(NewsNation) — Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson criticized President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court reform proposals as unconstitutional and potentially authoritarian.
Carson, on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live,” reiterated his op-ed in the Washington Examiner that Biden’s efforts to overhaul the court “a naked attempt to overhaul a court that refuses to do the President’s bidding” and are “a hallmark of authoritarian regimes everywhere.”
Last week, Biden said that “extremism” on the Supreme Court is undermining public confidence in the institution and called on Congress to quickly establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices.
Carson, a former Republican presidential candidate, expressed particular concern over Biden’s proposal to eliminate broad immunity for presidents.
“If you have that, then you can intimidate the president into doing your bidding,” Carson said. “They will never, ever want to go against those who can put them in jail or bankrupt them.”
Biden is calling for doing away with lifetime appointments to the court. He says Congress should pass legislation to establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court.
He argued term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and “reduce the chance that any single president imposes undue influence for generations to come.”
While opposing term limits for justices, Carson suggested annual mental status exams for Supreme Court justices and other high-ranking government officials. He argued this would address cognitive decline concerns without compromising judicial independence.
Biden also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a court code of ethics that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.
Carson also called Biden’s focus on Supreme Court ethics “incredibly rich” and “hypocritical” given allegations surrounding the president’s family.
“Our founders were very intelligent men,” Carson said. “They studied every governmental system that ever existed, and they extracted the good things and left the bad things out.”
Biden, who has less than six months left in his presidency, has little chance of seeing his proposals approved by a closely divided Congress with 99 days to go before Election Day.
Biden pointed to the 2013 high court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and rolling back abortion rights, and a 2023 decision “eviscerating” affirmative action in college admission programs as three prime examples of what he saw as “outrageous” decisions that have shaken Americans’ faith in the high court.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
