Donald Trump Bear Hugs Sam Alito At Height Of Flag Flap
INSIDE: Martha Alito ... Stormy Daniels ... Elon Musk
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Congratulations, For Not Recusing Yourself From My Cases!
In his singular way, Donald Trump managed to undermine Sam Alito at the very moment the flag-whipped Supreme Court justice was trying to extricate himself from his ethics morass.
In his usual grandiose style, Alito not only refused to recuse, but in a letter to Democratic senators engaged in a paucity of real legal analysis and suggested there was no possible good faith argument for recusal, which is of course silly, reductive, and self-serving.
Nonetheless, Alito baldly asserted there was no basis for recusal, used the Supreme Court’s weak self-enforcing code of conduct as an imperative to do the wrong thing as opposed to rigorous standard to meet, and thumbed his nose at his naysayers with typical relish.
To which the man whose cases Alito is compromised on rose up in his defense, even as a jury in Manhattan deliberated on criminal charges against him:
It was a marvelous distillation of the corrupt conservative-supermajority Supreme Court that Trump helped to create and which he sees as his ultimate salvation against the four – count ’em, FOUR – ongoing criminal prosecutions he faces.
Nevertheless, She Persisted?
Justice Alito’s letter contained one of the most remarkable lines in recent political history: “My wife is fond of flags. I am not.”
That bit of misdirection and minimizing came as he recounted in evolving fashion the upside-down American flag incident at his Virginia home.
His latest version is that he didn’t know about until he did and then he asked her to take it down (he doesn’t say why but implicit in the request is that it was inappropriate to have the insurrectionist symbol flying in front of his home) and … she REFUSED!
Alito proceeds to offer a pre-law-caliber legal defense of Martha Alito’s joint ownership interest in their Virginia home and her right to exercise her constitutional freedoms independent of him, an irony so excruciating coming from the justice who authored the Dobbs decision that it’s hard not to view it as a deliberate troll of his critics, even though his account in its entirety casts him as small, powerless, and clueless.
A Benign 18th-Century Foam Finger
Dahlia Lithwick, bringing the withering scorn even before Alito’s comical letter surrendering the flagpoles at his homes to his wife:
When the New York Times reported last week that Samuel Alito, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, had been flying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his vacation home on the New Jersey shore last summer, the legal world was confronted with yet another classic case of how to deal with the current warring textual methodologies for interpreting the law. One could either “read” this obscure-to-some pine-tree flag in the way the New York Times and its experts did—as a signifier of insurgent Christian nationalism. Or you could read it as a kind of benign 18th-century foam finger: “Gooooo George Washington!”
Jury Digs In On Its Trump Deliberations
A lot of speculation, attempted tea leaf reading, and bloviating about how to interpret the first two notes from the Trump jury yesterday. Journalists abhor a vacuum and so they will fill it, but there was in fact very little to go on from what transpired. Just chill. Juries are notoriously hard to predict.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky is at it again today, with a liveblog going. You can check in periodically to see if anything has happened.
We expect the judge to respond to both jury requests this morning: re-reading his instructions to them and reading some key trial testimony from the court transcript. This will happen in open court and take a while to complete. I doubt we’ll see a verdict this morning, but by afternoon we should be back on verdict watch.
Trump Trial Misinformation On Overdrive
A new round of furious spinning from the right commenced as soon as the jury got the case. You can safely ignore the substance (or lack thereof) of it, but between Fox News and at least one sitting Republican U.S. senator, there was a brain-eating level of dumb misinformation flying around.
This Didn’t Make It Into Evidence At Trial
The Daily Beast: “Donald Trump boasted about having sex with adult film star Stormy Daniels at the 2006 golf tournament where the two met, a celebrity athlete who played the tournament has said.”
The Price Of Resisting Trump
The mother of former police officer Michael Fanone, who was nearly killed defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, was swatted at her Virginia home on Tuesday, just hours after her son made a campaign appearance for Joe Biden outside the courthouse where Donald Trump’s trial is being held, NBC News reports.
Quote Of The Day
What would’ve happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think he’d be talking about pardons. This is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder. It’s the same guy who still calls the ‘Central Park Five’ guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say Black lives matter and invokes neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms.
President Joe Biden, in a campaign speech to Black voters in Philadelphia
Oligarchs Of The World, Unite!
WSJ: “Donald Trump and Elon Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the Tesla leader should the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House, the latest sign that the once-frosty relationship between the two men has thawed.”
New Eruption In Iceland
The ongoing series of eruptions on Iceland’s Peninsula resumed Wednesday morning with the most intense lava flow yet:
Although there was a more abundant level of magma, the eruption followed the pattern of previous ones, with an initial surge of magma followed by a gradual slowing of the rate of flow. The new lava mostly stayed with in the confines of previous flows in recent months:
Here’s a time-lapse video of the initial unzipping of the ground:
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Alito is having a great time giving two middle fingers to the American people, congress and the constitution. He doesn't care because he can't be touched. "I wont recuse what are you going to do about it. He is a disgrace to the court, to the judiciary and to America and he laughs about it every day as he plots what will happen when he helps to make sure t***p is back in the WH. Oh how delicious it will be to him to stomp down all these foolish, women and minorities that think they have rights.
Thursday 3:00 PM Eastern: Chief Justice ROBERTS just wrote a letter in the last hour refusing to meet with Senators Whitehouse & Durbin to discuss ethical COI's, conflicts (plural) of interest.
Meanwhile, JAMIE RASKIN posted a recusal pathway on the NYT platform. The pathway is outlined by TARA SUTER , a reporter at "The Hill" on 5/29/25 9:00 PM Eastern quoting JAMIE RASKIN verbatim:
"The U.S. Department of Justice --- including:
" ... the U.S. Attorney, [USAOC DC]
an appointed U.S. Special Counsel, [Special Counsel federal statute]
" and the solicitor General [ of the United States]
" ... all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecution underlying these cases and are opposing Mr. Trump's constitutional & statutory claims -- can petition of the remaining seven (7 )justices to require Justices ALITO & THOMAS to recuse themselves in cases NOT as a matter of grace but, as a matter of law."
Relying among other law, RASKIN cited the Due Process clause of the Constitution and the federal statute mandating DQ for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C , 455.
I would add the legal maxims for every wrong there is a remedy & fundamental fairness.