Weekend Report: What's happening?

Why Jack Smith is seeking to gag Trump in his espionage case. The Biden campaign's aggressive operation. Does Alito believe Trump was ordained by God?

It’s hard to believe that Judge Aileen Cannon—appointed by Trump late in his term and now slow-walking the espionage case in which Trump took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago—would issue a strong gag order on Trump. But that is what special counsel Jack Smith asked her to do in a filing last night, after Trump falsely and recklessly claimed the FBI and President Biden attempted to assassinate him. This is about violence against law enforcement—which Trump has promoted—and harm that could be directed at the FBI and even the president…

President Biden’s campaign this week showed the aggressive way it is taking on Trump, in a week in which Trump promoted Nazi themes and blurted out in an interview that he’d have a “plan” on banning birth control—only to attempt to backtrack on both, though it was too late. The Biden-Harris team has been all over the issues, going on the offensive with surrogates fanning out to the media, while Trump has been on the defensive, including with the GOP apologists appearing outside of his criminal trial in New York…

The recent history of the flag that Justice Alito and his wife hung at their beach house is perhaps more alarming than the upside-down American flag—a “Stop the Steal” symbol—flown at their Alexandria, Virginia, home. I spoke with an expert on Christian nationalism who explained that the promoters of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, embraced by the radical New Apostolic Reformation, have defined it as a symbol that Trump was ordained by God and that demonic forces stole the 2020 election. Is this what the Alitos believe?…