Samuel Alito Joins the Supreme Court’s Billionaires’ Club

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Samuel Alito Joins the Supreme Court’s Billionaires’ Club]( Samuel Alito Joins the Supreme Court’s Billionaires’ Club, Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times Judging from the trips and gifts they have received, both Alito and Thomas appear to have been beneficiaries of something like a billionaire buddies program, in which they’re paired with a particularly generous friend. I say “paired” because these connections aren’t as spontaneous as they may seem. If there is an evergreen presence in these stories concerning the court’s ethical entanglement, it is Leonard Leo, one of the longtime leaders of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. Leo helped organize Alito’s fishing trip with Paul Singer; he can be seen (in a painting commissioned for the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow) vacationing with Clarence Thomas; and he was responsible for steering tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to Thomas’s wife, Ginni. Last year, Leo turned his influence and ties into a $1.6 billion gift from a single donor to his Marble Freedom Trust — quite possibly the largest political donation in American history. - [Why Trump’s weird reaction to the audio recording matters]( Why Trump’s weird reaction to the audio recording matters, Steve Benen, MSNBC A newly surfaced audio recording appears to show Donald Trump admitting he kept classified docs while presenting them to someone who lacked clearance. On the newly released recording, we can hear Trump shuffling through papers, and apparently presenting a war plan — which the former president describes as “highly confidential” — to a writer as part of his criticism of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump said, adding, “Isn’t that incredible?” At one point, pointing to Pentagon documents, he also declared, “These are the papers. ... This was done by the military and given to me.” He went on to say, “As president, I could have declassified. Now I can’t, but this is still a secret. ... It’s so cool.” In an interview with Fox News last week, host Bret Baier asked about this aspect of the controversy. Trump responded, “There was no document there. ... That was not a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.” It now appears he was brazenly lying. The recording, if accurate, suggests Trump took classified materials, knowingly kept the classified materials, deliberately showed highly sensitive materials to someone who didn’t have the necessary clearance, and admitted he lacked the wherewithal to declassify the documents he wasn’t supposed to have. - [Separating Spin from Reality in the Supreme Court’s Moore v. Harper Case: What Does It Really Mean for American Democracy and What Does It Say About the Supreme Court?]( Separating Spin from Reality in the Supreme Court’s Moore v. Harper Case: What Does It Really Mean for American Democracy and What Does It Say About the Supreme Court?, Rick Hasen, Election Law Blog Here’s my view on this (as described in somewhat different terms in this Slate piece and this blog post): Moore has killed off the most extreme version of the independent state legislature theory, but it still gives the Supreme Court and federal courts a license to do mischief (under uncertain standards) in the most politically sensitive cases including post-election challenges to presidential elections. The reason the case looks like so much of a win has less to do with the Court’s holding than the Court’s rejection of a really extreme theory. In this way, it is much like the victory (that I wrote about recently in the New York Times) for voting rights plaintiffs in Allen v. Milligan. In Moore, the North Carolina legislators advanced a really bonkers theory that would have upended U.S. elections and provided a path for legislatures to engage in election subversion (as I argued in this amicus brief filed in Moore). In Allen, Alabama advanced a bonkers race-neutral theory of the Voting Rights Act that would have essentially killed it. The three conservative Justices in the middle rejected these extreme arguments: we are conservatives but not suckers they seemed to say. - [Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections]( Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections, Adam Liptak, The New York Times The 6-to-3 majority dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory, which would have given state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections. The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering. The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion. The Constitution, he said, “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.” - [703 Ways Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Conduct Bears No Resemblance to Hillary Clinton’s Emails]( 703 Ways Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Conduct Bears No Resemblance to Hillary Clinton’s Emails, Roger Parloff, Lawfare “Is there a different standard for a Democratic secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” asked Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis shortly after news of Trump’s classified-documents indictment broke. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country.” Many Republicans who know in their guts that, as I will establish in this piece, Trump’s conduct is palpably different from Clinton’s are publicly encouraging the corrosive myth that a double standard has been applied in the indictment of one and the non-prosecution of the other. Here’s Sen. Lindsey Graham doing just that on ABC’s This Week earlier this month: “Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her.” Note that Graham didn’t say that he believed we live in that world. Yet he managed to leave the impression that he was sympathetic to that view and that Republicans who held it were justified in doing so. - [Daily Kos has been struggling to make ends meet. We have a lot of work to do to get ready for the 2024 elections and could really use your help right now. Please donate today.]( - [Sip your favorite beverage from your very own Daily Kos mug. Click here to get one now!]( - [A Handy Guide to the Republican Definition of a Crime]( A Handy Guide to the Republican Definition of a Crime, David Firestone, The New York Times All federal crimes are charged and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Now that Republicans believe the department has been weaponized into a Democratic Party strike force, particularly against Mr. Trump, its prosecutions can no longer be trusted. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently tweeted. The F.B.I., which investigates many federal crimes, has also become corrupted by the same political forces. “The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Meet the dumbest Republicans in the House—it’s not who you think]( - [Unbelievable! Georgia teacher fired for reading children's book]( - [Watch Trump's brain break in real time]( Want even more Daily Kos? 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