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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is seen after a swearing in ceremony for U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on July 23, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
House Committee to Investigate Alito Leak, Right-Wing Lobbying at Supreme Court
“It’s clear that some of these justices are simply incapable of behaving ethically or putting the law before politics, and the court is unwilling or unable to police itself,” said one court watchdog.
Dec 02, 2022
U.S. Supreme Court watchdogs on Thursday applauded the House Judiciary Committee for announcing it will hold a hearing next week regarding allegations that Justice Samuel Alito leaked at least one of the court’s rulings to right-wing activists--and called on the Senate to follow suit in the next Congress.
“The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
The committee, which is led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and will be handed over to Republicans after they take control of the House on January 3, is set to open its investigation into the allegations on December 8.
The news of the hearing follows a bombshell New York Times report last month, in which Rev. Rob Schenck, the former head of religious right-wing group Faith & Action, said he had led a lobbying campaign targeting Supreme Court justices.
After Schenck directed his associates to donate to the Supreme Court Historical Society and attend events with the justices, Alito allegedly told two of them that the court would rule in favor of craft retailer Hobby Lobby in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby several weeks before the ruling was officially announced.
“House Judiciary is right to move quickly to investigate, and Senate Democrats should plan to take up the mantle in the new year,” Brian Fallon, president of court reform group Demand Justice, told HuffPost Thursday.
\u201cNEWS: The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing about Operation Higher Court and Politicking at SCOTUS, following a bombshell NYT report about ethical issues at SCOTUS.\n\nWe have been calling for congressional investigations and applaud this move.\nhttps://t.co/0LkjoEEKwc\u201d— Demand Justice (@Demand Justice) 1669922838
After the Times report was published last month, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)--who chair the House and Senate Judiciary committees’ panels on the courts, respectively--wrote to the Supreme Court’s legal counsel asking a number of questions about ethics at the high court, which unlike other federal courts does not abide by a binding ethics code.
The legal counsel denied any wrongdoing by Alito but did not answer the lawmakers’ questions, prompting more than 60 progressive groups including Demand Justice to demand congressional hearings, including testimony by Schenck.
Whitehouse and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and will maintain his position after the new year, have not yet announced their own investigation.
“We will continue to pursue oversight, including oversight into these latest troubling allegations,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of Take Back the Court Action Fund, called the House hearings “a good first step” in demanding accountability from the court.
“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing on the rampant collusion between the Republican Supreme Court justices and right-wing special interests,” said Lipton-Lubet. “It’s clear that some of these justices are simply incapable of behaving ethically or putting the law before politics, and the court is unwilling or unable to police itself.”
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U.S. Supreme Court watchdogs on Thursday applauded the House Judiciary Committee for announcing it will hold a hearing next week regarding allegations that Justice Samuel Alito leaked at least one of the court’s rulings to right-wing activists--and called on the Senate to follow suit in the next Congress.
“The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
The committee, which is led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and will be handed over to Republicans after they take control of the House on January 3, is set to open its investigation into the allegations on December 8.
The news of the hearing follows a bombshell New York Times report last month, in which Rev. Rob Schenck, the former head of religious right-wing group Faith & Action, said he had led a lobbying campaign targeting Supreme Court justices.
After Schenck directed his associates to donate to the Supreme Court Historical Society and attend events with the justices, Alito allegedly told two of them that the court would rule in favor of craft retailer Hobby Lobby in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby several weeks before the ruling was officially announced.
“House Judiciary is right to move quickly to investigate, and Senate Democrats should plan to take up the mantle in the new year,” Brian Fallon, president of court reform group Demand Justice, told HuffPost Thursday.
\u201cNEWS: The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing about Operation Higher Court and Politicking at SCOTUS, following a bombshell NYT report about ethical issues at SCOTUS.\n\nWe have been calling for congressional investigations and applaud this move.\nhttps://t.co/0LkjoEEKwc\u201d— Demand Justice (@Demand Justice) 1669922838
After the Times report was published last month, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)--who chair the House and Senate Judiciary committees’ panels on the courts, respectively--wrote to the Supreme Court’s legal counsel asking a number of questions about ethics at the high court, which unlike other federal courts does not abide by a binding ethics code.
The legal counsel denied any wrongdoing by Alito but did not answer the lawmakers’ questions, prompting more than 60 progressive groups including Demand Justice to demand congressional hearings, including testimony by Schenck.
Whitehouse and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and will maintain his position after the new year, have not yet announced their own investigation.
“We will continue to pursue oversight, including oversight into these latest troubling allegations,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of Take Back the Court Action Fund, called the House hearings “a good first step” in demanding accountability from the court.
“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing on the rampant collusion between the Republican Supreme Court justices and right-wing special interests,” said Lipton-Lubet. “It’s clear that some of these justices are simply incapable of behaving ethically or putting the law before politics, and the court is unwilling or unable to police itself.”
U.S. Supreme Court watchdogs on Thursday applauded the House Judiciary Committee for announcing it will hold a hearing next week regarding allegations that Justice Samuel Alito leaked at least one of the court’s rulings to right-wing activists--and called on the Senate to follow suit in the next Congress.
“The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
The committee, which is led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and will be handed over to Republicans after they take control of the House on January 3, is set to open its investigation into the allegations on December 8.
The news of the hearing follows a bombshell New York Times report last month, in which Rev. Rob Schenck, the former head of religious right-wing group Faith & Action, said he had led a lobbying campaign targeting Supreme Court justices.
After Schenck directed his associates to donate to the Supreme Court Historical Society and attend events with the justices, Alito allegedly told two of them that the court would rule in favor of craft retailer Hobby Lobby in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby several weeks before the ruling was officially announced.
“House Judiciary is right to move quickly to investigate, and Senate Democrats should plan to take up the mantle in the new year,” Brian Fallon, president of court reform group Demand Justice, told HuffPost Thursday.
\u201cNEWS: The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing about Operation Higher Court and Politicking at SCOTUS, following a bombshell NYT report about ethical issues at SCOTUS.\n\nWe have been calling for congressional investigations and applaud this move.\nhttps://t.co/0LkjoEEKwc\u201d— Demand Justice (@Demand Justice) 1669922838
After the Times report was published last month, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)--who chair the House and Senate Judiciary committees’ panels on the courts, respectively--wrote to the Supreme Court’s legal counsel asking a number of questions about ethics at the high court, which unlike other federal courts does not abide by a binding ethics code.
The legal counsel denied any wrongdoing by Alito but did not answer the lawmakers’ questions, prompting more than 60 progressive groups including Demand Justice to demand congressional hearings, including testimony by Schenck.
Whitehouse and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and will maintain his position after the new year, have not yet announced their own investigation.
“We will continue to pursue oversight, including oversight into these latest troubling allegations,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”
Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of Take Back the Court Action Fund, called the House hearings “a good first step” in demanding accountability from the court.
“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing on the rampant collusion between the Republican Supreme Court justices and right-wing special interests,” said Lipton-Lubet. “It’s clear that some of these justices are simply incapable of behaving ethically or putting the law before politics, and the court is unwilling or unable to police itself.”
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LATEST NEWS
With Genocide Confirmed and Gaza City a ‘Lifeless Wasteland,’ US Vetoes Another UN Ceasefire Resolution
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens,” said Algeria’s UN ambassador. “Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens.”
Sep 18, 2025
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
Trump Threatens to Strip Broadcast Licenses for Networks Giving Him ‘Bad Press,’ Ramping Up His ‘Campaign of Censorship and Control’
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says the commission “doesn’t have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content.”
Sep 18, 2025
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Khanna Moves to Subpoena FCC Chair Carr Over Effort to ‘Shred the First Amendment’
“We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment,” said Rep. Robert Garcia.
Sep 18, 2025
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”
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