Supreme Court in a rare summer spotlight

Jul 29, 2024

Presented by

THE CATCH-UP

The Supreme Court building is seen on Friday, June 28, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Joe Biden’s big reform proposals today call for 18-year term limits and a binding ethical code for the Supreme Court. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

The dog days of summer are typically a quiet time for the Supreme Court. But today, the justices are back in the spotlight, thanks to President JOE BIDEN and fresh reporting that casts some of their biggest decisions from this term in a new light.

Biden’s big reform proposals today call for 18-year term limits and a binding ethical code for the court, along with an end to blanket criminal immunity for presidents in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision protecting Oval Office occupants from prosecution, as Reuters outlines. Though the latter was precipitated by very recent events — he was on the phone with LAURENCE TRIBE within an hour of the immunity ruling — Biden’s ideas constitute a striking change for a president who’d long resisted progressive calls for fundamental court reforms.

They also reflect how much the court’s conservative supermajority has shifted jurisprudence to the right during Biden’s tenure, WaPo’s Tyler Pager reports — and the political upside Democrats see here in highlighting the ethical questions around Justice CLARENCE THOMAS.

But for now at least, Democrats are just dreaming (or messaging). Either Supreme Court change would require some congressional Republicans to sign on, and a constitutional amendment on immunity would have to go through state legislatures, too.

Conservative condemnation of the ideas this morning was swift and intense: Speaker MIKE JOHNSON called it a “dangerous” attempt to erode the rule of law. LEONARD LEO said Democrats just want to “destroy a court that they disagree with,” and that serious ethics reform should apply to all branches of government. The DONALD TRUMP campaign called it court-packing, and quickly tied it to VP KAMALA HARRIS.

Harris did say she supported the proposal today, as did Senate Judiciary Chair DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.), with both calling the changes essential to ensure ethical behavior and reaffirm that no one is above the law. (Democrats are also still stung by MITCH McCONNELL snatching away a Supreme Court seat from MERRICK GARLAND in 2016.) Biden’s speech today at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, amounts to a pivot to focusing on his legacy during his final half-year in office, AP’s Colleen Long notes.

As the legal community has digested Chief Justice JOHN ROBERTS’ immunity ruling over the past month, critics have increasingly pointed out that several of its features are very similar to the Roe v. Wade decision these same justices overturned, NYT’s Adam Liptak reports. They include a lack of explicit textual grounding in the Constitution and a multi-part test for enforcement newly created by the justices — the same types of concerns that laid the groundwork for the Dobbs ruling.

In the juiciest piece of Supreme Court reportage today — and what we’re told is the first of multiple installments this week — CNN’s Joan Biskupic pulls back the curtain on the court’s somewhat surprising decision to limit Idaho’s abortion ban. Though the conservatives decided to let Idaho enforce the law temporarily in January on a 6-3 vote, the balance of power shifted after oral arguments, and Roberts took the rare step of not assigning the opinion to any justice. Justice AMY CONEY BARRETT, along with Roberts and Justice BRETT KAVANAUGH, ultimately came to see the decision to take up the case as a mistake.

Then came liberal Justices ELENA KAGAN and SONIA SOTOMAYOR, who “were ready to negotiate, but with caveats” — since they now had unusual leverage. The five of these justices struck a compromise that “gave liberals and the Biden administration a rare win. In Idaho, it preserved some abortion access. But the question of whether federal law supersedes state law will inevitably return.”

Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.

A message from Wells Fargo:

Wells Fargo is proud of the role we play for our customers, communities and the U.S. economy. We serve 1 in 3 U.S. households and more than 10% of small businesses in the nation. We serve customers digitally and in-person, with 4,000 locations across the country, operating in 24 of the 30 largest markets. We cover more rural markets than many large banks, and nearly 30% of our branches are in low- or moderate-income census tracts. See how.

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

ST CLOUD, MINNESOTA - JULY 27: U.S. Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota. Trump hopes to flip the state of Minnesota this November, which hasn't been carried by a Republican in a presidential election since 1972. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

The FBI said Donald Trump has agreed to sit down for a routine victim interview with investigators. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

1. ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT FALLOUT: Speaking out for the first time, the leaders of the Beaver County, Pennsylvania, SWAT team tell ABC’s Sasha Pezenik, Jack Feeley and Josh Margolin there was a breakdown between the different security entities at Trump’s Butler rally. “They said they saw the problem coming, and they tried to alert the people in charge and sound the alarm.”

In its latest update, the FBI said Trump has agreed to sit down for a routine victim interview with investigators, per NBC’s Ryan Reilly. They also said they’ve determined that THOMAS CROOKS started shooting within half a minute of a police officer encountering him on the roof. And there’s still no clear motive, though they identified him as a “highly intelligent” “loner.”

2. SCRUTINIZING HARRIS’ RECORD: When Harris was serving as California AG, a progressive criminal justice revolution swept through the state — but she often stepped aside from weighing in on the hottest-ticket ballot measures, Jeremy White and Emily Schultheis report from Sacramento. Instead, she repeatedly opted for caution, pragmatism and neutrality, despite pressure from both her left and her right.

Nonetheless, Harris’ record on crime (especially given her own emphasis on her prosecutorial experience) is now coming to the forefront of some Republican criticism of her. And one victim of a 2008 attack, who had her skull fractured by an undocumented immigrant who’d been released by Harris, speaks out against her to ABC’s Lucien Bruggeman and Mike Levine: Harris presenting herself as tough on crime is “laughable,” AMANDA KIEFER says.

Harris is also in the hot seat early in her presidential campaign over the Israel-Hamas war, where she’s once again trying to stake out middle ground amid intense criticism from conservative and progressives, Blake Jones, Sally Goldenberg, Eugene and Shia Kapos report.

As for her time in national politics, NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt and Riley Rogerson talked with Harris’ former Senate colleagues in the GOP and found that they largely had positive experiences with her on a personal level — though they oppose her on policy. On the other hand, the Des Moines Register’s Brianne Pfannenstiel and Stephen Gruber-Miller dive deep into what went wrong with her 2020 presidential bid, when voters liked her warmth and personal authenticity but recoiled from her sometimes mealy-mouthed approach on key issues.

Pro Briefing: Kamala Harris and the World. What we expect on foreign policy and trade. Join POLITICO Pro for a deep-dive conversation with our specialist reporters about the vice president’s approach to foreign policy. Register Now.

3. DEMOCRACY WATCH: “A half-million records and one app: The group behind a massive effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls,” by CNN’s Curt Devine, Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Kyung Lah: “Election officials across the country have been inundated with dubious complaints about inaccurate voter rolls, which have wasted government resources and sapped taxpayer money spent reviewing lists of registered voters that officials say are already care fully maintained … One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories.”

4. JUST VANCE: Harris’ team sees Sen. JD VANCE (R-Ohio) as a new opening to attack the Trump campaign, not just criticizing his newly viral comments but questioning whether he should be “a heartbeat away from the presidency,” CNN’s Isaac Dovere reports. That also conveniently places an emphasis on Trump’s age. And contrasting with Vance is top of mind as Harris selects a running mate.

On the flip side, a pair of interesting stories today take seriously Vance’s political and personal transformations — and the substance beneath his controversial statements. WaPo’s Michelle Boorstein considers Vance’s conversion to Catholicism in his 30s, drawn to its theological stability and teachings in a chaotic world, like many young conservatives are these days. And WSJ’s Greg Ip and Janet Adamy examine Vance’s serious concerns about childlessness. He has worried for years about America’s low fertility rates, arguing that they’re rooted partly in housing struggles and a lack of patriotism — and that they worsen social isolation and economic growth.

5. I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER: “The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally,” by The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins: “[T]he prayers offered before Trump speaks illuminate this perilous moment in American politics just as well as anything he says from the podium. And they help explain how the stakes of this year’s election have come to feel so apocalyptically high. … The premise of all of these prayers is that America’s covenant can be reestablished, and its special place in God’s kingdom restored, if the nation repents and turns back to him. … [T]hese ideas have long percolated on the religious right. What’s new is how many Christians now seem convinced that God has anointed a specific leader.”

The space economy is already woven into our lives in ways we don't always appreciate, creating a global backbone for communications, media, data, science and defense. It's also becoming an increasingly competitive zone among nations - and a venue for complex and important public-private partnerships. Join POLITICO on July 30 for a conversation about what Washington needs to understand is at stake – which sectors of the global economy see their growth arc in space, and what the role of government leaders is in both growing and regulating the explosion of orbital ideas. REGISTER HERE.

PLAYBOOKERS

Katie Porter says Kamala Harris was a good boss.

Josh Shapiro’s support for private-school vouchers is under scrutiny.

Bill Pascrell is doing better.

Ben Cardin caught a foul ball.

IN MEMORIAM — “James C. Scott, Iconoclastic Social Scientist, Dies at 87,” by NYT’s Trip Gabriel: “In influential books, he questioned top-down government programs and extolled the power of the powerless, embracing a form of anarchism.”

MEDIA MOVE — Rebecca Klar will join Bloomberg Law to cover the EEOC and workplace discrimination. She currently covers tech policy for The Hill.

WEEKEND WEDDING — David Wright, a CNN Politics reporter/producer, and Natalie Lylo, an MSNBC coordinating producer, got married Saturday on Great Diamond Island, Maine. A lone wild turkey crashed the ceremony. The couple met at CNN in 2015.

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.

Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.