Democrats will be lucky to keep control of the US Senate after the November elections. However, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has lately demonstrated again why that is imperative: A Republican-led Senate would confirm more far-right ideologues like him to the federal bench if Donald Trump once again elects to the nominees, or it would block many of them. Joe Biden's elections if the president is re-elected.
first for him alito's story: An upside-down American flag flew in his front yard for days in January 2021, the New York Times first reported. that such a thing would happen whenever in the home of a Supreme Court justice is abominable. That he did it when the inverted flag served as a banner for the mobs who had just laid siege to the Capitol and tried to subvert an election is Not only is it arguably unethical (the Supreme Court was hearing cases related to the Trump-inspired “Stop the Steal” effort, and still is), but it is downright seditious. It doesn't matter if the uprising was the work of his wife, as Alito ignobly claimed.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Then on Monday, Chris Geidner, in his Substack Law Dork post, revealed that Alito last year appeared to have joined the Bud Light boycott in protest of that brand's advertising support of transgender people.
According to federal disclosure reports Geidner published, Alito sold stock in Bud Light maker Anheuser-Busch at the height of the controversy last summer and bought stock in competitor Molson Coors. The transactions did not involve large amounts of money, but here again, cases involving transgender rights were, and are, making their way through the courts to the Supreme Courts.
To make matters worse, on Wednesday the New York Times reported that another protest flag associated with right-wing pro-Trump sentiment flew at the Alitos' vacation home in New Jersey last summer.
Alito's apparent blindness to conflicts of interest and his penchant for moody displays of right-wing partisanship are only surpassed by those from his Republican-appointed colleague, Judge Clarence Thomas, spouse of “Stop the Steal” schemer Ginni Thomas. Both judges reject calls to recuse themselves from pending cases stemming from January 6. Both are complicit in, and perhaps responsible for, the court's inordinate delay in deciding whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for his role in the attempted insurrection. We could get a ruling from him in July, probably too late for a trial before November.
Furthermore, both judges are in their 70s. And that's where the political calculations about the Senate come in.
It is widely believed among court observers and experts that Alito and Thomas could well retire if Trump wins another term, potentially nominating much younger versions of themselves who could serve for many more decades to accompany Trump's trifecta of 50-somethings. : Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump could promote younger judges like those he appointed to lower federal courts — say, 40 something District Court Judges Aileen Cannon, who kindly suspended his trial over classified documents indefinitely, and Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose ruling ban a pill used for most abortions is currently before the Supremes.
A Republican-controlled Senate would presumably expedite the selection of Trump's nominees to the high court, and perhaps more than a couple hundred more to lower federal courts, just as it did the first time under Trump. However, a Senate still under Democratic control could presumably force a re-elected Trump to choose more moderate judicial nominees and, if he refused, could slow down, sideline or reject extremists. I like it more wings and you take.
Lest anyone doubt that Republican senators would be a conveyor belt for right-wing judges under Trump, or a roadblock against Biden's nominees if he wins a second term, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell reminded them Wednesday of their mindset. MAGA apologist. When asked by a reporter to comment on the Alitos flag, McConnell broken“I'm not going to dignify that with an answer.”
Talk about misplaced indignation.
More voters, both Democrats and independents and moderate Republicans who oppose right-wing activists throughout our judiciary, They must cast votes for both the Senate and the president taking into account the composition of the courts, as conservative voters did successfully for decades. Democratic candidates, including Biden, are doing more to raise awareness. But it's not enough. The message has to be explicit and frequent: the courts are also on the ballot.
A great test is Maryland, with a Democratic majority, precisely in all places. Larry Hogan, the popular former governor and probably the only Republican in the state who could be elected to the Senate, last week won his party's nomination. to fill the seat that Democratic Senator Benjamin L. Cardin is resigning. Democrats have to defend that seat along with incumbents in the red states of Ohio and Montana, and the swing states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The party, which now has just a two-vote majority, has already canceled the Senate seat that Democrat Joe Manchin III is vacating in Trump-loving West Virginia, making every seat crucial.
Hogan, an affable pragmatist and Trump critic, appeals to some to Maryland Democrats despite their party label, and to moderate Republicans and independents who have otherwise soured on the GOP in the Trump era. Many of them supported him for governor and senator. To attract them, the “pro-life” former governor has declared himself a “pro-choice” Senate candidate.
However, because the stakes in the Senate are much bigger than simply Maryland, Hogan's Democratic Party and others Anti-MAGA zealots should resist his charms this time. His victory would make it much more likely that Republicans will take control of the chamber with the power to confirm federal judges and justices. His Democratic opponent, widely respected County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, is showing early signs of driving home that point.
Your challenge is to get voters Who likes Hogan? think strategically and do your part to help keep the Senate out of Control by MAGA-supported Republicans. The composition of that other branch of government… the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal courts could depend on it. That should be the thumb on the scale.
@jackiekcalmes
