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Conservative Justice’s Spouse Leased Land to Oil and Gas Company While He Wrote Opinion Restricting EPA’s Work
Another U.S. Supreme Court scandal is brewing in the wake of alleged corruption involving nearly every conservative member of the current Roberts Court, or their spouse.
The wife of Justice Samuel Alito leased a 160-acre Oklahoma property to an oil and gas firm while her husband wrote the recent majority opinion greatly restricting the work the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is allowed to do. Should that land produce oil and gas, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito would earn just under a quarter of all revenue from that property, The Intercept reports.
“Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled ‘mineral interests’ was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales,” according to The Intercept. “Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.”
It also poses ethics concerns.
READ MORE: Liberty University VP Cites Hitler and Stalin in Plea for Conservatives to ‘Control Education’
“’There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family’s net wealth,’ Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept,” the news outlet’s Daniel Boguslaw reports. The Revolving Door Project says it “scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.”
Hauser added, “Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real life, run-of-the-mill political villain.”
His remarks did not end there.
On Twitter, Hauser wrote: “Sam Alito could choose to be invested solely in vanilla Vanguard or Fidelity investment funds. Instead, he and his wife cultivate conflicts of interest because he believes that he and his pals ARE the law. The latest? The Alitos are into natural gas production.”
This latest look at the financial dealings of the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court follows numerous reports, including decades of undisclosed luxury vacations gifted to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas by a conservative billionaire megadonor, along with a generous real estate transaction for his mother’s home and an education for the couple’s grandnephew. Then there was Justice Samuel Alito taking an undisclosed Alaska vacation with a conservative billionaire who repeatedly had business before the court, and a free trip to Rome where he delivered a secret speech days after writing the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Justice Amy Coney Barrett having ties to the leader of the group that funded Alito’s Rome trip, including selling her personal home to “a recently hired Notre Dame professor who was assuming a leadership role” at that organization. Justice Neil Gorsuch selling land to the head of a law firm with cases before the Court, while not disclosing his name. And Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife making millions by placing attorneys into high-powered law firms that routinely have business before the Supreme Court.
Political and legislative strategist Murshed Zaheed, a senior advisor to Take Back The Court, responded to The Intercept’s report via Twitter, saying: “There appears to be no limit to the culture of corruption from the extreme right wing judges on the #SCOTUS. This is not sustainable if we want to have a functioning democracy. #expandSCOTUS.”
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A federal judge chastised the Trump administration for defying his order issued last week to fully distribute SNAP payments by Monday, or at least partially by Wednesday. The administration had said it would release 65 percent of the funds but offered no timeline for doing so.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island sharply rebuked the Trump administration “for what he said was defying his order to make full SNAP payments by Nov. 5,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported on Thursday. “He has ordered USDA to make the *full* payment to states by tomorrow.”
“It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,” McConnell said, according to Cheney.
READ MORE: ‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
The judge alleged that “Trump and his allies have admitted to withholding SNAP benefits for ‘political reasons’ rather than to preserve child nutrition programs, which the judge said was a pretext,” Cheney also reported.
Judge McConnell cited a Truth Social post President Trump made in which he vowed to hold up the SNAP funds. The President wrote that food stamp benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”
The White House later walked back the President’s remarks, claiming he was referring to any future shutdowns.
The judge “said Trump’s Truth Social post was essentially an admission of his ‘intent to defy the court order,'” according to Cheney.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said, according to the Associated Press. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individual who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
READ MORE: Democratic Rep. Interrupts Speaker Johnson — Accuses Him of ‘Lies’
Image via Reuters
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shared a few of his goals for next year’s midterms with reporters.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, Oz promoted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform.
“We’ve dropped the [price of] infertility drugs to make lots of Trump babies — I’m hoping by the midterms,” he told reporters, as HuffPost reported.
READ MORE: ‘Clown Show’: House Dem Leader Slams ‘Divorced From Reality’ Senate GOP Head
Praising President Donald Trump’s plan to lower prices on popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs, Oz said, “America will have to get fit in order to rightsize the health care system.”
Dr. Oz has talked about making “Trump babies” before.
“Now I know what you’re all thinking, and you’re probably right, that there are going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz said in October at a White House event focused on making in vitro drugs more accessible. “I think that’s probably a good thing.”
“But it turns out the fundamental, creative force in society is about making babies,” he continued. “It’s about creating. And this country, the one that President Trump is leading so beautifully has been a country of abundance, not scarcity.”
Oz: We’ve dropped in fertility drugs to make a lot of Trump babies hopefully by the midterms pic.twitter.com/LxdPEasSns
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 6, 2025
READ MORE: Democratic Rep. Interrupts Speaker Johnson — Accuses Him of ‘Lies’
Image via Reuters
As the federal government shutdown enters its 38th day with no end in sight, the Speaker of the House and the House Democratic Minority Leader appear united — on one aspect only: blaming the Senate.
Amid reports that a few Senate Democrats might agree to vote to reopen the government if Republicans guarantee a date-certain vote on restoring the Affordable Care Act subsidies, Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to attempt to scuttle that potential bargain on Thursday.
Asked if he would assure that the House would vote on restoring the Obamacare subsidy funding, which would be the basis of a Senate deal, Johnson refused.
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“No, because we did our job, and I’m not part of the negotiation,” the Speaker told reporters on Thursday. “The House did its job on September 19th” when it passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through November 21. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has effectively declared that legislation is dead, unless he can change the end date.
“I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson continued. “I’m gonna let this process play out.”
Over on the Democratic side of the aisle, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the Senate Majority Leader.
“Not a partisan thing, a patriotic thing: We have to decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jeffries declared.
“And John Thune is divorced from reality,” he charged.
“I mean, it’s a clown show over in the Senate,” Jeffries continued.
READ MORE: Democratic Rep. Interrupts Speaker Johnson — Accuses Him of ‘Lies’
“Fourteen, fifteen times, you bring the same partisan Republican spending bill?” he said, referring to the House-passed continuing resolution that Leader Thune has been putting before the Senate several times a week.
“Expecting a different result? That’s the classic definition of legislative insanity. Doing the same thing, over and over and over again,” he said while blasting Thune, saying he “has no ability to actually negotiate in good faith.”
Weeks ago, Jeffries told MSNBC, “what I’m saying is that we need an ironclad path forward that decisively addresses the Republican healthcare crisis.”
“In terms of the Affordable Care Act, you know, this is a group of people, Republicans, who have tried to repeal the Affordable Care more than 70 different times since 2010. They can’t be trusted on a wing and a prayer. We need a real path forward to address the crisis that Republicans have visited upon the American people in terms of healthcare, the cost of living, and affordability.”
Jeffries: “John Thune is divorced from reality. It’s a clown show over in the Senate. 14, 15 times you bring the same partisan Republican spending bill to the Senate floor expecting a different result? That’s the classic definition of legislative insanity. Has no ability to… pic.twitter.com/MqPUA1sIMJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2025
READ MORE: Trump to Talk About Cost of Living Next Year White House Says
Image via Reuters
‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
‘Really Hurting’: U.S. Job Cuts Surge to Decades-Level High Amid Trump Recession Fears
Judge Rebukes Trump Admin for Defying SNAP Payment Deadline
‘Clown Show’: House Dem Leader Slams ‘Divorced From Reality’ Senate GOP Head
Judge Rebukes Trump Admin for Defying SNAP Payment Deadline
‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
‘Clown Show’: House Dem Leader Slams ‘Divorced From Reality’ Senate GOP Head
‘Really Hurting’: U.S. Job Cuts Surge to Decades-Level High Amid Trump Recession Fears
Trump to Talk About Cost of Living Next Year White House Says
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