(Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed a plan released by President Joe Biden this week to make drastic changes to the Supreme Court.
“President Biden and I are calling on Congress to pass important reforms – from imposing term limits for Justices’ active service, to requiring Justices to comply with binding ethics rules just like every other federal judge,” Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement on Monday, according to WGME.
“And finally, in our democracy, no one should be above the law,” she added. “So we must also ensure that no former President has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House.”
Harris claimed the reforms being proposed were “popular,” and that they would “restore confidence in the court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law.”
The Biden–Harris proposal would impose an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court justices and require that justices disclose all gifts, avoid political activity, and recuse themselves from cases if they or their spouses had conflicts of interest.
The term limit conveniently would remove three justices: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. That effectively would allow Biden to flip the idealogical makeup of the court.
Democrats have long seethed over the fact that Republican President Donald Trump was able to appoint three justices during his first term, although all three have issued rulings that flew against conservative principles at various times.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett notably opposed several of the conservative positions in the court’s most recent session, fueling speculation that she may be on her way to transforming into a liberal judge.
The reforms come after a prolonged effort by Democrats and the leftist media to smear conservative justices on the bench, particularly Thomas and Alito.
Republicans have vowed to kill the plan in Congress, with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., calling it “dead on arrival” in the House.
“President Biden’s proposal to radically overhaul the U.S. Supreme Court would tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice,” Johnson said Monday.
“This proposal is the logical conclusion to the Biden-Harris Administration and Congressional Democrats’ ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court,” he added. “Their calls to expand and pack the Court will soon resume.”
President Biden’s proposal to radically overhaul the U.S. Supreme Court would tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.
This proposal is the logical conclusion to the Biden-Harris Administration and…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) July 29, 2024
Johnson added that Biden’s and Harris’s proposed reforms were motivated by recent Supreme Court rulings hampering their agenda—not by a legitimate concern for ethics.
“It is telling that Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions,” he said. “This dangerous gambit of the Biden–Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House.”
