Biden warns that Trump could select two more Supreme Court justices if re-elected

President Joe Biden warned Saturday night about the possibility that former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, would nominate two new justices to the Supreme Court if he is reelected in November.

“The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees — two more,” Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles, adding that Trump has already nominated two justices who are “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals ”.

“I think that’s one of the scariest parts,” Biden said.

Biden’s comments came during a campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles, where he appeared alongside former President Barack Obama, actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts and comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

The president participated in a discussion at the fundraiser with Kimmel and Obama that touched on a range of political issues. Kimmel noted that nearly two years ago, conservative justices appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court played a key role in overturning Roe v. Wade. Wade, the historic decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to access to abortion.

“These threats to abortion rights, women’s rights, and even birth control and in vitro fertilization are no longer in our liberal imagination. They are very real, and these decisions, these very personal and intimate decisions, are now being made by nine unelected judges – one of whom flies his flag upside down. One of the others brings a $267,000 holiday gift,” Kimmel said, referring to the controversies surrounding conservative Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have come under scrutiny for previously undisclosed trips by a Republican mega-donor. .

“And I think we’re all asking ourselves: What can we do about this?” Kimmel asked.

“Elect me again,” Biden said, adding that the Supreme Court “has never been as unbalanced as it is today” and that Trump would “nominate two more flags flying upside down,” referring to the recent scrutiny Alito has faced over reporting of an inverted flag that flew outside his home in early 2021.

Some Trump supporters who were at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, flew an American flag upside down during the attack amid the then-president’s baseless claims of a fraudulent 2020 election and his refusal to concede.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he would not investigate Alito for the alleged upside-down flags hanging outside his properties, but urged the conservative justice to step aside from two pending cases involving Trump and the 6. January. , 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Alito refused to recuse himself after being criticized over reports of upside-down flags flying on his private property. In letters to members of Congress last month, Alito maintained that it was his wife who decided to fly the contentious flags on his property.

Chief Justice John Roberts also rejected a request for a meeting with Democratic senators to discuss Supreme Court ethics in light of reports about the controversial flags flying at Alito’s residences.