On Monday, President Joe Biden signaled his firm support for congressional efforts to enforce new rules on U.S. Supreme Court justices, which critics say amounts to a power grab by Democrats to limit the judicial freedom of the court’s conservative majority.

Fox News reported on Biden’s remarks, echoed by Vice President Kamala Harris, calling for all justices to abide by a new code of ethics and a term limit of 18 years. Biden, who announced the news in a Washington Post op-ed, also indicated he wants to pass a new law limiting presidential immunity in the wake of the court’s decision granting sweeping authority to presidents taking official acts in office. He will expand on those proposals during remarks later in the day at the LBJ Presidential Library, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

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“I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today,” Biden wrote in the Post. “I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach,” Biden wrote.

Central to the Biden reforms is the elimination of freedom by sitting presidents to commit crimes while in office. Hanging over the proposal is the specter of former President Donald Trump being prosecuted for mishandling classified documents and encouraging the January 6th, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Both elements of Biden’s plans were supported by Harris in a statement. “Today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent,” she said.

According to the Biden plan, once all incoming justices have been appointed under the 18-year limit, a president would have the ability to fill a court opening every two years. The plan faces nearly impossible odds of being implemented as the Supreme Court’s lifetime appointments are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and were intended to keep the justices free from political influence or focused on a future after the bench. Meanwhile, Biden’s ethics rule would require that all justices “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”

“President Biden and Vice President Harris look forward to working with Congress and empowering the American people to prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy,” a White House official said in a statement to Fox News.

Critics of the high court have kicked their complaints into overdrive since the 2022 undoing of Roe v. Wade, a watershed moment for conservatives that has come to define the modern slant of the court following three appointments by President Trump. A series of investigations have tied conservative Justice Clarence Thomas to high-net-worth individuals with business before the court, prompting questions about whether he was influenced by private trips and personal gifts. Supporters of Thomas have pushed back and cited efforts by staffers to liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to have university administrators purchase large quantities of her autobiography before she came to their campuses for speaking engagements.

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Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) on Wednesday filed a motion to begin impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, two of the court’s staunchest conservatives and frequent targets of the far left.

The filing comes after the high court has largely completed announcing a slew of decisions that have oscillated between wins for both the left and right, though progressives like AOC have continued to keep Alito, Thomas, and the court’s conservative majority in their sights. A steady drip of reporting over the past year has tied Thomas to several of the Republican Party’s most prolific billionaire donors, raising questions about how the Supreme Court enforces its ethics rules. The filing also mirrors a motion put forward by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) requesting the Department of Justice appoint a special counsel to criminally investigate Thomas, according to MSNBC. They have cited his acceptance of travel and loan of a luxury car.

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A simple majority in the U.S. House may pass articles of impeachment against a Supreme Court justice, teeing up a formal trial in the Senate. However, Republicans’ control of the lower body means AOC’s motion is all but dead on arrival. Under Democrats, the Senate previously held impeachment hearings against former President Donald Trump.

Similar to Thomas, Alito has been accused of accepting financial gifts without properly disclosing them, including in some cases by individuals with business before the court. AOC has accused Alito, appointed in 2005 by former President George W. Bush, of failing to recuse himself from cases where she claims he has a conflict of interest, MSNBC added.

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Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached. In 1805, Associate Justice Samuel Chase was impeached by the House, according to Fox 5 San Diego. Chase at the time was accused of refusing to dismiss biased jurors while excluding and limiting defense witnesses in political cases. He was acquitted about a year later and remained on the court until his death in 1811, the outlet added.

In June, justices ruled that sitting and former presidents are largely protected from criminal prosecution over official acts taken in office, largely vindicating arguments made by attorneys for former President Donald Trump. The decision rocked Washington and has thrown his remaining three criminal trials into chaos, with all expected to be delayed well past the November election. Should Trump win, he would hold the power to order the DOJ to drop both federal cases against him. In Georgia, a state-level prosecution of election interference has been badly hampered by unforced errors committed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

While the motion may be good politics for Democrats, it wasn’t enough for Rep. Ocasio Cortez to save her endorsement from the far left. On Wednesday the Democratic Socialists of America rescinded their June 23rd endorsement of the progressive darling, citing an online forum she held with several progressive Israel supporters who denounced antisemitism among progressive activists. Meanwhile, consternation over President Joe Biden’s ability to win the election has thrown his party into free fall as leading figures, including former President Barack Obama, appear cautious to limit calls for him to end his reelection bid.

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Ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used Monday’s bombshell ruling on presidential immunity to suggest the former President Donald Trump has a path to removing Jack Smith from both of his ongoing federal cases.

In a concurring opinion, Thomas questioned whether there was a legal basis for appointing Smith to prosecute the former president, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times. His rationale could put the wind at the back of Trump’s defense team, who have already made a motion in his classified documents case to dismiss Smith. A decision about how far to extend presidential immunity will now head back down to the lower courts for further determination.

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Just as much was requested by Thomas, who wrote that “lower courts” should explore “essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment” without naming U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon by name. If the appointment by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was found to be illegal, there should be consequences, he added.

“If there is no law establishing the office that the special counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution,” Thomas wrote on Monday. “A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former president.”

Smith has made clear his disdain for Judge Cannon for rebuking him on a number of fronts, including excessive redactions of evidence against Trump which she ordered removed. In April the prosecutor essentially gave Cannon an ultimatum to either rule expeditiously on favorable jury instructions or face an immediate appeal. Trump’s team, meanwhile, has argued much of the same, saying Smith should have been approved by the Senate before receiving authorization to oversee cases related to classified documents and the January 6th, 2021 riots at the Capitol building. Smith has countered that the appointments clause of the Constitution gives the U.S. attorney general the authority to appoint “inferior officers” like himself.

Thomas dismissed that argument, writing that it is questionable whether a special counsel would qualify as an “inferior officer… unless a statute created the special counsel’s office and gave the attorney general the power to fill it.”

Since the concurring opinion was issued by Thomas, a top target by critics of the high court, Smith may well argue that his opinion is tainted by prejudice. A trove of revelations about Thomas have emerged in recent years, including that he accepted swanky vacations from conservative mega-donors though insisted his friendship with them played no role in his decision making. His wife, Ginni Thomas, was found to have strongly encouraged President Trump to remain in office in the time between the 2020 election and J6.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to a 2017 tax law signed by former President Donald Trump that sought to rein in a funding mechanism used to pay for his signature cuts.

In a 7-2 decision, justices ruled against Kathleen and Charles Moore, the couple who sued to block a $14,729 tax bill levied against their investment in an overseas company. The Moores argued that they did not realize any profits from their investment and that the collection violates their protections under the 16th Amendment; the court disagreed, ruling that Congress was within its rights to pass a one-time Mandatory Repatriation Tax (MRT) on shareholders with a 10% stake in foreign companies that earned profits, regardless of whether or not those profits were received, according to the Daily Caller.

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“The MRT—which attributes the realized and undistributed income of an American-controlled foreign corporation to the entity’s American shareholders, and then taxes the American shareholders on their portions of that income—does not exceed Congress’s constitutional authority,” the majority held.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the majority’s opinion, urged readers to interpret the decision as a narrow one. It applies, he wrote, to “(i) taxation of the shareholders of an entity, (ii) on the undistributed income realized by the entity, (iii) which has been attributed to the shareholders, (iv) when the entity itself has not been taxed on that income.”

“In other words, our holding applies when Congress treats the entity as a pass-through,” he continued.

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