On Tuesday, Senate majority leader John Thune told the Washington Examiner that the Senate is “prepared” to confirm a replacement for Justice Samuel Alito before the midterm elections should Alito retire at the end of the Supreme Court’s term this June. If anybody thought the Senate Republicans were going to follow Mitch McConnell’s rule of not confirming a Supreme Court justice in an election year—a rule that McConnell used to block Merrick Garland from succeeding Antonin Scalia but ignored so that Amy Coney Barrett could succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg—then you haven’t been paying attention to the level of hypocrisy Republicans are comfortable living with.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump offered his own thoughts on a potential SCOTUS opening when he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Business that he was “prepared” to name a new justice should the opportunity arise.

Given that everybody with half a brain cell knows that Trump and the Republicans would rush through a Supreme Court pick before the midterms if given the chance, it’s a little weird that Trump and Thune said anything at all. I suppose we can chalk Trump’s statements up to his chronic inability to keep his mouth shut for more than two seconds at a stretch, but Thune is usually a little more reticent.

One possibility is that all Thune is doing with his statement is alerting the always-behind Democrats that a confirmation battle is brewing (not that Thune should be particularly worried that the Democrats can or will do anything to stop him). But I think another potential reason might be to send a direct signal to Alito himself. Thune may be signaling that he’s not sure Republicans will be in charge in the Senate should Alito delay retirement past the midterms. Thune certainly has access to polling data Alito does not, and this might be his way of telling Alito, and Alito’s wife, “Buddy, leave while you still can.”

Helping Thune telegraph this case was Senator Chuck Grassley—but from where I sit, he really screwed up the messaging. Like Thune, Grassley said that the Senate was “fully prepared” to push through a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court, but Grassley also named names. He said he was in favor of one of his colleagues, Senator Ted Cruz or Mike Lee, getting the job.

Current Issue

May 2026 Issue

Folks, I’ve been trying to prepare people for an imminent Alito retirement for two months now. Whenever I talk about it, liberals respond with either “Hmm, that seems bad… anyway,” or “Well, the next guy can’t be worse than Alito, right?” I can tell people about all the horrors of Andy Oldham or Jennifer Mascot or some other Federalist Society judge most people have never heard of, and I can watch the interest slowly drain from their eyes. But when Grassley floated the idea of Ted Cruz being given lifetime power, my social-media feeds blew up like the Supreme Court was on fire: “Lord help us!” “That would be the END of the Supreme Court!” “How can this be stopped?!?” Putting a face as punchable as Cruz on this thing really seemed to clue liberals into what could be about to happen.

Personally, I don’t think Cruz is likely to get the job. But I do think that he would be the easiest person for Trump to confirm. Cruz might get 99 votes in the Senate… because his colleagues hate him and would relish seeing him literally anywhere else.

If Alito retires, the Republicans will try to push through a nominee, and the only thing that could potentially stop them is a human wall of people preventing them from doing their work, and even that might not be enough. It’s going to be a long summer.

The Bad and the Ugly

• A week ago, Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh over his approval of racial profiling. Sotomayor quite pointedly suggested that Kavanaugh lacked any real-world experience with the kinds of working-class Latinos who are now being rounded up by ICE as part of racist Kavanaugh Stops. But this week, she apologized to Kavanaugh. Why!? She wasn’t wrong. I am so sick of these people pretending that they all must be friendly and respectful when the Republican justices are out there urging straight-up racism.
• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson slammed the Supreme Court’s use of the emergency docket during a speech at Yale Law School. She’s been pretty willing to criticize her fellow justices in public. I find this refreshing. Never apologize to these people, Justice Jackson. Never let their evil slide because of a misplaced sense of decorum. Never become one of them.
• Justice Clarence Thomas slammed “progressivism” in a speech at the University of Texas Austin Law School. He said, “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government.” First of all, the Declaration of Independence is not our “form of government”; the Constitution is. The Declaration led to the Articles of Confederation, a form of government so unworkable that the people who wrote it asked for a do-over after just seven years. Second, the basic premise of the Declaration is that rich white men cannot be truly free if the king doesn’t listen to them, and nobody other than rich white men should be involved in the conversation. Lastly, “progressivism” is responsible for innovative legal concepts such as “what if we didn’t have little kids working in factories,” and “lead seems bad,” so I think whatever it’s replacing is probably a net gain for society.
• More than 70 organizations are trying to stop Meta from putting facial recognition eyeglasses on the market, warning that the technology will help arm sexual predators. If only Meta could be doused in the cleansing fire of progressivism.
• This article in Slate argues that liberals on BlueSky are the only people who haven’t gotten over Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo. I can confirm that. As a liberal on BlueSky, I have not gotten over Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo. I am comfortable being “out of touch,” if being in-touch requires me to get over Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo. When Platner turns into John Fetterman with a Nazi tattoo, I will be the guy saying, “All of this could have been avoided by not getting over Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo.”

Inspired Takes

• In 452, Pope Leo I faced down Attila the Hun, unarmed, and convinced him to turn back from Italy and spare the eternal city of Rome. (History note: In addition to his fancy hat, Leo also benefited from a literal plague ravishing Attila’s army and an advancing Eastern Roman army threatening to cut off Attila’s supply lines). In 2026, Pope Leo XIV is facing down Orange the Hun, unarmed, and convincing him not to “do a Red Cross” or whatever, because, you know, claiming to be the second coming of Jesus is a literal sign of the Antichrist. In this piece here, The Nation’s Joan Walsh explains Trump’s bizarre and ill-fated feud with the pope.
• I want you to read this story in The Nation from Will Meyer about Ross Douthat. (Full disclosure: I am biased. I knew Douthat, a little, in college. A colleague once told me that the way white people feel about affirmative action is the way I feel about Ross Douthat. And… I got it.)

Worst Argument of the Week

Eric Swalwell dropped out of the California gubernatorial primary and resigned from Congress amid a slew of sexual assault allegations. During the brief period between the allegations dropping and Swalwell dropping out, I saw a number of posts on social media, from liberals, pointing out that Republicans defend their stars even in the face of sexual assault allegations, while Democrats are eager to throw their stars overboard at the slightest hint of sexual misconduct.

Yes. And? Is there some kind of problem with that? I am willing to stipulate that Republicans will defend politicians who have “merely” been accused of sexual assault. Republicans are also willing to defend politicians who have been judged to have committed sexual assault. They are also willing to defend Nazis, white supremacists, and bigots of all kinds. They’re willing to defend war criminals, financial criminals, and literally any cop or wannabe cop who shoots an unarmed Black person.

I do not take my cues on which alleged crimes should or should not be overlooked based on the moral compass of the Republican fucking Party.

The difference between me and a rank-and-file Republican voter is not just that I’m a superior human being, although I am. The difference is that I never believe that there is only one person who can do a good job of being in a position of public trust. I think there are many, many people who can do a good job in Congress. I think there are many people who can make a good governor. I think there are far, far more people who can competently be president of the United States than there are people who can fly a spaceship or play quarterback in the NFL. (And the spaceship driver and football chucker don’t require me to bless them with my personal stamp of approval to do their job.)

If one politician is credibly accused of rape, we can always find another guy. Or, you know, not to blow your mind here, but we could even find a woman to do the job.

Eric Swalwell will have the opportunity to defend himself through all legal means, and he will be well-funded when he does it. If he is acquitted once all the facts are laid out, I’m sure he’ll feel no hesitation about asking the public to place their trust in him once more. People can decide then what to do about his public career. In the meantime, there are plenty of people who have not been accused of sexual assault by multiple women who are also more than capable of being the governor of California.

What I Wrote

All print for me this week. Also, my kid got Covid. It was the first time either of my children had gotten it, and I was pretty freaked out for a bit. I hadn’t gotten the memo that Covid was just a thing that we’ve all decided to live with. I went straight into 2020 mode and everybody else was like, “What’s… wrong with you?” Anyway, point is, I think I’m pretty clearly entering my “In my day, we kept children in isolation for 10 days when they got sick, and gas cost under $10 a gallon, and people went on dates with real people instead of AI-powered fleshbots who serve you an ad before dessert” villain arc.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

This week, Donald Trump had McDonalds delivered to the Oval Office via Door Dash. He posed for a picture with the delivery person, a woman named Sharon Simmons, who was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Door Dash Grandma.” Simmons, 58, later told Fox News that Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” policy helped her pay for medical treatments for her husband, who has cancer.

Every. Single. Thing about this story makes me incandescently angry. Every single aspect fills me with rage. Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way:

• A 79-year-old man who has access to personal chefs and the finest ingredients in the country but still eats McDonalds is not “relatable” to me. He’s not “salt of the earth.” He’s just cheap.
• The picture he took with the woman reminded me that Trump has plastered the words “The Oval Office,” painted in yellow or “pee” or whatever color Trump thinks gold is, outside the Oval Office, as if he can’t remember what room it is without proper signage.
• Door Dash does not deliver to the door to the Oval Office. Door Dash cannot get past the doorman in your apartment building, much less the Secret Service. Door Dash admitted that the whole thing was a publicity stunt organized by the White House to highlight the year since the passage of the No Tax on Tips provision.
• Sharon Simmons is not a Door Dash worker from DC. Black people work Door Dash in DC. Simmons was flown in from Arkansas to participate in this farce.
• Simmons is not even some random Trump supporter from Arkansas. She was an advocate for the No Tax on Tips provision and even gave congressional testimony on the issue. She was an activist for the bill.

All of these facts made me rage. But the thing that made me truly apoplectic was Simmons’s line crediting No Tax on Tips for helping her earn an additional $11,000, which she says helps her afford her husband’s cancer treatments. She told Fox she wanted to thank the president for that. Fox, it’s worth noting, did not ask her how much Trump’s gas prices are cutting into those savings. Or why her healthcare costs so much, or where Trump’s healthcare plan is, or how much funding has been cut from cancer research in the name of eliminating DEI.

In a reasonable country, the president would be thanked for providing some form of [Samuel L. Jackson voice] universal-mutherfuckin’-health care, not thanked for tipping on an order of Big Macs. The idea that this woman should be thankful to her government for tips, for functional scraps, while she shoulders the burden of ruinously expensive healthcare without the government’s care or concern is simply maddening.

Indeed, the idea that any 58-year-old grandma needs the gig economy to offset healthcare bills is an indictment of our entire society. Like, how is it possibly okay that grandmas have to deliver quarter-pounders to afford chemotherapy for their husbands? Could our government, you know, HELP this woman, and the millions and millions of people like her, instead of turning her wage-slave exploitation into a fucking photo opportunity?

The No Tax on Tips stunt should be seen as an embarrassment for the entire country. It’s embarrassing that the president has super-glued room names outside his office. It’s embarrassing that so many people must rely on the gig economy to earn a living. It’s embarrassing we have 58-year-old grandmas out there participating in that economy to afford healthcare. It’s embarrassing that the government thinks “Door Dash Grandma” is a helpful photo op about the state of the economy in an election year. It’s embarrassing that the president has evidently never tried Shake Shack, and it’s even more embarrassing if he has.

I only hope that when future history textbooks start their section on “The Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony,” they use the photo from this event.

***

If you enjoyed this installment of Elie v. U.S., click here to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday.