Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has evolved to become one of the most combative, MAGA-friendly figures on the highest court in the land, a new report claims.
At the start of his legal career, working in the Reagan administration, Alito was viewed as professional and nonpartisan—so much so that he even earned bipartisan support during his confirmation process after being nominated to the court by former President George W. Bush.
In his nomination, Bush stated that Alito “understands that judges are to interpret the laws, not to impose their preferences or priorities on the people.”
Alito has evolved over his 20 years on the bench and, in recent years, has become seemingly unwilling to defy President Donald Trump and more combative as a result, according to a new feature by Peter S. Canellos in The Atlantic.
The article notes that Alito’s jurisprudence has increasingly moved toward promoting conservative values, not just strictly interpreting the law.
Alito once said: “Good judges are always open to the possibility of changing their minds based on the next brief that they read or the next argument that is made by an attorney.” But The Atlantic claims that hardly any federal judges still view him as the man who once uttered those words.
One of Alito’s classmates from Princeton, libertarian legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, told the outlet that Alito’s decisions now reflect his conservative values over any legal theory.
“Sam is not an originalist,” Napolitano said. “Sam is a conservative person who wants a conservative outcome.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that in the court in which he sits, because it’s a court of last resort. If he was on the Third Circuit behaving that way, he’d get reversed a lot. But where he sits, he has the privilege of doing that,” he said.
While serving on the Supreme Court, especially in the age of Trump, Alito has become openly angry, blunt, and sometimes overtly political during oral arguments. His opinions, which once contained neutral political analyses, now contain overtly partisan language, The Atlantic wrote.
The high court is additionally preparing to rule on some of Trump’s most high-stakes cases, including his challenge to the Constititional right to birthright citizenship and his power over the Federal Reserve.
During oral arguments on Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship, while other conservative justices cast doubt on the administration’s argument, Alito seemed more inclined to side with the administration.
“What we’re dealing with here was basically unknown at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, which is illegal immigration,” Alito said.
The Atlantic noted that while the 6-3 conservative majority court would often prefer the conservative outcome, with the exception of Alito and Clarence Thomas, the other conservative justices regularly disagree with how Trump applies the law.
As Trump repeatedly tests the legal boundaries of his presidency, Alito’s fellow conservative justices—including John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch—have found the strength to rule against the president. But not Alito.
Opposing the president, however, can come at a cost.
Just last month, the president verbally accosted Gorsuch and Barrett, both of whom he nominated to the high court during his first term, calling them “an embarrassment to their families,” “a disgrace to our nation,” and “very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution,” after they slapped down the way he was implementing his signature economic policy: tariffs.
Despite his once-bipartisan characterization, Alito has often found himself in political controversies. For example, he has been criticized for making overtly political arguments at conventions hosted by right-wing organizations such as the Federalist Society.
A 2024 report from The New York Times revealed that Alito flew an upside-down American flag outside his house in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election—a symbol adopted by Trump supporters contesting Biden’s electoral win despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Alito blamed the incident on his wife, claiming she was the one who flew the flag in response to a dispute with their neighbors.
It was also reported that Alito flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his beach house on the Jersey Shore. While the flag was adopted as a symbol during the Revolutionary War, in modern times it has been associated with Christian nationalists.
Some of Alito’s friends have said they hardly recognize him since his MAGA transformation.
“I listen to a lot of Supreme Court arguments, and sometimes I am shocked at the tone and nastiness of some of his questions,” one Princeton pal told The Atlantic. “I just can’t believe that’s my Sam Alito. But obviously, my Sam Alito at the time was holding back, or he’s evolved, or some of both.”
