazines or books or whatever) on screen have to come up with dummy text to make the thing look real. In movies, they’ll have someone write something that looks real but doesn’t draw attention. At other times, someone will just pull from some similarly inoffensive source — like, say, an encyclopedia entry on a global conflict.
There’s just one problem: Sometimes those entries contain snippets that might be overlooked until someone looks closely. Like a mention of a “unified reich.”
It’s not hard to see why that word, on that screen, would generate attention. “What’s next for America” followed by a hard-to-read sentence that ends in “reich,” a word used to describe the empire envisioned by Nazi Germany? Coming from Donald Trump?
Looking more closely, though, it’s clear that the video isn’t saying that “what’s next” is an American reich. The full sentence says that “industrial strength significantly increased … driven by the creation of a unified reich.” This, too, is a reference to world history, and the evolution of German power in the decades before World War I. That this is just more dummy text is made more obvious by its inclusion in the final page of “newsprint” shown in the video.
The Trump campaign asserts that it didn’t make the video but, instead, that it was made by a supporter and reshared by the former president’s account. (It’s not clear whether Trump himself posted the video; it was published during a break in his Manhattan criminal trial.)
Such things have happened before. In 2015, Trump blamed a social media post insulting Iowans on a “young intern.” The following February, he reshared an unattributed quote from the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. That July, his campaign spent days dealing with the fallout of his resharing an image including antisemitic tropes. Then, as now, it seemed more likely that Trump or his team were insufficiently attentive to what they were sharing than that they were intentionally sending a weird, coded wink to their followers. And then, as now, doing so triggered a flurry of criticisms and suggestions that the shared material was deeply revealing of intent.
The Trump video arrived on the heels of a similar flare-up for President Biden. During a speech in Michigan over the weekend, Biden offered an anecdote intended to show his affection for the city of Detroit and its leadership.
“When I was vice president,” Biden said, “things were kind of bad during the pandemic, and what happened was Barack said to me, ‘Go to Detroit and help fix it.’ Well, poor mayor, he spent more time with me than he ever thought he was going to have to.”
There was a pandemic when Barack Obama was president; in 2009, the H1N1 influenza virus reached that status and Biden was tasked with the government’s response. (This was a common point of comparison among Trump supporters during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.) But Biden misspoke, as the White House transcript indicates; he meant “recession.”
Fox News wrote a story about the mistake, as did the New York Post and other right-wing outlets.
There are two advantages for partisans in elevating such stories. The more obvious is to embarrass their opponents. The other is slightly more subtle, using such stories to reinforce existing assumptions about the other party’s presidential candidate.
To his critics, Biden’s gaffe is the smoke that proves the fire: He is insufficiently mentally capable to serve as president for another four years. To Trump’s critics, the “reich” video plays the same role: It shows that he is sympathetic to the fascism that defined Nazi Germany — or at least, his supporters are.
We live in a moment where this sort of smoke detection, if you will, is rampant. It’s not new that political candidates and their supporters would seek out gaffes on the part of their opponents. It is new, though, that so many people would be engaged in the gaffe-seeking economy, in serving as smoke detectors that might demonstrate the presence of a conflagration. Anyone, these days, is empowered to have an international audience in the manner that was once reserved for substantial news organizations, so anyone interested in undermining a candidate for president can pore over videos or transcripts and pick out things that might serve as that smoke or otherwise embarrass the candidate. And there are rewards for doing so: the tainted, jinxed currency of social media attention.
Americans have valid concerns about how Trump intends to wield power, should he return to the White House, and about how Biden’s age might affect his job performance. Those points of weakness increase the social value of finding proof of those flaws and — in classic supply-and-demand fashion — increase the supply of examples.
We are a nation littered with political smoke detectors, constantly blaring. The type of smoke detectors, mind you, where you can’t simply take out the battery.
Update: A person who does motion graphics and video editing work emailed with a link to the stock footage used in the video Trump shared. This person noted that they’d used the same template recently, noting that the designer of the Trump video had apparently not swapped out the filler text included by default.
PBS NewsHour full episode, Jan. 6, 2021, Watch: What we saw the day the Capitol was attacked | 'America, Interrupted' Podcast 8JAN21
SHARING videos (and transcripts when available) of the treason committed against the United States of America by the insurrectionist sent by (NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump and other fascist republican officials to storm the U.S. Capital Building on 6JAN21. drumpf's / trump's actions reminds me of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. hitler and drumpf / trump but incited their followers to commit treason, insurrection and physical violence. While hitler physically participated in the putsch, cadet bone spurs ((NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump) hid in the White House watching the storming of the U.S. Capital Building by his followers he just sent to Capital Hill on TV. I watched this horror take place mostly on PBS, Lisa Desjardins' reporting was nothing short of amazing. First from PBS NewsHour, then MSNBC
On Jan. 6, for the first time in more than two centuries, Congress was attacked and overrun, this time by its own citizens. The PBS NewsHour’s anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff talks to correspondents Lisa Desjardins, Amna Nawaz and Yamiche Alcindor about what they saw as they reported from inside the Capitol, the grounds that surround it and the White House, respectively– and what they and other Americans will remember from that day.
Inside the U.S. Capitol at the height of the siege
At 2:12 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters of President Trump began climbing through a window they had smashed on the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol. “Go! Go! Go!” someone shouted as the rioters, some in military gear, streamed in. It was the start of the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The mob coursed through the building, enraged that Congress was preparing to make Trump’s electoral defeat official. “Drag them out! … Hang them out!” rioters yelled at one point, as they gathered near the House chamber.
Officials in the House and Senate secured the doors of their respective chambers, but lawmakers were soon forced to retreat to undisclosed locations. Five people died on the grounds that day, including a Capitol police officer. In all, more than 50 officers were injured.
To reconstruct the pandemonium inside the Capitol, The Washington Post examined text messages, photos and hundreds of videos, some of which were exclusively obtained. By synchronizing the footage and locating some of the camera angles within a digital 3-D model of the building, The Post was able to map the rioters’ movements and assess how close they came to lawmakers — in some cases feet apart or separated only by a handful of vastly outnumbered police officers. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: https://wapo.st/2QOdcqK
23 May 2024
Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues (Official HD Video)
I think it's best to listen to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" naked, there's just something about the lyrics and the rhythm......AND if you actually know me you know for me life is good naked 👀!!!!
Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues (Official HD Video)Lyrics: Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine I'm on the pavement, thinkin' about the government The man in a trench coat, badge out, laid off Says he's got a bad cough, wants to get it paid off Look out kid, it's somethin' you did God knows when, but you're doin' it again You better duck down the alleyway, looking for a new friend The man in the coon-skin cap in a pig pen Wants 11 dollar bills – you only got 10
Upside-down flag flew at Justice Alito’s house after neighbor dispute & NYT: 2nd controversial flag flown on Alito property & Sign the petition: Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas must recuse themselves in the Trump immunity case!17&22MAI24
IF RBG flew an American flag upside-down in response to the 6 JAN 21 attack the U.S. Capital the hypocritical neo-nazi fascist authoritarian right wing would have had a collective aneurysm rupture. Since fotze Martha-Ann Alito did it it is OK with them. I have carried upside-down American flags at protest against the Kuwait and Iraq wars because I believed the country was in distress, being led into illegal and immoral wars (and I was right). I was not abusing our flag, I was protesting the lies and deceptions the government and the military-industrial complex were using to justify taking us to war. Fotze Martha-Ann Alito flew the American flag upside-down because she was having a hissy fit about a sign in her neighbors yard against drumpf / trump and the traitors of the 6 JAN 21 attempted coup. AND NOW it turns out right wing authoritarian neo-nazi fascist "christian" nationalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an Appeal To Heaven flag that was carried by traitors at the 6 JAN 21 attempted coup at his Long Beach Island, New Jersey vacation home in July and September 2023. The SCOTUS is supposed to hear two court cases related to 6 JAN 21, one is if drumpf / trump has immunity for his involvement in the attempted coup and the other is if DOJ was authorized to an obstruction statute in charging over 300 traitors of 6 JAN 21. ALITO AND THOMAS must recuse themselves from these cases, if they refuse they must be removed. From the Washington Post , Axios and the petition to sign is from Demand Progress.
Supreme Court justice says his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, flew the flag as a symbol of protest after a dispute over political yard signs turned personal.
By Ann Marimow
May 17, 2024 at 5:25 p.m. EDT
In the fraught weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. flew an upside-down American flag at their home following a dispute with a neighbor over anti-Trump yard signs, according to a statement from the justice and interviews with neighbors.
The upside-down flag has long been used as a sign of distress as well as protest by liberals and conservatives. At the time, it had been embraced by supporters of the “Stop the Steal” movement who falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. Some rioters displayed it when they stormed the Capitol to disrupt the formal certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
The flying of the flag at the justice’s home, which was first reported Thursday by the New York Times, has prompted calls for Alito to recuse himself from a pair of high-profile Jan. 6-related cases that the court is set to rule on in coming weeks: whether Trump has immunity for his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, and whether it was proper for the Justice Department to use an obstruction statute to charge the more than 300 who rioted that day.
Neighbors and acquaintances of Martha-Ann Alito said they have never heard her espouse election disinformation or support for the Jan. 6 attack. But they also said the flag was displayed on the front lawn of the Alitos’ Fairfax County, Va., home soon after a dispute that appeared to have political dimensions.
Neither of the Alitos responded to a request for comment through the court.
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” the justice said in a statement to the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
A woman who lives down the street from the Alitos, who like other neighbors spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy, said her adult daughter had brought home some signs from a protest and propped them up against her bushes in the front yard. Another neighbor, who said the signs appeared in late 2020, said that one had Trump’s name on it with an expletive and that the other carried a message along the lines of “you are complicit.”
The house sits at the entrance to the quiet suburban cul-de-sac that the Alitos have called home for more than a decade. The neighbor who described the placards said they didn’t mention the Supreme Court justice explicitly, but the wording of the latter one prompted some residents to wonder whether it was a dig aimed at Alito, a staunch conservative who has frequently sided with Trump’s position in cases before the court.
At the time, the Supreme Court was deciding whether to take emergency action on a case related to Trump’s efforts to block Biden’s victory, and passions were running high about the election and Jan. 6.
In an interview Friday, the mother of the woman with the signs said Martha-Ann Alito was passing by her home one day and made comments to her daughter about them. A heated back-and-forth ensued, but the mother said she did not know what was said. The daughter, who does not live in the Washington area, did not respond to requests for comment.
Alito told Fox News reporter Shannon Bream on Friday that the sign with the expletive was about 50 feet from a school bus stop. He said his wife spoke with the neighbors about the signs shortly after Jan. 6, but the conversation did not go well, Fox reported Friday. The neighbors then put up a sign directly attacking his wife and blaming her for the Jan. 6 riots, Alito alleged. He did not say what the sign said, according to the news station.
Alito told Fox that someone living on the property got into an argument with his wife and called her a crude, derogatory word for women. He said his wife was distraught afterward and wanted to make a statement, so she hung the flag upside down.
Alito said he couldn’t tell his wife what to do, and the neighborhood has been “very political.”
One neighbor interviewed by The Washington Post said she first noticed the upside-down flag in late January 2021, and it remained up for two to five days. The neighbor said she never saw anyone raise the flag or lower it when it came down, and Martha-Ann Alito never told her what message she was trying to send.
The Times obtained a photo of the flag flying upside down Jan. 17, 2021.
The incident has once again plunged the Supreme Court into controversy, two years after revelations that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Trump White House officials to overturn the 2020 election results and said the contest had been stolen. Clarence Thomas has refused subsequent requests from Democrats and experts on court ethics to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases.
Some Democratic politicians and court accountability groups made similar calls Friday for Alito to recuse, arguing that the upside-down flag at his house raised questions about his impartiality and created the appearance of bias.
“[Alito] must recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “Congress should immediately consider legislation to impose an ethical code of conduct on a runaway Supreme Court.”
Asked at the White House briefing whether the president believes Alito should recuse, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that “that is something for the court to decide.” She emphasized that Biden believes the American flag is sacred and that “we should be making sure that it is respected in that way.”
The federal recusal statute that applies to all judges and justices requires a justice to “disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned” or “where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”
The court’s new code of conduct, adopted in November in response to ethics controversies, separately prohibits justices from engaging in political activity and directs them to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Court employees are regularly reminded that they may not publicly support or oppose a partisan organization or candidate, including through the display of “signs or bumper stickers, or stating positions on social media,” according to the court’s human resources manual.
Rakim H.D. Brooks, president of the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice and a former law clerk to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his D.C. Circuit tenure, said in a statement Friday that it does not matter whether it was Alito or his wife who flew the flag on the couple’s property so long as the justice knew it was being flown and did nothing to stop it.
“Supreme Court justices are supposed to be the ultimate guardians of our Constitution,” Brooks said in a statement that called on Alito to recuse from any case related to Trump or the Jan. 6 attack.
But Stephen Gillers, an expert in judicial ethics at New York University’s law school, disagreed, noting that the test in the recusal statute is based on the perspective of a fair-minded person who has all the facts.
“I don’t think such an objective observer would question Alito’s impartiality based on this incident,” Gillers said in an email. “I find it impossible to believe that Alito knew the flag was flying upside down or, if he did know, that he knew the relationship to ‘Stop the Steal.’ I don’t believe he would have allowed this to happen otherwise.”
Gillers added that while Alito’s explanation for how it happened is “hard to believe, it is more credible than the view that he knowingly chose to fly the flag upside down knowing its political message.”
NYT: 2nd controversial flag flown on Alito property
A screenshot of a Google Street View taken outside Justice Samuel Alito's property in New Jersey Photo: Google Street View
An "Appeal to Heaven" flag was hung outside Justice Samuel Alito's vacation home as recently as 2023, according to photographs obtained by the New York Times.
Why it matters: It's the second symbol reportedly displayed outside an Alito home that has a connection to the Jan. 6 riot.
- An upside-down American flag, a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement, was hung outside the Alito home days after the Jan. 6 attack, the New York Times reported earlier this month.
State of play: The "Appeal to Heaven" flag was reportedly displayed at Alito's New Jersey vacation home in July and September of 2023, per photos obtained by the Times for a story that published Wednesday.
- The photos are from different dates and it's not clear whether the flag was hung for consecutive days.
- The white flag dates back to the Revolutionary War and has a green pine tree and the words "Appeal to Heaven" across the top.
- In recent years the flag has been embraced by Christian nationalists, and it featured prominently in the symbols waved during a Trump rally and subsequent riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
- The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment on the Times report.
Of the upside-down flag, Alito told the Times that he had "no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag."
- He said it was "briefly placed" by his wife "in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
Zoom out: The reports of the flags outside Alito's home come as the nation's highest court grapples with a number of Jan. 6-related cases, including whether former President Trump has absolute immunity.
- The Supreme Court's eventual ruling on immunity could decide whether Trump ever faces trial in his federal Jan. 6 case.
- Justice Clarence Thomas has faced similar calls to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases over his wife Virginia "Ginni" Thomas' involvement in efforts to challenge 2020 election results.
- The latest report is likely to escalate calls from Democratic lawmakers who have been urging Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases.
The bottom line: The Supreme Court's ethics code, which was adopted last year following a number of ethics controversies, says that justices should "avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities."
Go deeper: Alito faces intense heat from Congress over flag controversy
Go deeper
May 21, 2024 -Politics & Policy
Alito faces intense heat from Congress over flag controversy
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito during a formal group photograph on Oct. 7, 2022. Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing blowback in Congress over reporting that an upside-down flag — a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement — hung outside his home in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.
Why it matters: Even some Republicans are criticizing Alito, with Democrats going so far as to demand his recusal from Jan. 6-related cases and even censure.
Sign the petition: Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas must recuse themselves in the Trump immunity case!
According to reports from The New York Times, an upside-down American flag (a prominent ‘Stop the Steal’ symbol after January 6) flew over Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house.1
The flag was raised over Alito’s house while the Court considered whether or not to take on a critical election case in the days after the Capitol riots, just before President Biden was sworn in.2 A Supreme Court Justice displaying a symbol at their house representing efforts to overthrow the 2020 election is disturbing AND a clear conflict of interest as Alito prepares to rule on the Trump immunity case in the next few weeks.
Alito isn’t the only one with a conflict of interest. Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas attended the January 6 Stop the Steal rally and pleaded with senior White House staff to help Trump overturn the election.3
Alito’s and Thomas’ actions continue to undermine public confidence in the judiciary, and raise serious ethical questions about their decisions to preside over cases relating to Trump and January 6.
As Senator Dick Durbin said of Alito’s upside-down flag, "Such actions from a person in his position send a worrying message about the stability and respect for our democratic norms."4 Rep. Jamie Raskin called it “a very clear conflict of interest.”5
Despite clear conflicts of interest, Thomas has failed to recuse himself from Trump’s immunity case, which could decide whether Trump and others involved in January 6, including his wife, could be prosecuted for election interference.6 Alito also refuses to recuse himself from January 6 related cases, even though he showed support for the insurrection at his house.
This blatant corruption on our highest court cannot be allowed to stand.
Thanks for taking action,
Joey and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
- The New York Times, “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display,” May 16, 2024.
- Ibid.
- The New Yorker, “Legal Scholars Are Shocked By Ginni Thomas’s 'Stop the Steal' Texts,” March 25, 2022.
- Huffington Post, "Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin Calls On Samuel Alito To Recuse From Jan. 6 Cases,” May 17, 2024.
- The Hill, "Raskin on upside-down flag at Alito home: ‘It’s a very clear conflict of interest,’” May 19, 2024.
- CBS News, "Supreme Court appears divided over obstruction law used to prosecute Trump, Jan. 6 rioters,” April 16, 2024.
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