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Next story starts small - a neighborhood fight over lawn signs. But it goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York Times recently reported that conservative Justice Samuel Alito had an upside-down flag flying in front of his home about a week after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. It raised a lot of questions, which Alito answered by saying this was about a political dispute between his wife and their liberal neighbors. NPR's Tom Dreisbach spoke to the neighbor at the center of the fight.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Like a lot of things about life in America today, this whole story was really only possible because of COVID. Emily Baden was working as an actor and restaurant server in New York when the once-in-a-century pandemic shut the country down, so she and her husband moved in with her mom in suburban D.C. Her mom just happened to live down the street from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. Now, Justice Alito is firmly on the political right. Emily Baden, on the other hand...
EMILY BADEN: I describe myself as a leftist.
DREISBACH: At first, Baden did not think much of the Alitos. They lived several houses down. You can't even see their place from her mom's front yard. Then Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and Baden put up a handmade side in the yard. On one side, it said, Byedon (ph). Get it? On the other, it said - paraphrasing the curse word for the radio here - F Trump. One day, Martha-Ann Alito happens to drive by.
BADEN: Pulls up in her car, says, thank you for taking the sign down.
DREISBACH: But she actually did not take it down. The wind had knocked it over, and she was not about to leave it down.
BADEN: I say, I'm going to keep the sign up. Thank you. Bye.
DREISBACH: Then came the January 6 attack on the Capitol. It's important to remember just how tense things were at the time. The Capitol had barbed wire around it, troops and camouflage on the streets of D.C. On their block, Baden put up a new sign - Trump is a fascist on one side and you are complicit on the other. So on the morning of January 7, Baden and her husband are parked in front of their house.
BADEN: This car pulls up and then stops next to us. And the person inside just stares at us, just glares at us. And I was just sitting there, like, you know, thinking to myself, oh, my God. That's Mrs. Alito. That's her. And, you know, she stopped there for a period of time that feels like forever and then drives off.
DREISBACH: Baden texted some friends, like, can you believe what just happened? About a week or so after this, the American flag flying in front of the Alito home gets turned upside down. For sailors, this is considered a distress signal. But at that particular time, it was also a symbol that supporters of the pro-Trump, quote-unquote, "stop the steal" movement used to protest Joe Biden's win. Some Trump supporters flew upside-down flags at the Capitol riot. For what it's worth, Emily Baden never actually saw the Alitos' flag. Other neighbors did, and they later sent pictures to The New York Times. Then comes Inauguration Day 2021. Baden says she and her husband are curious about what's going on over at the Alitos, so they drive by.
BADEN: I don't know if I expected to see anything or what I expected to see.
DREISBACH: Martha-Ann Alito was out front.
BADEN: She sees us and runs out to the street. And she's yelling something. And we don't hear - our windows are up, and we're in motion, so we don't hear what she's yelling.
DREISBACH: Now, the street is a cul-de-sac, so they have to actually turn around and go drive back by the house a second time. And this time, she says she saw Martha-Ann Alito talking to the security detail, gesturing at them.
BADEN: And we see in our rear-view mirror that she, like, spits at our car, or it looks like she spat at our car. And then we just got the hell out of there.
DREISBACH: Spits from how far away?
BADEN: Well, we're in motion, so it probably - I'm sure that it didn't hit our car.
DREISBACH: This was all just leading up to one more incident a few weeks later. And by all accounts, it was a lot more intense. It's February 15, 2021.
BADEN: My husband and I are just in the driveway. We're getting the trash cans. And then the Alitos walk up. They presumably were just taking a walk. And it's sort of a blind corner. So we didn't really see them coming. And then Mrs. Alito says something like, well, well, well, if it isn't the f***ing fascists, Emily and my husband's name and my mom's name. You're f***ing fascists.
DREISBACH: Baden says she was kind of freaked out. She says Alito had used their full names, but they'd never actually introduced themselves. And at the time, she and her husband weren't married, didn't even have the same name.
BADEN: Why do you know personal details about us? And that was when I spoke back, and I said - I did obviously use an expletive.
DREISBACH: That expletive was the C-word.
BADEN: But I also said a lot of other things like, how dare you behave this way? You're a Supreme Court justice of the United States. And now I'm addressing Mr. Alito, who was there and did not intervene in her behavior, which I took note of.
DREISBACH: The Alitos walked away as Baden yelled at them.
BADEN: And Mr. Alito is walking away much quicker 'cause I think, yeah, he really got out of there.
DREISBACH: Do you regret cursing at all?
BADEN: I guess I would say that I regret it. You know, the power imbalance between these people and myself is huge. Like, it literally couldn't get any bigger. And they're choosing to harass and intimidate us when we are nothing to them. We're just random people. And yeah, so that would have been the message that I wanted to convey. And, you know, and if a curse word cheapened that somehow, then, yeah, I would say that I regretted saying it.
DREISBACH: Right after this happened, Baden's husband actually called the cops. The officer who answered told them, basically, it's not illegal to yell at your neighbors. But he said he would call the Alitos' protective detail. Baden actually recorded that call to have a record of what happened.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: So what'll happen - OK? - if it does happen again - she's causing issues as far as for whatever, she's in your guys' yard, she's gone to you guys, it's a problem that's happening right then and there - call us back. We'll see if we can come out and handle it then on scene, OK?
DREISBACH: And that was the last time Emily Baden or her husband interacted with the Alitos. But then last month, The New York Times reported about the upside-down flag. Democrats said that flying a symbol associated with Trump meant Justice Alito should recuse from cases related to January 6. Alito rejected those arguments. He wrote a letter to Congress saying that his wife alone was responsible for flying the flag upside down. He claims he asked her to take it down, and she refused for several days. He also wrote that his wife's reasons for flying the flag upside down are, quote, "not relevant for present purposes." And then he described the dispute with Emily Baden and her husband and the use of the C-word.
But the fight with the C-word actually happened weeks after Martha-Ann Alito flew the flag upside down. We contacted the court and asked about that discrepancy but did not get a response. Based on these brief interactions, Baden says she is skeptical that Justice Alito really had nothing to do with the flag.
BADEN: He is representative of our entire judicial system and then we'll go on to make legally-binding decisions about the insurrection and, you know, election denialism. It should scare everyone.
DREISBACH: In his letter to Congress, Alito said that, quote, "any reasonable person would agree" that he does not need to recuse over the flag. Of course, what and who count as reasonable can depend on your political perspective or what side of the street you're on. Tom Dreisbach, NPR News.
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