Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday that Congress should more aggressively use the tools at its disposal to investigate Supreme Court justices for potential conflicts of interest, including impeachment and subpoenas.
The remarks from the New York Democrat, a member of the far-left “Squad,” come in the wake of rulings last week by the conservative-led court against liberal positions like affirmative action and President Biden’s student debt forgiveness.
Her remarks also come after it was revealed that some conservative justices accepted lavish gifts from wealthy individuals who argued cases before the court.
“I believe that if Chief Justice [John G.] Roberts [Jr.] will not come before Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe that we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we must pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines where we see members of the Supreme Court potentially breaking the law, as we saw in the refusal of [Justice] Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases implicating his wife in Jan. 6,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There also must be impeachment on the table. We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power.”
She borrowed a phrase from her Democratic colleagues to suggest the high court was losing legitimacy over its rulings.
“The Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.