Tag Archive for: Supreme court

Supreme Court Takes Case With Major Implications For Trump, Jan. 6 Defendants

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The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear a case with major implications for hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, as well as former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges stemming from alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In a brief order, the justices agreed to hear a case stemming from Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer’s request to dismiss a charge against him for obstructing an official proceeding. His case provides the Supreme Court an opportunity to rule on the scope of a statute, Section 1512(c)(2), which he argues has been used to charge hundreds of other defendants in an “unprecedented extension of the statute’s reach.”

“Hundreds of cases have been and will be affected by the scope of Section 1512(c)(2), including a case against the former President,” Fischer’s petition notes. “In addition, the use of Section 1512(c)(2) outside evidence impairment crimes is an extraordinary and unprecedented extension of the statute’s reach.”

The statute threatens to levy fines or up to 20 years in prison for anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.” Jan. 6 defendants, including Fischer, have been charged under Section 1512(c)(2) for obstructing Congress’s certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump also faces the obstruction charge in his indictment for alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 election.

Fischer argues that the government seeks to sever the statute “from its legislative, historical, and textual moorings.”

“The D.C. Circuit’s expansion of Section 1512(c)(2) beyond evidence impairment to protests at the seat of government thus conflicts with the interpretations of other courts of appeal limiting the scope of the same statute,” Fischer’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.

Two other defendants, Edward Lang and Garrett Miller, also earlier asked the Supreme Court to dismiss obstruction charges against them.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Student Group Sues West Point Over Race-Based Admissions

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Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a lawsuit against the military academy West Point Tuesday alleging that the school is violating the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by using race-based admissions policies.

The Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina in June in a 6-3 decision, arguing that a “student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.” SFFA, who represented the plaintiffs in the previous cases, sued the military academy, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision should apply to all schools.

“Over the years, courts have been mindful of the military’s unique role in our nation’s life and the distinctive considerations that come with it,” Edward Blum, president of SFFA said in a press release. “However, no level of deference justifies these polarizing and disliked racial classifications and preferences in admissions to West Point or any of our service academies.”

The lawsuit argues that instead of basing admissions on “objective metrics and leadership potential” the academy’s administrators had instead opted for discriminating on the basis of race. It notes the school’s “benchmarks” for the amount of students in each class that should be made up of  “African Americans,” “Hispanics,” and “Asians.”

“Because skin color can be—and often is—a decisive factor for successful applicants who are chosen from those congressional nominee pools, it is equally dispositive for the other qualified nominees who are turned away,” SFFA argues. “Put differently, because race is a ‘positive’ factor for some West Point applicants, it is necessarily a ‘negative’ factor for others.”

SFFA criticized the military’s justification for the racial quotas, saying that these kinds of policies insinuate that all minorities think alike. The lawsuit also dismissed the academy’s claim that these policies were needed in order to gain legitimacy in a “diverse nation,” noting that a country’s military should not be considered trustworthy only because of its racial make up.

The lawsuit asks that the court issue a “declaratory judgment that West Point’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment” and that it grant a preliminary injunction barring the academy from enforcing the policy while the lawsuit goes through the court system.

“Because the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent opinion in the SFFA cases expressly forbids all institutions of higher education from using race in admissions decisions, it must follow that the U. S. military higher education institutions must end their race-based policies as well,” Blum said.

West Point did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

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Supreme Court Says You Can’t Fight Racism with Racism

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“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” That was the conclusion of the majority in the Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The court concluded that it violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law for colleges and universities to consider a student’s race in their admissions process.

For many, this is common sense. Earlier in our battle against racism, the Supreme Court clarified that segregated schools were illegal because “separate but equal” was not actually equal. In doing so, the court established that it is inappropriate to reward and punish people based on the color of their skin. But more recently, some have decided it’s not merely acceptable to treat people differently based on the color of their skin, it’s good provided we do so for the right reasons.

That’s one of the reasons why, in recent years, colleges of been creating “safe spaces” where white students are not allowed. It is also the reason a Colorado elementary school hosted a “Families of Color Playground Night” and put it on the sign in front of their school. They weren’t ashamed to be engaging in racial discrimination, they were proud of it because they were doing it for the right reasons. They were protecting racial minorities, not harming them. Similar sentiments motivate those who want to use race as a determining factor in the college admissions process. They don’t believe racial discrimination is always bad, it’s only bad if it’s done for the wrong reason.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced her belief that race-based evaluations are constitutional if done for the right reasons. “The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality” she said. “The Court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.”

Good intentions aside, there are unavoidable problems with the effort to rebrand racial discrimination as “race-consciousness” because anytime the law favors one group on account of their race, they necessarily disfavor other groups because of their race. This was illustrated in Harvard’s own admissions data. While the goal was to help Hispanic and black students gain opportunities they otherwise might not have, the result was that Asian students were required to score, on average, 22 points higher than white students and 63 points higher than black students in order to be admitted. Creating opportunities for one group means handicapping another.

Obviously, that’s not fair, but you’re also not supposed to care that it’s not fair.

The Left has divided the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” and often those categories are defined by our skin color. The bad kind of racism punishes those who they see as “oppressed” and should be stopped. The good kind of racism punishes those they see as “oppressors” and should be tolerated or even celebrated as a race-conscious effort to “level the playing field.”

You don’t need to be concerned that the poor Vietnamese kid from a broken home and better test scores was rejected for a black kid with billionaire parents, because the individual circumstances of their lives matter less than the identity politics we’re all supposed to be focused on. This is Critical Race Theory 101, and this is the world the political Left wants us all to live in. But the Supreme Court just said you can’t do that. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It has never made sense that we would be able to solve the problem of racism with more racism, but the Supreme Court just went a step further and clarified that fighting racism with racism isn’t just a bad idea, it’s also illegal.

AUTHOR

Joseph Backholm

Joseph Backholm is Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Here’s How The Supreme Court’s Latest Term Reshaped America

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The Supreme Court’s most recent term has brought on huge changes to American law, with the court delivering many wins to conservatives.

The 2022-2023 term for the Supreme Court included many high-stakes issues, including race-based admissions by colleges, individual rights of religious expression, the applicability of Native American treaties and more. The court’s conservative majority particularly hit hard on the Biden administration, striking down his student loan forgiveness plan and limiting his regulatory power with the EPA.

On Friday, in Biden v. Nebraska, the court struck down the Biden administration’s plan to grant student loan forgiveness to nearly 40 million Americans, saying that the Biden administration cannot unilaterally cancel student debt using the 2003 HEROES Act. The plan would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for non-Pell Grant recipients and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

The case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis ruled in favor of religious rights Friday, with the court finding in a 6-3 ruling that a Christian graphic designer cannot be compelled to create a website for same-sex couples that has messages that violate her religious beliefs. This case comes after the 2018 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which provided limited protections for a bakery owner who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding.

Colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to use race as a determining factor in admissions after a ruling in two separate cases involving Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, blocking colleges from using affirmative action policies in both public and private universities. The decision overturned a previous case, Grutter v. Bollinger, in 2003 that held that race could be a factor in the admissions process.

Congressional districting was also considered by the court, which found in a 5-4 decision on June 8 that an Alabama congressional district map violated the Voting Rights Act as it did not give enough influence to black voters. The previous map only had one majority-black district out of seven.

A case involving Native American treaties was examined in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, where the court ruled that the federal government has no obligation to meet the Navajo Nation’s water needs under the 1968 treaty that established the reservation.

In another loss for the Biden administration, the court ruled in May that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overstepped its regulatory authority when telling a couple they could not build on their own property due to the EPA’s ability to regulate “navigable waters.” Sackett v. EPA found that the EPA lacked the power to prevent the couple from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho, because it contained wetlands.

The court faced heavy criticism this term, with complaints of ethics violations around paid gifts to justices. A ProPublica report called for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign after it was unveiled that he took paid-for vacations with long-time friend and billionaire Harlon Crow. Conservatives fired back, pointing out trips like those taken by Justice Stephen Breyer that were funded by a Democratic donor.

AUTHOR

WILL KESSLER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Expand The Court’: ‘Squad’ Democrats React To SCOTUS Striking Down Biden’s Loan Giveaway

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action Admissions

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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to block affirmative action in two closely watched lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC).

The cases, initially brought by a coalition of students, prospective applicants and their parents in 2014, challenged the universities’ use of racial preferences during the admissions process.

“Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in the UNC case and a 6-2 decision in the Harvard case, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” Roberts wrote. “In otherwords, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

“Many universities have for too long done just the opposite,” he continued. “And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The court overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which held that race could be a factor in the admissions process.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

“Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens,” Jackson wrote. “They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations.”

Both lawsuits were brought by Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA), a coalition of over 20,000 prospective higher education students and parents, including one Asian American member who applied for Harvard and six other top schools but was denied admission in 2014, despite his academic record.

SFFA argued that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasiz­ing race and rejecting race-neutral alter­natives. Similarly, SFFA argued UNC violated Title VI by rejecting alternative race-neutral criteria that could also ensure diversity in the admissions process.

The Supreme Court heard both cases in October. Schools have been anticipating the decision for months, searching for ways to maintain racial quotas without explicitly using racial preferences, such as eliminating standardized testing requirements and recruiting based on geographic region.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s How Universities Plan To Skirt The Supreme Court’s Likely Ban On Race-Based Admissions

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Supreme Court Rolls Back Biden EPA’s Expansive Water Regulation

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The Supreme Court rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate under the Clean Water Act (CWA) in a unanimous decision Thursday.

Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, brought by a couple prevented by the EPA from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho because it contained wetlands, considered the scope of the agency’s “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, which defines what “navigable waters” can be regulated under the CWA. Plaintiffs Chantell and Mike Sackett, who have spent 15 years fighting the agency’s rule in court, allege the EPA has overstepped the authority it was granted when Congress enacted the CWA in 1972—forcing them to stop construction on their land or face fines.

The Supreme Court sided with the Sacketts, determining their land is not covered under the text of the CWA, which gives the EPA authority to regulate “navigable waters.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barett, that the EPA’s interpretation “provides little notice to landowners of their obligations under the CWA.” The Court held that the CWA applies to only wetlands that are “as a practical matter indistinguishable from waters of the United States,” maintaining a “continuous surface connection.”

Though justices were united in their judgement, they maintained disagreements on definitions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in an opinion concurring in judgement that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, thought the majority went too far in its test for which wetlands are included.

“By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States,” he wrote.

Kagan similarly said in an opinion joined by Sotomayor and Jackson that the majority has appointed itself as “the national decision-maker on environmental policy” by choosing a test that “prevents the EPA from keeping our country’s waters clean by regulating adjacent wetlands.”

“The eight administrations since 1977 have maintained dramatically different views of how to regulate the environment, including under the Clean Water Act,” she wrote, noting some “promulgated very broad interpretations of adjacent wetlands.”

“Yet all of those eight different administrations have recognized as a matter of law that the Clean Water Act’s coverage of adjacent wetlands means more than adjoining wetlands and also includes wetlands separated from covered waters by man-made dikes or barriers, natural river berms, beach dunes, or the like,” she wrote. “That consistency in interpretation is strong confirmation of the ordinary meaning of adjacent wetlands.”

The decision likely means that the Biden administration will need to go back to the drawing board on its new WOTUS rule issued in January, which Republicans and some Democrats have criticized for placing a burden on landowners, ranchers and farmers while dramatically expanding the EPA’s authority. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a “radical power grab that would give federal bureaucrats sweeping control over nearly every piece of land that touches a pothole, ditch, or puddle.”

In April, President Joe Biden vetoed a bipartisan bill to limit his administration’s WOTUS rule. Just days later, a federal court blocked the rule for 24 states that sued pending the Supreme Court’s decision.

“The Court’s ruling returns the scope of the Clean Water Act to its original and proper limits,” said Damien Schiff, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation who argued the case, in a statement. “Courts now have a clear measuring stick for fairness and consistency by federal regulators. Today’s ruling is a profound win for property rights and the constitutional separation of powers.”

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden’s EPA Chief Says ‘Environmental Justice’ Is In Agency’s ‘DNA’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Dobbs Leaker Intended to ‘Kill One of the Justices,’ Expert Says

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One year after the leak of the Dobbs decision, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the pro-life ruling made the conservative majority “targets of assassination” — a deadly outcome which a legal expert described as the “ultimate purpose” of the unauthorized disclosure.

Last May 2, Politico posted a draft of the landmark Supreme Court ruling, which returned abortion to the constitutional standard that prevailed for the 184 years of U.S. history before the controversial Roe v. Wade decision. A wave of pro-abortion violence swept the nation, targeting traditional churches, pro-life women’s centers — and the homes of the six Supreme Court justices believed to have crafted the decision. One year later, Alito said the still-unsolved release was designed to normalize the intimidation of constitutionalist judiciary.

“Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Justice Alito told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”

He added, while the official investigation concluded it could not identify the individual who released the report, “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible.” But, he added, “that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.” While most observers believe a left-leaning clerk, or justice, leaked the opinion in an attempt to alter the course of judicial history, liberals have countercharged that Alito released the draft decision to the media himself — charges Alito calls “infuriating” and “implausible.”

“This made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves?” Alito, the author of Dobbs, asked WSJ’s James Taranto. “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court,” one component of a six-week-long “campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

That campaign reached its apogee last June 8, when a mentally disturbed man who camouflaged himself appeared among raucous crowds of protesters outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with the intention of assassinating the embattled justice. The suspect turned himself in before carrying out his plan. Police reported the man — who was armed with a gun, a tactical knife, pepper spray, and zip ties — confessed “he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to an abortion” and believed killing Kavanaugh would “give his life meaning.” Media outlets reported that the would-be assassin, Nicholas Roske of California, identified online as a “trans gamer girl” and “sissy slave” named “Sophie.”

The murder plot is the foreseeable, possibly intended, effect of the Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life justices and soft targets following last May’s leak, a legal expert told The Washington Stand.

“I don’t think the Biden administration did anything to help protect the justices of any substance. They stood on the sidelines,” Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, told TWS. “They should have prosecuted individuals. Not a single individual was prosecuted.”

“It was pretty clear, both from the leak and from the assassination threats, that the ultimate purpose was to intimidate a justice into changing his or her mind or inciting people to kill one of the justices in the majority in order to stop the overturn of the abortion decisions,” Staver added.

He accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of maintaining “shameful silence” while “these justices’ lives were being threatened.”

Federal law makes it illegal to protest, picket, or parade outside a federal official’s home “with the intent of influencing” his or her official duties, such as changing the vote of a Supreme Court justice. Garland testified that U.S. Marshals decided of their own accord not to arrest any of the pro-abortion activists outside numerous justices’ homes.

But slide presentations specifically instructed law enforcement not to arrest anyone without first coordinating with the U.S. Attorney Attorney’s office. “[A]rrests of protestors are a last resort to prevent physical harm to the Justices [sic] and/or their families,” said training documents exposed by Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.). The law, the slides contended, “logically goes to criminal threats and intimidation,” not other forms of protest specifically listed in the statute.

Democrats slow-walked legislation that would have given justices greater protections, with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisting that “no one is in danger” just one day after the Kavanaugh arrest. “The justices are protected.”

“Perhaps some Democrats may want this dangerous climate hanging over the justices’ heads as they finish the term,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last summer.

The Biden administration’s inaction comes amid a surging wave of threats targeting judges. The number of threats against judges and jurors skyrocketed 387% between 2015 and 2021, from 926 to 4,511 six years later, according to statistics released by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Congress has since voted to give the justices around-the-clock protection by U.S. Marshalls outside their homes. Alito says he’s now “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force.”

Pro-life advocates marked the ignominious anniversary by declaring that violence, against grown jurists or unborn children, will not prevail. “Here is our message to those who use violence to impose their violent pro-abortion ideology: You will not win. Love is stronger than hate,” said Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s vice president of government affairs, Marilyn Musgrave. “The overwhelming majority of Americans are on the side of life. Threats and intimidation will not deter us from our mission. We will not rest until every child in America is protected and all mothers are free from abortion coercion.”

Nonetheless, the offender will probably elude justice, Staver said. “I don’t expect anyone’s ever going to be held accountable” for the Dobbs disclosure, Staver told TWS. “I wish that their investigation would have been more definitive.” The list of potential leakers is “very short, and Justice Alito would be in a good position to know that list of names.”

“That person, and probably more than one person who assisted with this leak, should be held accountable,” Staver concluded.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: ALL Nine SCOTUS Justices Issue Rare Statement Rejecting Senate Democrats’ New “Ethics Oversight” Measures

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

RNC Chair Tells Republicans: ‘We Can Win on Abortion’

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After a deflating 2022 midterm election, the surest path to lose the White House would come from Republicans refusing to speak on the issue of abortion, the party’s chair told aspiring candidates.

“We’ve seen what happens when we let Democrats define who we are and what we stand for,” said Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel during a speech Thursday at the Reagan Library. In 2022, “a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject. Then what happened? Democrats spent $360 million running ads filled with lies about abortion, and most Republicans had no response.”

“Let’s talk about abortion, which has become a huge issue coming after the Dobbs decision,” McDaniel exhorted GOP candidates. “When you don’t respond, the lies become the truth.”

The discussion should include a national minimum standard of protections for the unborn, which most voters favor — especially contrasted with the Democratic Party platform, she said. “Polling shows that when the choice is between a Democrat who wants zero abortion restrictions and a Republican who supports protecting life, at 15 weeks, we win by 22 points,” McDaniel noted. A 15-week national pro-life standard wins over “72% of voters, including 60% of Democrats [who] support protecting unborn children.”

“We are the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family party, and we can win on abortion. But that means putting Democrats on the defense and forcing them to own their own extreme positions,” she concluded.

Her comments came during a moment of uneasiness within GOP ranks, as aspirants and advocates contemplate the best strategy to advance the pro-life cause in a post-Dobbs environment. A statement from former President Donald Trump roiled the movement, as some interpreted it to advocate inaction at the federal level. “President Donald J. Trump believes that the Supreme Court, led by the three Justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the State level,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Washington Post late last week. The Post last week also reported on tales from unnamed sources that Trump personally believes abortion should be a matter of “states rights” and advocated not discussing the issue — comments that drew instantaneous backlash.

“Life is a matter of human rights, not states’ rights,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the SBA Pro-life America, adding that a states-only position would result in “abortion up until the moment of birth” in states such as California, New York, and Oregon. “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” she added. Other pro-life leaders amplified her position. “If you don’t understand killing children is a federal issue, you shouldn’t be running for federal office,” said Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America. “Imagine supporting a candidate who said that slavery was a ‘states rights’ issue,” tweeted Lila Rose of Live Action.

Trump did not address the criticism directly — but he appeared to take McDaniel’s words to heart, bashing Democratic extremism on abortion “As the most pro-life president in American history, I will continue to stand strong against the extreme late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party, who believe in abortion-on-demand in the ninth month of pregnancy, and even executing babies after birth,” said the 45th president in pre-recorded comments to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on Saturday. “They actually talk, beyond birth — after birth — executing the baby.”

He likely had in mind comments from then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D), who said in 2019 in the event of a live birth during a botched abortion, the abortionist would hold “a discussion” about whether the newborn would receive lifesaving care. In January, the House of Representatives passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to establish national standards of care — with the support of only one Democrat.

“This is where we’ve come, and it’s so sad to see,” said Trump. “I will stand proudly and defend innocent life, just as I did for four, very powerful, strong years. Because every child, born and unborn, is a sacred gift from God.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, said the former president provided a strong foundation during his four years in office. “President Trump gave us the justices who gave us Dobbs. He was the first presidential candidate to actually describe what an abortion is — a child being ripped out of her mother’s womb even just before birth — and he was the first president to attend the March for Life,” Szoch told The Washington Stand. “His administration did more for the unborn than any other.”

That sets a high bar for any Republican, including himself. “In a second term, he — or anyone else who calls himself a Republican — must be held accountable to do the same, which means committing to signing any democratically passed pro-life legislation and committing to upholding and reinstating federal protections for the unborn,” Szoch told TWS. “The pro-life movement must continue to work until nobody has the power to take away the fundamental right to life with a vote, scalpel, or pill.”

Trump’s proposals for future pro-life accomplishments seemed less precise. He promised to “again [appoint] rock-solid constitutional conservatives to be federal bench judges and justices, in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke at the Iowa event in person and plans to decide whether to mount a presidential campaign “well before late June,” endorsed national pro-life protections after the first trimester over the weekend. “I think the American people would welcome a minimum national standard in Washington, D.C. — 15 weeks,” he told CBS “Face the Nation” Sunday. Another likely presidential contender, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), has vowed, “If I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress.”

His colleague, senior South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R), believes his legislation, the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act, deserves top consideration. “America does not need, and the unborn cannot afford, to have two major parties who support no restrictions on abortion up to the moment of birth. The unborn need a voice in Washington,” Graham said. “It is up to us to provide it.”

Beltway pundits and consultants widely blamed the lack of the 2022 “red wave” on Graham’s bill, which Democrats portrayed as a “national abortion ban.” Yet Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Kim Reynolds of Iowa all signed heartbeat bills protecting children from abortion beginning at six weeks after fertilization before winning lopsided victories in 2022. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also signed a heartbeat bill after his 20-point reelection.

Being willing to have accurate, disciplined, unapologetic messaging and refusing to run from discussions about abortion will prove indispensable to retaking the White House and U.S. Senate in 2024, McDaniel said.

“Just as Reagan was the great communicator, we have to be great communicators. Republican candidates right now are trying to do that. They are out there working hard to get the nomination of our party. And in four short months, the RNC will host its first primary debate in Milwaukee.”

The second debate would take place at the Reagan Library, she announced. Life, family, parental rights, and children’s safety will all likely be topics of debate.

“I firmly believe that our next president will be on that stage,” as long as he handles the abortion issue properly, predicted McDaniel.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The ‘Father of the Abortion Pill’ reveals it was always about death

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Supreme Court Vacates Ruling that Minors Have Constitutional ‘Right’ to Abortion; One Justice Dissents

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The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court’s opinion asserting that underage girls possess a constitutional right to have an abortion without notifying their parents. Only one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented that her colleagues effectively erased the pro-abortion decision from the books, preventing lawyers from citing it as a binding legal precedent in future cases.

Justices on Monday wiped out an appeals court’s decision in the Chapman v. Doe case. In 2018, a 17-year-old referred to as “Jane Doe” sought a Missouri court ruling to bypass the state’s law requiring that she obtain parental consent before undergoing an abortion. But a Randolph County court clerk named Michelle Chapman told the minor that the judge said her parents must be notified before the court hearing. Doe traveled to Illinois, where she received a judge’s permission and underwent an abortion.

She then contracted the ACLU to sue Chapman for placing an “undue burden” on her unalienable “right” to abortion, violating the terms of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 1992 opinion in Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

Hearing Doe’s case, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals contended last April that the right of a minor to bypass parental input or knowledge is an established part of U.S. citizenship. Jane “Doe’s constitutional right to apply for a judicial bypass without notifying her parents is clearly established by Supreme Court precedent,” said the appeals court. “Chapman’s refusal to allow her to apply for a judicial bypass without parental notification violated her Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

Two months later, the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision, which ruled that “procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our [n]ation’s history.” Chapman and Dobbs agreed the decision made their case moot — but Chapman then appealed to have the lower court ruling thrown out.

In Chapman’s legal filing, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) noted, since Roe v. Wade had not established a minor’s right to obtain an abortion without her parents’ involvement, the lower court’s ruling “carries legal significance on parental notification requirements that this Court has not” established. Bailey requested the justices issue a vacated judgment, known as a “Munsingwear vacatur,” which Bailey noted, “prevents the decision from spawning legal consequences for similarly situated persons.”

Justices on Monday remanded the case to the Eighth Circuit with instructions to vacate and dismiss it as moot. That halts others from citing the Eighth Circuit’s pro-abortion ruling as precedent in future cases.

“We are still seeing the trickle-down effects of the Dobbs decision — both saving unborn children’s lives and now protecting the right of states to protect parental notification laws,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “When a minor is considering a decision as tragic, terrible, and dangerous as allowing an abortionist to kill her unborn child, her parents should be there to help their daughter choose life and to speak up in defense of their grandchild’s life.”

President Joe Biden’s only Supreme Court appointee to date, Associate Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, issued the lone dissent. “[O]ur common-law system assumes that judicial decisions are valuable and should not be cast aside lightly, especially because judicial precedents ‘are not merely the property of private litigants,’ but also belong to the public and ‘legal community as a whole,’” she wrote. She argued, since Chapman agreed the case was moot due to Dobbs, Dobbs did not play the definitive role in making the ruling moot.

Jackson represented NARAL Pro-Choice America, the League of Women Voters, and the Abortion Access Project of Massachusetts during the time she belonged to Boston’s Goodwin Procter law firm.

Jackson also generated headlines during her confirmation hearings, when she said she felt incapable of defining the word “woman,” because she is “not a biologist.”

The issue of parental notification and consent for their young daughter’s abortion continues to play a part of the national debate over parental rights, which has expanded to public school curriculum, school library book choices, and gender transitions.

The high court remains largely sympathetic to parental rights. Last June, Chief Justice John Roberts allowed Indiana to begin enforcing its parental notification law as the case made its way through the court system.

Yet lower courts remain mixed. A Montana judge permanently enjoined that state’s parental consent law as “unconstitutional and unenforceable” last month but said a trial must determine the fate of its 2012 Notification Act. Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Chris Abbott was appointed to the bench by former Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat.

The debate has also engulfed potential judicial appointees. Democrats have signaled concern over Biden’s appointment of Michael Delaney, nominated for the Boston-based First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, because he once signed a petition for a parental notification case. As deputy attorney general of New Hampshire in 2005, Delaney signed a brief in Ayotte vs. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which required parents to be notified before minor daughters had an abortion.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said, since he sees abortion as “a fundamental, core issue … I’d want to know why he put his name on the brief.” Another, unnamed Democratic senator also told the Associated Press of their hesitancy because of Delaney signing the brief, and the National Council of Jewish Women opposes Delaney’s nomination, saying his role in the 2006 Supreme Court ruling proves he lacks “fairness, independence, fidelity to constitutional values, and respect” for plaintiffs.

A total of 36 states require parental notification of one or both parents before an unemancipated minor can have an abortion, including 21 states that demand at least one parent’s consent, but 35 of those states provide for a judicial bypass, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

“We should give thanks for the Dobbs decision that continues to positively impact other Supreme Court decisions and allows states to do whatever possible to protect the unborn,” said Szoch.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

SCOTUS Rules Biden Admin Must Keep Trump-Era Border Policy In Place

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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of Republican states asking to keep Title 42, a Trump-era policy used to expel certain illegal immigrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in place.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court forced the Biden administration to keep Title 42 amid record surges of illegal immigration at the southern border. Federal authorities encountered more than 2.3 million migrants in fiscal year 2022.

The Biden administration believed that ending the policy would bring roughly 14,000 illegal immigrants a day, according to Axios.

A federal judge previously ruled that the policy must end Dec. 21. Republican states asked the Supreme Court to intervene a day before the policy would expire, arguing that the recent decision would lead to a harmful surge in illegal immigration.

The Supreme Court justices will hear arguments in February to consider whether to fully scrap the policy beyond the pause. Until then, the Biden administration must continue to expel a number of illegal immigrants based on their country of origin.

Venezuelans coming to the U.S. illegally were the latest group of migrants to be expelled under the policy, which has resulted in the expulsion of over 2 million illegal immigrants, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

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Trump Turns To Supreme Court On Mar-A-Lago Raid

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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers requested the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling regarding the Mar-a-Lago raid, saying Tuesday that not allowing the Special Master to review all the seized documents “erodes public confidence in our system of justice.”

On Sept. 21, the 11th Circuit allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to keep looking at “classified” documents the FBI seized from Trump’s Florida residence in August, after the DOJ appealed their case.

Judge Aileen Cannon had previously put a pause on the DOJ’s review while a neutral Special Master was being appointed to review all documents, but after the appeals court’s ruling, the third party watchdog can only review materials not bearing classification markings.

The DOJ now has access to roughly 100 documents bearing classification markings, which Trump’s lawyers have claimed were declassified by the former president.

Trump’s request to the Supreme Court was specifically addressed to Justice Clarence Thomas, and asks for the Special Master to have access to the “classified” materials again, claiming that the 11th Circuit “lacked jurisdiction” to stay Cannon’s order.

“This unwarranted stay should be vacated as it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the Special Master. Moreover, any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice,” the application to the Supreme Court read.

The DOJ has claimed it needs to review the “classified” materials due to their potential of being national security risks. The 11th Circuit mentioned this concern in their ruling, stating, “It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in ‘exceptionally grave damage to the national security.’”

In the request to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers state that the Special Master looking over all documents before the Biden administration’s DOJ has access is an “intermediary procedural step to conduct an orderly, transparent, and fair review of the seized materials.”

AUTHOR

DIANA GLEBOVA

White House correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Here Are The 17 Democrat Members Of Congress Who Were Arrested Outside The Supreme Court

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At least 17 House Democrats were arrested Tuesday afternoon outside the Supreme Court.

The Democrats were attending an abortion rights rally to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In several videos posted on Twitter, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar can be seen with their hands behind their back being held by police officers who appear to be escorting them away from the protest in front of the Supreme Court.

“Today, Rep. AOC was arrested along with other members of Congress outside the Supreme Court for protesting in support of abortion rights,” Ocasio-Cortez’s office tweeted from her account.

HERE ARE THE NAMES: 

  • New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
  • Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
  • Missouri Rep. Cori Bush
  • Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley
  • Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark
  • New York Rep. Nydia Velazquez
  • California Rep. Barbara Lee
  • California Rep. Jackie Speier
  • California Rep. Sara Jacobs
  • Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib
  • North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams
  • Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean
  • New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman
  • Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar
  • Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky
  • New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney
  • Michigan Rep. Andy Levin

Democratic Missouri Rep. Cori Bush tweeted Tuesday that she and her colleagues “put” their “bodies on the line” amid the protest.

“I introduced legislation yesterday and today to protect reproductive freedom. Today my colleagues and I put our bodies on the line—because we will leave no stone unturned in our fight for justice. Bans off our bodies,” Bush said.

The Daily Caller contacted the U.S. Capitol Police about the videos to which Capitol Police said they would be releasing final arrest numbers later in the afternoon.

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Senior Congressional correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Prominent Pro-Abortion Group Appears To Be Front For Radical Revolutionary Communists

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A prominent pro-abortion activist group downplaying its association with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) shares significant infrastructure and leadership with the radical outfit’s other offshoot groups, a Daily Caller analysis has found.

Although RiseUp4AbortionRights seems like most other pro-abortion groups at first glance, other pro-abortion activists released a statement in late June asserting that RiseUp is a front for a “pyramid scheme” and cult of personality. The Daily Caller’s examination of the organization’s leaders, online presence, and fundraising platforms lend credence to the claim that RiseUp is an offshoot front group for the RCP.

“Support for communism in the U.S. is incredibly low, so one way for these individuals to jump-start is to ride the coattails of something that has much more acceptability” in mainstream discussion of current political events, Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, told the Daily Caller.

RiseUp shares leadership with the RCP and several of its related organizations. Sunsara Taylor is a prominent RCP spokeswoman and a co-founder of RiseUp. Taylor founded RiseUp in January 2022 to protest for “abortion on demand and without apology.” An earlier pro-abortion group Taylor founded, Stop Patriarchy, used the same slogan and also attracted scrutiny from other pro-abortion activist organizations, the Austin Chronicle reported in 2014. Stop Patriarchy has not posted any new tweets to its Twitter feed since 2020, but the organization’s website features more recent footage of an interview in which Taylor discusses the consequences of the Dobbs decision.

Taylor also founded The World Can’t Wait, Inc., (TWCW) alongside another RCP devotee in 2006 to oppose the Bush administration, particularly its policies in the Middle East.

Taylor went on to co-found another organization, Refuse Fascism, in 2016 to resist the incoming Trump administration. At the time, the RCP took credit for helping create Refuse Fascism on its website. The “what you can do now” quick links section at the bottom of the RCP website still links directly to the Refuse Fascism homepage.

Another leading RiseUp activist, Sam Goldman, is a prominent spokeswoman for Refuse Fascism. In a Jan. 2022 episode of the Refuse Fascism podcast featured on the organization’s website, Goldman stated that she has “been busy helping launch RiseUp4AbortionRights.”

The RCP website promotes digital content from RiseUp and Refuse Fascism. Similarly, Refuse Fascism’s website features digital content from RiseUp and the RCP. All three organizations generally promote each others’ digital content on their websites without making clear the nature of their association.

On its main fundraising portal, RiseUp states that it is sharing certain “tools” with Refuse Fascism until RiseUp “establishes infrastructure” for fundraising of its own. RiseUp’s PayPal fundraising account also includes the name of TWCW. Refuse Fascism and TWCW share a New York City mailing address.

RiseUp’s website claims that the group spends donated funds on protest materials and logistics. Amid accusations of financial impropriety from other pro-abortion groups, RiseUp released a statement promising that it “has never used any funds it has raised for any purposes other than exactly what the funds were raised for.”

The RiseUp statement derided criticism of Taylor and Avakian as “scurrilous and false.” The RCP added that the accusations from other pro-abortion groups “smack strongly of the tactics of the right wing fascist forces in this country and the political police (the FBI, etc.) who create pretexts to go after revolutionary groups” in its own statement. The RCP flatly denied ever having used RiseUp funds in any capacity in its statement.

Taylor refused to say if RiseUp would submit to an independent audit of its financial dealings in order to clear up the accusations, and referred the Daily Caller to previous statements on the matter. Neither RiseUp nor the RCP disclosed documentation in response statements to definitively disprove the allegations of impropriety.

VIEW THEIR INSTAGRAM PAGE HERE

The RCP centers on Avakian’s revolutionary ideology, which RCP materials refer to as “new communism.” Critics, including those who signed the June statement against RiseUp, have claimed that the RCP is a Maoist group that elevates Avakian and his teachings as messianic. The late June statement from pro-abortion groups opposed to RiseUp asserted that the RCP established RiseUp as a front to divert funds and people towards the growth of its ideology rather than earnestly supporting the pro-abortion cause.

“There will be individuals who use this division and deep and wide disappointment with the Dobbs decision to not only stake claim with regard to abortion rights, but also to make their overall failed political worldview an attractive option” to naive demonstrators, Levin said.

RiseUp has become one of the most visible pro-abortion groups in the United States. Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined RiseUp demonstrators in protest the day of the release of Dobbs. Taylor held a megaphone to Ocasio-Cortez’s face while the congresswoman led chants calling the Supreme Court illegitimate. Several protesters, including Taylor, have been spotted and photographed wearing RCP merchandise at RiseUp demonstrations.

The group has appeared at many demonstrations across the country since its inception, and has received attention from the press and celebrities. Hillary Clinton promoted a RiseUp protest on Twitter in early May. Hollywood social justice warriors Mark Ruffalo and Rosanna Arquette have publicly supported RiseUp, according to its website. MSNBC even broadcast an interview with two young RiseUp activists.

RiseUp protesters deploy unique tactics, including smearing red paint over their private parts. They also paint green handprints over the chests of protesters wearing white. Doing so represents “a facsimile of what would happen to actual living women, hemorrhaging to death from unsafe abortions,” one RiseUp activist explained to the Daily Caller at a recent protest in front of the Supreme Court.

“These are opportunists who are trying to take advantage of people of good will who have deeply held, sincere beliefs with regard to the right to abortion,” Levin concluded.

None of the signatories of the statement in opposition to RCP that were contacted returned the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICHOLAS POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Just Days After Roe Reversal, Abortion Is Already Banned In Almost A Quarter Of America

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Barely more than 72 hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion is already illegal in roughly one-quarter of the states in America.

A number of Republican-controlled states have had “trigger” laws activated, which are laws put in place to impose restrictions on abortion in the event the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Others have moved to enact new abortion restrictions, with some banning the practice entirely.

Abortion is now outlawed in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee have enacted six-week bans, and the others have fully banned abortion, according to NPR.

Other states are poised to follow suit in the near future. Republican North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley announced Tuesday that his office had certified the overturning of Roe, and the state’s abortion ban will go into effect July 28. Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is asking courts to lift an injunction holding up the state’s heartbeat abortion ban.

“Trigger” laws are currently pending in several more states, including Idaho, Mississippi and Wyoming, and Georgia’s six-week ban is currently subject to an injunction.

Analysts expect roughly half the states in America could ultimately ban abortion entirely, or come close to doing so, now that Roe has been overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Democrats have been scrambling to find ways to maintain abortion access, and no blue states have so far implemented any new restrictions.

AUTHOR

DYLAN HOUSMAN

Healthcare reporter. Follow Dylan on Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

‘Impregnator’: Did A Democrat Rep Just Coin A New Gender-Neutral Term For Men Who Get A Woman Pregnant?

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Rep. Jackie Speier used the term “impregnator” to describe men who get women pregnant during an appearance on CNN Sunday,

“There has been nothing said about the fact that a woman doesn’t get pregnant with immaculate conception,” the California Democrat told “CNN Newsroom” host Jim Acosta. “There’s an impregnator and there’s not a word that’s been said about the responsibility of the impregnator. So for all those states that are now saying a woman can’t get an abortion, I would suggest to their legislature that they require the impregnator to put up a $350,000 bond so that this mother can take care of that child.”

The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling Friday written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito upholding a Mississippi ban on abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, effectively overturning Roe v. Wade.

Democrats have called for expanding the Supreme Court after a string of rulings that did not go their way. In addition to the Dobbs ruling, many of them decried the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down the state’s requirement that those applying for a license to carry a pistol show “good cause” to be issued a permit.

WATCH:

Speier also accused the conservative justices of lying about their position on Roe v. Wade during their respective confirmation hearings.

“There’s no question they lied, and they did that under oath,” Speier said. “So, there should be consequences, I agree with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, and I think that we need to look at ways of making them pay.”

Speier hinted that impeachment would be difficult due to what she said was a requirement for a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The Constitution states a two-thirds vote is only required for conviction in the Senate, and a majority vote is required in the House of Representatives.

Speier did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.