Last week, Justice Samuel Alito delivered a rousing keynote address to the annual convention of the Federalist Society, arguably the nation's most influential conservative legal group.
The speech was starkly different from the guarded public pronouncements that are the usual fare from members of the Supreme Court. Instead, it was a full-throated attack on policies and judicial decisions that, he contended, grant too much power to government agencies charged with protecting public health — and further threaten religious liberties already under assault.
Afterward, one could hardly be blamed for musing on the hypocrisy of Supreme Court nominees who regularly claim they have no political agenda only to pursue such an agenda once they've secured confirmation. It was only last month when the nation witnessed this charade at the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly assuring the committee that "I have no mission and no agenda. Judges don't have campaign promises."
Like the newest justice, Alito at his 2006 confirmation hearings promised his political views would be irrelevant to his work on the high court. Then on a federal appeals court, he contended there is a stark difference between being a judge and an advocate who "has the goal of achieving the result that the client wants within the bounds of professional responsibility." A judge, he said, "doesn't have an agenda, and a judge has to follow the law."
And when asked if he agreed with a series of Supreme Court rulings, or continued to subscribe to previous criticisms of other decisions, he consistently. refused to answer. He insisted he could not comment on cases or issues that might come before the court, lest he be seen as prejudging them.
Such reticence vanished before the Federalist Society. Alito unburdened himself of grievances, legal and political. And he freely talked about issues already on the Supreme Court docket. He seemed untroubled skating up to the line of ethics rules requiring judges to remain impartial, to avoid any appearance of bias and to avoid public comment on the merits of any pending matter.
About state public health measures attempting to curb the spread of the coronavirus, he observed that "the pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty" and asserted that "We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020."
Abandoning the posture he assumed at his confirmation hearings, Alito specifically criticized his own court's recent refusal to stop restrictions imposed by two states to fight Covid-19 — measures, he contended, that "blatantly discriminated against houses of worship."
Those cases reveal what he called "emerging trends in the assessment of individual rights" by the court. "It pains me to say this, but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right."
The justice proudly proclaimed his belief in the virtues of the 1993 law dubbed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, even as the court is currently considering a case that could curtail its reach.
And in discussing the 2018 case of a Colorado baker who refused on religious grounds to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple, the justice declared such treatment caused the couple no harm because a nearby baker provided them a "free cake." He professed that view even though a similar issue involving religious freedom and discrimination against same-sex couples is also pending in his courthouse.
Warming to another conservative legal cause celebre, Alito cited what he called the "disturbing trend" of the growing power of federal regulatory agencies. Again, he spoke while the court's docketnow has cases testing the authority of the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Trade Commission.
"Every year," the justice complained, "administrative agencies acting under broad delegations of authority churn out huge volumes of regulations that dwarf the statutes enacted by the people's elected representatives." Echoing the Trump administration's paranoia about a "deep state" and its hostility to science, Alito decried what he called "government by executive officials."
These are hardly the words of a justice without an agenda. Indeed, they seem to be a rallying cry for the Supreme Court's newly augmented conservative majority to use its power to curtail the power of government agencies responsible for protecting public health and safety and to advance the libertarian cause.
As Gabe Roth of Fix the Court, a nonprofit group that has called for stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court, rightly noted, the speech "was more befitting a Trump rally than a legal society." It provides yet another occasion for Americans to wonder whether our judges can be trusted when they claim that they are merely neutral arbiters of the law.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump delivered his address days after the Supreme Court struck down the administration's tariff strategy, and amid a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf threatening Iran.
Some MAGA loyalists have turned on Trump. Why the rest haven’t
I recently watched "A Face in the Crowd" for the umpteenth time.
I had a better reason than procrastination to rewatch Elia Kazan’s brilliant 1957 film exploring populism in the television age. It was homework. I was asked to discuss it with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz at the just-concluded TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles. As a pundit and an author, I do a lot of public speaking. But I don’t really do a lot of cool public speaking, so this was a treat.
With that not-very-humble brag out of the way, I had a depressing realization watching it this time.
"A Face in the Crowd" tells the story of a charming drifter with a dark side named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, played brilliantly by Andy Griffith. A singer with the gift of the gab, Rhodes takes off on radio but quickly segues to the brand-new medium of television. He becomes a national sensation — and political kingmaker — by forming a deep connection with the masses, particularly among the rural and working classes. His core audience is made up of people with grievances. “Everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle,” as Rhodes puts it.
The film’s climax (spoiler alert) comes when Rhodes’ manager and spurned lover, Marcia, turns on the microphone while the credits rolled at the end of “Cracker Barrel,” his national TV show. Rhodes tells his entourage what he really thinks of the “morons” in his audience. “Shucks, I can take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them for caviar. I can make them eat dog food, and they’ll think it’s steak. … Good night, you stupid idiots.”
It was a canonical “hot mic” moment in American cinema. But the idea that if people could glimpse the “real person” behind the popular facade, they’d turn on them is a very old theme in literature — think Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (1782) or Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s "The School for Scandal" (1777), in which diaries and letters do the work of microphones.
Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg were very worried about the ability of demagogues to whip up populist fervor and manipulate the masses through the power of TV, in part because everyone had already seen it happen with radio and film, by Father Coughlin in America and Hitler in Germany. But as dark as their vision was, they still clung to the idea that if the demagogue was exposed, the people would instantly turn on their leader in an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for the mass media age.
And that’s the source of my depressing realization. I think they were wrong. It turns out that once that organic connection is made, even a shocking revelation of the truth won’t necessarily break the spell.
In 2016, a lot of writers revisited "A Face in the Crowd" to understand the Trump phenomenon. After all, here was a guy who used a TV show — "The Apprentice" — and social media to build a massive following, going over the heads of the “establishment.” Trump’s own hot mic moment with "Access Hollywood," in which he boasted of his sexual predations, proved insufficient to undo him. That was hardly the only such moment for him. We’ve heard Trump bully the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.” He told Bob Woodward he deliberately “played down” COVID-19. After leaving office, he was recorded telling aides he shouldn’t be sharing classified documents with them — then doing it anyway. And so on.
Trump’s famous claim that he could “shoot somebody” on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters may have been hyperbole. But it’s not crazy to think he wouldn’t lose as many voters as he should.
In the film, Lonesome Rhodes implodes when Americans encounter his off-air persona. The key to Trump’s success is that he ran as his off-air persona. Why people love that persona is a complicated question. Among the many complementary explanations is that he comes across as authentic, and some people value authenticity more than they value good character, honesty, or competence.
This is not just a problem for Republicans. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner once had a Nazi tattoo and has said things about women as distasteful as Trump’s “grab them by (the genitals)” comments, and the Democratic establishment is rallying around him because he’s authentic — and because Democrats want to win that race.
Many prominent MAGA loyalists are turning on Trump these days. They claim — wrongly in my opinion — that he’s changed and that the Iran war is a betrayal of their cause. But if you look at the polls, voters who describe themselves as “MAGA” still overwhelmingly support Trump. In short, he still has the Fifth Avenue voters on his side.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.