Attention to the Unseen

Ian Millhiser writes: Let’s not beat around the bush. It is more likely than not that Donald Trump will return to the White House next year. Right now, polling averages show Trump with a slight popular vote lead over incumbent President Joe Biden. And, even if Biden overcomes this small deficit, the Electoral College system effectively makes Trump votes count more than Biden votes. Although there may be signs that the Republican Party’s advantage in the Electoral College is fading, that advantage was…

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The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump is vowing to wrest key spending powers from Congress if elected this November, promising to assert more control over the federal budget than any president in U.S. history. The Constitution gives control over spending to Congress, but Trump and his aides maintain that the president should have much more discretion — including the authority to cease programs altogether, even if lawmakers fund them. Depending on the response from the Supreme Court and Congress, Trump’s…

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By Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow. The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not…

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CNN reports: [Judge Aileen] Cannon’s assignment to the documents case was a game of odds. Though the charges were filed in West Palm Beach, the division that is home to Mar-a-Lago, Cannon was randomly chosen from a broader pool of judges in Florida’s southern district. Her approach as a jurist – detail-obsessed to the point of tedious – appears uniquely prone to being exploited by a defense team eager to delay the case. And the complicated system Cannon has set…

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CNBC reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of gifts over the past two decades on the bench, a total nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time, according to a new analysis. Thomas received 103 gifts with a total value of more than $2.4 million between 2004 and 2023, the judicial reform group Fix the Court said in a report Thursday. In contrast, Thomas’ fellow justices…

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  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, delivers the 32nd in a series of speeches titled “The Scheme,” exposing the machinations by right-wing donor interests to capture the Supreme Court and achieve through the Court what they cannot through the elected branches of government. Whitehouse discusses the ethics violations related to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s MAGA battle flags that flew at two of his homes, and Chief Justice Roberts’s refusal to take action as…

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By Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica. Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company. The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his…

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Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern: Dahlia Lithwick: I think the merits can get lost when we talk about the flags. But there is a substantive problem that we’re starting to pick up on, and that is Justice Alito, in recent weeks, making very real and serious errors in his opinions. They’re actually prompting corrections from sources that he cites, who say, “No, my work reflects the opposite of what you’re claiming.” I’d love for you to unpack that. Mark…

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Ankush Khardori writes: It may not have been the trial that the country deserves, but it’s the trial that we got. On Thursday, Donald Trump became the first president in U.S. history to become a convicted felon thanks to a jury of 12 New Yorkers. The verdict was swift, coming after less than two days of deliberations in the hush money trial. But a conviction was not inevitable. The legal issues were intricate and in some key respects novel, and…

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