On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” President Joe Biden criticized the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and striking down racial preferences in college admissions and stated that the court is straying away from what “the Constitution says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator” and that ruling that there isn’t a right to privacy in the Constitution and states can make their own laws on abortion in Dobbs is “giving states power that we fought a war over in 1860.”
Biden said his earlier statement that the Supreme Court is not “normal” meant that the court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history. And that’s what I meant by not normal. It’s gone out of its way to — I mean, for example, take a look at overruling Roe v. Wade, take a look at the decision today, take a look at how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes, and that’s what I meant by not normal.”
He added, “Remember, the Federalist Society…had a very, very strict construction of the Constitution, and if didn’t use the word, it didn’t exist. But this administration — this court has gone beyond that. And I just find it — I don’t know how to express it, I find it just so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people, and I think that, across the board, the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.”
Biden further stated, “Its value system is different, and its respect for institutions is different, and in that sense, it is not as embracing of all what I think — the Constitution says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator. It’s the uniqueness of America. We never fully lived up to it, we never walked away from it. And this court seems to say that, no, that’s not always the case. The idea there’s no right of privacy in the Constitution, giving states power that we fought a war over in 1860. I just think it’s — this is not your father’s Republican Party.”
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