Tipsheet

McConnell Agrees SCOTUS Reforms Are 'Dead on Arrival.' Is Biden Going to Threaten Him Too?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 30, 2024 10:15 PM

President Joe Biden, as Matt covered at the time on Monday, told reporters that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was "dead on arrival." Biden was responding to how Johnson had used the phrase when referring to his opposition to the president's plans to upend the U.S. Supreme Court. Biden himself referenced those comments during a speech he gave that same night at the LBJ Library. On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) indicated reiterated he was also opposed, also describing Biden's plans as "dead on arrival."

The Hill quoted McConnell as making clear that Biden's proposals were "dead on arrival" and also that the president, who himself bragged about overseeing so many Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings, should know better:

McConnell, one of the Supreme Court’s most ardent defenders in the Senate, said he was “surprised” that Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed authorizing presidents to appoint justices every two years and limiting them to 18 years in active service.

“I couldn’t be more disappointed. This is a man who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee for a long time. He absolutely knows what he recommended is unconstitutional, to try to limit the terms of the Supreme Court justices who under the Constitution are appointed for life,” McConnell said of Biden.

“That shows you the depth to which they have gone lately to attack the Supreme Court because they don’t like the current makeup of the court and decisions they disapprove of,” McConnell said of Democrats.

“The way to change” the makeup of the court “is to win the presidency and the Senate and appoint people that you like, but not to try to break — break — the Supreme Court,” he said. “This is a level that I think is just simply unacceptable.”

“I know he knows better, and such a proposal would be dead on arrival in Congress,” he said.

McConnell also gave remarks from the Senate floor on Monday, during which he pointed out how Democrats have gone after the Court in plenty of other ways. 

As the Republican leader mentioned early in his remarks, "the Supreme Court is under attack." He went on to mention how Democrats have "incited violence against the Court" and so "we've had to put Justices under 24/7 police protection. Even so, a deranged young man is about to go on trial for trying to kill a Justice and his family while they slept in order to change the outcome of a case," McConnell continued, referencing Nicholas Roske, who was allegedly planning to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022 after the Dobbs v. Jackson opinion was leaked. 

That wasn't the only example. McConnell also later mentioned how "the Left wages daily warfare against the Justices--illegally picketing their neighborhoods with impunity, trying to harm their spouses’ careers, and even spying on what kinds of flags they fly in their yards." 

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Such comments are not merely a reference to how conservative justices were illegally targeted after the Dobbs leak, a move which then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said they "encourage." There's also how Justice Samuel Alito and his wife were more recently targeted over the flags they flew on their properties. 

McConnell charged Democrats with having "devoting the last eight years to an all-out campaign against the Court’s legitimacy--and ultimately against its very existence" as well. 

He even signaled out Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), who have been particularly relentless in attacking the Court and conservative justices. Both are on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Durbin even serves as the chairman. 

"Influential members of this body, including the Senior Senator from Rhode Island and the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have threatened ominously that 'perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be restructured,'" McConnell reminded.

When it comes to Biden's reforms announced on Monday via an op-ed in The Washington Post and reiterated during his Monday night speech, he's looking for Congress to approve 18-year term limits for the justices, for a code of ethics, and for there to be a constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity after the Trump v. United States decision handed down earlier this year.

Such proposals are indeed almost certainly likely to fail. Whitehouse and Durbin have already tried to get their so-called ethics legislation passed, though it's failed in the Senate and would have no chance in the Republican-controlled House.