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🎙 Can Congress turn off the lights at the Supreme Court | The Receipts - Dataspheres AI

Can Congress turn off the lights at the Supreme Court (5 min), with captions The story Justice Samuel Alito said on Thursday, November 12, that Congress ca...

Can Congress turn off the lights at the Supreme Court (5 min), with captions The story Justice Samuel Alito said on Thursday, November 12, that Congress can turn off the lights at the Supreme Court. He made the remark at the Federalist Society's Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner in Washington, according to The Hill, which reported it first. He added that it is important to preserve the independence of the judiciary. The remark matters because every dollar of the Supreme Court's budget is voted by Congress. Article One, Section 9 of the Constitution says no money shall be drawn from the Treasury except through appropriations made by law. The Constitution protects the justices' pay under Article Three, Section 1, but not the rest of the Court's funding, which covers staff, police, technology and the building. The timing drew attention. Democrats won control of the House and the Senate on November 3, nine days before the speech, and December 11 is the deadline to fund the government. HuffPost and the Epoch Times both reported that Alito did not mention the election. In the same talk he said some lower-court judges have issued unjustified orders blocking presidents' policies and have gone far astray in abuse of their powers, though no report read for this account names a bill in Congress to cut the Court's funding. The money involved is modest by federal standards. Congress enacted 174.5 million dollars for the Court in fiscal year 2026, and the Court requested 225.1 million dollars for fiscal year 2027, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Court testified in July that its budget is 2 percent of the judicial branch's funding and that the whole branch is one tenth of one percent of the federal budget. Justice Elena Kagan presented the request in person on July 14 and said recent growth has been almost entirely for security, with the Supreme Court Police expecting threats to rise 38 percent this year after 25 percent last year. Funding has lapsed before. A government shutdown began on October 1, 2025, and the Court kept operating on what it called permanent funds not subject to annual approval. Its spokesperson then said the Court expected to run out of funding on October 18 and that the building would be closed to the public until further notice, while arguments, orders and opinions continued, SCOTUSblog reported. Congress has also changed the Court's structure in the past. The Judiciary Act of 1802, which became law on April 29, 1802, cancelled the Supreme Court term scheduled for that June, according to the Federal Judicial Center. The Court's own history page says the number of justices changed six times before settling at nine in 1869. The next funding deadline is December 11, and the new Congress takes office in January 2027. No date is set for any bill that would change the Court's funding or its size. Because the justices must return each year to ask Congress for money, the leverage sits in that annual request. Highlights Highlight In pictures Listen The episode as audio