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      ‘Racial resentment’ a factor in violence of 6 January 2021, study says

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      Political observers are quick to blame hyperpartisanship and political polarization for leading more than 2,000 supporters of Donald Trump to riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.But according to a recently published study, “racial resentment” – not just partisanship – explains the violence that broke out after the 2020 election.Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters – some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone – stormed the US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election.“What Trump and Republicans did was they tried to make the point that something nefarious was going on in areas that were primarily African American,” said David Wilson, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who published the study with Darren Davis, a professor of political science at Notre Dame.The paper, Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection, relied on a national survey of adults in the US conducted in 2021.Respondents were asked a question assessing their approval or disapproval of the House select committee investigating January 6, and responded to numerous statements evaluating racial resentment, such as “I resent any special considerations that African Americans receive because it’s unfair to other Americans” and “special considerations for African Americans place me at an unfair disadvantage because I have done nothing to harm them”.The research revealed a correlation between respondents’ feelings of racialized resentment and opposition to the House committee on January 6.Wilson and Davis also point to the fact that while a slew of polls show the general public split somewhat evenly over the legitimacy of the House select committee, Black Americans overwhelmingly supported the committee’s work, while white poll respondents generally opposed it.“Many of President Trump’s supporters believed they were being victimized by election fraud in the 2020 election, but they also believed that whites were being victimized more generally – the American way of life for them was changing and they were being disadvantaged by African Americans and other minorities,” Wilson and Davis wrote.The study comes as the former president and his allies are stoking unfounded fears of non-citizens voting and tainting political outcomes.The strategy activates “action emotions – primarily anger”, said Wilson. “When you’re angry, you want to see some problem resolved because it’s clearly not making you feel good. Your heart rate increases, you have a festering sense that things are wrong and you’re playing by the rules and other people aren’t and it’s just not right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther forms of racial resentment, according to this framework, would include the perception that affirmative action unfairly hurts white applicants – or the idea that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies unfairly benefit people of color.Distinct from racial hatred or prejudice, racial resentment, Wilson argues, is a particularly powerful motive to action because it stems from a sense of injustice.The psycho-social phenomenon can have consequences for democracy, Wilson said.“If you can get people to believe that democracy is about your freedom, and that the government is taking that away through taxes, through policies, through regulatory efforts, and [even] by fixing and rigging elections, you can stoke their resentment and they can even come to resent democracy.” More

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      Neighbors say Alitos used security detail car to intimidate them after sign dispute

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      Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.Then a large black car, part of the Alitos’ security detail, started parking in front of her mother’s house instead of theirs, and Baden understood the perils of being an ordinary citizen going up against one of the most powerful men in the country.The two sides do not agree on much, but Baden, a staunch liberal, and Martha-Ann Alito, a staunch conservative, concur that they began exchanging words in late 2020, almost two months after Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. Soon after, according to Baden, the Alitos’ security detail began parking a car directly in front of her mother’s house – several houses down from its usual spots either directly in front of the Alitos or across the street from them.“This happened a handful of times,” Baden now recalls. “I took that as directly threatening.”Baden and her husband both say that the security detail’s car showed up in front of her mother’s house again two weeks ago, after the New York Times broke the story about an upside-down American flag hanging on the Alitos’ flagpole in the days before Biden’s inauguration – a symbol associated with the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Biden from taking office at all.Baden was no longer living with her mother by that point – she is now a mother herself and living on the west coast. Neither she nor her mother were mentioned by name in the initial Times story. Still, she found the message that this sent disturbing.“I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat,” she said. “The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.”Baden’s husband, who did not want to be identified by name, said he, too, remembered a large black security SUV parking in front of their house, most memorably after Martha-Ann Alito confronted the couple in February 2021 and Baden let an expletive fly at the justice’s wife.“Right after, a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night,” he recalled.The Alitos did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.Baden is an unusual witness to the Alito flag controversy and furore it has unleashed, because she never saw the upside-down flag flying outside the Alitos’ house and did not hear about it until the story hit the headlines two weeks ago.When the Times first contacted her, she said she didn’t want to be in any story because she had nothing to add. That changed when Alito put out a statement saying that his wife had briefly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s use of “objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”.Baden realised this was a reference to her. It both incensed and frightened her.“He’s lying about many, many things in that statement,” she claims. Contrary to Alito’s assertions, she alleged, it was not true that she had initiated any confrontation. She said it was also untrue that her lawn signs were directed personally at the justice or his wife.In Baden’s version of events, Martha-Ann Alito first approached her to complain about a home-made cardboard sign that said “Bye Don” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other – sentiments found on many similar signs around their neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and in the rest of the country.Alito took further umbrage after January 6 when Baden erected signs that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” – the latter intended, Baden says, as a condemnation of all Trump supporters, not as a message to the Alitos, who had no direct view of it from their house.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe next day, according to Baden, Martha-Ann Alito pulled up in front of their house in her car and glared at her and her partner (now her husband). The security detail started parking outside the house around the same time, and the dispute continued for more than a month, culminating in the swearing incident in mid-February and a police report that the Badens filed right after.“This was unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger, who had done nothing except put up a yard sign,” Baden charged. “I became truly afraid of what they might do.”That fear also made her hesitate about agreeing to be named publicly. She knows how quickly people can be vilified when stepping into a high-profile political controversy, and she has thought of Anita Hill, who tried in vain to stop Clarence Thomas being named to the supreme court in the early 1990s, and of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018, also to no avail.“I was scared for myself, for my mother, for my family, for anyone who shares my last name,” Baden said.Then news broke of a second flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement being flown at a second Alito home, and she felt she had no choice but to speak out.“That other flag sealed the deal for me,” she said. “I thought, if I don’t use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in world war two … he was a person who quite literally fought against fascism.”Her view of Alito was further coloured by the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended a constitutional right to an abortion. She happened to be in Virginia when the news broke, and participated in street protests outside the Alitos’ home, at which point her signs (and almost everyone else’s) were indeed personally directed at the justice.Now, she feels compelled to add her voice to the growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases before the supreme court and is willing to testify before Congress, as Hill and Blasey Ford did before her.“This story is not about me. I didn’t do anything except put a sign in my front yard,” she said. “The story is that one of the most powerful men in the country showed allegiance to an insurrection … I’m horrified by this behaviour, and want to see at least a modicum of accountability.“If I’m coming forward, it is to encourage other people to resist. I want to galvanise people and let them know they have the power. It truly gives me chills to think how close we came to a coup, and Christian fascists taking over our country. [But] this is still a democracy.” More

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      Man who allegedly rammed Trump sign at police on January 6 arrested by FBI

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      The FBI has arrested a South Dakota man on charges that he stood among the first participants in the January 6 insurrection, allegedly breaking police lines and ramming a large sign toward officers during the riot.William Knight, 37, of Rapid City, faces two felony charges of obstructing law enforcement and resisting or impeding officers, the justice department announced on Thursday. He also faces five misdemeanor charges, including engaging in violence on the day supporters of Donald Trump tried to derail certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.He was arrested by the FBI on Sunday and was expected to make his first appearance in court on Thursday.Knight was featured prominently in several videos that were taken during the riot, helping the FBI build its case against him. Investigators were able to match Knight’s appearance in his videos to his state driver’s license, which prominently shows tattoos on his neck.Prosecutors accuse Knight of being one of the first rioters to breach a restricted perimeter at the Capitol on January 6. Multiple times, he gestured aggressively and threateningly toward officers. He broke police lines and was sprayed with a chemical spray at one point, but he kept pursuing officers, prosecutors say.“We ain’t leaving! We ain’t going nowhere!” Knight could be heard yelling at police in one of the videos, according to court documents. “Here are the bitches. Here are the bitches.”At one point, documents say, Knight and a large group of rioters picked up a giant metal-frame “TRUMP” sign and rammed it toward officers. After, he allegedly shoved a police officer and removed barriers that police had put in front of the crowd.He allegedly continued to chant “Stop the steal!” with other protesters, referring to Trump’s lies that electoral fraudsters rigged Biden’s victory.Knight’s case is being prosecuted by the US attorney’s office in Washington DC and the justice department.Nearly 1,500 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection, according to the justice department. More than 100 of those people have been sent to prison for sentences ranging from a few days to 22 years, the length of the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio’s sentence from last fall.The US supreme court is expected to rule soon on whether the justice department can prosecute rioters on an obstruction statute.A decision against the department could jeopardize the prosecution of hundreds of defendants who received obstruction charges. More

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      Alito refuses to step aside from Trump supreme court cases amid flag scandal

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      Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.The paper also reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. Both flags were carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.Alito said he was unaware that the upside-down flag was flying above his house until it was called to his attention. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” he wrote in nearly identical letters to Democrats in the House and Senate.Trump praised Alito’s rebuff of demands for his recusal, posting on his Truth Social account that the rightwing justice had showed “INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’”. Writing as he waited for the jury to return its verdict at his criminal hush-money trial in New York, Trump added: “All US Judges, Justices and Leaders should have such GRIT”.Alito’s flat-out refusal to address doubts about his impartiality in the wake of the flags scandal underlines the weakness of the supreme court’s current ethical guidelines. Following a public outcry over undeclared luxury trips and other gifts that had been received by Alito and his fellow hard-right justice Clarence Thomas, the court was forced to adopt its first ethics code last November.To the dismay of advocates of judicial reform, however, the code contained no enforcement provision. Individual justices are left to their own devices to decide whether or not they should recuse from cases in which there might be an appearance or reality of conflict of interest or impartiality.Thomas has also been accused of conflict of interest after he became the only vote on the court to oppose the release of digital communications to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. It later transpired that the stash of documents included emails between Thomas’s wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas, and Trump’s then top White House aide Mark Meadows over how to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.The lack of response from either Thomas or Alito to the welter of criticism over their ethical positions is starting to attract the attention of Congress.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Jamie Raskin, the Democratic Congress member from Maryland who led the second impeachment trial of Trump, said that it was “unfathomable that the two justices could get away with deciding for themselves whether they can be impartial in ruling on cases affecting Donald Trump’s liability for crimes he is accused of committing on January 6”.Raskin proposed a solution to the conundrum: the US justice department could petition the other seven justices on the nine-member supreme court under the federal recusal statute to require Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the January 6 cases. “The supreme court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices,” Raskin wrote.Democratic leaders in the US Senate are also pressuring the court to take more robust action. The Senate judiciary chairman, Dick Durbin, and fellow committee member Sheldon Whitehouse have written to the chief justice, John Roberts, asking for a meeting to discuss what he was proposing to do about Alito’s refusal to recuse himself.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Republican activist with ties to DeSantis and Rubio indicted over January 6

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      A Republican activist with links to Florida’s Republican senator, Marco Rubio, and its governor, Ron DeSantis, has been indicted on charges relating to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.Barbara Balmaseda, 23, has been charged with five counts of being involved in the riot, including obstructing an official proceeding, knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly conduct with intent to impede a session of Congress.The indictment against Balmaseda, a former director-at-large of the Miami Young Republicans, follows her arrest on the same charges last December, after an FBI investigation alleged she had been communicating with members of the far-right Proud Boys organisation, which pledges allegiance to Donald Trump.It comes after investigators discovered a chain of mobile phone messages with a member of the group, including the potentially revealing information two days after the riot that he had her Taser.Balmaseda previously served as an intern in the office of Rubio, who voted to certify Biden’s election win, defying the then president, Donald Trump, and worked as an organiser for DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor.Nayib Hassan, Balmaseda’s lawyer, said she was pleading not guilty to the charges. “We look forward to presenting a vigorous defense on her behalf,” he said. Hassan added that he was awaiting the US supreme court verdict on an appeal against the conviction of another participant in the January 6 events, Joseph Fischer, saying it “may have a direct impact on Mrs Balmaseda’s case”.Balmaseda is accused of exchanging hundreds of texts with Gabriel Garcia, who was convicted last November of felony charges relating to the Capitol riot.According to documents submitted by an investigating FBI agent, Balmaseda’s messages were found on Garcia’s phone.Prosecutors say they identified the pair inside the Capitol building from January 6 footage, and allege that they had entered after they “climbed on equipment that had been staged in preparation for the presidential inauguration”.Two days later, Balmaseda allegedly messaged Garcia: “Hey! Good morning! You left a hat and a gas mask in Adolfo’s car, I also have your sunglasses in my purse and you have my taser.”The FBI investigator wrote: “As part of my investigation, I reviewed images sent in text and chat messages to Garcia’s phone, from a contact saved as ‘Barbarita Balmaseda’ in Garcia’s phone with the phone number XXX-XXX-4534 (the ‘4534 Number’).“In one text message thread, Garcia and ‘Barbarita Balmaseda’ exchanged hundreds of texts and images from August 2020 through January 2021.”A message in a separate WhatsApp thread on Garcia’s phone read: “My name is Barbara Balmaseda [I am] involved in local politics. id [sic] love to stay informed on the D116 race. Can you add me to the group chat?”A subsequent text showed a selfie-style picture featuring a woman, believed to be Balmaseda – wearing a Trump 2020 hat – posing alongside Garcia, who wore a hat sporting the words “Proud Boys”. More

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      Virginia home of mother of January 6 police officer swatted

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      The home of the mother of Michael Fanone, a Washington DC police officer who nearly died in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, was “swatted” on Tuesday night.An unnamed person who had written a manifesto seen by NBC falsely claimed they had killed Fanone’s mother and would go to Fanone’s old high school on Wednesday and shoot people. The manifesto listed Fanone’s mother’s address in Virginia.Fanone’s father was also targeted in the manifesto but was out of the country at the time. He called swatting calls like the one aimed at his parents “incredibly fucking dangerous”.Fanone told NBC News: “How dangerous is it to send law enforcement to an address in which you essentially are describing an active shooter, in which the only person present is a 78-year-old fucking woman.”Fanone spoke of how horrified his mother was that night to open the door and be met with Swat team officers while in her nightgown.Fairfax county police assisted in an investigation into the swatting call.Fanone said the swatting incident likely happened as a “direct result” of the public appearances he makes speaking out against Donald Trump.Speaking at a Biden campaign event earlier on Tuesday outside the courthouse where Trump’s hush-money trial was taking place alongside the Capitol police officer Harry Dunn and the actor Robert De Niro, Fanone said Trump was an “authoritarian who answers to and serves only himself”.Fanone voted for Trump in 2016 but has since thrown his support behind Biden, and blames the Capitol attack on “Trump’s lies”.At the Tuesday press conference, Fanone said: “These supporters were fueled by Trump’s lies and the lies of his surrogates, lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Those same lies have been spewed by Donald Trump and his surrogates about what happened to me and so many other police officers on January 6, 2021 – that day, I was brutally assaulted.”Recounting the attack on the Capitol during which he was on duty, Fanone said he was pulled by the “violent mob” and beaten, almost stripped of his firearm and tasered on his neck.He was assigned a desk job for his safety after leaving the Metropolitan police department later in 2021.The swatting incident involving Fanone’s mother is one of several targeted at high-profile individuals in politics. Others have been aimed at the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Florida senator Rick Scott, the Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows, and the former House Republican from Wisconsin Mike Gallagher, who stepped down because of the threats against him and his family.Amid the spike in these types of threats, Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, said in January: “These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy.” More

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      Samuel Alito’s wife claimed upside-down flag was ‘international sign of distress’

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      The wife of US supreme court justice Samuel Alito reportedly justified the display of an upside-down American flag at the couple’s home by saying it was “an international signal of distress”, as senior Democrats have requested a meeting with the chief justice over the growing scandal.Martha-Ann Alito made the comments to a Washington Post reporter, the outlet reported on Saturday, when the journalist visited the couple’s Virginia home in January 2021, not long after the attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump.She reportedly told the Washington Post at the time that the flag had been run up their flagpole in that way in response to a neighborhood dispute.Flying the Stars and Stripes flag upside down is acceptable as a rare distress signal, according to the official US flag code. But these days it is more often associated with activists making an extremist sign of protest, and at the time of the January 6 insurrection it had been adopted by some on the far right amid efforts, ultimately unsuccessful, to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.The Washington Post report said on Saturday, quoting the outlet’s own spokesperson, that “the Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors … It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics.”In another twist, it was the New York Times that first reported earlier this week the display of the American flag in that fashion at the Alitos’ residence in early 2021, during a political row with neighbors.That was swiftly followed by a second report from the Times that another flag, one originally associated with the American revolution but now associated with the far right and known as the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, was flying last year above a holiday home of the Alitos in New Jersey.View image in fullscreenTwo leading Democratic senators are requesting a meeting with the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, in the wake of these reports. This comes on top of calls demanding that Justice Alito recuse himself from election-related cases before the court and face investigation by the US Senate, the congressional chamber that confirms federal and supreme court judges.The Senate judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, and the senator and judiciary committee member Sheldon Whitehouse wrote a letter to Roberts earlier this week asking him for a meeting to discuss court ethics and to take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the January 6 attack or Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.The court did not respond to a request for comment regarding the letter.The court is considering two major cases related to the Capitol attack, including one related to charges faced by the rioters and another on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges. Alito is participating in both cases and has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse himself on other issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlito earlier said he had no part in the flying of the inverted American flag. He and the court declined to respond to requests for comment on how the “Appeal to Heaven” banner came to be flying and what it was intended to express.Durbin and Whitehouse said they will continue to pressure the court. The plea for a meeting is a new approach after Roberts declined to testify at a hearing on supreme court ethics last year, amid a scandal over accusations of political influence and corruption aimed at Alito and Clarence Thomas, the two most conservative justices on the supreme court bench.“Until the court and the judicial conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote.The American Legion US flag code states of the Stars and Stripes that “the flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Leading Democrats demand Alito face investigation after second report of far right-linked flag

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      Leading Democrats are demanding that Samuel Alito recuse himself from election-related cases and also face investigation after a second report that a flag now associated with the far right was flying above one of his homes.Dick Durbin, the Senate judiciary chair, urged the US supreme court justice to step back from certain major cases and demanded John Roberts, the chief justice, implement an enforceable code of conduct on his bench, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded that the US Senate investigate.The demands follow a new report by the New York Times of a second incidence of flags flown at homes of Alito that are associated with the 6 January 2021 attack at the US Capitol.Durbin put out a statement late on Wednesday, saying: “This incident is yet another example of apparent ethical misconduct by a sitting justice, and it adds to the court’s ongoing ethical crisis. For the good of our country and the court, Justice Alito must recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection. And the chief justice must see how this is damaging the court and immediately enact an enforceable code of conduct.”Ocasio-Cortez also weighed in during an interview with the MSNBC host Chris Hayes late on Wednesday, calling on Senate Democrats to launch “active investigations”.The congresswoman said: “What we are seeing here is an extraordinary breach of not just the trust and the stature of the supreme court, but we are seeing a fundamental challenge to our democracy.”She added: “Samuel Alito has identified himself with the same people who raided the Capitol on January 6 and is now going to be presiding over court cases that have deep implications over the participants of that rally.“And while this is the threat to our democracy, Democrats have a responsibility for defending our democracy.”The New York Times reported that an “appeal to heaven” flag, which has been adopted by Christian nationalists, was flown at the summer home of Alito on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, last July and September. The flag was carried by some in the crowd during the far-right, violent insurrection at the US Capitol, where extremist supporters of Donald Trump broke in to try, in vain, to stop the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election over Trump.Also known as the pine tree flag, it was originally used on warships commanded by George Washington during the American revolutionary war against the ruling British. It has since been adopted by Christian nationalists who advocate for an American government based on Christian teachings.The second flag report comes after the paper also reported that an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia residence of Alito’s home shortly after the January 6 insurrection. Alito claimed his wife flew the flag briefly during a spat with neighbors over politics.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, posted on X: “Flying this flag is a political statement that is a clear and compelling reason for Alito’s recusal. He cannot responsibly sit on Trump-related cases when he has already signaled his sympathy with January 6th rioters. He owes the American people an explanation.”Sheldon Whitehouse also posted, with pictures of the offending flags.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Rhode Island Democratic senator said on X: “Did another neighbor make Alito’s wife mad? How many Maga battle flags does Alito need to fly for the court or the judicial conference to see there’s a problem?”Durbin has been pushing for regulation of the supreme court.He added: “This episode will further erode public faith in the court. The Senate judiciary committee has been investigating the ethical crisis at the court for more than a year, and that investigation continues. And we remain focused on ensuring the supreme court adopts an enforceable code of conduct, which we can do by passing the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.”He has repeatedly called for the passing of legislation that the judiciary committee advanced last July. The supreme court has an internal, non-binding code of ethics.Neither the supreme court nor Alito had commented by Thursday morning. More