Fly Your Freak Flag

Last week, we learned that Samuel Alito flew a stop the steal upside-down flag at his home. This week comes news of another flag displayed above his vacation house. “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.” (There’s a religious war in America, and SCOTUS is ground zero.) NYT (Gift Article): Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home.

+ What will happen? Nothing. Dahlia Lithwick in Slate (Gift Article): “Rather 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 the courts. Not just Alito or Thomas, who happen to go to work every day at the court, and not just Dobbs and gun control, which happen to have come out of the very same court, but the connection between those two tales: 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.” What These Stories About Samuel Alito’s “Provocative” Flags Are Really About.

+ Meanwhile: Supreme Court approves South Carolina congressional map previously found to dilute Black voting power.