Biden's coming court conundrum

From: POLITICO West Wing Playbook - Monday May 17,2021 11:05 pm
May 17, 2021 View in browser
 
West Wing Playbook

By Theodoric Meyer

With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne

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President JOE BIDEN’s Supreme Court commission is set to meet for the first time on Wednesday, starting a clock that will require it to produce a report on reforming the court by Nov. 15.

Some of the most ardent advocates of expanding the nation’s highest court couldn’t be less excited.

“It’s not even on my calendar, because I don’t care,” said BRIAN FALLON, the executive director of Demand Justice, which has called for adding four seats to the Supreme Court and imposing term limits on the justices.

Biden pledged to set up the commission during the 2020 campaign under pressure from progressives who have pushed to expand the court after the death of Justice RUTH BADER GINSBURG. President DONALD TRUMP filled Ginsburg’s seat with a conservative justice, tipping the balance on the nine-person court.

Fallon and others have complained that a commission will only put out a report, not make recommendations, and that some of its members are conservatives opposed to court expansion.

“There’s nothing that they can do that’s going to impress me,” Fallon said. “The whole thing is doomed from the start.”

AARON BELKIN, the director of Take Back the Court, which advocates adding additional justices to rebalance the Supreme Court “after its 2016 theft” — a reference to Republicans’ refusal to give President BARACK OBAMA’s nominee MERRICK GARLAND a hearing in Obama’s final year in office — said he wouldn’t be watching the commission’s first meeting closely, either.

“I would say I have high hopes and very low expectations,” he said.

Reached for comment, the White House pointed out that some progressives as well as conservatives had also praised the commission.

The ambivalence on the left to Biden’s court commission came into sharper relief today after the Supreme Court announced that it would hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi abortion rights case that could imperil Roe v. Wade. The announcement added even more urgency to progressives’ push to convince Biden to back a Supreme Court revamp — as well as to the campaign to get Justice STEPHEN BREYER to retire.

At 82, Breyer is the oldest justice by a decade. (For his part, Breyer, who questioned the idea of expanding the court in a speech at Harvard Law School last month, is set to release a book in September on “how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it.)

Demand Justice has been pressing Breyer to retire for months so Biden can nominate a younger successor. Even some Democratic senators have privately said they’d prefer to see Breyer step down, though they’re been reluctant to speak out on the record.

If recent history is any indication, Breyer might not be going anywhere this year.

When Justice DAVID SOUTER stepped down in 2009, he announced his retirement on May 1; Justice JOHN PAUL STEVENS, who retired the next year, made an announcement in April. Just two of the past six justices to retire from the court — ANTHONY KENNEDY and SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR — announced their decisions later in the court’s term.

“The odds are looking slimmer and slimmer as the days and weeks and months go by,” ARTEMUS WARD , the author of “Deciding to Leave: The Politics of Retirement From the United States Supreme Court,” said in an interview.

Fallon argued the Mississippi case has made it even more crucial to replace Breyer, however.

“We oughta have a Black woman on the damn court to hear a case like this,” he said, since women of color will be disproportionately affected by the court’s ruling. Biden has promised to make history by nominating a Black woman justice if a spot on the court opens up.

Take Back the Court is less concerned with pushing Breyer to retire and more focused on convincing Democratic lawmakers that expanding the Supreme Court is a viable idea. Ironically, support for court expansion could grow if the court eviscerates abortion rights.

“Today we have a JOE MANCHIN problem,” Belkin said, referring to the West Virginian who is one of many Democratic senators opposed to expanding the Supreme Court. “But what will the politics look like when the court destroys Roe v. Wade?”

“The politics are continuing to shift rapidly and there is a path to expansion,” he added.

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PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA

With the Partnership for Public Service

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — how many members of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community have been both members of a presidential Cabinet and state governors?

(Answer is at the bottom.)

The Oval

TAX DAY — The president and vice president released their 2020 tax returns on Monday, resuming a decades-long tradition by those holding the offices, BEN LEONARD and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO report.

Biden and first lady JILL BIDEN reported $607,336 in adjusted gross income and more than $157,000 in federal tax paid — an effective federal tax rate of 25.9 percent. Harris and second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF reported nearly $1.7 million in adjusted gross income, with $621,893 in federal tax paid — an effective federal tax rate of 36.7 percent.

Biden’s income dropped significantly from 2019, when he reported more than $985,233 in adjusted gross income.

Agenda Setting

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE? The Biden administration would like Israelis and Palestinians to “calm” down. Ideally, a “sustainable calm” that comes because the two sides “deescalate tensions” and bring a “halt to the violence,” writes NAHAL TOOSI.

But what about “peace” or “peace talks”? Not so much.

THE BUREAUCRATS

SHAKE UP AT THE CDC — Top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official ANNE SCHUCHAT is planning to step down from her role as the agency's principal deputy director this summer, the agency confirmed to ADAM CANCRYN and ERIN BANCO.

Schuchat's retirement would be the CDC's second high-profile departure in the past month, after longtime senior scientist NANCY MESSONNIER said in early May she also planned to leave.

Advise and Consent

MARK YOUR CALENDARS Tomorrow, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Gen. PAUL LaCAMERA, Biden’s nominee to be commander of the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea.

The Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing with CHRISTOPHER FONZONE, Biden’s pick to be general counsel of the office of the director of national intelligence, and BRETT HOLMGREN to be assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research.

What We're Reading

Biden administration approved $735 million arms sale to Israel - sources (Reuters’ Patricia Zengerle)

What Kamala Harris has learned about being vice president (The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere)

Biden is developing a pardon process with a focus on racial justice (The New York Times’ Kenneth P. Vogel and Annie Karni)

The human cost of Biden’s travel ban on India (Vox’s Nicole Narea)

Where's Joe

He traveled from Delaware to Washington, D.C., accompanied by White House deputy chief of staff BRUCE REED, homeland security adviser RUSSELL TRAVERS and special assistant to the president STEPHEN GOEPFERT.

Later, he delivered remarks regarding coronavirus and vaccine progress in the East Room.

He also spoke to Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU and “encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians,” according to a White House readout of the call.

Where's Kamala

She met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the Ceremonial Office.

Reps. RAUL RUIZ (D-Calif.), LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD (D-Calif.), ALBIO SIRES (D-N.J.), JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-Texas), NORMA TORRES (D-Calif.), VICENTE GONZÁLEZ (D-Calif.), NANETTE BARRAGÁN (D-Calif.) and SYLVIA GARCIA (D-Texas) were in attendance.

The Oppo Book

Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO is pretty tough — in college, she played on the Harvard-Radcliffe Rugby Football Club team.

She told the Providence Journal back in 2015 that because of her small stature she played scrum-half, a position usually given to the smallest player on the team, so they can weave across the field quickly and tactfully.

Her rugby days weren’t over after Harvard: She also played on a club team at Oxford University in England (the original home of rugby) when she was a Rhodes scholar.

And it seems she has some strong feelings about the comparison of rugby to American football.

“We always felt football was for wusses,” she said in 2015 , at the rivalry football game between Brown and the University of Rhode Island. Rugby players played with “no pads. Nothing,” she noted.

We’d love to see how Raimondo handles a reporter scrum… Do we need to wear mouthguards??

HELP US OUT — It's been interesting digging through memoirs and college newspaper clips about Biden administration officials. But we want your help, too. Got a story — that’s potentially embarrassing but not too mean or serious — you think we should use for an "Oppo Book" item? Email us transitiontips@politico.com.

Trivia Answer

Two. GARY LOCKE served as Washington’s governor and later as Commerce secretary in the Obama administration, and NIKKI HALEY served as South Carolina’s governor and then as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration.

We want your tips, but we also want your feedback as we transition to West Wing Playbook. What should be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know.

Edited by Emily Cadei

 

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