Lame duck President Joe Biden lashed out at House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday after Johnson indicated Biden’s plan to change the rules for appointing Supreme Court justices has no chance of passing the House.
As noted in a video posted to X after Biden arrived in Austin, Texas, a reporter called out, “Mr. President, House Speaker Johnson says your Supreme Court reform is ‘dead on arrival.’ What is your reaction, sir?”
After being told a second time that Johnson made the comment, Biden said, “I think that’s what he is, adding moments later, “That he is — dead on arrival,” according to the White House official transcript.
REPORTER: “Speaker Johnson says [Supreme Court reform] is dead on arrival.”
BIDEN: “That’s what he is — he is — dead on arrival.”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 29, 2024
Biden, stung by a Supreme Court ruling that said presidents have immunity for official acts during their terms of office after others that were contrary to his agenda on guns and abortion, unveiled a proposal Monday to impose term limits on the Court, according to the Associated Press.
A Biden representative later sought to say Biden was saying Johnson’s “thinking” was “dead on arrival,” according to the Washington Times.
Johnson made no direct response, but on X he posted a clip of the June 27 presidential debate in which former President Donald Trump said of Biden, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
https://t.co/RfSSVaQ1ak pic.twitter.com/RkiTWx2Oms
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) July 29, 2024
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Justices would serve for 18 years under Biden’s plan, which was immediately endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, according to the Associated Press. Justices currently are appointed for life.
Johnson called the proposal a “dangerous gambit” that would be “dead on arrival in the House.”
Biden also called for ethics oversight of the court, requiring justices to disclose gifts, to refrain from public political action and to recuse themselves from cases when there is a potential conflict with either themselves or their spouses.
Biden is also calling for a ban on presidential immunity, a critical point for former President Donald Trump in his trials, which claim Trump committed election interference in his response to the 2020 presidential election.
In comments at the LBJ Presidential Library, Biden made it clear that he wants to curb a conservative court he cannot control, according to NPR.
“In recent years, extreme opinions the Supreme Court has handed down have undermined long established civil rights principles and protections,” he said.
Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the Federalist Society, said Biden’s changes are “Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with,” according to CNN.
“No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is about undue influence,” he said.
In an Op-Ed for Fox News, former Attorney General William Barr and First Liberty Institute CEO Kelly Shackelford said Biden’s call for a more malleable court is dangerous.
“Transforming the Supreme Court into another partisan body would destroy the independence of the judiciary and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Concerning such an idea, then-Senator Biden once said that changing the structure of the Court was ‘a bonehead idea’ that would ‘put in question … the independence of the … Supreme Court.’ He was right. The last thing we need in this country right now is a Supreme Court coup that would threaten our democratic republic,” they wrote.
“Congress has no business interfering with the actions of the judiciary. It is the separation of powers into three district branches of government that makes our nation strong. To protect religious freedom and all of our cherished liberties, judges must be able to make decisions without fear of partisan retribution from the executive or legislative branches. Biden and Harris’ ‘court reform’ would destroy that,” they wrote.
“Americans who care about their freedoms need to speak up and stand up against this attempted coup,” they wrote.
