Everyone in the political sphere and beyond has disagreed with Supreme Court decisions from time to time. Rulings by the high court on everything from abortion to gay marriage to presidential powers have sparked widespread dissent and public protest, as one would expect in a republic grounded in free speech. But it is one thing for members of Congress to vigorously oppose a particular decision by SCOTUS and quite another to publicly denounce and question the integrity of the institution. However, that is exactly what the most high-ranking Democrat in the US House of Representatives and prominent colleagues positioning themselves for the 2028 presidential race have done with relish in recent days.
Scuttling SCOTUS
Stung by the Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries did not limit his reaction to disappointment or anger. Instead, he went after the integrity of SCOTUS with a head-spinning pronouncement: “[the] decision by this illegitimate Supreme Court majority strikes a blow against the Voting Rights Act and is designed to undermine the ability of communities of color all across this country to elect their candidate of choice.”
Reinforcing the assertion that the high court is corrupt and illegitimate was the self-declared Spartacus, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who appears ready to run for president again after becoming an object of widespread mockery in 2020. “It’s a corrupt court,” said Booker. “The highest court in our land has the lowest ethics laws. I led one of the pieces of legislation with Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse [D-RI] and others to give term limits to Supreme Court members … It is a corrupt court.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who is also considering a presidential run in 2028, added his voice to the left-wing chorus, declaring that “[t]he Supreme Court is rigged” and calling it the “most partisan Supreme Court in the history of the nation.” Evidently, the good senator is not familiar with history or aware, for example, of the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, which declared abortion to be a constitutional right, on top of many other decisions favorable to the left. But unlike leftists these days, frustrated conservatives never called for packing the Court or adding term limits.
Of course, the anti-SCOTUS narrative would not be complete without comment from the most high-profile hopeful for 2028, Gavin Newsom. The California governor posted on X that the Court was “doing raw power politics.” After years of attacks, threats, and even an assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Newsom stated that “there’s a reason so many Americans have lost faith in the Trump Court and now view it as a partisan political entity — they have eyes.” Or maybe they have ears to hear the left repeatedly denigrating the institution when it disagrees with one of their decisions, holding public temper tantrums, and threatening “reform” that would amount to Democrats adding enough new Supreme Court justices to tip the balance dramatically to the left.
And then along came Kamala Harris, apparently still positioning herself for another run at the White House after failing badly in the last two cycles, to give voice to the left’s fever dreams. On a recent podcast, the former vice president recycled the same trio of radical reforms that Democrats tried to institute when they held the trifecta — White House, Senate, and House — from 2021 to 2023: pack the Court with leftist justices, turn DC and Puerto Rico from territories into states, and trash the Electoral College, all moves designed to upend the constitutional order and provide Democrats with a permanent majority in the Senate and high court. In a statement that has been widely ridiculed, Harris proposed a summit to find new lines of attack against President Donald Trump and the GOP, saying, “This is a moment where there are no bad ideas.” Republicans undoubtedly continue to hope that the woman who was handed the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and beaten badly by Trump will conclude that her running for president again is also not a bad idea.
Even Liberals Are Queasy
Negative reaction to Jeffries’ statement was hardly limited to the right. No less than The Washington Post objected to the House Minority Leader’s unhinged diatribe, writing that “threatening to subordinate judicial independence to the whims of a political party befits a banana republic.” And liberal lawyer and podcaster Dan Abrams delivered a stern rebuke to Jeffries: “You can disagree with the ruling. You can believe it’s a bad ruling. You can believe it has an impact you disagree with and believe is dangerous. But it is even more dangerous to start calling this court illegitimate. The minute we have partisans on both sides referring to this court as illegitimate, we are going to have no arbiter of anything in this country.”
Say one thing for the leftists. If their goal was to make the Supreme Court appear illegitimate, corrupt, and partisan, they have succeeded to a stunning degree. The Court recorded an all-time-high approval of 62% in 2000, but with the institution under constant attack from the left in the last decade, that approval has now fallen to an all-time low of 40%, according to Gallup. And it’s no wonder. Forgetting even their vicious, shameful treatment of Clarence Thomas decades ago, Democrats’ vilification of Kavanaugh based on accusations devoid of evidence led to an attempted assassination at his home and has forced other justices under threat to hire security details.
But let us not forget that, while it was Jeffries who did the heavy anti-SCOTUS lifting this time around, it was his fellow leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who set the table when, in 2020, he openly threatened the justices about a pending decision in an abortion case. Schumer famously thundered with a bullhorn outside the Supreme Court building, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Is it acceptable for public officials in high office to go beyond attacking a decision by the country’s final arbiter of justice and actually threaten or question the integrity of the institution itself? The consequences of a discredited Supreme Court are many, none of them good. Democrats have been nothing if not honest about their intention to transform the Court into another arm of their political operation. If they win control of Congress one of these days and do what they promise, it is the country that will reap the whirlwind.
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