Good morning. It's May 30th. The rain has moved out of New York, leaving behind a cool morning. It's time to get back to long pants for the day. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. The biggest story is the empty story -shaped space in which a Manhattan jury is deliberating on the criminal charges against Donald Trump. It's like 7 p on election night. minus even the importantest self -satisfied hint dropping of the people who've seen the exit polls. The jury will do something. What it does will be very important. And it hasn't done it yet. The New York Times website has the perfect headline for the moment. Trump jurors to review evidence as they consider a verdict in his trial. Like, yes, that's right. That is the definition of the situation.

It's like the Wikipedia page for trial by jury or something. The non -story of the jury is not on the front of the print edition today, but it might as well be as the lead story on page one is another piece of holding pattern news. War in Ukraine straining bonds in border zone, split by a frontline. Conflict causes anguish for people with kin on both sides. Why is a story that could have been written any day since the Russian invasion of Ukraine the number one piece of news for today? Who knows? Next to that is a story about how, for the sake of the war, a big new munitions plant is opening up in Mesquite, Texas. At least, unlike all the war production capacity we built that ended up pumping out AR -15s into the civilian market, we're probably not going to see 155 millimeter howitzershells diverted stateside once the Ukraine market is lost for whatever reason. And next to that,

The Times is beating the drum on Samuel Alito and his flags. Alito rejecting calls to recuse and flag uproar. Now this is a model of how to make a scandal story stay alive instead of just wringing his hands in impotent frustration. Senator Dick Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee got together with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and sent a letter demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts make Alito recuse himself. which, because Alito is a thin -skinned, compative partisan, got Alito to reply, which in turn got the New York Times to write a front -page story about some things that official people were doing. On the page facing the jump, there are two more stories about the Alito situation. One is the Times' follow -up dive into what actually happened in the neighborhood, finally making it into the print edition, days after it was on the web. And then a little profile of Martha Ann Alito, a Justice's spouse, has avoided the spotlight.

until now. The Times is so excited about this story at the moment that it's not even pretending not to have an active hand in it. Instead of just saying that a portrait is emerging of Martha Annalito, the paper writes, but since reporting by the New York Times raised questions about how and why an upside down American flag appeared outside her family's home in Alexandria, Virginia, just days after rioters at the Capitol carried the same flag on January 6th, 2021.

Mrs. Alito, 70, has abruptly found herself at the center of controversy. Pretty good. Technically, if you follow the sentence from beginning to end, it's not so much that she's found herself there as that the Times has found her there. Nevertheless, hot Supreme Court scandal. Major League Baseball officially decided to incorporate Negro League statistics in the record books, and so page one has the new all -time batting leaderboard with Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays sitting on top with a 372 average, five points ahead of second place loser Thai Cob. In other news, the temperature hit 126 degrees in Delhi yesterday. Another volcano is erupting in Iceland with picturesque dark red splashes of molten rock, fountaining out of a long rift in the ground. North Korea sent balloons to drop garbage on South Korea, and there's a deal in place to bring pandas back to the National Zoo pair of two -year -old pandas, Bao Li and Ching Bao, the Times Rights, will be flown over before the end of the year. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going, and if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.