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‘Fake Argument’: Top Senate Democrats Focused on Fixing Supreme Court Slam Alito’s ‘Stunningly Wrong’ Ethics Claims

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Two Senate Democrats who for years have been focused on fixing the U.S. Supreme Court’s lack a strong code of ethics are furious after Justice Samuel Alito, once again speaking to The Wall Street Journal, claimed Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate the nation’s top court.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) blasted Justice Alito’s “fake argument” in response to a Politico piece on the justice’s Journal interview.

“I stand by my takedown of this fake argument,” Sen. Whitehouse said Monday on social media. “This opin-terview is probably an effort to prop it back up. ‘No sale.’”

Whitehouse also slammed Alito for opining on an issue not only related to the Court, but one that conceivably could come before it.

“Remember all the nominees saying to us it would be wrong to talk about issues that might come before the Court? So much for that.”

READ MORE: Judge Likens Trump to ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and Denies Attempt to Block Potential Fulton County Indictment

For over a dozen years, Whitehouse has been trying to revamp the Supreme Court’s meager ethics code of conduct, one that is far less rigorous than the code of conduct all other federal judges must abide by.

In a four-hour interview with The Wall Street Journal Alito did not appear to hold back, which the Journal’s reporters called “a candor that is refreshing and can be startling.”

“Justice Alito says he voluntarily follows disclosure statutes that apply to lower-court judges and executive-branch officials; so do the other justices. But he notes that ‘Congress did not create the Supreme Court’—the Constitution did. ‘I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,’ he says. ‘No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.'”

Numerous legal experts have weighed in since that Friday interview to say that yes, Congress indeed can regulate the Supreme Court.

“I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year,” Justice Alito told The Journal.

He makes clear he will continue to speak out, regardless of institutional norms.

READ MORE: ‘Cult’: Poll Finds Trump-Supporting GOPers Who Believe He Committed Crimes Outnumbers All DeSantis 2024 Voters

“In the face of a political onslaught, he observes, ‘the traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute’ and leave it to others, especially ‘the organized bar,’ to defend them,” the Journal writes.

“But that’s just not happening,” Alito claims. “And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

Also on Monday Sen. Whitehouse pointed to a Washington Post opinion piece by Ruth Marcus: “No, Justice Alito. Congress should not butt out on Supreme Court ethics.”

Last week Sen. Whitehouse explained his legislation to repair the Supreme Court’s ethics code to CBS News.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is also focused on fixing the Supreme Court’s ethics challenges, and on Sunday “forcefully pushed back on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s claim that Congress does not have the authority to regulate the judicial branch, calling Alito’s comments ‘stunningly wrong,'” Politico reported.

“It’s just stunningly wrong. And he should know that more than anyone else because his seat on the Supreme Court exists only because of an act passed by Congress,” Murphy said Sunday on CNN.

Like Sen. Whitehouse, Sen. Murphy also slammed Alito for weighing in on Congress’ ability to regulate the Supreme Court, “saying Sunday it is ‘even more disturbing that Alito feels the need to insert himself into a congressional debate.'”

“It’s just more evidence that these justices on the Supreme Court, these conservative justices, just see themselves as politicians. They just see themselves as a second legislative body that has just as much power and weight to impose their political will on the country as Congress does,” Murphy added. “It’s why we need to pass this common sense ethics legislation to at least make sure we know that these guys aren’t in bed having their lifestyles paid for by conservative donors, as we have unfortunately seen in these latest revelations.”

Watch Senator Murphy’s comments below, Senator Whitehouse’s comments above, or both at this link.

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Carville Says There’s Only ‘One Thing’ Trump Is Thinking About on His China Trip

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Democratic strategist and political commentator James Carville is blasting what he says is the “one thing” President Donald Trump is thinking about on his trip to China, and it has nothing to do with diplomacy, the U.S. economy, or the war in Iran.

Carville told Al Hunt on their Politicon podcast that it was “really interesting” that all the people he took to China were essentially the people who were in the “first three rows” from his inaugural address. He “put them on Air Force One, and he took Eric — who handles the business end of his business.”

“You’re going to watch a grift and graft over there, like you can’t imagine,” Carville continued. “That’s all this trip is about, and I got news for you, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack, or whoever you are out there, he doesn’t give a s—— about you, your future, your finances, your retirement, your anything.”

“He just cares about making all the money he can as fast as he can, and people [who] don’t realize that are just, just woefully stupid.”

Hunt reminded Carville that earlier this week Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

“Oh, you don’t, Donald,” Hunt responded. “Well, you know something? I think a lot of Americans think about their financial situation, and I’m sure those billionaire oligarchs you’re traveling with don’t, but a lot of voters do, and, uh, you’re gonna pay, you’re gonna pay a price.”

Carville added that Trump also said that he doesn’t even think of Iran.

“I think there’s only one thing that he’s thinking about in his trip to China. And that is a big grift,” Carville said. “Look at who he’s taking with him.”

Carville said there would be “economic exchanges” and “investment opportunities” during the China trip.

“You can see, this is where this is going,” he continued. “They just buy him off. He does not care.”

“He doesn’t care if he, as long as he can go there and make as much money, as fast as he can make it, that’s all what he cares about.”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

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Christian Content Creator Fighting Sin Is Teaching Others How to Eat Biblically: NYT

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27-year-old Michigan-raised Kayla Bundy is a Christian content creator who turned to the Bible for ways to eat healthy — but her lifestyle is also part of a “higher calling,” The New York Times reports, explaining that she is “a biblical eater, someone who consumes mostly foods mentioned in the Bible.”

“Sin entered into the world through food,” Bundy told the Times, “and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”

According to the Times, a “diet inspired by the Bible has found new audiences online in the Make America Healthy Again era.”

Bundy, who has over 500,000 followers on TikTok, and has been eating biblically for eight years, “claims that her diet ‘fixed’ her skin, her hair and her depression, and she sells coaching sessions to help others with their diets,” The Times reports. She “is open about not having nutrition credentials, but she sells a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods, as well as coaching sessions that start around $700 for a month, she said.”

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She buys raw milk, eats sardines and authentic sourdough bread without commercial yeast, and tries to cook with locally sourced foods.

“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” said Bundy, who now lives in Bali. Cutting out refined sugar made her feel good, and she started “studying scripture from that lens of noticing what they are eating.”

32-year old Georgia stay-at-home mom Annalies Xaviera “posts biblical eating tips,” and “said her Facebook following had jumped from scant thousands to over 300,000 in just a few weeks this spring. She sells a digital cookbook.”

“The Bible says that God appreciates and celebrates small steps of obedience,” Xaviera told the Times.

“When you’re in a craving,” she said, “have you ever thought to stop and pray?”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

 

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‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

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The Trump White House is hosting an unprecedented Christian prayer festival Sunday on the National Mall — a nine-hour event that a Trump advisor describes as “rededicating the country to God.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and House Speaker Mike Johnson are all expected to appear.

The funding for “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” comes in part from taxpayer dollars earmarked for America’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers say, according to The Washington Post.

The speakers are almost all Christian, and expected to largely be evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, “many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian,” the Post reports. The event will have a “focus on American identity as aligned with a specific slice of conservative Protestantism.”

Pastor Paula White-Cain, Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office who delivered the invocation at President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, said the Jubilee “is about the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values, on the Bible.”

“This is really truly rededicating the country to God,” she added.

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

According to The Guardian, the invited speakers include those who experts have been “characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist.”

Among them, a pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic,” the Guardian says, along with “a rabbi who has defended the use of torture,” and “a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims.”

Scholars have deemed the event unprecedented in the modern era.

“I’m unaware of anything like this, with this involvement of senior government officials, on this scale, trying to paint this false picture of the United States as a quote unquote Christian nation,” Amanda Tyler told the Post. Tyler is executive director of BJC, a Baptist group that promotes religious liberty through church-state separation. “Trump’s rhetoric in the past 18 months is how he’s ‘going to make America Christian again,’ that it’s his job to push religion. This is all part of that piece.”

Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse told the Post, “There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it.”

“Those are very different things,” he said.

Kruse also noted that the only rules about religion that the framers of the Constitution wrote “were ones that keep religion at arm’s length. No establishment, no limits on free exercise, no religious test for office.”

But the Trump White House defended the event, its focus, and its list of speakers.

Brittany Baldwin, executive director of the White House’s 250 Task Force, in an April webinar, said: “We worked very hard with the faith leaders we trust … to ensure that we hear their concerns and we have the right focus for our community of believers, across the country. So I think if you do see another religion represented, it would probably be in a modest way.”

Paula White-Cain went even further, saying that the jubilee would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Using a Secret Super PAC to Pour $1 Million Into Democratic Primaries

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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