STATE POLS BLAST ‘ILLEGITIMATE,’ ‘OUT OF CONTROL’ SUPREME COURT
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey further ratcheted up the rhetoric around the U.S. Supreme Court, slamming the body as “illegitimate” and “out of control.”
“We need to repeal the filibuster so that we can expand the Supreme Court to reclaim the two stolen seats on a now illegitimate court, which are stealing the rights of American people,” Markey, the junior senator from Massachusetts, proclaimed at an event in Boston on Tuesday.
Warren too called for an end to the filibuster, saying, “The United States Supreme Court is out of control, and Congress needs to react quickly.”
“We have an out-of-control Supreme Court,” Warren, the Bay State’s senior senator and a former presidential candidate, reiterated. “They have torched their own credibility.”
The two Democrats were speaking at an event in Boston about federal environmental resiliency grants in South Boston when they were prompted to speak about the nation’s highest court. The political left is furious at the body, which overturned the five-decadeold Roe v. Wade abortion precedent last week, ruling that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.
The court has been a flashpoint over the past several years, first after Republicans didn’t allow a vote on former President Barack Obama’s pick to fill an election-year vacancy in 2016 and then during the highly fraught hearings and accusations around the appointment of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh by then-President Donald Trump.
Trump’s appointment just weeks before the 2020 election of now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cemented a strong conservative majority, with now six of nine justices appointed by Republicans.
The way individual justices vote is often not that simple to predict, but the 6-3 majority struck down Roe, a precedent that the right has railed against for decades.
Protests from the left have broken out over the past several days against the verdict, which has led to calls like those of progressives Warren and Markey to make major structural changes.
As for the topic of abortion itself, little changes in Massachusetts, where it’s is legal under state law.