Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.
This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.
Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google street view image from late August also shows the flag.
The photographs, each taken independently, are from four different dates. It is not clear whether the flag was displayed continuously during those months or how long it was flown overall.
A Google street view photo taken in August 2023 shows the flag flying at the Alitos’ house.
Justice Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag, including what it was intended to convey and how it comported with his obligations as a justice. The court also declined to respond….
In coming weeks, the justices will rule on that case, which could scuttle some of the charges against Mr. Trump, as well as on whether he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances at regaining the White House in the next one.
The disclosure about the new flag is troubling, several ethics experts said in interviews, because it ties Justice Alito more closely to symbols associated with the attempted election subversion on Jan. 6, and because it was displayed as the obstruction case was first coming for consideration by the court.
Judges are not supposed to give any impression of bias, yet the flag could be seen as telegraphing the Alitos’ views — and at a time when the justices were on the cusp of adopting a new ethics code. “We all have our biases, but the good judge fights against them,” said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington. “When a judge celebrates his predispositions by hoisting them on a flag,” he added, “that’s deeply disturbing.”
I was uncertain if the initial revelation of the first flag merited Justice Alito’s recusal in the first case, but I now believe he must recuse in the Trump immunity and related cases. His impartiality could be reasonably questioned here. There’s no blaming it on his spouse this time in any credible way.
Several members of Milwaukee’s election staff have voiced concerns to the mayor’s office about the inexperience of the new leader chosen to replace the Election Commission’s recently ousted executive director, two people close to the matter told Votebeat.
The new head, Paulina Gutiérrez, became deputy director of the commission in 2023 and had worked in several other positions in city and state government before that. But during her tenure at the commission, she has not worked a federal general election.
In addition to staff members raising concerns in a meeting with the mayor’s chief of staff and Gutiérrez herself, two employees wrote letters to the mayor’s office noting their doubts about whether she is equipped to lead the commission during a critical time in Wisconsin’s largest city, said a person close to the commission who requested anonymity to avoid professional consequences.
The concerns sprang from Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s surprise move not to reappoint Claire Woodall, who has been with the commission for about a decade and executive director since 2020. Woodall told Votebeat that she was ousted because she was quoted in a recent news article criticizing election staff over a ballot error. A spokesperson for the mayor said there was more to it but declined to be more specific.
The mayor’s office didn’t directly address multiple Votebeat questions about the mayor’s selection process, and Gutiérrez declined to answer Votebeat’s questions….
Woodall faced questions this year over an error in which more than 220 Milwaukee residents received absentee ballots for the incorrect ward. Much of the criticism came after Woodall told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about the commission’s mistake, “I can’t express how frustrating and infuriating it is that it just seems like there was no critical thinking involved or communication.”
Woodall had to rebuild trust and strengthen morale after that comment went public, she told Votebeat shortly after her removal.
“I regretted being that forthright … but also don’t feel like I can skirt details or sidestep questions in my line of work,” she said. “Folks didn’t follow procedure, and I was extremely frustrated when I uncovered that.”
Woodall said the comment to the newspaper was the sole reason Milwaukee officials cited for not reappointing her. Fleming disputed that.
“There were multiple … non-operational issues, management issues that were of significant concern,” he said, declining to elaborate….
Florida election officials are warning that an obscure new ballot rule being put in place by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis could force them to break state law or face removal from office.
A wave of exasperated election supervisors — meeting at their summer conference — vented to top officials from the Department of State about a recently rolled out proposal that they contend would violate the right to a secret ballot. They also said they worried it would put them in the crosshairs of activists who continually question the validity of elections.
Smartmatic alleges that Newsmax has destroyed evidence in the voting machine company’s lawsuit against the right-wing news channel over false claims that Smartmatic helped “rig” the 2020 election, according to court documents made public this week.
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.
In a statement, Newsmax said it “categorically” denies the allegations.
The lawsuit is just one of many major defamation cases filed by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems against news organizations over false claims about fraud in 2020 election. Most are still pending, and several may go to trial this fall — ensuring that Trump’s claims about a “rigged election” in 2020 will continue to be a focus even as the next presidential election nears.
What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it….
I grew up in Michigan. My own political education and my early years as a journalist coincided with a stunning Republican resurgence in my home state. Over several decades, Michigan’s dynastic families — the DeVoses and Meijers and Van Andels on the west side, the Romneys and Fords on the east — poured money and manpower into the Michigan Republican Party, building it into one of the most vaunted political operations in the country. They transformed Michigan from a bastion of organized labor that leaned Democratic into a toss-up state that, until recently, had a right-to-work law and put Republicans in control of all three branches of government for eight of the last 14 years. Michigan Republicans were so successful that other states copied their tactics. As Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway fortune and a prolific Republican donor, once told a gathering of conservative activists, “If we can do it in Michigan, you can do it anywhere.”
Several years ago, however, my home state stopped making sense to me. I watched as thousands of political newcomers, whose sole qualification appeared to be fervor of belief, declared war on the Republican establishment that had been so dominant. Calling themselves the “America First” movement, these unknowns treated the DeVoses and other party leaders as the enemy. I had covered the DeVoses and the Michigan Republican Party long enough to know that they were not just pro-business but staunch conservatives who wanted to slash taxes, abolish regulations and remake the public education system in favor of vouchers and parochial schools. Yet the new “America First” activists disparaged prominent Michigan Republicans as “globalist” elites who belonged to a corrupt “uniparty” cabal. That cabal had denied Trump a rightful second term and needed to be purged from the party.
With a consequential election looming, I traveled back to Michigan earlier this year to understand how this all happened. I sought out the activists waging this struggle, a group of people who don’t trust institutions or individuals except Trump and one another — and sometimes not even that. Could they triumph over the elites? I found chaos, incompetence, strife, a glimpse of a future post-Trump Republican Party and, all around me, danger for our system of government and the state of the country.
“We can’t keep going through election after election like this where a large plurality of the country just does not accept the outcome of the majority and refuses to abide by it,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party who now works with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “That’s when the system falls apart.”
When Missouri voters head to the ballot box this year, they’ll be asked to sign off on a measure that would ban ranked-choice voting or ranking candidates by preference.
But the first bullet point that will appear on the ballot question has nothing to do with that issue. It instead will ask Missourians whether to ban non-U.S. citizens from voting in the state, a practice that is already illegal. Disputes among lawmakers over whether to include a ban on non-citizen voting ultimately tanked a separate measure to weaken direct democracy. It was a key win for Democrats, who argued Republicans were using the non-citizen language as a way to deceive voters.
However, Missouri voters will still see similar language on the ballot this year. House Republicans, in the waning hours of the legislative session, passed a measure that included a ban on non-citizen voting attached to the ballot question that would outlaw ranked-choice voting.
Very troubling and deplorable:
Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington went on lockdown for about two hours Wednesday morning after a suspicious package was delivered to the building.
The United States Capitol Police’s hazardous incident response division cleared the… Continue reading
WaPo:
Rudy Giuliani has agreed to no longer accuse two Georgia poll workers of tampering with the 2020 election, according to a draft agreement filed Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court.
The agreement bars Giuliani — who has amplified election… Continue reading
NYT:
The incumbent in the lone competitive race for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court won re-election on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, fending off a challenge from a former Democratic congressman who had built his campaign… Continue reading
NYT:
Republicans are pushing legislation to crack down on voting by noncitizens, which happens rarely and is already illegal in federal elections, in a move that reinforces former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the 2024 results if he… Continue reading
The Washington Post has published several responses to the op-ed written by three GOP ex-senators: Danforth, Cohen, and Simpson. In their op-ed, they explained that they are creating a new organization called “Our Republican Legacy” inside the Republican Party.… Continue reading
Cleveland.com:
If President Joe Biden is going to make it on the ballot in Ohio, it won’t be because of the Republican-controlled state legislature, according to Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens.
Stephens told reporters on Tuesday the push to fix… Continue reading
CNN:
Rudy Giuliani and 10 others pleaded not guilty in an Arizona court Tuesday to charges of allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
The former New York mayor was also ordered to post a $10,000 bond… Continue reading
Bloomberg Businessweek:
As the rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump draws nearer, political professionals are detecting an unusual concern among some undecided voters: that if Trump returns to the White House, he’ll refuse to step down when his term… Continue reading
