President Biden on Monday lashed out at Republican senators for blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and confirming Amy Coney Barrett, calling it a “blatant attack on the very nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices.”
Biden complained about the tactics behind the court’s rightward shift while outlining proposed reforms to the court that would limit terms to 18 years and require justices to follow new ethics rules that were widely interpreted as more of a message-making exercise than a serious legislative push.
“Justice [Antonin] “Justice Scalia died in February 2016, and Republicans blocked President Obama’s nominee to fill that vacancy for nearly a year, creating an entirely new standard that Supreme Court confirmations cannot occur in an election year,” Biden said in a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
“But the judiciary [Ruth Bader] “Ginsburg died in 2020, at the same time Republicans rushed through President Trump’s nominee, and now the votes are being cast in an election that Trump will lose. This is outrageous!”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was then the Senate Majority Leader and spearheaded Republican strategy in the Supreme Court confirmation fight, argued that he was not hypocritical in supporting Barrett’s nomination in 2020 but not Garland’s.
Four Biden proposals for Supreme Court reform that Harris supports:
McConnell said waiting until after the election was “a historically normal outcome when you have a divided government.”
Biden nominated Garland to be attorney general in 2021. Republicans have frequently accused him of political bias, including in his handling of criminal investigations involving Biden and his family, as well as the prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
