Neoliberal

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The second flag is the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a Revolutionary War-era banner. The “Appeal to Heaven” language references philosopher John Locke, who argued that, when earthly political appeals are exhausted, men have the right to take up arms and let God sort out the justness of the cause. While the The Appeal to Heaven flag was not always controversial, it has been revived by militant Christian nationalists and was also a potent symbol on Jan. 6. This flag was flown at the Alitos’ vacation home in New Jersey in 2023. 

Democratic congressional leaders cited the displays in calls for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving Jan. 6 defendants, as well as the case to determine whether Trump is immune from prosecution over his efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election. Alito rejected the call for recusal in a May 29 letter. He attributed both banners to his wife. 

“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote. Alito claimed that the upside down U.S. flag was a response to “a very nasty neighborhood dispute,” and of the Appeal to Heaven flag wrote that neither he nor his wife were aware of “any connection between this historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement.’” He dismissed any notion that his “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” and declared that he was “duty-bound to reject” the recusal demand.

Windsor spoke with Rolling Stone about her decision to attend the event and record her conversation with Alito. “Because the Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’re refusing to submit to any accountability in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious ethics breaches, I think that it’s justified to take these types of measures,” she says. (Last year, ProPublica reported that Alito failed to disclose a 2008 private jet flight provided by a billionaire conservative donor with business before the court.)

Windsor says she wants to give the public a “window into a body that is increasingly powerful and increasingly willing to overturn precedent.” She has been working on a documentary, “Gonzo for Democracy,” which will chronicle the growth of Trumpism, election denial, and religious extremism. 

“One of the main drivers for me in this work is showing Americans that we are at a crossroads: Do we embrace the idea of secular democracy and uphold that tradition, or do we start to transition into a Christian theocracy?” she adds. The Supreme Court Historical Society is a nonprofit organization that collects justices’ writings and other artifacts. Anyone can pay $150 to become a dues-paying member and rub elbows with the court’s nine justices at events like the dinner where Windsor spoke with Alito. (Tickets for the dinner were an extra $500.) TheNew York Times has reported that, for years, right-wing activists who sought to influence the justices’ views have been encouraged to donate to the organization and use its events as an opportunity to cultivate personal relationships with the jurists. 

Rev. Rob Schenck, founder of the evangelical group Faith and Action, told the Times that becoming a member of the society was one tactic he promoted as part of his group’s years-long campaign to shape conservative justices’ views. (Schenck left the organization in 2018; it is now known as Faith and Liberty and is affiliated with Christian conservative litigation shop Liberty Counsel.) 

In 2022, Schenck went public about his work at Faith and Action amid an investigation into who leaked an early draft of the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Schenck sent a letter to Roberts revealing that in 2014, one of Faith and Action’s donors informed him that she had learned the outcome of Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, a decision that ultimately exempted employers from offering insurance coverage for birth control, at a D.C. dinner party hosted by the Alitos weeks before the ruling was released to the public. (Alito denied disclosing the Hobby Lobby decision.)

Windsor previously attended the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner last year. In that audio recording, she asks Justice Alito whether he thought the individual who leaked a draft of the Dobbs decision would ever be “ferreted out.”

“Well, it’s hard,” Alito says, before taking a long pause. “You can’t name somebody unless you know for sure, and we don’t have the power to do the things that would be necessary to try to figure out — to nail down exactly who did it. That’s the problem. And even then, we might not be able to do it. But we don’t have the power to subpoena people to testify, to subpoena records, phone records, or other things like that. We don’t have the authority, so —”

Windsor interjects: “It just seems crazy that you can’t because it’s so detrimental to the trust [that] the public places in the Supreme Court.” […]