Biden leads Democrats in ‘MAGA’ attacks on conservative court rulings

President Joe Biden and his deputies began this focus after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, especially zeroing in on Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, which went further than the majority in a way that could be portrayed as a threat to liberal precedents beyond abortion. The court also rebuffed the administration on guns, environmental regulation, and multiple pandemic-related policies.

But Biden’s team has started to extend this critique to lower courts, tying rulings they oppose to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and former President Donald Trump, as well as other Republican elected officials involved in legal challenges to liberal policies.

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When a Republican appointee-dominated panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program shielding certain illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children from deportation, was unlawful, the White House issued a Biden statement denouncing the ruling.

“The court’s stay provides a temporary reprieve for DACA recipients, but one thing remains clear: The lives of Dreamers remain in limbo,” Biden said Wednesday. “Today’s decision is the result of continued efforts by Republican state officials to strip DACA recipients of the protections and work authorization that many have now held for over a decade.”

“My administration is committed to defending Dreamers against attacks from Republican officials in Texas and other States,” he continued. “This challenge to DACA is just another example of the extreme agenda being pushed by MAGA Republican officials.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre opened Tuesday’s press briefing with a report decrying “the onslaught of radical and dangerous actions from Republican officials since the Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] decision,” which overturned Roe and the constitutional right to abortion. She included a “court decision to reinstate an extreme abortion ban that sends … Arizona women back to 1864.”

“These extreme abortion bans also have consequences that extend beyond abortion, including reports of women being denied prescriptions at pharmacies to treat miscarriage and conditions like arthritis and cancer — and threats to contraception, including for college students as well,” she said.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a White House event later that day marking 100 days following the Dobbs decision.

“When the Dobbs decision came down, I said — and Justice Thomas warned us very plainly — that this wouldn’t stop with a woman’s right to choose and it would extend to the right to privacy itself in things like contraception,” Biden said.

But the criticism of conservative judges doesn’t stop with Dobbs.

“The president has been very clear about these extreme decisions that the Supreme Court has been making,” Jean-Pierre said in July, “not just on Roe but on [West Virginia v.] EPA and other decisions that have come down most recently. This is another one that you’re talking about in October. The president has also been clear that we have to take action, that Americans have to make sure that they take their voices to the ballot box.”

Conservatives have complained about Democrats delegitimizing the courts.

“When Democrats attack the courts, they destabilize a key part of the progressive strategy,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “Without the courts, they have nothing.”

“We have a Senate right now that has a majority leader who stood on the steps of the Supreme Court two years ago shrieking like a lunatic threats at Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) previously told the Washington Examiner, referring to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

DACA is one of Biden’s more popular immigration policies, as it benefits a sympathetic subset of undocumented immigrants few actually want to support. But the program was created through executive action rather than legislation, making it also one of the legally shakiest.

Seeking to bolster flagging Hispanic support, other Democrats weighed in on DACA. “The Fifth Circuit decision holding that DACA is unlawful is deeply disappointing,” Harris tweeted. “It is a direct result of ongoing efforts by certain Republican officials to strip DACA recipients of protections they’ve had for over a decade.”

Some Democrats on the ballot this year went further in connecting the DACA ruling to Republicans and their court appointees.

“The 5th Circuit’s ruling threatens DACA and it’s the direct result of McConnell stacking the courts. Even with DACA in jeopardy, McConnell will do everything he can to stop the Senate from protecting DREAMers,” tweeted Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), who is locked in one of the tight races that will decide the chamber’s majority. “It’s time for my Republican colleagues to show some spine.”

Trump and McConnell worked together to nominate and confirm conservative judges at all levels of the federal judiciary. State-level Republican elected officials spearheaded the DACA challenge.

Still, there are concerns making the broader case against conservative judges could detract from the laserlike focus on abortion.

“Democrats should keep their eyes on the prize, which is the SCOTUS decision to end reproductive freedom for millions of women,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “The nullification of Roe v. Wade turned a walk in the park for the GOP into a street fight between the two parties.”

“The accusations about Herschel Walker have just added fuel to the fire created by Dobbs,” he added, referring to the Republican nominee in a pivotal Senate race in Georgia. Herschel Walker faces accusations of paying for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion.

Some of the progressive complaints about the Supreme Court bear a striking resemblance to conservative proposals to hamstring liberal justices’ power in the past. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for stripping the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, same-sex marriage, and other issues, just as figures on the Right like Pat Buchanan once proposed to curb decisions such as Roe.

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Gallup in August found that Democrats’ confidence in the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority including three Trump nominees, is at a record low of 13%. But Dobbs is clearly the biggest factor.

“Attacks on other federal court decisions turn a simple, compelling issue into a complicated message,” Bannon said.