Kamala Harris has finally unveiled her campaign’s “issues” page, seven weeks after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. The page reveals a striking aspect of her platform: a vow to wage war on the Supreme Court.
Harris’s stance comes in response to the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision, which ruled that a president has “absolute immunity” for actions within their constitutional authority. This decision dealt a significant blow to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to pursue former President Donald Trump through the courts.
Harris’s campaign page declares that she will fight to ensure that no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in office. She also promises to support “common-sense” Supreme Court reforms, including requiring justices to comply with ethics rules and imposing term limits.
This stance echoes President Joe Biden’s own calls for an overhaul of the court. In a recent op-ed, Biden suggested that the executive branch could partner with Congress to control the judicial branch. He proposed a constitutional amendment stripping all presidents of immunity, even for official acts, and advocated for term limits and a “binding code of conduct” for justices.
A coalition of Democrats has formed the Court Reform Now task force, which seeks to expand the bench, install term limits on justices, and force the court to follow an ethics code created through partisan public input. The task force also aims to create an independent review board to hear ethics complaints.
These calls for radical changes to the court have been fueled by media-manufactured controversies surrounding conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Despite the lack of substance to these claims, Democrats have seized on them as justification for drastically altering the Supreme Court.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has even threatened to create a federal ethics panel to inundate the court with complaints. Biden has referenced these phony scandals as a reason for his proposed reforms, claiming that the court is “mired in a crisis of ethics.”
However, the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous decisions tell a different story. The court has issued over two dozen unanimous rulings, finding that lower courts have severely erred in their judgment. These decisions undermine Democrats’ justifications for radical reform proposals.
In fact, the court’s unanimous ruling in confirming Trump’s ballot eligibility in Colorado demonstrates that the justices can put aside their differences and agree on the outcome of a case. This highlights the threat of partisan extremism posed not by the Supreme Court, but by leftist lower court justices and Democratic legislators and activists who seek to destroy the court to further their agenda.
