The future of the Supreme Court is on the line in November’s elections. If Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are victorious in November, the independent Supreme Court that the Framers bequeathed to us will be a thing of the past. That’s one of the big reasons why Harris must be defeated in her campaign for president, and why Schumer must be demoted to Minority Leader.
For the past three and a half years, the Biden-Harris administration has been on a rampage, disregarding the limits on executive authority emplaced by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has responded as it should, striking down many executive actions as the Court enforces the Constitution’s limits. In case after case – the employer vaccine mandate, the moratorium on evictions, and the various versions of Biden’s student loan payoff scams, for instance – the Court rejected the Biden-Harris administration’s overreach.
Biden wasn’t the only recent Democrat president to have his actions rejected by the Court for overreach. Before him, Barack Obama had his amnesty for illegal aliens struck down by the Court. Obama’s placement of three new members of the National Labor Relations Board without Senatorial confirmation was struck down, too.
Democrats are unhappy that their attempts to plow through the Constitution’s guardrails have been blocked by a Court whose majority is composed of men and women determined to keep the Constitution in place.
Democrats now seek to turn their despair into joy by changing the Court – or, failing that, by pressuring the Court, as Franklin Roosevelt did.
Following his announcement that he was no longer a candidate for reelection, Biden proposed a series of reforms to the Court, including an 18-year term limit on the justices and a measure that would have instituted the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice every other year, so that each president’s term would have brought with it as a spoil of campaign victory the right to name two new justices to the Court.
Further, Biden’s proposal included a new “binding” code of ethics designed to encroach on the Court’s independence.
What Biden proposed – and Schumer and Harris declared their support for – is Constitutional war. Threatening to enact legislation to impose term limits and a “binding” ethics code on Supreme Court justices is an assault on the independence of the judiciary by the executive and legislative branches of government.
One of the Framers of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, wrote of this possibility in Federalist 78, saying, “from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.”
“Permanency in office” in Hamilton’s words, is the greatest safeguard of the Court’s independence. And why is it important that the Court be independent of the other two branches? Because, he continued, “The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution.” Further, “independent spirit in the judges” is “essential to the faithful performance of so arduous a duty.”
Schumer said before the Senate left town for its August recess that if the results of the November elections leave him in place as Majority Leader and Democrats in control of the White House, he will push Supreme Court reforms hard in the next Congress – and he said he was willing to eliminate the filibuster to pass the Democrats’ agenda, if need be.
Schumer has been trying for a decade to eliminate the filibuster, and he has already brought it to a vote – in January of 2022, when Democrats-turned-Independents Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted with Republicans to maintain the 60-vote threshold for the filibuster and defeat Schumer’s plan.
Sinema and Manchin have since announced their departures from the body at the end of this session. Schumer noted their near-future departures: “There were probably 35 Democrats who were willing to change the rules on that issue. We got it up to 48. Of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no … Well, they’re both gone.”
His meaning is clear – if given the opportunity, he will eliminate the filibuster to get what he wants.
Harris, too, has made clear her willingness to eliminate the filibuster to achieve her ends. She was sitting in the chair, ready to cast her tie-breaking vote, presiding over the Senate when Schumer made his failed attempt in early 2022. And later that year, speaking to the Democratic National Committee, she declared: “[F]or me, as vice president, I’m also president of the Senate … I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster … “
They have made themselves clear: If Kamala Harris is elected president, and Chuck Schumer keeps his job as Senate Majority Leader, Democrats will attempt to eviscerate the independence of the Supreme Court, even eliminating the filibuster if need be.
In a few short months, America’s voters will decide – will they stand with the Constitution and its independent judiciary? Or will they side with the Democrats, determined as they are to destroy the rules of the Senate to violate the independence of the judiciary – to become, in other words, tyrants? The stakes could not be clearer, or higher.
Jenny Beth Martin is President of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.