Joe Biden worries that the “extreme” US supreme court, dominated by rightwing justices, cannot be relied upon to uphold the rule of law.
“I worry,” the president told ProPublica in interview published on Sunday. “Because I know that if the other team, the Maga Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.”
“Maga” is shorthand for “Make America great again”, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but nonetheless dominates Republican polling for the nomination to face Biden in a presidential rematch next year.
In four years in the White House, Trump nominated and saw installed three conservative justices, tilting the court 6-3 to the right. That court has delivered significant victories for conservatives, including the removal of the right to abortion and major rulings on gun control, affirmative action and other issues.
The new court term, which starts on Tuesday, could see further such rulings on matters including government environmental and financial regulation.
The whole point of a lifetime appointment is that they can abandon all political concerns once they’re in the SCOTUS - so they don’t have to be political. And I’ve seen that happen - while they obviously stay conservative or progressive, they tend to drift away from an alignment with the parties - with exceptions, obviously.
But, as with all other branches of the US government, it’s becoming clear that we’ve exited the era of being able to trust our leadership to support the Constitution and represent the people.
(For me, it wasn’t even Trump that snapped me out of that mindset. It was when they were talking about outlawing congressional insider trading. One of the Republicans said, out loud and in public, that the notion of prohibiting congressional sick trading was off the table, because it was a core part of the job. He said something like, “half of us wouldn’t be here” - as though that was a bad thing.)