WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday introduced legislation reaffirming that presidents do not have immunity from criminal prosecution, in an attempt to reverse the Supreme Court’s landmark decision from last month.
What is Chuck Schumer’s bill – Telemundo Washington DC (44)
Schumer’s No Kings bill would attempt to invalidate the decision by declaring that presidents are not immune from criminal law and clarifying that Congress, not the Supreme Court, determines to whom federal criminal law applies.
The court’s conservative majority decided July 1 that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their official duties, a decision that called into question the Justice Department’s case against former Republican President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Schumer, of New York, said Congress has an obligation and constitutional authority to check the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Given the dangerous and consequential implications of the court’s ruling, legislation would be the quickest and most efficient method to correct the grave precedent that Trump’s ruling presented,” he said.
The Senate bill, which has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors, comes after President Joe Biden called on lawmakers earlier this week to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity, along with establishing term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., recently proposed a constitutional amendment in the House.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision stunned Washington and prompted strong dissent from the court’s liberal justices, who warned of the dangers to democracy, particularly as Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Trump celebrated the decision as a “HUGE WIN” on his social media platform, and Republicans in Congress joined him. Without GOP support, Schumer’s bill has little chance of passing in the closely divided chamber.
Speaking about Biden’s proposal, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Biden’s proposal would “shred the Constitution.”
A constitutional amendment would be even harder to pass. Such a resolution requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate — highly unlikely in this time of divided government — and ratification by three-quarters of the states. That process could take several years.
Still, Democrats see the proposals as a warning to the court and an effort that will rally their voter base ahead of the presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who will face off against Trump in the November election, announced earlier this week that the reforms are necessary because “there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.”
The title of Schumer’s bill recalls Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the case, in which she commented that “in every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
The decision “makes a mockery of the principle, fundamental to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law,” Sotomayor argued.
In the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that “our constitutional structure of separated powers — the nature of presidential power — grants the former president absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”
But Roberts insisted that the president “is not above the law.”
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