Well, well, well. Progressives across the country just got their Friday ruined in spectacular fashion.
Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal in no uncertain terms that he is NOT going anywhere. As first covered by USA Journal, the Supreme Court's most unapologetic conservative voice confirmed he will serve another term, effectively torching every progressive fantasy about reshaping the bench. The 6-3 conservative supermajority? Rock solid. Still standing. Not budging.
But here is where this whole saga gets absolutely delicious.
Before Alito even opened his mouth, NPR had already turned this into a full-blown media circus. On the final day of Supreme Court opinions back in June, National Public Radio, funded by your tax dollars no less, published a report claiming Alito was stepping down. Liberal America collectively popped champagne. Conservative America held its breath. And then the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.
The story was flat wrong. Not slightly off. Not a matter of nuance. Completely, totally, hilariously inaccurate.
And oh, the cleanup effort was somehow even worse than the original blunder. Veteran Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg initially said she had misheard an announcement. But that explanation also turned out to be incorrect. So NPR put up a blog post explaining how the mistake happened, then had to UPDATE that blog post after Totenberg went on All Things Considered to give yet another version of events. Let that sink in. They published a wrong story. Then published a wrong explanation of the wrong story. Then corrected the wrong explanation. It is genuinely hard to screw something up that many times in a row without it becoming performance art.
Meanwhile, Alito remains completely unbothered. This is a man who has faced coordinated protests outside his home, relentless ethics complaints, and nonstop media attacks following every conservative ruling. None of it fazed him. Not even a little. He kept writing sharp dissents and calling out what he views as political pressure campaigns targeting the Court.
Progressives who spent months constructing elaborate scenarios around his departure need to go back to the drawing board. That DSA co-chair who publicly called for abolishing the Supreme Court entirely? Gonna need a brand new strategy.
The conservative majority remains locked in. Alito is staying put, doing his job, and apparently enjoying watching his opponents lose their minds over it.
As for NPR, they already torched the retirement narrative weeks before Alito officially shut it down. Now all they can do is sit there and watch him keep showing up to work. Sometimes the biggest political stories are the ones that never actually happened, and the absolute trainwreck that follows when the media pretends they did.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
