Harris backs Biden’s supreme court reforms
Kamala Harris has endorsed Joe Biden’s push for supreme court reforms that include term limits for justices, a binding code of conduct and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
“President Biden and I strongly believe that the American people must have confidence in the supreme court,” she said in a statement.
Yet 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.
Harris added:
These popular reforms will help to restore confidence in the court, strengthen our democracy and ensure no one is above the law.
Key events
Leonard Leo, the rightwing dark money organizer who just issued a statement slamming Joe Biden’s call for supreme court reforms, has played a key role in the conservative effort to move the judiciary to the right.
Leo’s advocacy and financial network played a major role in Donald Trump’s judicial nominations and confirmation hearings as part of his years-long push to make the courts more friendly to conservatives and their causes.
Justice Clarence Thomas once joked that Leo was the “No 3 most powerful person in the world”.
Leo is a Catholic conservative activist widely known as the force behind the Federalist Society, which has helped transform the US courts system, ultimately through the installation of three hardline justices on the supreme court that has handed down epochal rulings on abortion rights, presidential immunity and more.
Leonard Leo, the rightwing donor, has hit back at Joe Biden’s call for supreme court reforms, saying they were about “Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with.”
Leo, in a statement, said that if Biden and the Democrats were “truly serious” about ethics reform, they would calls for bans on “all gifts and hospitality of any kind to any public official in any branch of government”, including in Congress, where he said “the real corruption is”. He concluded:
Let me be clear: If Democrats want to adopt an across the board ethics ban for all branches, I am in favor of that: no jets, no meals, no speaking honorariums, no gifts for anyone from anyone for any reason in any branch, starting with Congress. Until they support that, let’s all be honest about what this is: a campaign to destroy a court that they disagree with.
INBOX: Statement from Leonard Leo Regarding President Biden’s Supreme Court Announcement (endorsed by Kamala Harris):
“No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is about undue influence. It’s about…— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 29, 2024
Joe Biden, in his proposals for supreme court reform, also called for a binding, enforceable code of ethics.
The president “believes that Congress should pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require Justices to 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,” according to a White House statement.
Supreme Court Justices should not be exempt from the enforceable code of conduct that applies to every other federal judge.
Joe Biden’s proposals also call for limiting a supreme court justice’s term to a maximum of 18 years rather than the current lifetime appointment, under a system where a new justice would be appointed to the supreme court by the serving president every two years.
Term limits would help “reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come,” according to a White House statement.
Congress approved term limits for the Presidency over 75 years ago, and President Biden believes they should do the same for the Supreme Court. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices.
The White House has detailed a series of sweeping changes to the supreme court proposed by Joe Biden, which include introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
The reforms include a “No One Is Above the Law Amendment”, in which Biden calls for a constitutional amendment that “makes clear no president is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office”.
The amendment would state that the US constitution “does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as president”.
If approved, the amendment would in effect reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office, a decision Donald Trump hailed as a “BIG WIN” amid his legal travails.
The news that Donald Trump has agreed to a victim interview with the FBI comes after the agency confirmed a bullet or a fragment of a bullet struck the former president’s ear.
In a statement on Friday, the FBI said:
What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.
The statement marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump’s injuries and followed ambiguous comments earlier in the week from the agency’s director, Christopher Wray, that appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or whether he was instead struck by shrapnel.
Adam Gabbatt
Kamala Harris raised $200m in the week since she was endorsed by Joe Biden, her team said, as the vice-president appears to be drawing increased enthusiasm to her campaign.
Harris for President said about 66% of the total came from first-time donors, as the campaign said it had seen “unprecedented grassroots support”.
On Sunday Al Gore, the former vice-president and a climate activist, endorsed Harris, while more than 170,000 volunteers have signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts, said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director.
It comes after Harris raised $81m in the 24 hours after she was endorsed by Biden, a record sum. The donation news comes after Harris attended a fundraiser in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday. The event had been organized when the president was still the presumptive nominee, and had originally been expected to raise $400,000, but ended up bringing in about $1.4m, according to the Harris campaign.
Future Forward, the largest Super Pac in Democratic politics, announced last week it had secured $150m in donations over the first 24 hours after Biden dropped out of the race.
Trump gunman searched for information on shooting of Slovakian leader – FBI
Donald Trump’s interview with the FBI “will be consistent with any victim interview we do”, an agency official said.
Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said a local police identified the gunman about an hour before Trump spoke that day and took a photo.
The FBI official also revealed new details about the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.
Crooks conducted Internet searches into previous mass shooting events, improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, earlier this year.
Despite hundreds of interviews, the FBI said it has yet to identify a motive for the shooting.
The gunman’s parents, described as having been “extremely cooperative” with investigators, said they had no knowledge of Crooks’s plans, Rojek said.
Biden’s supreme court reform proposals ‘dead on arrival in the House’, says Mike Johnson
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has warned that Joe Biden’s proposals to reform the supreme court will be “dead on arrival” in the House.
Biden’s proposed reforms include introducing term limits for supreme court justices, a binding code of conduct and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
Johnson, in a statement, said:
President Biden’s proposal to radically overhaul the US supreme court would tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.
This proposal is the logical conclusion to the Biden-Harris administration and congressional Democrats’ ongoing efforts to delegitimize the supreme court. Their calls to expand and pack the court will soon resume.
It is telling that Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the court’s recent decisions. This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris administration is dead on arrival in the House.
Trump agrees to FBI interview after assassination attempt
Donald Trump has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI as part of an investigation into his attempted assassination, an agency official said.
The interview is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims of federal crimes during the course of their investigations.
Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, told reporters:
We want to get his perspective on what he observed.
Harris backs Biden’s supreme court reforms
Kamala Harris has endorsed Joe Biden’s push for supreme court reforms that include term limits for justices, a binding code of conduct and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
“President Biden and I strongly believe that the American people must have confidence in the supreme court,” she said in a statement.
Yet 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.
Harris added:
These popular reforms will help to restore confidence in the court, strengthen our democracy and ensure no one is above the law.
Joe Biden is expected to speak about his new supreme court reform proposals at an address later today at the LBJ presidential library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
The president, in a national address from the Oval Office last week, pledged that overhauling the supreme court would be a priority. Biden said:
I’m going to call for supreme court reform because this is critical to our democracy.
Adam Gabbatt
Joe Biden, in an op-ed this morning, said supreme court justices should be limited to a maximum of 18 years’ service rather than the current lifetime appointment, under a system where a new justice would be appointed to the court by the serving president every two years.
The president also called for stricter, enforceable rules on conduct which would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial interest.
Last week Justice Elena Kagan called for the court to strengthen the ethics code it introduced in 2023 by adding a way to enforce it.
That code was introduced after a spate of scandals involving rightwing justices on the court: Clarence Thomas was found to have accepted vacations and travel from a Republican mega-donor, while Samuel Alito flew on a private jet owned by an influential billionaire on the way to a fishing trip.