Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted Democrats’ recent attempts to undermine the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have come under concentrated attack from Democrats in recent years, with such scrutiny intensifying after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, McConnell not only condemned the undermining of the court but connected it to a wider pattern of Democrats attempting to subvert democracy, an accusation more commonly leveled by Democrats against Republicans.
“The Constitution vests each branch of the federal government with an exclusive power, responsive to the people in elections,” he wrote. “In each branch, liberals seek to remove that power from democratic accountability and vest it in unelected bureaucrats. This practice might come from a good-faith trust in ‘experts,’ or a sincere belief that sound policy is too valuable to risk in elections. But at its core, it is a rejection of democratic accountability in favor of the administrative state.”
In the essay, McConnell argued that Democrats are misunderstanding the system of the federal government, especially regarding members of the legislature demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts force Alito to recuse himself from certain cases.
“As the court has maintained for decades, recusal is a judicial act. It isn’t, as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said in response to my criticisms, ‘an administrative matter,’” he wrote. “This misunderstanding suffuses efforts to force ethics ‘reform’ on the high court. Liberals complain that the court’s binding ethics rules lack an ‘enforcement mechanism’ to ensure recusal when they want it. But this complaint would throw the Constitution out the window.”
The Kentucky Republican argued that Democrats were undermining the Constitution by trying to establish a bureaucracy to “administer” the court. He also wrote that Democrats believe “bureaucrats should usurp the judicial power.”
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Republicans have argued that Democrats’ critiques of Thomas, as well as Justice Alito, are part of a smear campaign to delegitimize the court in an effort to win back control in the judiciary.
Alito and Thomas have been facing intense pressure to recuse themselves from a case deciding whether or not former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution over actions taken while he was president. Alito has explicitly said he will not recuse himself, while Thomas doesn’t appear to be prepared to, either.
