A component of President Joe Biden’s proposal to alter Supreme Court operations is making some of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats hesitant to endorse it.
The plan’s unveiling came in the final months of Biden’s presidency and is meant to energize the base with a trio of major changes: enforceable ethics rules, a constitutional amendment to reverse presidential immunity, and 18-year term limits, to allow a new appointment to the nine-member court every two years.
The term limits measure is the one that is proving most controversial, and Democrats in tough reelection bids avoided endorsing it Monday. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told the Washington Examiner on Monday evening she’s “still evaluating” the term limits element, and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) said he’d yet to look at that portion.
Both Democrats are among those in battleground Senate races this November that could determine Senate control. Tester’s contest is rated a “toss-up” by nonpartisan election forecasters, while Baldwin’s is “lean Democrat.”
Neither elaborated on the term limits or constitutional amendment for presidential immunity. But they did offer full-throated approvals of the ethics code in the wake of a series of controversies involving conservative justices being accused of having conflicts of interest over gifts and ties to GOP activists.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have been at the center of accusations by Democrats of ethical violations — Thomas for failing to disclose gifts from wealthy conservative friends and Alito for his wife’s association with right-wing groups or movements. Both have defended their impartiality and declined to recuse themselves from cases tied to former President Donald Trump and the Capitol riot.
“In Wisconsin, people have really lost faith in the Supreme Court [with] the Dobbs decision reversing so many years of precedent,” Baldwin said, referring to the high court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. “But the ethics scandals, the idea that these folks are compromising themselves in conflict by taking yachts and whatever, they want to see ethics reform. We have to restore the trust of the people in Wisconsin in the Supreme Court.”
Tester said that “everybody, regardless of what branch of government you’re in — you need to serve by the highest ethical standards.”
Biden on Monday assailed the Supreme Court’s current ethics pledge as “weak and self-enforced.” He said his proposal would make justices “required 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.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed Biden’s plan, as the presumptive Democratic nominee kicks her presidential campaign into overdrive with less than 100 days before voters hit the polls.
But the proposal has no viability in a divided Congress, and it remains to be seen whether Senate Democrats will coalesce around the framework as they fight on the campaign trail to hold their one-seat majority.
