Buckle Up – Justice Samuel Alito Just Made A Big Announcement About Retirement

The retraction and explanation were, if anything, worse than the original error. NPR’s Nina Totenberg — the veteran Supreme Court reporter who has covered the institution for decades — claimed she had misheard an announcement. Then that explanation turned out not to be accurate either. A blog post explaining the error was subsequently updated after Totenberg went on All Things Considered to explain what happened, producing a correction to the correction.

To summarize: NPR published a false story about Samuel Alito retiring. Then published a false blog post about how the false story was published. Then corrected the false explanation after the false explanation became the story.

Alito has been one of the conservative majority’s most unapologetic voices — and by “unapologetic” I mean both willing to write sharp, sometimes savage dissents and equally willing to call out the institutional pressure campaigns targeting the Court as the political operations they are. The left despises him for both. The coordinated harassment campaigns targeting his home, the endless ethics complaints, the media pile-ons that followed every decision that went the wrong way for progressives — none of it moved him. None of it will.

He’s here for another term. The 6-3 majority is intact. The DSA co-chair who wants to abolish the Supreme Court is going to have to find another angle.

NPR already burned the retirement story down in advance. Now they can watch Alito keep working.