News
Justice Alito’s Secret Speech ‘Spiking the Ball’ on Revoking Abortion Seen as Worsening Court’s ‘Credibility Crisis’
One week ago conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito delivered a speech in Rome on religious liberty that is being denounced from the left and the right as furthering the Court’s “credibility crisis” while further placing the 72-year-old Bush appointee’s judgment into question.
Alito delivered the keynote address at the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit gala dinner on July 21. The invitation-only speech at the event hosted by the 153-year-old Catholic institution was not announced in advance to the public, nor even made known until one week later, when the law school posted a news release and full video of the speech. The Supreme Court Justice was not on the schedule of speakers posted online, as Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley, who covers the Supreme Court, noted on social media.
While it’s unclear why the speech was kept secret, American media was quick to latch onto some of Alito’s remarks but did not do a deep dive into the 35 or so minute-long speech, which has raised eyebrows and elicited anger among legal experts, court watchers, and the general public.
CNN and Politico noted Alito lambasted several foreign critics of his majority opinion rescinding five decades of settled U.S. law in the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking the constitutional right to abortion and opening the door to further assaults on liberty and autonomy.
His targets were not opinion writers or pundits, but political leaders of America’s top allies.
Alito mocked the embattled, now former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, robustly declaring, “he paid the price.”
READ MORE: Justice Alito’s Gay Marriage Questions: Could It Legalize Polygamy, Did Ancient Greeks Allow It?
Politico added that Alito “went on to note that President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada ‘are still in office’ despite the salvos they launched at the ruling.”
And he went after Britain’s Prince Harry, falsely characterizing the Duke’s remarks.
“What really wounded me was when the duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said. “Despite this temptation, I’m not going to talk about cases from other countries.”
In his Rome speech on religious liberty, Justice Alito mocked “foreign leaders” who condemned his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, including Boris Johnson, Macron, Trudeau, and … Prince Harry.
Of Boris, Alito quipped: “He paid the price.” https://t.co/NPqalw0KA6 pic.twitter.com/xC0qguZ31n
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 28, 2022
And while mainstream media focused on some of the low-hanging fruit in his remarks, others who apparently watched his speech, posted by Notre Dame, expressed outrage at what they seem to see as his intolerance of freedom of and from religion, intolerance toward women, and mocking of those who dare criticize his attack on the right to abortion.
NYU professor Barbara Malmet, an artist, activist, triathlete, and producer who has a huge Twitter following, did not hold back in denouncing Alito’s remarks.
“Alito working the room, basking in the laughs. Bearded, in a tux, at a religious liberty speech in Rome. He thinks it’s a fucking joke that women no longer have agency over their own bodies in many states in America because of his own religious beliefs?” she tweeted.
Hours later she again commented, this time writing, “I am still spinning about Alito in Rome at a Notre Dame event, cracking jokes about his devastating abortion ruling while women are reeling here.”
Well-known economist David Rothschild, an avid commentator, attacked Alito and his audience: “Cannot get over mix of arrogance, entitlement, general derision towards American people & democracy that Republican Partisan Hack in Robes Alito showed in speech trashing foreign leaders in Rome to laughing audience of (what I can only assume) are also authoritarian misogynists.”
Novelist, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter Paul Rudnick: “Samuel Alito made a speech in Rome praising the repeal of Roe and condemning the left for a ‘hostility to religion.’ Alito uses his faith to punish women and he wants to not only ban marriage equality but criminalize LGBTQ lives. His religion is a weapon of mass destruction.”
Conservative attorney John David Dyche: “Regardless of one’s view on Dobbs it is hard to see how an arrogant & injudicious Alito ‘spiking the ball’ in political comments at a Notre Dame event in Rome will do anything but further erode public confidence in a court already diminished by a multi-faceted credibility crisis.”
Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett wrote: “This was Alito’s speech in Rome about ‘religious freedom.’ And it always boggles my mind that to these guys, religious freedom doesn’t apply to anyone but those in their own religion.”
Award-winning investigative reporter Paul Barry: “If Justice Alito wants to claim overturning Roe v Wade was based entirely on law, it’s maybe better not to do it at a conference on religious freedom in Rome.”
Veteran journalist Jim Roberts: “In a speech in Rome, the obviously shameless Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito jokes about the overseas reaction to the Roe v. Wade ruling that he authored.”
Other social media critics were equally angered.
“Who the hell is responsible for holding SCOTUS justices accountable, because there’s no way alito should be in Rome behaving like a GOP congressman.”
“What an undignified, crass, embarrassment to the country this smug, condescending seditionist is. Whoever imagined a (laughably ‘impartial’) SCOTUS Justice, out taking *political* shots at America’s allies? Absolutely unacceptable.”
“Wow! We’re not even pretending that the Supreme Court is not political. Alito is having a good old time in Rome mocking the loss of reproductive rights for US women.”
“Justice Samuel Alito is a dangerous clown who should be nowhere near our SCOTUS. Going to Rome to speak on ‘religious liberty’ as he wages a war on women, and then criticizes our allies?? WTF. He’s an embarrassment to the United States.”
“Christian Dominionism, anyone? With a side of gaslighting and projection, and snark as an aperitif.”
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President Donald Trump, his team, and his allies are “saboteurs” who are “wrecking” all the institutions that brought America prosperity and prestige, says a fascism expert who warns that the president may take action to disrupt — or even cancel —a future election.
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and a scholar of fascism, is an expert on authoritarianism and strongmen. She spoke with Politicon’s James Carville and Al Hunt on Friday.
When asked whether it is “accurate” to call Trump a fascist, Dr. Ben-Ghiat replied, “He’s got many fascist qualities, and they’re recycling Nazi slogans now,” she observed.
Trump, she continued, “made a campaign video that said that he was going to — he was going to create a ‘unified Reich.'”
READ MORE: Trump Warns CNN and MS NOW: Stop Booking Ty Cobb and Miles Taylor
“They’re taking from the fascist playbook,” she added, noting that they “love” Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and “all autocrats.”
“They are trying their best to have an authoritarian state and destroy our democracy,’ she warned.
Ben-Ghiat agreed that she is worried that Trump would try to do something to intervene in the elections, perhaps by not holding one.
The “more they feel backed into a corner,” she observed, “and these are people, these strong men, who live in fear of being — getting into a position where they can be held accountable.”
“It’s inconceivable that he would just leave office normally,” she noted. “So you can’t underestimate what they’re going to do.”
“It could be the Insurrection Act, it could be trying to have a state — some kind of state emergency to cancel the election,” she said. “ICE could be used in violent ways or intimidating ways to get people to stay home.”
READ MORE: ‘God Doesn’t Care if You Score a Touchdown’: Critics Torch Christian Sports Movement Op-Ed
“All kinds of tricks could be used.”
“They’re not gonna give up without a fight,” she warned.
Ben-Ghiat also said, “I have been saying since February — and people thought I was like a conspiracy theorist — that Trump and company are saboteurs.”
“They’re trying to sabotage America so thoroughly that it’ll be wrecked for generations, and that’s why they’re wrecking medical research, scientific research, child welfare. All the things that brought America prosperity and prestige in the world have to be wrecked.”
“I truly see Trump as in office in part to solve Putin’s problems. And to make autocracy flourish.”
“He’s trying to take down America in every way. So that it has its role in the Western hemisphere, and then Xi can do his thing in Asia, and Putin can prosper, and all the failed, horrible states can have a new life, because the U.S. military or the U.S. — they’re not gonna come after them.”
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President Donald Trump, in what appeared to be an attempt to pressure two major cable news networks, warned against booking two prominent former officials from his first administration.
Trump targeted CNN and MS NOW — formerly MSNBC, which he called “MSDNC” — while denouncing attorney Ty Cobb, a former member of the White House legal team who reported directly to the president, and former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.
The president called Cobb “one of the Worst Lawyers in Washington, D.C.,” and a “WHACKJOB, who I hardly knew,” and said Taylor is “another major Loser … who I have no idea who he is.”
He charged that both “make livings talking about me like they know me well.”
READ MORE: ‘God Doesn’t Care if You Score a Touchdown’: Critics Torch Christian Sports Movement Op-Ed
“So, when you watch these two guys on Television, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often because there’s very little audience at either CNN or MSDNC,” he wrote, “remember, they know nothing about me — Just two DOPES trying to make a ‘buck’ by pretending to know something about someone who turned out to be very famous.”
Trump already was the president when they served in his administration.
“These two Networks are forewarned not to put them on the air again, because they have no knowledge or credibility with respect to anything have [sic] to do with DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Last month, Cobb “claimed President Trump is experiencing a ‘significant decline’ in his mental faculties,” according to The Hill.
“I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians,” Cobb said.
Trump’s social media post came just about the same time that he or someone with access to his social media account deleted what many, including several prominent Republicans, denounced as a racist meme that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
READ MORE: ‘This Is How It Begins’: Alarm Bells Erupt Over FBI Midterms Email to Election Officials
Image via Reuters
Ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, a Washington Post guest opinion piece praising the deliberate growth of the Christian sports movement is being met with criticism by readers who appear to largely disagree with professional sports becoming overtly religious.
“Today athletes are some of the most prominent Christians in public life, far exceeding any pastor or priest,” writes Paul Putz, director of the Faith and Sports Institute at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. “And the interviews offered at the end of sporting events may be the only time many Americans will hear a proclamation of faith.”
“Christians will be prominently featured during the biggest sports Sunday of the year. Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Patriots quarterback Drake Maye have already used the run-up to the game to share their faith in Christ,” he notes. “When the contest starts, players will be found at various points kneeling in prayer, and pointing upward to God in celebration.”
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Putz also points to the event’s popular commercials, which he says for the fourth year will include “the latest Jesus ad from the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign.”
“And during the postgame interviews they’ll hear the winners give glory to God, while the losers try to make sense of the disappointment, perhaps turning to the Bible for solace.”
Putz makes clear that this “transformation” from a largely secular game to one infused with religion “did not happen by accident,” but is “the result of a Christian sports movement that has been growing since the 1950s.” He points to evangelical sports ministries such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Pro Athletes Outreach, and Athletes in Action.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes reportedly has come under scrutiny over the years for its recruitment efforts in public high schools, and for its statements against homosexuality.
Readers offered sharp criticism.
READ MORE: ‘I Have Stopped Nuclear Wars’: Trump Defends Letting US-Russia Arms Treaty Expire
“People of faith have always been in sports. They just didn’t feel the need to ram it down our throats before,” wrote one reader in the most popular comment.
“I hate to break it these athletes but God doesn’t care if you score a touchdown. God hopefully has more important things to be concerned about,” said another.
“Performing public Christianity is not Christianity, which Republicans do not seem to get at all. Aren’t we all just sick of politics and culture war dressed up as religion?” asked still another.
“Football Christianity and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes…really?” asked another reader. “What does that have to do with the Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes, compassion teachings, taking care of the poor, the hungry, the stranger, the ill? Where are they in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles? When people were being rounded up, beaten, shot, pepper sprayed, dragged from their homes and automobiles?”
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Image via Reuters
Fascism Expert Warns Trump Could Invoke Emergency Powers to Cancel the Election
Trump Warns CNN and MS NOW: Stop Booking Ty Cobb and Miles Taylor
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