Biden Announces Sweeping Plan to Rein in Corrupt Supreme Court

After the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the presidency near-total immunity on July 1, President Joe Biden now believes that the nation’s highest court is in dire need of reform.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post published Monday morning, Biden proposed a plan that would enforce term limits for the court’s justices, as well as a binding code of conduct. The term limits would have justices spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court, and the president could only appoint a justice every two years.

“The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court,” Biden wrote. “Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary.”

“It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come,” Biden added.

Biden’s proposed code of conduct would require justices to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”

“Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt,” wrote Biden.

In the op-ed, Biden also called for a constitutional amendment called the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment,” which would clearly state that there is “no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.”

“I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws—not of kings or dictators,” Biden wrote.

Biden’s plans for the Supreme Court follow a series of scandals involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In April 2023, a ProPublica investigation revealed Thomas received luxury vacations from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, which had not been disclosed by Thomas in accordance with mandatory financial disclosure rules. More revelations of undisclosed gifts followed in August of that year, including at least 38 vacations and 26 private jet flights given to Thomas from an array of right-wing billionaires. Thomas in 2003 also accepted a free trip to visit Vladimir Putin’s hometown in Russia.

Alito has had his own scandals involving political advocacy in the form of political flags flying outside of his home, and he was also implicated for receiving gifts from Crow and other right-wing billionaires. Monday’s op-ed may not be received well from the right, but it follows months of calls for reform from judicial observers as well as Democrats. While it may not be to the level of expanding the court, as some have called for, it is a strong proposal and likely to be factored in November’s elections. 

After taking flak all week for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” three years ago, J.D. Vance doubled down on those comments Friday in an interview with Megyn Kelly Show.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment,” he said on on Kelly’s SiriusXM show. “I’ve got nothing against cats... People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megan, I’m sorry, it’s true. It is true that we’ve become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child.” (This is not true, at all.)

Vance insisted earlier in the interview that he was not trying to be critical of people who don’t have children: “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids, this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

Well, let’s roll the tape. Here’s what he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021: 

We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?

He sure seemed to be disparaging people for being childless!

Vance’s attempted course-correction this week also doesn’t jibe with some of the Ohio senator’s weird policy ideas. For instance, he has said wants childless people to pay more in taxes and have their votes count for less. So it seems that the initial criticism he received from celebrities as well as lawmakers was warranted.

Vance has been going viral all week—in a bad way. He was found to have defended the infamous QAnon shaman from the January 6 riots, a campaign rally speech in his hometown fell flat, and he lost support from some of Trump’s allies. Even a false rumor about a sexual act with a sofa picked up steam, forcing news organizations like the AP to conduct fact checks.

The new Republican vice presidential nominee may hope that his Kelly interview will help tamp down the criticism he’s receiving, but it’s only a matter of time before something else embarrassing surfaces. The likes of Anthony Scaramucci are already saying Vance’s days are numbered, and he may end up being the worst vice presidential candidate in history.  

Right-wing conspiracy theorist and failed politician Laura Loomer launched a despicable attack on Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and his wife, gun violence survivor and former Representative Gabby Giffords, on X earlier this week.

Loomer, without evidence, cruelly accused Kelly of writing a post on his wife’s behalf from her account endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president, claiming that Giffords—who was shot in the head in an assassination attempt 13 years ago—is “brain dead” and “certainly isn’t tweeting on her own.”

This wouldn’t matter much, as Loomer has engaged in white nationalism and Islamophobia before, but she is also a favorite of Donald Trump Jr., who has touted Loomer as a possible White House press secretary if his father gets elected in November. Trump Jr.’s opinion seems to carry some weight in his father’s political decisions. He reportedly pushed his dad to choose J.D. Vance, who’s friends with Don Jr., for a running mate.

Giffords was shot while holding a campaign event in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. The bullet passed through her brain, and yet today, though she has some difficulty speaking and walking, she is able to conduct interviews. She even campaigned for Harris in Pennsylvania on Thursday. Needless to say, she is not “brain dead.”

Loomer has been banned from various social media sites in the past, only to be reinstated on X when Elon Musk took over the site. She’s not likely to face any consequences for this post, although it probably won’t help her standing in the Republican Party, where even some of the MAGA faithful aren’t big fans.

J.D. Vance thinks the “QAnon Shaman” would be “a fun guy to have a beer with.”

In a recently resurfaced speech from 2023, Vance said that Jacob Chansley, more popularly known as the “QAnon Shaman,” should have gotten a lighter prison sentence since he was only “walking around the Capitol.”

“It was a crazy guy with, like, the bullhorns … he looked like he’d be a fun guy to have a beer with, right? The Q shaman,” said Vance.

Chansley received a 41-month prison sentence in November 2021 and was charged with obstruction of an official proceeding. He was released early from federal prison and sent to a reentry center in March 2023.

Following his prison sentence, Chansley indicated he was interested in running for Arizona’s 8th congressional district seat, but he missed the deadline to get enough signatures.

One Republican actually has met up with Chansley. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was “honored” to meet the QAnon Shaman back in December 2023 at a Turning Point USA event.

“When I spoke with Jake, he is remarkably positive, happy, forgiving, and determined. Most people would be crushed and forever destroyed after being treated so horrendously by the media and their own government, but not Jake,” Greene wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Maybe the three can grab a beer together?

The far right is zeroing in on its new attack on Vice President Kamala Harris: She is somehow solely responsible for the U.S.-Mexico border. 

On Thursday, House Republicans approved a resolution slamming Harris as the “border czar” and condemning her handling of immigration. The resolution, authored by Representative Elise Stefanik, passed in a 220–196 vote. 

“By every metric, Kamala Harris has failed to secure our borders, instead advancing far-left Democrats’ failed open border policies and the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of America,” Stefanik argued on the House floor. 

Six Democrats also voted for the resolution: Representatives Yadira Caraveo, Henry Cuellar, Don Davis, Jared Golden, Mary Peltola, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—all of whom have also been critical of President Joe Biden’s border policies. Davis has since endorsed Harris. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the measure “fake and fraudulent,” since Harris was never appointed as a so-called “border czar.”  

But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies, who are eager to find a way to successfully attack Harris, from pushing the term. 

During a rally Thursday in North Carolina, Trump insisted Harris “was the border czar, but she never went to the border.”

“As border czar, Kamala threw open our borders and allowed 20 million illegal aliens to stampede into our country from all over the world,” he said.

This is false. CNN pointed out in a fact-check that Harris did go to the border as vice president. Further, the total number of border “encounters” since February 2021 adds up to about 10 million, and an “encounter” does not mean someone was let into the country. 

That night, Trump’s former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed on Fox News that Biden had personally dubbed Harris the border czar. But the clip she showed to prove her point didn’t actually include Biden using the term.

Vance has said the vice president failed as “America’s border czar” and claims she “supported abolishing ICE,” something Harris has never floated. 

Let’s dispel this myth that Harris had been put squarely in charge of the U.S.-Mexico border. While it is true that in 2021, the vice president was assigned to lead a limited effort to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, Harris was not by any means in charge of the border.