OPINION:
President Biden, backed by newly minted presidential candidate Kamala Harris, unveiled the Democratic Party’s plan to overhaul the Supreme Court — one of the last stable institutions in American governance and, conveniently, one they don’t control.
Their proposal includes a new code of conduct and term limits that would allow presidents to appoint new justices every two years — in other words, packing the court. Mr. Biden argues that these reforms will “strengthen the guardrails of democracy.”
But if Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and their allies were genuinely dedicated to ethics and democracy, they would begin by addressing issues in their own ranks, starting with corruption in Congress and applying their reforms across all branches.
Their selective focus on the Supreme Court reveals their true motives: to pack the court, undermine its legitimacy and appease the most radical members of the left.
Indeed, Ms. Harris has been unapologetically political on this issue. She has never been shy about her attempts to turn the court upside down; she openly campaigned on packing it during her failed presidential bid. In 2019, she was all in favor of “increasing the number of people on the U.S. Supreme Court,” asserting that “everything is on the table” to address what she called a “crisis” at the court.
It was only when she became Mr. Biden’s vice president, amid overwhelming opposition to court-packing among most Americans, that she said that “now is not the time” to address the matter.
But make no mistake: Ms. Harris and the most radical factions of the left have been itching to overhaul the court ever since it became inconvenient to their agenda. Now, with Ms. Harris at the head of the Democratic Party, they may finally be able to execute their scheme to dismantle our nation’s highest court and reshape it to a second liberal legislature.
The timing of this proposal is no coincidence. Even Mr. Biden, who has opposed court-packing for his entire 51-year political career, has suddenly joined forces with the party’s most radical voices as he prepares to pass the baton to Ms. Harris.
Their singular focus on policing the Supreme Court as self-appointed arbiters of its ethics reveals their surreptitious motives. The court is arguably the government branch least susceptible to corruption, yet the Biden-Harris reform plan makes no effort to implement their suggestions across all branches.
The initiative does not ban gifts for all public officials, including members of Congress, where corruption is most prevalent. Nor does it ban insider trading, a far more prevalent and insidious issue that should have been addressed before all else. A string of unethical and illegal scandals has plagued Congress for years, with billions of dollars in dark money flooding our political system.
For instance, Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who was compelled to resign his post as chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee last September, was convicted last month of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign bribes that went undetected for over four years.
Similarly, Rep. Henry Cuellar, California Democrat, was indicted on 14 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud but has yet to be removed from his position. At the same time, Rep. Eric Swalwell remains on the House Foreign Affairs Committee despite allegations of having had a compromising relationship with a Chinese spy.
Amid such widespread corruption, including incidents that directly threaten U.S. national security, the Biden-Harris administration has not advanced any congressional code of conduct. Needless to say, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have likewise ignored the negative consequences of an entrenched and growing federal bureaucracy, largely unaccountable to the American people and highly susceptible to unsavory influence from outside forces.
The Democrats’ push to restructure the Supreme Court has never been about promoting ethical governance but rather is about bending the judiciary to their political will. This power grab threatens the court’s independence and will erode public trust in our democratic institutions.
This push is nothing more than a continuation of Democrats’ yearslong strategy to dismantle a court they no longer dominate.
• Paul Teller is executive director of Advancing American Freedom.
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