Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, best known as the author of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, has long taken pride in his Italian heritage — a loyalty that, according to a recent profile, extends to the celebration of Christopher Columbus, the deeply controversial figure at the center of the traditional narrative of America's so-called discovery.

"On a Sunday in October 1959, the whole neighborhood, including the future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito and his family, stood alongside church leaders and diplomats to erect an image of their hero, Christopher Columbus, peering from the prow of a ship as he approaches the New World," Peter S. Canellos, author of Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, in a New York Times article published Sunday.

Long after Alito had ceased to be the 9-year-old boy celebrating the statue's unveiling, he remained loyal to the literal and figurative Columbus institution.

"Most Italians had left Chambersburg [New Jersey] by 2020," Canellos wrote. "Many of the town's residents, chiefly Black and Central American, decried Columbus as a symbol of slavery and genocide. 'What we know about Columbus simply makes his image a poor fit for a city that is as diverse as Trenton,' the mayor said at the time."

According to Canellos, the statue now lies in pieces in a warehouse, and a six-year saga has ensued in which local Italian Americans — backed by a valuable ally in Justice Alito himself — have feuded with the city over its restoration. After years of patient advocacy, Italian Americans in Trenton have agreed to a compromise: they are negotiating to acquire the statue and re-erect it outside a Knights of Columbus hall — the Catholic fraternal organization named for the explorer — in neighboring Hamilton. The dispute has turned Trenton into a local front in a wider national argument over Columbus monuments and the holiday that bears his name.

Alito is reportedly displeased with the current state of affairs.

"Despite optimism surrounding this year's Columbus Day, the has yet to approve the transfer," Canellos concluded. That approval remains the decisive step: until the city signs off, the Hamilton compromise cannot take effect and the statue stays in the warehouse.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has seized on the movement to eliminate Columbus Day, writing that "the Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much," and adding that they "tore down his statues, and put up nothing but WOKE…" Columbus, he assured, "is going to make a major comeback." His comments track the same fault line running through the Trenton dispute, where a monument erected in 1959 as an emblem of Italian American pride now divides a changed city.

Columbus's historical record includes notorious brutality. During his tenure as governor and viceroy of the Indies, which he conquered for Spain — though he personally hailed from the Italian city-state of Genoa — Columbus ruled as a dictator who ordered a corn thief's tongue and ears cut off before the man was sold into slavery, tortured a woman for insulting him, and beat those who openly disagreed with his policies. He ultimately became so unpopular that the Spanish monarchs forcibly recalled him from his post. Columbus also committed brutalities against Indigenous populations, including the Arawaks, who approached his ships when they first arrived in 1492.

"They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance," Columbus wrote in his journal at the time. "They would make fine servants... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."