Biden Campaign Dismisses Idea of Supreme Court Reform [View all]

[Celerity]

The campaign waved off the notion that the court’s bombshell Trump immunity ruling would move Biden to embrace reform

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/biden-supreme-court-reform-trump-immunity-1235051044/

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that American presidents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for any “official acts” they take while in office. For President Joe Biden, this should be great news. Suddenly a host of previously unthinkable options have opened up to him: He could dispatch Seal Team 6 to Mar-A-Lago with orders to neutralize the “primary threat to freedom and democracy” in the United States. He could issue an edict that all digital or physical evidence of his debate performance last week be destroyed. Or he could just use this chilling partisan decision, the latest 6-3 ruling in a term that was characterized by a staggering number of them, as an opportunity to finally embrace the movement to reform the Supreme Court.

But Biden is not planning to do any of that. Shortly after the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Trump v. The United States, the Biden campaign held a press call with surrogates, including Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who was injured when Trump supporters stormed the building on Jan. 6; Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas); and deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks. Their message was simple: It’s terrifying to contemplate what Donald Trump might do with these powers if he’s reelected. “We have to do everything in our power to stop him,” Fulks said. Everything, that is, except take material action to rein in the increasingly lawless and openly right-wing Supreme Court.

Four years ago, Biden was at least willing to pay lip service to the idea that something needed to be done. Under pressure in 2020, then-candidate Biden promised that, if elected, he would appoint a bipartisan commission to consider reforms to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. It’s worth noting, he offered that pledge before the court overturned Roe v. Wade, before it struck down a Trump-era ban on the device that facilitated the deadliest mass shooting in American history, and before it ended affirmative action in college admissions. Biden made good on his promise to assemble that commission — 34 experts who held six public meetings, interviewed 44 witnesses, combed through 7,000 public comments, and ultimately delivered 294-page report — but he’s done nothing at all with its findings.

The commission wrote at length about proposals like adding more seats to the Supreme Court or imposing term limits — the latter of which is an idea the commission’s experts said warranted “serious consideration.” Biden, though, did nothing with the report. A year ago — after a string of calamitous decisions and devastating reporting exposing ethics scandals — Biden “upped his criticism” of the court, calling it not “normal” in one interview and saying the court’s ​​“value system is different” in another. Asked directly on Monday whether Biden was recalibrating his position on reform after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, his deputy campaign manager Fulks said, “I don’t have any news to share on that this morning,” adding that Biden “deeply respects our institutions of government.”

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