Politics
Thomas and Alito sound eager to push for execution despite prosecutor’s objection
Even Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general thinks death row prisoner Richard Glossip should get a new trial. You might think that automatically means he wouldn’t be executed, but it’s not that simple with this Supreme Court.
Indeed, the court appointed a third party to defend the state court ruling that, if upheld by the justices, would send Glossip to the execution chamber. That’s despite the state’s admission that prosecutorial misconduct tainted his trial.
All this led to a strange high court hearing in Washington on Wednesday, where three lawyers presented arguments to the justices. One represented Glossip, another represented Oklahoma, and the third defended the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ ruling against Glossip.
It’s not unheard of for the justices to appoint third parties to defend abandoned positions, but the practice made for an unusual outing in this capital case. Former U.S. solicitors general represented Glossip (Seth Waxman) and Oklahoma (top conservative lawyer Paul Clement). The appointed lawyer, Christopher Michel, also previously worked in the solicitor general’s office, and he clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justice Brett Kavanaugh when the latter was a federal appeals court judge.
But despite the state’s confession of error, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in particular quizzed the lawyers in ways that suggested those justices want Glossip’s execution to go forward. That’s not surprising, given that they and Justice Neil Gorsuch have split from even their Republican-appointed colleagues to vote against death row prisoners.
So what about Gorsuch, then? In another twist, he’s recused. He didn’t explain why, but it’s probably because he sat on prior Glossip-related litigation when he was a federal appellate judge on the court that covers Oklahoma.
But even in Gorsuch’s absence, it’s not guaranteed that Glossip and Oklahoma will succeed in getting a new trial. Because a 4-4 tie would uphold the state court ruling, they need to convince a majority of this eight-justice court. Wednesday’s hearing reflected that the court’s three Democratic appointees are (as expected) prepared to side with Glossip, who maintains his innocence. That leaves the open question of Roberts and Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, whose votes can be decisive at the court these days. This life-or-death appeal is no different.
How the court will ultimately rule, in a decision expected by late June, is further complicated by the fact that there are multiple legal issues in play. There’s a threshold issue (added by the court when it took up the case) about whether the justices even have jurisdiction to review the Oklahoma state court ruling. It’s the sort of procedural hurdle that the high court likes to employto avoid having to deal with potential injustices lurking in the actual merits of cases.
The merits of Glossip’s appeal deal with due process, including whether that constitutional mandate was violated when prosecutors suppressed their key witness’s admission that he was under the care of a psychiatrist and failed to correct the witness’s false testimony about that care and related diagnosis.
With the caveat that questions at oral argument don’t necessarily signal how a justice will vote, Kavanaugh at one point asked the appointed lawyer, Michel, a question that could be seen as hopeful for Glossip:
I think you had said earlier …, if you get past all the procedural bars and you get to the point where the prosecutors didn’t comply with their obligations, that it still wouldn’t have made a difference to the jury had they known that Sneed [the key state witness] was bipolar and that he had lied on the stand. And I’m having some trouble on that last piece of the argument, if we get there, … when the whole case depended on his credibility.
Thomas, meanwhile, seemed to take offense at the notion that there was prosecutorial misconduct in this case. At least he thought the prosecutors didn’t get to fully explain themselves. “[I]t would seem that because not only, you know, their reputations are being impugned, but they are central to this case, it would seem that … an interview of these two prosecutors would be central,” Thomas said, in a theme that he pressed throughout the hearing.
Lawyers for Glossip and Oklahoma contested that the prosecutors were given short shrift. But on the subject of factual discrepancies in the case, some justices’ questions raised the prospect of the court sending the case back for a hearing to get more information. While that could obviously be better for Glossip (and Oklahoma) than the justices upholding the state court ruling against him right now, his lawyer said on Wednesday that “[n]o evidentiary hearing could alter the conclusion that Mr. Glossip was denied due process.”
Subscribe to theDeadline: Legal Newsletterfor expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
President Donald Trump is blaming fellow Republicans as his endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, appears to be in a fierce struggle for a Senate seat in Texas with Democratic challenger James Talarico in a state the GOP has long taken for granted.
Trump, in a lengthy post to Truth Social Thursday, singled out longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove and Sen. John Cornyn, the incumbent who failed to secure the president’s endorsement in a heated primary.
Rove and Cornyn, Trump said, are doing “everything possible” to make it harder for Paxton to defeat Talarico, a state lawmaker and Presbyterian seminarian who is making a suprisingly strong run for Senate in deep red Texas.
“They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!” Trump wrote. “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.”
Cornyn, a longtime fixture in Texas politics, lost his bid for reelection in a contentious Republican primary in which he and his supporters portrayed Paxton as a deeply flawed candidate. As Election Day approaches, public polling over the past two months has shown Talarico with a narrow edge against Paxton, the state’s attorney general.
Trump urged his supporters to back Paxton.
“Your favorite President (ME!) is asking all of those who supported Senator John Cornyn to UNITE, and immediately switch your support to Ken Paxton,” Trump said. “He will be a Great Senator, just like he is a Great Attorney General. “
The race has also become one of the most expensive non-presidential battles. Talarico raised $64 million this summer — the largest third-quarter haul of any Senate candidate in history. He has raised more than $134 million since launching his campaign last year.
Paxton raised $18 million in the third quarter of 2026 and last month announced a new $20 million ad buy. Earlier this month, though, a Trump operative told POLITICO that MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are could spend nearly $45 million on direct mail, TV and digital advertising in Texas through Oct. 12.
Already, $235 million has been spent by outside conservative groups and party committees against Talarico as national Republicans scramble to boost Paxton.
Some Republicans have grown concerned that the cost of the Texas race is diverting money needed in other states and have expressed frustrations with Paxton after leaked audio showed him blaming Trump for his woes.
Trump easily won Texas in 2024, winning just over 56% of the vote. But concerns about Republicans’ chances this November have surged as the president’s approval rating plummets.
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he thinks Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans are wrong to move away from the party’s traditional embrace of free-market economics — and that their shift could create an opening for a “pro-freedom” movement.
“I think they are in error,” Daniels said in an interview when asked about Vance’s criticism of economist Milton Friedman, who championed free-market capitalism.
“I think what Vance is saying is that there are aspects to the free market which can be disruptive of culture and tradition. I mean, that’s what the free market does. It’s dynamic,” he told Blue Light News. “It’s the only mechanism, in my view, for preserving the American dream, and that’s the most important element of our culture.”
The vice president’s intra-party critics have argued that Vance has been moving away from free-market economics and toward a larger role for the government in shaping the economy in his defense of the Trump administration’s economic policies, especially its wide-ranging tariffs.
“What the president is doing is changing 40 years of a failed bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C., that has sold out American workers and destroyed the underlying economic strength of the United States of America,” Vance said in a Fox News interview last year.
The move is seen by some as Vance testing a more populist and protectionist message as he eyes the Republican presidential nomination in 2028.
But the two men were at one point closer politically. In Vance’s bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described Daniels as his “political hero.” Daniels has said that Vance sought his counsel on running for office in 2018 and Daniels advised against it because it was likely to be a bad year for Republicans.
The vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Daniels’ remarks.
Daniels recently released his new book, “Impatience Is a Virtue.” In it, the veteran of Indiana politics — who also led the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush — detailed his career championing the free market.
Daniels told Blue Light News that President Donald Trump was both a “symptom” and “a propellant” of voters’ discontent, pointing to their “feeling of being patronized, condescended, looked down on, ignored, disrespected.” And Trump’s political success came from his ability to unite and represent these discontented voters.
Still, Daniels argued the evolution of the Republican Party under Trump has created room for a “pro-freedom party” that champions economic freedom and individual autonomy.
“Whether that is the next iteration of this Republican Party or you find some other vehicle, I don’t know,” he said. “But I think that there’s a need, and as I say, there’s certainly, I think, a market for that viewpoint waiting to be expressed by somebody.”
The former governor, now back at Purdue University as the interim president after leading the school for a decade until 2022, sidestepped a question about his party identification and another one on whether he sees Vance emerging as the “pro-freedom” candidate.
“It’s all TBD; I don’t know,” he said of Vance.
Daniels also defended his view on another 2028 hopeful, Democrat Pete Buttigieg, who was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, during the tail end of Daniels’ governorship.
In his book, Daniels said Buttigieg is smart, but his principal asset that excites Democratic activists is his sexual identity.
Buttigieg became the first openly gay person confirmed to be a Cabinet secretary when he was tapped to lead then-President Joe Biden’s Transportation Department. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This differentiates him in a way that would be appealing to large portions of the core Democratic electorate,” he said. “Absent that, he would be a less likely national figure.”
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Two women this week sued former GOP Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and two others — including a former state legislator — in federal court and accused the men of engaging in an alleged sex trafficking scheme during a time when Gaetz was still in Congress.
The lawsuit, which seeks damages from Gaetz and other defendants, was filed in Orlando by two women who were in their early 20s when they first met Gaetz. The women are not named in the lawsuit. The details mirror allegations that were at the center of a House Ethics Committee probe that found Gaetz had sex with a minor, solicited prostitutes and used illegal drugs.
“The defendants collectively used their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability of the plaintiffs to commit the acts outlined below,” states the 38-page lawsuit.
That House probe helped derail Gaetz’s bid to become attorney general under President Donald Trump. He resigned from his Northwest Florida congressional seat to seek the post but decided to withdraw his name ahead of a potentially messy confirmation battle in the Senate.
Gaetz, who has repeatedly denied he ever had sex with a minor, said he would vigorously contest the allegations in the lawsuit.
“I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” Gaetz said in a text message. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”
The civil suit is the latest development in the long-running scandal involving Gaetz, a former ally of Trump who has continuously denied any involvement in underage sex or trafficking of women after news broke in 2021 that the Justice Department was investigating him.
The lawsuit this week by Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 was first reported by the Miami Herald. It alleges that Gaetz and former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg “coordinated the recruitment, payments, drugs and travel to obtain commercial sex acts from young women.” The lawsuit includes former Florida legislator and lobbyist Chris Dorworth because his Central Florida home was the site of a party where he allegedly “participated in the activities alleged there.”
Greenberg is serving an 11-year federal sentence after he pleaded guilty to multiple federal offenses including underage sex trafficking of a minor and wire fraud. Greenberg cooperated with federal investigators who were probing Gaetz but the U.S. Department of Justice closed the investigation without filing charges.
The lawsuit says it “arises from the recruitment and sexual exploitation” that occurred from 2017 through January 2019 and included trips to various locations such as Las Vegas, New York City and the Bahamas. It accuses Gaetz and Greenberg of making promises to help the two women financially or with college bills.
“They led her to believe they would resolve her financial needs as long as she continued to perform sexual acts for them and their associates,” the lawsuit states about Jane Doe 1. “They used the age, wealth and political power gap between themselves and Jane Doe 1 to keep her compliant and silent.”
Jane Doe 2, the lawsuit states, was “paid less” than promised and “through this pattern defendants caused Jane Doe 2 to believe she would lose her education and serious financial harm if she stopped performing sexual acts.”
Stencer Kuvin, a West Palm Beach attorney representing the two women, said in an email that federal law designed to protect sex trafficking victims has a 10-year statute of limitations “which potentially could run [out] next year based upon the allegations in the complaint.”
Gaetz, a firebrand and ally of Trump, was once seen as a potential candidate for Florida governor or attorney general. Since he left Congress, he has hosted his own show on the One America News Network and he was appointed to the board of a nonprofit charged with distributing proceeds from a settlement Florida received after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill along the Gulf Coast.
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