Politics
Durbin looks to force Supreme Court ethics bill vote amid Alito controversy
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will attempt to force a vote Wednesday evening on a Supreme Court ethics bill backed by Democrats amid recent scrutiny of Justice Samuel Alito and renewed calls for the conservative justice to recuse from former President Trump’s immunity case.
Durbin will lead fellow judiciary committee Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., in a request to bring the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act to the floor for a vote around 5:30 p.m.
However, unanimous consent to consider the measure will not be granted, as Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will object, his office told Fox News Digital.
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Sen. Dick Durbin will attempt to force a vote on a Supreme Court ethics reform bill, but Sen. Lindsey Graham will object to it. (Getty Images)
If brought for a vote and passed, the bill would require the Supreme Court to create an ethics code that is publicly available. It would additionally allow for complaints to be lodged against justices and for a judicial investigation panel to then review them.
The measure advanced out of the committee last year by a party line vote, with 11 Democrats in favor and all 10 Republicans opposed.
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Sens. Whitehouse, left, and Durbin, right, have made a concerted effort to push Justice Alito to recuse. (Getty Images)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised judiciary Democrats for their work on the bill after it advanced, saying at the time, “I support Chairman Durbin, Senator Whitehouse, and the Judiciary Committee’s work on SCOTUS ethics reform, and I look forward to working with them to make progress on this legislation.”
But since its advancement, the bill has remained in limbo.
Schumer’s office did not provide comment to Fox News Digital regarding his plans for bringing it to the floor.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Judiciary Democrats have made a renewed and concerted push to increase accountability for Supreme Court justices in the wake of the controversy surrounding Alito and his wife. The New York Times recently reported on an upside-down American flag that flew at their Virginia home in the weeks following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, as well as an “Appeal to Heaven” flag that was on display at a beach home belonging to the Alitos.
Democratic critics have suggested that the flags were displays of support for those who rioted on Jan. 6.
The reports prompted several letters to both Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts from Durbin, Whitehouse, and Blumenthal, which requested a meeting with Roberts and Alito’s recusal from 2020 election-related cases.
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U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito (R), answers questions during the fourth and likely final day of his confirmation hearings January 12, 2006, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Alito has since refused to step back from such cases, which include the matter of Trump’s immunity claim in his federal election interference case, in which a decision from the court is expected this month.
The unanimous consent request also comes in the wake of secret recordings that were taken by an undercover liberal filmmaker at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, which featured Alito acknowledging that “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised” when it comes to ideological differences. Alito additionally agreed with the activist’s statement suggesting the country should return to “godliness.”
In an op-ed on Tuesday for the Wall Street Journal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., slammed his Democratic colleagues’ attempt to pass the legislation. The Republican explained that the court is charged constitutionally with the power to govern itself. “Liberals complain that the court’s binding ethics rules lack an ‘enforcement mechanism’ to ensure recusal when they want it,” he wrote. “But this complaint would throw the Constitution out the window.”
“The court rightly vests judicial power in its democratically legitimate members as the Constitution requires. Democrats instead want a bureaucracy to ‘administer’ it,” he said in a scathing rebuke of the Democratic effort.
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
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Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
Politics
After lawsuit, ICE pauses construction of Bay Area detention facility
The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Northern California.
The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
“This pause in the construction, demolition, and development at the site of the challenged ICE facility is a significant step towards protecting our people, our communities, and our environment while the case remains ongoing,” Bonta said in a statement Monday night.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
State and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time, though ICE denied that it would be a detention center.
Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight detention centers can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.
The halt is part of a compromise between both sides involved in the legal action. After the state and county submitted a request for the court to temporarily halt the project, a hearing was set for Oct. 7.
Now, state and federal officials jointly requested that the court move up the hearing by at least a month. The agreement also extends how much time the federal government has to respond.
A federal judge signed off on the agreement Monday night.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San José, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps before beginning construction.
Politics
Why Supreme Court Justices Are Asking for More Security
Supreme Court justices are asking lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase their 2027 budget, with most of the additional funding earmarked for security. Ann E. Marimow, a New York Times reporter, explains why the justices say these measures are necessary to protect them from rising threats.
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