JOE: KILL FILIBUSTER TO GET ‘ROE’
President Biden made an extraordinary attack on the Supreme Court during a news conference in Madrid on Thursday, accusing the judiciary of “outrageous behavior” in overturning Roe v. Wade last week — before adding that he supported Senate Democrats changing the 60-vote filibuster to codify abortion rights.
“The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden told reporters at the conclusion of this week’s NATO summit in Spain. “And overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy. We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights. And it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court [to] do what it did.
“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure that the Congress votes to do that,” Biden later said. “And if the filibuster gets in the way . . . we provide an exception for this.”
Republicans slammed Biden for casting aside the historical mantra that “politics stops at the water’s edge” to attack the court.
“Attacking a core American institution like the Supreme Court from the world stage is below the dignity of the president,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “Beyond that, President Biden’s attacks on the court are unmerited and dangerous. He’s upset
that the court said the people, through their elected representatives, will have a say on abortion policy. That does not destabilize democracy — it affirms it. By contrast, it is behavior like the president’s that undermines equal justice and the rule of law.
“It’s unthinkable for the president to attack a co-equal branch of government in front of NATO. This is not leadership and undermines our authority on the world stage,” tweeted Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).
Democrats tried once before to enshrine the right to an abortion in federal law but failed to do so before the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24.
In that ruling, the court upheld a Mississippi law prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy and found that the final say over whether abortion should be legal rests with the states. Following the decision, a number of states implemented so-called “trigger laws” that banned or restricted abortion with immediate effect.
When Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News later pressed the president on his support for changing the filibuster, Biden clarified that the change was meant to enshrine the “right to privacy, not just abortion rights.”
“But yes, abortion rights,” the president added.
Two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have opposed changing the chamber’s legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most bills — almost an impossible ask in the 50-50 Senate.
A Manchin spokesperson told The Post on Thursday that the senator’s position on the filibuster “has not changed.”
‘Nuclear option’
Sinema’s office directed The Post to an op-ed the senator wrote in June of last year in which she asked: “To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to expand health-care access . . . would it be good for our country if we did, only to later see that legislation replaced by legislation . . . defunding women’s reproductive-health services?”
At least two Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — favor legal access to abortion, but neither has endorsed doing away with the 60-vote rule.
Biden last year spoke out against changing Senate rules, saying it would “throw the entire Congress into chaos.” However, he later threw his support behind altering the filibuster in January to pass two sweeping election-reform bills. That effort failed when Manchin and Sinema voted against the so-called “nuclear option.”
Before wrapping up the news conference, Biden appealed to voters to express their dissatisfaction with the ruling at the ballot box. Fellow Democrats have tried to use the abortion ruling to stave off what has appeared to be a Republican wave in November spurred by public anger at the
worst inflation since 1981. “I feel extremely strongly that I’m going to do everything in my power which I legally can do in terms of executive orders as well as push the Congress and the public,” Biden said.
“The bottom line here is if you care . . . and you think this decision by the court was an outrage or a significant mistake, vote, show up and vote. Vote in the off year and vote, vote, vote. That’s how we’ll change it.”
The statement was an echo of Biden’s initial remarks following Friday’s ruling, in which he said: “This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty and equality — they are all on the ballot.”
The White House has also said it will fight to ensure that women retain access in all states to FDA-approved medications that can cause an abortion and to ensure that women can travel from more restrictive to less-restrictive states for the procedure.
Although Biden said last week that the decision “casts a dark shadow over large swaths of the land,” as a senator he actually voted in 1982 for the same outcome via a proposed constitutional amendment that would have returned abortion policy to states. At the time, Biden cited his Catholic upbringing.