ALITO 2

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singer vulture COI

no merri

see clarence // corruption

see originalist BS

SEE VOTER SUPPRESSION

FINISHED GUTTING VOTING RIGHTS ACT 4 26 GERRY AMICUS

COMSTOCK

SEE SCOTUS, SEE DISSENT ~

opus dei?! xian nat’l?

MACHINE GUNS

RULE OF LAW?

CLERKS? jon berry fusion ctr

note pro corp anti-green eg water

see 1st amend

bak 8 24

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AN 10 26

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has spent his career skeptical of the rigid version of originalism championed by Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, that skepticism has placed him in an unexpected position: as a model for a Trump-era legal movement increasingly impatient with old conservative rules.

Jack Goldsmith, a professor of law at Harvard, states in an article for The Atlantic that the new book by Alito, titled So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, demonstrates a justice who is attempting to reshape originalism even though the New Right has moved beyond it.

The view of originalism holds that the Constitution should be understood in the light of its meaning at the time that its provisions were adopted, and for many years it has been the central doctrine of the conservative legal movement since it committed to limiting judges from imposing their political preferences.

Yet Alito has never been able to fit properly into that pattern.

Goldsmith points out that when he was serving on the federal appeals court, Alito seldom used originalist reasoning and at times disagreed with Scalia after he had joined the Supreme Court; in his book So Ordered, Alito sets out what he terms a "working judicial" form of originalism which allows judges more scope to use their judgment in cases where the Constitution does not offer a clear answer.

He also regards restraint as not being the main aim, on the ground that originalism “sometimes calls for bold action.”

As Goldsmith points out, this reflects a broader change on the right. The idea behind traditional originalism was to keep judicial decisions separate from political consequences. However, a growing New Right legal movement aligned with President Donald Trump has become dissatisfied with that arrangement, favoring conservative results and judges willing to uphold Trump’s program over strict adherence to originalist methodology.

Goldsmith refers to originalism as an increasingly "zombie creed" since it is still used as a way of earning conservative credentials even though it has little effect in explaining how the Supreme Court's right-wing majority arrives at its decisions in important cases.

Goldsmith notes that a number of conservative justices, such as those appointed by Trump, have joined the liberals in opposing major initiatives of the second term administration. The fact that they have made these rulings has annoyed Trump and his supporters, who have in turn attacked the conservative lawyers and judges that they regard as not loyal enough.

Goldsmith stresses that Alito is not formally a member of that New Right movement and that he does not depict his judicial decisions merely as a means of achieving political results; instead, he presents Alito as a serious lawyer whose legal philosophy is influenced by conservative instincts, even though those principles may be difficult to reconcile.

The similarity is clear. Goldsmith states that Alito, along with Clarence Thomas, has supported the administration in all of the major cases during its second term, and at the same time his focus on results, his skepticism about restraint, and his attitude towards the cultural wars are in line with the legal movement that has developed around Trump.

Which is why, Goldsmith concludes, Alito has become a figure he never originally intended to be: the Supreme Court's unintended face of the Trumpian legal agenda.

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SCOTUS MAIN VOTE FAIL 6-3 ALITO CLAR

AN 9 26

The real reason the Supreme Court blocked Trump and the Postal Service

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AN MSNOW 10 26

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made remarks in a recent interview that exposed a "really disturbing mindset," one former prosecutor told MS NOW, and also exposed the "ivory tower" he lives in, as opposed to reality.

On Monday, MS NOW's Alicia Menendez hosted a panel discussion about the latest developments surrounding the Supreme Court as its new term begins. This included Joyce Vance, the attorney and legal analyst who previously served as a U.S. Attorney in Alabama under former President Barack Obama, whom she pressed for a reaction to comments Alito made during a recent Fox News interview, decrying what he called a "concerted effort to intimidate the court."

"There has been a concerted effort to intimidate the court and justices on the court to try to influence us, to decide cases differently from the way in which we have been deciding them," Alito said. "And I am concerned about the future of the court. I think it's an important institution. It has not always done the right thing, but I think on the whole it has been fundamental in protecting our constitutional structure and the rights that all Americans enjoy."

Menendez asked Vance for her take on Alito's meaning, suggesting that "there are lots of ways to interpret that... whether that concerted effort is coming from the president of the United States or vigilantes who send pizza boxes to people's homes." Vance, for her part, said that it was clear Alito certainly was not referring to criticism from President Donald Trump.

"I think we all know how Justice Alito interprets those comments, and he's certainly not talking about the president of the United States," Vance said. "He's long had the view that the court, in many ways, is under siege. And I think that speaks more to the ivory tower that he lives in than the reality of American citizens who are deeply concerned with both the court's decisions and with its procedure. And so they are speaking up, exercising their First Amendment rights to talk about the court. I think it's really disturbing that a justice perceives that as being threatening."

She continued: "But, you know, to the point of the conversation that you were just having about Supreme Court reform, increasingly the issue is less one of whether there should be reform and more a discussion about what that reform is going to look like, and it will be essential that it be accomplished in a way that's not perceived as political, because Sam Alito and I agree on one thing, and that's the importance of the court as one of the central institutions in american democracy. And if we cannot find a way to come together as Americans and restore our confidence in the court, then we really are in a dangerous place, because we submit our most difficult disputes to the court, issues that we simply cannot resolve short of action by the nine, or however many justices we end up with, resolving those issues for us. And so this issue of court reform, yes, it's a political one, but it's more fundamentally an American one."

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HUH? AN 10 26

Justice Brett Kavanaugh found himself in an unusual position at the Supreme Court on Monday, standing apart from his conservative colleagues after Justice Samuel Alito unexpectedly recused himself from a major oil-company case.

The court refused to hear the case of Sunoco Inc. v. Cline, and so left intact a class-action judgment of roughly $100 million against the company. One notable point in the short order was that Kavanaugh was the only member of the judiciary who had made a public statement expressing his desire for the court to take the case.

At the same time, Alito did not take part in the decision. The court gave no reason for his recusal, but Newsweek reported that he has a financial interest he has in Sunoco's competitors

The disagreement stems from the allegations that Sunoco did not pay the required interest when payments to the owners of oil wells in Oklahoma were delayed, and the case later developed into a class action suit involving tens of thousands of holders of royalties and interest.

Sunoco contended that the class was far too wide and that a great many of the individuals included in the ruling had never been identified or proven to have suffered an injury that would entitle them to bring a lawsuit.

The federal appeals court dismissed those arguments and maintained the judgment. The Supreme Court's decision not to consider Sunoco's appeal meant that the ruling could stay in place.

By supporting the company's plea for another hearing, Kavanaugh had taken a position that was clearly at odds with that of the other members of the court. On the same day Kavanaugh showed sympathy for another big energy company in a separate case involving Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, the development took place.

The disagreement centers on lawsuits initiated by local governments in Colorado against oil companies for damages caused by climate change, and the companies contend that interstate pollution is essentially a matter for the federal government and cannot be dealt with by means of individual state-law claims.

While giving his oral arguments, Kavanaugh referred to a number of earlier Supreme Court rulings which he stated strongly supported the companies' position.

“As I read them together, [these precedents] make crystal clear that interstate air and water pollution are matters for federal law unless Congress specifically preserves state law,” Kavanaugh said. “That is through and through those four cases.”

The two cases involve different companies and legal issues, even though they share similar names: Sunoco and Suncor. Yet on Monday there was a rare opportunity to see Kavanaugh's view on the court, where the six-member conservative majority usually acts in unison.

In the case of the Sunoco dispute, Kavanaugh was prepared to give the company another hearing while none of his colleagues publicly supported him.

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RUMOR RESIGNATION 6 26 AN

SAID CU UNFAIRLY MALIGNED 7 26

AN 7 26

We understand that politics can bring on self-delusion about reality when it flies in the face of ideological goals, but the Supreme Court's purposeful turn away from the racism behind Donald Trump's immigration policies is both absurd and angering.

In twin decisions this week, the right-leaning majority on the Court allowed Trump to end "temporary protective status" for Haitians, Syrians and eventually others, including Afghans who helped our war efforts, and to eliminate access to asylum procedures at the border for whomever he chooses. They were bad decisions for a variety of reasons, but what really stung were the arguments offered that simply struck away any racial bias in our immigration policies.

Justice Samuel Alito's ruling for the 6-3 majority had to determine legally that race had played no role before removing the humanitarian protections to shield Haitians. His ruling said that Trump's many statements about Haitians were not "overtly racial," and that it was unlikely that race had been a motivating factor in the administration's decision to end the protections.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan suggested Alito was wearing blinders, adding "The statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike" and to prove her point, she listed many, including discredited Trump statements that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio had been eating neighbors' pets, that Haiti was a "s-------" country and that he wanted immigrants from Norway instead. Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." Haitians are "poisoning the blood" of the nation. Trump's remarks were "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print," she wrote. Actually, Trump has invited White African immigrants from South Africa, but the point is all about race.

That Trump has an unwarranted obsession with immigrants and a strong liking for all efforts to remake this into a White Christian Nation are well established. What has become problematic is that in its zeal to support Trump, those six justices on the right apparently cannot see real racial impact in cases that range from immigration to unequal treatment by social services to policing and imprisonment cases to election redistricting issues.

Deportation to Violence

Even mindful that the Court decides how to so narrow the legal cases that it decides to consider, this court is building a distrust with the public for its failure to recognize the practical and very real impact of its rulings.

Haiti is in freefall; this week even a national police figure was kidnapped by rebel gangs. What does Trump or those justices think is going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians that the White House is panting to put on planes to Port-au-Prince? The whole reason for temporary protective status is to shield refugees from prosecution and social harm.

How does sending Haitians who have lived here for years "home" to chaos comport with the State Department warnings to Americans to stay away from Haiti as a dangerous place?

Alito did acknowledge that "political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago." But he concluded that the administration opposed immigration generally and had not used racial criteria in its decisions.

The same court majority said the same thing in allowing redistricting to eliminate Black-majority voting districts and in settling various recent policing cases. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been outspoken about a "post-racial" era that ignores the reality of college admissions, hiring and promotion practices, Justice department prosecution and punishment practices, mortgage redlining and other cases.

As The Huffington Post noted, Alito doesn't notice bias of any kind unless it is perceived to be anti-Catholic, his own religion, or anti-Christian in its effect. In this week's opinion, Alito said there were neutral reasons for lifting the Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians, noting that temporary protections had been lifted in more than a dozen countries, including Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Cameroon, Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela. "Most would regard this as a racially diverse group of countries," he wrote. The plaintiffs contended that they were all "nonwhite."

When the case was argued in April, Alito suggested that "nonwhite" was not a meaningful category. Alito had told the plaintiffs' lawyer, "I don't like dividing the people of the world into these groups." Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who adopted two children born in Haiti, joined Alito's majority opinion along with Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Not What Was Promised

Roll back the clock and remember that what Trump said he wanted to tackle were the presence of undocumented migrants with backgrounds of violent crime. We are way beyond that now, evidenced by the botched campaigns to rebuild huge holding facilities for immigrants rounded up in courtrooms, from workplaces and schools for visa overstays and traffic violations.

The current crop of immigrant law cases concerns legal immigration methods, as ICE and border patrols pursue de-naturalizations, end legal asylum procedures, rush deportation cases through overloaded courts or skip legalisms altogether. The current cases involve humanitarian treatment of migrants and separation of families.

This case will prompt disarray in health care industries, where Haitians have found work, and in urban areas. In New York city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already declaring a campaign against rules that "are putting so many people's lives in jeopardy."

It's not limited to courts. Behind the deportation program are ideologies that are specifically racial and nationalistic in the most peculiar way. Support requires actively looking the other way. At the same time, Texas education officials requiring St. James version Bible readings clearly have chosen not to look at the feelings or considerations of non-Christians.

One wonders why Trump is rushing aid to Venezuela after two devastating earthquakes to help the very people he had consistently demeaned as mentally ill criminals until the U.S. military grabbed former leader Nicholas Maduro. Oh yeah, Trump took control of that nation's oil industry, and suddenly we care about the Venezuelans we deported there six months ago.

On this 250th birthday as a nation that proudly displays a Statue of Liberty, we ought to be finding ways to celebrate our diversity, not to trample it.

NOTE SCOTUS 6 26 PREZ CAN FIRE INDEP AGY EG SLAUGHTER, THIS CAN CORRUPT OR PARALYZE AGENCY BY NO QUORUM

OFFICIAL Leadership and structure - FEC.gov

4 VANCANCIES, NO NOMS OR TIMELINE 7 26

Supreme Court strikes down limits on party spending in federal elections, backing Republican appeal | The Associated Press

(AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday erased limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president, striking down a federal election law that is more than 50 years old.

Prodded by a Republican-led lawsuit that includes Vice President JD Vance, the court’s six conservative justices were again in the majority of the latest decision that upended congressionally enacted limits on raising and spending money to influence elections. The court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending in federal elections.

The limits on party spending stem from a desire to prevent large donors from skirting caps on individual contributions to a candidate by directing unlimited sums to the party, with the understanding that the money will be spent on behalf of the candidate.

The Supreme Court had previously upheld the limits, in 2001.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court, said that decision was wrong and should be overruled. “In short, constitutional text, history and precedent establish that the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent for the three liberal justices said the court “ushers in untold harm” by enabling parties to funnel large contributions to individual candidates, far in excess of what donors can give those candidates directly.

National parties now will be able to make direct contributions to candidates’ campaigns,

The decision is likely to give Republicans at least a short-term boost because they maintain a sizable cash advantage over Democrats.

The Republican National Committee and its Senate and House campaign fundraising arms have dwarfed Democrats’ in the months before congressional elections where the GOP is defending narrow majorities in both houses.

At the end of May, the RNC reported having more than $125 million to spend, its highest-ever cash on hand total, according to its most recent Federal Election Commission filing in May. Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had more than $48 million on hand in its most recent report and the National Republican Congressional Committee had more than $81 million.

In the same period, the Democratic National Committee had $14.4 million on hand, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had roughly $37 million and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, roughly $73 million.

The Republican committees for House and Senate candidates filed the lawsuit in Ohio in 2022, joined by Vance, then a senator from Ohio, and then-Rep. Steve Chabot.

After President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the Federal Election Commission dropped its defense of the law and joined with Republicans in urging that it be overturned.

Democrats had called on the court to uphold the law, even though there is wide agreement that the spending limits have hurt political parties in an era of unlimited spending by other organizations.

Last year, the coordinated party spending for Senate races ranged from $127,200 in several states with small populations to nearly $4 million in California, the most populous state. For House races, the limits were $127,200 in states with only one representative and $63,600 everywhere else.

Entrenched divisions between liberal and conservative justices over campaign finance restrictions were on display when the court heard arguments in December.

“Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a dissenter in Citizens United and the court’s other campaign money cases.

By contrast, Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the Citizens United majority, described the decision as “much maligned, I think unfairly maligned.” The effect of the decision was to ”level the playing field,” Alito said, by expanding the right to spend freely that had previously belonged only to media companies.

Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont contributed to this report.

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AN 8 26

Many MAGA Republicans are hoping that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, now 76, will retire — thus giving President Donald Trump a chance to nominate a younger judge who, if confirmed, could serve on the High Court for the next 30 or 35 years. But Alito, so far, is sticking around. And according to Reason's Damon Root, the "circling vultures" of the far right are not happy about it.

"Do you remember the rumors that were swirling around earlier this year about the 'impending' retirement of Justice Samuel Alito from the U.S. Supreme Court?" Root writes in the libertarian-oriented Reason. "Well, if you still harbored any lingering hopes or fears of those rumors coming true in 2026, Alito himself has now put them to rest. 'Obviously, I'm here for another term,' the justice recently told The Wall Street Journal. Ironically, the idea of Alito sticking around for a little longer is probably more popular right now among progressives than it is among conservatives."

Root continues, "Remember that conservatives were the ones lobbying for Alito to step down in the first place. They have been desperate to avoid what we might call the Ruth Bader Ginsburg scenario, in which an aging justice remains on the bench so long that his or her party loses control of the White House or Senate, or both, and thus loses the ability to pick the justice's replacement. If the GOP loses control of the Senate in this year's midterm elections, those fears could be realized."

With Trump suffering from weak approval ratings in one poll after another, Democratic strategists are feeling optimistic about their chances of flipping the U.S. House of Representatives — where Republicans, under Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), have only a small majority. Democrats realize that the U.S. Senate is a heavier lift for them. But if Democrats do manage to flip the Senate on November 3 and a Democratic Senate majority is seated in January 2027, Trump would have a harder time getting SCOTUS nominees confirmed — especially someone who is far to the right.

Root recalls that progressives were calling for Justice Ginsburg's resignation "as early as 2011," when it remained to be seen whether or not then-President Barack Obama would win a second term. Now, in 2026, Root observes, Alito is facing similar pressure from MAGA Republicans.

"Ginsburg also heard the buzzing of the carrion-feeders and chose to tune out the sound," Root argues. "Perhaps this is the rare case in which Alito is truly in harmony with Ginsburg. Like her, he may be perfectly content to continue doing a job he enjoys for as long as he possibly can — which just happens to be one of the most important jobs in the country — all while ignoring the circling vultures and disappointing his supposed allies."

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crc pod

Who Funds That? EP 3: Justice Samuel Alito (with Mollie Hemingway)

Capital Research Center

113 views

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8 26

Trump's AG pick is letting a a 111-year-old corpse dictate your rights

Thom HartmannAugust 06, 2026

Todd Blanche is campaigning to become our real, confirmed Attorney General, presumably so he can better help Donald Trump, his corrupt family, and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet make off with as much of our money as they can.

Most recently, his campaign took him to the rightwing “religious” group Intercessors for America. When he was asked about progress in totally ending legal abortion in America, or at least Red State America, he told them:

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and and it will be permanent.”

He added, later in the call:

“If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that. They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs.”

So, how’s he going to pull this off? His sworn testimony before Congress may offer us a glimpse into the plan.

Ted Cruz asked him:

“18 USC 24 Section 1461, the Comstock Act, provides that every article or thing designed or adapted or intended for producing abortion is declared to be non-mailable. I have to admit that statutory text to me looks quite straightforward. It is not subtle. It is not difficult. It is straightforward. …

“[W]ill you commit that the Department will carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act and other Federal pro-life acts?”

Blanche answered: “Yes.”

How does he plan to “protect every life from the moment of conception”? Apparently, with the Comstock Act. And he may well have the backing of the six Republicans on the Supreme Court as their next step after their Dobbs decision.

Back during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in March of 2024, the Comstock Act was invoked repeatedly by Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Erin Hawley, the wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who was the lawyer arguing before the Court that the abortion drug, Mifepristone, should be banned nationwide.

Justice Sam Alito said:

“This [Comstock Act] is a prominent provision. It’s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. Everybody in this field knew about it.”

Erin Hawley was emphatic:

“We don’t think that there’s any case of this court that empowers FDA to ignore other federal law. The Comstock Act says that drugs should not be mailed … either through the mail or through common carriers.”

And Clarence Thomas laid out the possibility of future litigation when he essentially threatened the lawyer for Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of Mifepristone:

“How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?” He went on to note that the law “is fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”

In other words, they want the Act enforced today.

So, what the heck is the Comstock Act and why are Republicans trying to revive it before the Supreme Court and in threatening letters to pharmacy chains?

You’ve probably never heard of Anthony Comstock, a Civil War Union soldier and New York Postmaster, who died in 1915. You need to learn about him and his legacy, however, as his long fingers are about to reach up out of the grave and wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years.

Anthony Comstock was a mama’s boy who hated sex. His mother died when he was 10 years old and the shock apparently never left him; women who didn’t live up to her ideal were his open and declared enemies, as were pornography, masturbation, and abortion. He was so ignorant of sex and reproduction that he believed a visible human-like fetus developed “within seconds” of sexual intercourse.

Comstock spent decades scouring the country collecting hard-core pornography, which he enthusiastically shared with men in Congress, and harassing “loose women.” For example, when he visited a belly-dancing show (then a new craze) in Chicago at the Cairo Theatre during the World’s Fair of 1893, he demanded the show be shut down.

As Amy Sohn, who wrote a brilliant Comstock biography titled The Man Who Hated Women, noted:

“Despite national controversy and Comstock’s intervention, ultimately the only alteration made to the fair’s belly dancing was costuming: the dancers swapped their gauze blouses for thin woolen undershirts. The vice hunter had lost in Chicago. But he would not forget the dancers, and would have four of them arrested and fined when they came to New York that winter. New York, after all, was Comstockland.”

Comstock lobbied for and shepherded through Congress a law passed on March 3, 1873 titled “An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles of immoral Use.” Today we refer to it as the Comstock Act.

It’s language with regard to abortion is not at all ambiguous:

“Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance … designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and

“Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

“Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and

“Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

“Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing—

“Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.” (emphasis mine)

The penalty is also not ambiguous. Persons mailing information about abortion, or drugs or devices to produce an abortion:

“[S]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter.” (emphasis mine)

The Biden administration argued that the Comstock Act of 1873 was set aside almost a century ago.

And, indeed, in 1930, the Appeals Court for the Second Circuit ruled in Youngs Rubber Corp. v. C.I. Lee & Co that the law couldn’t apply to things sent through the mail that are legal, even if they were illegal at the time of the passage of the Comstock Act. (The case involved condoms manufactured by Youngs Rubber Company.)

“Such a construction,” the Court wrote, “would prevent mailing to or by a physician of any drug or mechanical device ‘adapted’ for contraceptive or abortifacient uses, although the physician desired to use or to prescribe it for proper medical purposes.”

The law has been amended by Congress four times (in 1955, 1958, 1971, and 1994), but the language above about abortion was never struck because legislators figured the 1930 appeals court’s ruling rendered it nugatory.

But don’t tell that to Trump’s appointee, Texas District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, who ruled in 2023 that Mifepristone was to be banned nationwide: he based a large part of his decision on the plain language of the Comstock Act.

Republican members of Congress agree, and want the Comstock Act enforced nationwide now. They think they don’t even need a ruling from the Supreme Court: they just need Todd Blanche to “enforce the law already on the books.”

In a letter sent to CVS (among other pharmacy chains), Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and eight other Republican senators (Lankford, Daines, Braun, Rubio, Marshall, Risch, Crapo and Blackburn) wrote that the Biden interpretation (and that of Congress in 1955, 1958, 1971, and 1994) is wrong.

They explicitly asserted that the Comstock Act is still in effect and they want it enforced:

“We write to express our support and agreement with 21 [Republican] State Attorneys General,” they wrote “who have reminded you that Federal law in 18 U.S.C. 1461-1462 [the Comstock Act] criminalizes nationwide using the mail, or interstate shipment by any express company or common carrier, to send or receive any drug that is ‘designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.’”

The 1930 court ruling that lawmakers and judges had, for over 90 years, believed only applied the Comstock Act to items that were illegal (like child porn), Senator Hide-Smith wrote:

“[D]oes not protect CVS or any other individual or entity from being prosecuted within the five-year statute of limitations for the illegal mailing or interstate shipment of abortion drugs … even for conduct that occurs today.”

Keep in mind, under the plain language of the Comstock Act this could also apply to birth control pills, IUDs, and other things used to prevent pregnancy. And, of course, pornography and “masturbation devices” like vibrators.

The lawyer for Republicans defending Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Erin Hawley, went so far as to assert before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that even physicians and pharmacies shouldn’t be able to receive Mifepristone or other drugs that could produce an abortion via the mail, FedEx, or UPS:

“What the Comstock law says is that it is improper to mail things that induce or cause abortions, which is precisely the action the FDA took in 2021 when it permitted the mailing of abortion drugs.”

If Hawley’s interpretation is enforced by Todd Blanche once he’s securely settled into his office with a vote by Republicans in the Senate, all abortions in the United States could be ended when drugs and suction and surgical devices designed specifically for the procedure can no longer be shipped to hospitals, clinics, or physicians’ offices.

This is no idle threat.

As Washington Post reporter Dan Diamond wrote for his Substack newsletter, anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson, who’s helped several cities around the country put into law local versions of the Comstock Act, told him:

“If a future president were to enforce these federal statutes, then they could shut down every abortion facility in America.”

This is the specific goal of these mostly “Christian” religious fanatics: to completely outlaw all abortion and radically restrict access to birth control. And having Blanche start enforcing the law that’s already on the books, provoking a battle heading for the Supreme Court, is all it would take.

Such a case would, based on Blanche’s sworn testimony to the Senate, have Republicans, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation.

So, if you’re concerned about the future of abortion rights in America, it might be a good time to call your Senators — particularly if either is a Republican — and let them know your thoughts on Blanche’s nomination that’ll probably get a vote in the next two days.

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an truthdig 7 26

You might think that an arch-conservative who has used his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court to send U.S. law back to the 1920s would take a victory lap and maybe chill just a bit. But no. Despite his success in helping to dismantle abortion rights, attacking public-sector labor unions, elevating gun rights, promoting “religious liberty,” and destroying the Voting Rights Act, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is still seething mad, motivated by ideological extremism and a stack of personal grievances, some dating to his childhood in Trenton, New Jersey.

Alito’s well-established pattern of outbursts was on full view during the court’s June 26 announcement of several late-term rulings. He set the tone for the session by reading a summary of his cruel 6-3 majority opinion that denied political asylum seekers the right to enter the country before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border (Mullin v. Al Otro Lado). Finishing quickly, he paused before moving on to summarize another of his opinions. Justice Soto Sotomayor apparently took the break in the action as a cue to read a synopsis of her dissent. Dissenters often refrain from reading their summaries, but there is nothing unusual about them opting to speak up, provided they give advance notice of their intentions.

Sotomayor blasted Alito’s handiwork. “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” she said. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.” Her remarks apparently enraged Alito, making him look, in the words of NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nine Totenberg, like “he had just bitten into a lemon.”

“There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said, uttering remarks that, in the staid confines of the nation’s most august judicial body, were veritable obscenities that prompted audible gasps from spectators and reporters in the gallery. A court spokesperson later clarified that Alito was in fact notified of Sotomayor’s plans, but to date, he has not publicly apologized. Like the president whose policies he almost always supports, Alito invariably overreacts and never recants.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is still seething mad.

Who can forget Alito sneering on live TV during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, mouthing the words “not true” as the president decried the court’s Citizens United opinion and the impact it would have on future elections, including greater foreign influence? Since then, Alito has only gotten more unhinged and offensive, becoming a regular featured speaker at Federalist Society events, railing against the legalization of gay marriage, labeling the Second Amendment and freedom of religion as “unfavored” constitutional rights, and condemning liberals as a threat to civil liberties.

In September 2021, Alito went ballistic after The Atlantic magazine staff writer Adam Serwer penned a column accusing the court’s right-wing majority of releasing a 5-4 shadow-docket ruling on Texas’ newly enacted vigilante abortion law in the middle of the night to minimize public outcry. In an hour-long live-streamed speech delivered at University of Notre Dame, he excoriated the press for portraying the court’s conservatives as “a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” and for feeding “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”

In June 2023, Alito again went off the rails with an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that lambasted a ProPublica report that in 2008 he took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska, flying for free aboard a private jet owned by Republican megadonor Paul Singer. The problem, according to ProPublica, wasn’t just that Alito had failed to recuse himself from reviewing lawsuits involving Singer’s hedge fund, but that he also failed to note anything about the excursion on the annual financial disclosure forms required under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

Claiming he had no duty to reveal the junket, he argued that his spot on the private jet “would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat” if he had not accepted the billionaire’s offer of a free ride, and that gifts of “hospitality” need not be reported. In a follow-up interview with the Journal, he added, “Congress did not create the Supreme Court” and “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Alito’s official court opinions have been equally acerbic and hyperbolic. They arguably reached a crescendo in his 2022 majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). Not content with simply overruling the 50-year-old precedent on which U.S. women had come to rely as an essential part of their health care, he wrote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

When used by a high court justice, the phrase “egregiously wrong” is an insult and a sign of contempt. And to add further insult, Alito reached deep into the bowels of Anglo-American common law to override Roe, citing the work of Henry de Bracton, a 13th-century English cleric and judge who condemned abortions as homicide, and a 17th-century English jurist who sentenced at least three women accused of using witchcraft to death.

So many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land.

What’s behind Alito’s fury and habit of issuing norm-breaking invective? As Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall told The Wall Street Journal in an article published this month, “Alito thinks of the other side as the enemy.” And true to Segall’s observation, Alito unwittingly admitted as much at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner in 2024, when documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor asked whether there was any way the country could overcome its terrible polarization, then surreptitiously recorded Alito’s answer that “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Like most extremists, Alito has views that derive not just from his abstract political beliefs, but from his lived experiences growing up in a predominantly white Christian community as the son of deeply religious Catholic Italian immigrants, and later as an out-of-place right winger at Princeton University and Yale Law School.

In a revealing new biography, Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, journalist Peter S. Canellos offers a compelling psychological portrait of Alito as a man dismayed by the demographic and secular changes that have transformed and, by his estimation, degraded the country of his boyhood. Alito has been on a mission to reverse those trends ex cathedra from his perch on the Supreme Court.

The problem is not that Alito has personal hang-ups — we all do — but that so many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land. On June 30, NPR’s Totenberg erroneously reported that Alito planned to retire so that President Donald Trump might nominate a younger right-wing zealot to the bench. The story turned out not to be true and was promptly retracted. Too bad for her — and even worse for the country.

7 25

The Federal Election Commission officially has a new chair.

Democrat Shana Broussard, who was nominated to the commission in 2020 by President Donald Trump, formally became FEC chair on Tuesday, two months after her fellow commissioners elected her to the position. It’s Broussard’s second time in the role; she previously chaired the commission in 2021.

Broussard is the first permanent chair at the FEC since February, when Trump abruptly removed longtime commissioner and then-Chair Ellen Weintraub from the agency. Since then, Republican Commissioner Trey Trainor has served as the commission’s acting chair.

Broussard is beginning her tenure as chair at a particularly difficult moment for the FEC. The six-person commission has seen its membership cut in half since the beginning of the year.

Republican former Commissioner Sean Cooksey resigned in January to take a job in Vice President JD Vance’s office and Trump ousted Weintraub a month later. Republican now-former Commissioner Allen Dickerson then resigned from the agency in April – on the same day Broussard was elected chair – when his term in office expired.

The resignations and Weintraub’s firing has left the FEC one commissioner shy of the four-member quorum it needs to hold meetings, issue advisory opinions and take enforcement actions. Trump has yet to nominate replacements for any of the vacancies, and it’s unclear when he might do so. Even then, any nominee would have to be confirmed by the Senate before taking office.

Despite its lack of a quorum, the agency has continued to collect, process and post campaign finance disclosure and transaction information.

A ‘Challenging Time’ for the FEC

In a statement on Tuesday, Broussard acknowledged that it is a “challenging time” for the FEC, but insisted that she is prepared to tackle the growing backlog of campaign finance enforcement matters once the commission’s quorum is restored.

According to Broussard, there were 161 pending enforcement matters before the FEC as of April – far fewer than the 452 on the docket in 2021, when Broussard first became chair.

“As money in federal elections increases, so does our agency’s responsiveness,” Broussard said. “The 2024 election cycle set numerous records, both in terms of the money raised and spent on federal elections and the amount of financial activity reported to the Commission. Our disclosure work has not stopped: during the first quarter of 2025, over 3,000 committees reported transactions totaling over $700 million of financial activity.”

“I am ready to tackle any backlogged matters if a quorum is restored before the end of this year,” she added.

No Timeline for Filling Vacancies

Trump has yet to name nominees for any of the three vacancies at the FEC, and the White House hasn’t offered a timeline for when he might do so. A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to C&E’s request for comment on Wednesday.

Still, the Trump administration has shown little interest in enforcing campaign finance laws and has, in fact, signaled that certain regulations should be tossed out.

The Justice Department notified the Supreme Court last month that it would not defend current restrictions on coordinated party spending in a case that the high court is expected to hear later this year.

Likewise, the FEC – at the direction of the Trump administration – has said that it agrees with the plaintiffs in that case, which argues that the existing limits on how much party committees can spend in coordination with federal candidates violates First Amendment free speech rights.

The Democratic National Committee and its associated groups have said that they will defend the current law before the court.

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“As of Today, the FEC Can’t Enforce Campaign Finance Laws — and That’s Only One of Its Problems”

:{:{[May 1, 2025,}:

federal election commission Rick Hasen}:

Dan Weinerfor the Brennan Center:

Starting today, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission won’t be able to do its job. That’s because the independent agency, which oversees money in campaigns for federal office, will no longer have the minimum four required members to do most business.

The loss of quorum is due to the resignation of a Republican appointee, coupled with President Trump’s unprecedented move in February to fire a Democratic appointee. Such a shortfall has only happened three other times in the FEC’s 50-year history, including twice during Trump’s first term.

Ordinarily, the big question would be how fast the president and Congress will move to restore a full complement of commissioners so the agency can function. That is still important. But in light of the firing and the president’s other steps to exert control over the FEC and other independent agencies, there is now a much bigger issue: Will the FEC be able to continue as an independent watchdog at all? Because even worse than a dormant FEC is one that could be weaponized against the president’s opponents….

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14TH AMEND

AN 6 26

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision striking down President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive orderin an opinion that was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. However, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued her own concurrence that targeted Justice Clarence Thomas by name.

After 31 pages of Roberts walking through the long history of birthright citizenship in the law, Jackson wrote a response to the dissent that Thomas penned along with Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

"Despite his longstanding endorsement of a 'colorblind' Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to 'freed slaves such as Dred Scott,' post, at 56, and those who shared with them certain characteristics ... It is for this reason, he says, that 'children who were born in the United States but [to parents] not domiciled here' are not entitled to claim birthright citizenship. ... But that narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the history of its ratification. Even worse, Justice Thomas’ telling elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery."

She goes on to allege that Thomas has a "myopic treatment" of the 14th Amendment.

"The Amendment caused a paradigm shift in the trajectory of our Nation; the teacher who scolds a student for bullying a classmate hopes the student learns the broader lesson of treating everyone with kindness, not just that one kid," she says.

She even went so far as to add an extensive footnote of cases "denied by this court" that refers back to Thomas' slavery argument.

"It is common ground that the Fourteenth Amendment was 'enacted ... with the one pervading purpose of securing equal citizenship for the freed slaves.' Also true is the fact that this Court 'has time and again denied Americans that promise.'"

Her footnote for that comment reads: "I suspect, though, that Justice Thomas and I disagree about when and how that promise has been denied by this Court. My list is long (and sadly only getting longer)." She cited 11 separate cases, the most recent of which refers back to a decision earlier this term in *Louisiana v. Callais.*

Jackson closes by saying, "Thankfully, a majority of the Court remembered this today, and has dutifully preserved the most basic animating principle of our Nation’s founding — that all human beings are created equal — once more."

Bill Shein called it a "blistering concurring opinion/takedown of Clarence Thomas's dissent."

Northwestern University School of Law Professor Paul Gowder said, "Justice Jackson knows what's up." He later added, "God bless Justice Jackson actually talking about what the Black folks who won the clause had said and done."

Loyola University School of Law Professor Justin Levitt wrote, "Justice Jackson is absolutely on fire in her birthright concurrence, unloading on the dissent not only for their votes in this case, but its apparent inconsistency with most of the 'colorblindness' jurisprudence of the past few terms."

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6 26

'Blindsided' Alito sat 'stone-faced' with anger after Sotomayor exchange - Alternet.org

AN 5 26

Alito refuses to recuse from Supreme Court case despite owning stock in industry - Alternet.org

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AN 5 26

In late April, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that critics say “demolishes” the Voting Rights Act by ending a provision that prevents racial discrimination. Now, according to experts, it appears that arguments made by Justice Samuel Alito were based on “misleading data analysis.”

According to the Guardian, “In his opinion gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week, Alito said that Black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. Alito’s claim was copied almost verbatim from a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the justice department. It was a critical data point Alito used to make the argument that the kind of discrimination that once made the Voting Rights Act necessary no longer exists.”

But a review of this assertion revealed that an “unusual methodology” was used to come to such a conclusion.

The brief provided by the Trump-led Justice Department calculated Black and white voter turnout in direct proportion to the total adult population of each racial group. But as the Guardian explained, “Such an approach is not preferred by experts in calculating statewide turnout because the general over-18 population may include non-citizens, people with felony convictions and others who cannot legally vote. But it does yield Alito’s conclusion that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in Louisiana.”

If calculated using the accepted method, however, the numbers offer a different conclusion: “that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.” What’s more, “The Guardian also reviewed data from the Louisiana secretary of state’s office, which calculates voter turnout a third way, as a percentage of registered voters. Using that methodology, Black turnout has not exceeded white turnout in any of the last five presidential elections in Louisiana.”

Experts suggest that this was no mere mistake, but an intentional attempt to manipulate the outcome.

“[The DOJ approach] is misleading because they’re including ineligible voters in the denominator,” said University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald. One of the nation’s leading expertson voter turnout, he noted that if he wanted to reach Alito’s conclusion, McDonald would “manipulate” the numbers in the exact same way. “They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into account margin of error, and all these other methodology issues about the current population survey to arrive at that number. Someone knew what they were doing.”

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maj rept

April 21, 2026. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent and columnist at The Nation magazine, joins the program for a conversation about Justice Alito’s future and other recent Supreme Court activity.

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kennedy breyer leak? all pol $ no law

...

15:40

15 minutes, 40 seconds

this because Andy Olm is coming and Jennifer Mascot is coming and James Ho is coming, people are just like, "Oh god, that sounds bad." Anyway, a rant.

15:48

15 minutes, 48 seconds

When Chuck Grasserly said, "We should nominate Ted Cruz." My social media blew up. Just liberals just, "Oh my god, we...

22:41

22 minutes, 41 seconds

like when I look at a James Hoe and we're talking about how Clarence Thomas is on uh uh Harlon and Crow's uh uh uh play payroll, you know where James Hoe,

22:51

22 minutes, 51 seconds

the current fifth circuit judge, James Hoe, you know where he was sworn in to be a fifth circuit judge in Harlon Crow's library by Justiceclarence

....

26 minutes, 39 seconds

point they all look the same to me. Like there there three archetypes of Republicans. You've got the superch Christian uh uh uh warrior Republican.

26:48

26 minutes, 48 seconds

You've got the super business I'm on Epstein Islands Republican. And I'm not saying those two are mutually exclusive,

26:55

26 minutes, 55 seconds

right? And then you got the Mara Lago woman Republican. Like those are your you know the the internalized patriarchy Republican. Like those are your three.

27:03

27 minutes, 3 seconds

And they just kind of like, you know,

27:06

27 minutes, 6 seconds

find pick one of the three. I think they throw a dart on the board and be like, "Oh, it's time for the Mara Lago face.

...

memory because the Federal Society has