Kamala Harris’ Platform Declares War On The Supreme Court

Kamala Harris has finally released an “issues” page on her campaign website seven weeks after she became the presumptive Democrat nominee — and part of her platform includes waging a war on the Supreme Court.

On July 1 the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that a president has “absolute immunity” for “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” “at least presumptive immunity” for all “official acts,” and “no immunity for unofficial acts.” The decision severely impeded the Biden-Harris administration’s lawfare efforts against former President Donald Trump.

Harris has now vowed to fight “to ensure that no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House.”

“[Harris] will also support common-sense Supreme Court reforms — like requiring Justices to comply with ethics rules that other federal judges are bound by and imposing term limits — to address the crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court,” the issues page states.

It’s similar to a platform supported by President Joe Biden, who capitalized on the aforementioned decision to push for an overhaul of the court. “I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers,” Biden wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post, before immediately suggesting ways the executive branch could partner with the legislative branch to control the judicial branch.

Biden called on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment stripping all presidents of any immunity even for official acts. Biden also called for term limits and a “binding code of conduct” for the justices.

A coalition of Democrats similarly created the deceptively named Court Reform Now task force that seeks to expand the bench, install term limits on justices, and force the court to follow an ethics code that is created through partisan public input. The task force also seeks to create an independent review board to hear such ethics complaints.

Calls for radical changes to the court were bolstered by media-manufactured controversies surrounding conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Alito’s wife flew a flag upside down outside of their home, much to the umbrage of their leftist neighbors. It was so inconsequential that The Washington Post admits to passing up on the story three years prior.

But the non-story story became useful to the propaganda press once it could be turned into fodder for Democrats to justify drastically altering the Supreme Court. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., for example, threatened the creation of a federal ethics panel comprised of circuit judges, so that he and other Democrats inundate it with their complaints about the Supreme Court.

Biden even referenced the phony scandal as a reason for his proposed reforms, writing in The Washington Post that the court is “mired in a crisis of ethics,” citing “scandals involving several justices [that] have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence.”

These hollow claims of “ethics” violations are a tactic to suggest the court has been hijacked by partisan ideologues and needs intervention. It’s a deliberate effort to turn justices into activists and make sure the court serves Democrat interests, as many lower courts already do.

In fact, the Supreme Court issued more than two dozen unanimous decisions during its 2023 term, finding some lower courts severely erred in their judgment and undermining Democrats’ justifications for such radical reform proposals.

The court, for example, unanimously ruled in confirming Trump’s ballot eligibility in Colorado. In that case Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Americans should “take home” “the message” that “our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case.”

These unanimous rulings confirm that the threat of partisan extremism is posed not by the structure and makeup of the current Supreme Court, but by leftist lower court justices and the Democrat legislators and activists who are willing to destroy the Supreme Court as we know it in order to forward their agenda.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2