A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Let Me Say That Again: Google Effing Street View!
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag flying at Samuel Alito’s Jersey shore beach house is right there in Google Street View, if you know where to look. Morning Memo isn’t in the habit of giving out the addresses of Supreme Court justices, but it took about 10 minutes to locate it (would have been faster with more than one cup of coffee under my belt).
It’s not the Google Street View of Alito’s beach house proper. It’s a shot from between two houses on an adjacent street, looking across a canal, toward the back of the Alito house, where the flagpole stands.
One of the NYT’s reporters on the story:
And thanks to the Google Street View car for driving by exactly at the right time. It hadn't been by since 2013 before this image. pic.twitter.com/gmgSCq9VFI
— Aric Toler (@AricToler) May 22, 2024
I want to be super clear though: Google Street View is a hilarious confirmation under the circumstances, but the NYT story almost certainly originated with tip(s) from neighbors and/or others who saw the earlier story about the upside down American flag at Alito’s Virginia home and shared what they’d seen at his New Jersey beach property. The story cites “accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by.”
I’ll leave the Times to provide you with the background and history of the flag and what it has come to represent. Pay particular attention to the role of Dutch Sheets in elevating the flag to prominence in right-wing religious circles.
Stop The Stealito!*
Let’s have some fun with this, shall we?
- John Collins: “Schoolhouse Rock never prepared us for this shit.”
- Jay Willis: “We’re at most 48 hours away from learning that Sam Alito has been the QAnon Shaman for Halloween for the last three years running.”
- Steve Vladeck: “I wonder what the neighbors did to provoke this one …”
- Chris Hayes:
- And this one:
*Credit for the subhead goes, as best as I can tell, to Leah Litman. Kudos.
On A More Serious Note …
Some of the more substantive reactions to the discovery of the second Alito flag:
- Joyce Vance: “Perhaps we will learn some feud with local aquatic life led Mrs. Alito to fly the flag. But sarcasm aside, when you’re a Supreme Court Justice, you’re supposed to avoid giving off even a whiff of partisan bias. Or religious favoritism. As a judge, and certainly, as a Supreme Court Justice, you have that duty. Justice Alito flunks the test and flunks it badly.”
- Law Dork Chris Geidner: “It’s been clear for some time that Justice Sam Alito was the Fox News (or an even further right-wing channel) justice on the U.S. Supreme Court bench. The past two weeks have helped to cement that into the public consciousness for those who don’t hear him at oral arguments or read his opinions — particularly his concurrences and dissents.”
- Dahlia Lithwick: “[R]ather than hurling ourselves headlong into the “Alito Must Recuse” brick wall of “yeah, no,” we need to dedicate the upcoming election cycle, and the attendant election news cycle, to a discussion of … what it means to have a Supreme Court that is functionally immune from political pressure, from internal norms of behavior, from judicial ethics and disclosure constraints, and from congressional oversight and why that is deeply dangerous.”
Aileen Cannon Actually Held A Hearing In MAL Case
The good news is U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon held an actual hearing in the molasses-slow Mar-a-Lago case. The bad news is that it was to entertain a ridiculous claim of selective prosecution that most other judges would have rejected out of hand.
Cover Up?
Smartmatic is accusing Newsmax of destroying evidence to thwart the voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit over the 2020 Big Lie, NBC News reports:
Lawyers for Florida-based Smartmatic allege that Newsmax engaged in a “cover-up” by destroying texts and emails of key executives that would demonstrate the network’s knowledge that voting fraud claims being pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies were untrue. Smartmatic says the deletions occurred after Newsmax had received notice to preserve evidence for the pending suit.
Newsmax denies the allegation.
2024 Ephemera
- Bloomberg: Half of Swing-State Voters Fear Violence Around US Election
- NBC News: “Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to NBC News that he was behind a robocall impersonating Joe Biden’s voice, has been indicted in New Hampshire.”
- Nikki Haley commits to voting for Donald Trump again:
Abortion Watch
A new law scheduled to take effect this summer in Kansas would require abortion providers to ask their patients the following questions, compile the answers, and submit them to the state twice a year for inclusion in a public report, as Brandi Buchman reports:
- Would having a baby interfere with the patient’s education, employment or career?
- Was the patient able to provide for the child?
- Does the patient already have enough, or too many, children?
- Does the patient’s husband or partner want them to have an abortion?
- Does the patient lack enough child support from family or others to raise a child?
- Was the pregnancy the result of rape or incest?
- Does the pregnancy threaten the patient’s physical, mental or emotional health?
- Would the child have a disability?
When The Truth Hurts
House Republicans lost their minds yesterday when Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) went on the floor and listed the trials Donald Trump is currently facing. They moved to strike McGovern’s comments from the record and admonished him for making them. McGovern was dumbstruck:
The result of the admonishment was that McGovern was barred from speaking on the House floor for the rest of the day.
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