In this week’s Elie v. US: A look at the campaign to dislodge Alito and replace him with... Ted Cruz? Plus: the appalling charade of President Big Mac and Door Dash Grandma.
US Associate Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Alito, attends an audience of Pope Leo XIV, September 20, 2025. (TIZIANA FABI / A FP via Getty Images)
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.
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
Inspired Takes
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.
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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.
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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:
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.
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Elie MystalTwitterElie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, both published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” here.