Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Republicans are scrambling to prevent Hunter Biden’s conviction on felony gun charges from undermining their argument that the judicial system is being weaponized against Donald Trump. They just can’t agree on how. Trump’s campaign cast the conviction of his rival’s son on Tuesday as a “distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family,” while some hard-line supporters dismissed the proceedings as “fake.” House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that Hunter Biden’s conviction “doesn’t” undercut Republicans’ claims of…

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The New York Times reports: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness. “One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a…

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The Daily Beast reports: Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, once again unwitting made herself the internet’s Main Character on Tuesday after an undercover reporter released a secretly recorded conversation in which she nastily complained about her neighbor’s Pride flag and bizarrely declared “I’m German.” “Look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German,” she told a documentary maker who was posing as a conservative activist. “You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you. And…

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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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