Kamala Harris and Joe Biden Propose Their Own January 6 for the Courts

With today’s rollout of a Court-packing-lite scheme to force the three most senior conservative justices off the Supreme Court, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are proposing their own January 6 for the court system. It’s the most dangerous policy proposal by an American president since the Second World War. Harris is pledging her campaign to it, so the question will be squarely on the ballot this fall. Anyone who repeats the partisan propaganda of calling this “court reform” should resign his job as a journalist. David Garner of the Daily Beast actually gets the headline right: “Kamala Harris Goes to War on Supreme Court and Backs Term Limits.”

This isn’t “saving democracy” but destroying it. If we saw this in any other country in the world — a president frustrated with rulings of his country’s top court trying to remove the judges — we’d call it the authoritarian coup that it is. Remember the massive protests, covered lovingly by the American press, when Benjamin Netanyahu tried to rein in the power of the Israeli Supreme Court? And that was responding to a court that has no constitutional powers to overrule its parliament. Biden and Harris are proposing a far more dramatic break with American history and law than anything Netanyahu did.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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January 6th

With today’s rollout of a Court-packing-lite scheme to force the three most senior conservative justices off the Supreme Court, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are proposing their own January 6 for the court system. It’s the most dangerous policy proposal by an American president since the Second World War. Harris is pledging her campaign to it, so the question will be squarely on the ballot this fall. Anyone who repeats the partisan propaganda of calling this “court reform” should resign his job as a journalist. David Garner of the Daily Beast actually gets the headline right: “Kamala Harris Goes to War on Supreme Court and Backs Term Limits.”

This isn’t “saving democracy” but destroying it. If we saw this in any other country in the world — a president frustrated with rulings of his country’s top court trying to remove the judges — we’d call it the authoritarian coup that it is. Remember the massive protests, covered lovingly by the American press, when Benjamin Netanyahu tried to rein in the power of the Israeli Supreme Court? And that was responding to a court that has no constitutional powers to overrule its parliament. Biden and Harris are proposing a far more dramatic break with American history and law than anything Netanyahu did.