Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sparked outrage Sunday, calling for the investigation and possible impeachment of members of the Supreme Court after justices issued a series of landmark rulings with which she disagreed.
“If … Chief Justice John Roberts will not come before Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe that we should be considering subpoenas,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
She also called for consideration to be given to ‘impeachment’, despite it being completely unnecessary and unconstitutional due to the justices upholding their constitutional duties in making these decisions.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week on a number of cases, including student loan forgiveness, affirmative action in college admissions, and freedom of speech and religion for business owners – all decisions that were met with opposition from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic Socialist views.
Specifically, she was displeased with SCOTUS ruling that President Biden did not have the authority to unilaterally cancel student loans via the HEROES Act – bizarrely claiming such a decision represented an ‘expansion’ of power by the high court.
The representative, who said she still owes student loans, was furious with the Court’s decision to end President Biden’s plan to remove some of the debt from some borrowers.
But she was also furious with the president himself for not wanting to pack the court as she, and other progressives, have suggested.
“I truly do. And this is not a new – this is not a new development in history. This is part of our system of checks and balances. The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, it would be dangerous authoritarian expansion of power,” she said.
“In the Supreme Court, (they) are overturning abortion, that signals a dangerous, in fact, we have members of the court themselves, with justice Elena Kagan, saying that the court is beginning to assume the power of a legislature,” she said.
She asserted that Justice Clarence Thomas had violated the law by refusing to recuse himself from certain cases, even though no such law governs Supreme Court Justices.
“Where we see members of the Supreme Court potentially breaking the law, as we saw with the refusal of Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases implicating his wife in January 6,” she said before saying, “there also must be impeachment on the table.”
There is a law that does apply to federal judges recusing themselves in cases where their can even be the appearance of a conflict of interest, though it usually applies to judges who have financial interests in the parties involved in a case, the final arbiter of that would be the Supreme Court.
It is clear that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez believes President Biden has complete control over taxpayers’ money through his Secretary of Education; however, as Bash pointed out during their interview, it is actually up to Congress to make such changes – something AOC conveniently forgot when politicizing SCOTUS’ decision.
During the conversation about SCOTUS striking down affirmative action in college admissions between Thomas and Brown Jackson – both black – Ocasio-Cortez characterized Justice Clarence Thomas as being “profoundly disrespectful” towards Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
When asked by Bash about President Biden’s stance opposing court packing on MSNBC Thursday night, AOC seized the opportunity to further her own agenda by claiming an expansion of power from SCOTUS would lead to an “undemocratic and dangerous authoritarian expansion of power”.
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.
