Justice Alito’s Jan. 6 flag problem grows

What happened

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, already facing criticism over an upside-down U.S. flag flown outside his Virginia home in January 2021, had another flag popular with Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters displayed at his New Jersey beach house last summer, The New York Times said Wednesday. Alito said last week his wife had raised the inverted flag amid political arguments with neighbors and he “had no involvement whatsoever.” He declined to comment on the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flown outside his beach house.

Who said what

The Revolutionary War–era white-and-evergreen “Appeal to Heaven” flag had fallen “into obscurity” until it was recently adopted by Christian nationalists supporting Donald Trump and a “religious strand of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign” to keep him in office after he lost, the Times said. “Judges are not supposed to give any impression of bias” or partisanship.

“At this point it is difficult to make any reasonable case for Alito’s impartiality,” Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said to The Associated Press. At minimum, “he must not sit on cases about the 2020 election or the insurrection he appears to have supported.”

What next?