Democrats are so intent on preventing the Supreme Court from derailing their legal actions against former President Donald Trump that members like Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., are openly pledging to attack the judicial branch if outcomes don’t favor them.
Recently, The New York Times published a critical piece on Justice Samuel Alito, attempting to portray him as a partisan ideologue influenced by far-right politics, simply because an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was seen outside his New Jersey beach home last year, as noted by my colleague Tristan Justice. This followed another article claiming Alito was compromised due to an upside-down American flag flown by his wife.
Raskin seized on the narratives, stating on MSNBC that if Alito doesn’t “recuse himself from the [Jan. 6-related] case,” there should be a federal ethics panel composed of circuit judges to which Raskin and other Democrats can appeal whenever they oppose a Supreme Court decision. Additionally, House Democrats have introduced a task force, including Raskin, dedicated to court reform through legislation and public discourse.
Raskin further intensified his remarks, recently urging Americans to “fall out of love” with the Supreme Court and arguing that the institution can only be trusted once Democrats manage its operations.
To my mind, we’ve gotta organize the people in America. That’s where the power comes from. And we will, if and when we win back the House and the Senate and the White House. We will look at the Supreme Court and figure out what can be done about that extremely corrupted and contaminated body.
Fellow Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse echoed Raskin’s sentiments in a post on X, saying, “Yes we will, brother. Yes we will.”
Raskin: “if and when we win back the House and the Senate and the White House we will look at the Supreme Court and figure out what can be done about that extremely corrupted and contaminated body.” Yes we will, brother. Yes we will.https://t.co/tqrffjtEnl
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) May 24, 2024
Contrary to claims, the Supreme Court is not “corrupted” or “contaminated.” It simply refuses to act as an appendage of the executive branch or the Democrat Party. This is the true reason behind Raskin and other Democrats’ focus on the Alito narrative.
The Supreme Court is poised to decide on whether obstruction charges can be brought against Jan. 6 protesters, potentially jeopardizing one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s cases against Trump, which involves presidential immunity. By falsely associating the “Appeal to Heaven” flag with so-called “right-wing extremism” instead of its true Revolutionary War history, Democrats can paint the court as a “corrupted” and “contaminated” government body that requires oversight by Democrat lawmakers.
In reality, the Democrats’ so-called “court reform” task force aims to expand the bench, establish term limits for justices, mandate a code of ethics for the Supreme Court based on partisan public input, and create an independent review board to handle ethics complaints against the justices.
As Alexander Hamilton warned in Federalist 78, the judicial branch “is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced” if linked to the executive or legislative branches.
“Though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the Judiciary remains truly distinct from both the Legislature and the Executive,” Hamilton wrote. “And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the Judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.”
