Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Disastrous Decisions Announced By The MAGA Supreme Court That Threaten American Democracy
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor one week after the MAGA Supreme Court announced decisions that could fundamentally undermine core premises of our democracy. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
American democracy stands today at a perilous crossroads.
One week ago, the six conservative Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court undermined the most basic premise of our constitutional order, that no one – no one – is above the law.
They incorrectly declared that former President Donald Trump enjoys broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office.
They incorrectly declared that all future presidents are entitled to a breathtaking level of immunity, so long as their conduct is ostensibly carried out in their official capacity as president.
They incorrectly declared, in effect, the same thing Richard Nixon told David Frost in 1977. Nixon said, “when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” That’s what the Court, in effect, was saying.
We were all taught in grade school that there are no kings here in America, but what the conservative Justices have done is effectively place a crown on Donald Trump’s head.
In their judgment, the president is now free to behave however he likes – even to behave criminally – and as long as he argues that he was acting as president, he is in many ways untouchable.
The conservative majority’s decision on immunity is a most un-American proposition, the very antithesis of what the framers envisioned. Presidential immunity is nowhere to be found in the Constitution and this lawless ruling underscores just how hollow the conservative Justices’ commitment to originalism truly is.
We Democrats will not let the Supreme Court’s decision stand unaddressed. The Constitution makes plain that Congress has the authority to check the judiciary through appropriate legislation.
I will work with my colleagues on legislation classifying Trump’s election-subversion acts as unofficial acts not subject to immunity. We’re doing this because we believe that in America, no president should be free to overturn an election against the will of the people, no matter what the conservative Justices may believe.
As we work on this important matter, we’ll also keep working on other proposals to reassert Congress’ Article I authority to rein in the abuses of our federal judiciary. The American people are tired – just tired – of Justices who think they are beyond accountability.
Now, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States is just the finishing touch on one of the most destructive Supreme Court terms in modern history.
A few days before ruling on presidential immunity, the MAGA Court also upended forty years of precedent by overturning the Chevron doctrine. In doing so, they have potentially turned the federal government upside down in a dangerous way, declaring that judges now know better than agency experts on matters ranging from student loans, to Medicare, to AI, to climate change, to Net Neutrality, and so much more.
From now on, anytime there is a shred of legislative ambiguity, any time Congress didn’t explicitly anticipate every conceivable scenario for how agencies should apply complex policy, judges are now free to impose their own views, even if they don’t know a lick about the policy in question, even though they are the unelected branch in government.
It is impossible for the Congress to think of every possible scenario, so either you have subject matter experts in the Administration making a judgment call or have unelected judges making a judgment call. That was the whole point of the Chevron doctrine: to give administrative subject matter experts some deference. The MAGA Court’s annihilation of the Chevron doctrine is their latest and most dangerous attempt to side with powerful special interests against the wishes of the middle class and to come up with new legal theory to suit their ideological needs and overturn decades of well-accepted precedent.
And these cases are just the start. In the last few months, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court also has upheld racial gerrymandering in South Carolina – can you imagine? They allowed the criminalization of homelessness, struck down a commonsense ban on bump-stocks, defanged the EPA’s ability to regulate against air pollution, and so much more.
It all points to a clear, growing, disturbing trend emerging out of the Supreme Court. It is plain as day – plain as day – this MAGA majority is hell-bent on siphoning power away from the electorate and from the other branches in order to reshape America in their ultra-conservative and extreme vision.
So, I will repeat what I said at the top of my remarks: American democracy now stands at a crossroads. The MAGA Court’s disastrous rulings are the clearest illustration of why elections have consequences. And this year, the American people will choose between two vastly different visions for our country.
If Donald Trump returns to the oval office, if Republicans retake control of Congress, the disastrous rulings coming out of the Supreme Court will just be the start. The chaos we saw on January 6th will just be the start. If they get the chance, Donald Trump and the MAGA right will plunge our country into an abyss of extremism the vast majority of Americans oppose and which America has really never seen.
Nowhere else is this contrast between Democrats and Republicans as clear as on the issue of reproductive freedom.
This week, Senate Democrats intend to pick up where we left off in June, by bringing every single member of this chamber to task on a woman’s fundamental right to choose.
It is our goal to take up a very simple resolution – cosponsored by every female Senator in our caucus and myself – that asks a very, very simple question: where do Senators stand on freedom of choice? Do we believe that a woman should have a basic right to reproductive care? Do we agree that the rights protected under Roe should be federal law?
Freedom of choice is perhaps the defining issue for Americans this year, and this week every Senator must show where they stand.
Of course, Democrats have already made it abundantly clear where we stand: yes, we emphatically believe women should be free to make their own health care choices!
Democrats also believe in building on the incredible progress of the last three and a half years. Under Democratic leadership, we have made great strides in America to lower the cost of living. We have made prescription drugs like insulin more affordable. We have brought manufacturing jobs back to our shores. We have invested in a clean energy economy. And on the world stage, we have stood up to defend democracy against autocrats and restored America’s good name among the free nations of the world.
Donald Trump and the MAGA right cannot say any of this. Instead, what Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have made clear it that if they get into power, they will dismantle American democracy as we know it.
MAGA radicals are long done with talking in euphemisms. The leader of one of America’s most powerful conservative think tanks recently made the hard-right’s goals very clear: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
That is the kind of talk that leads to political violence. To go down the road that MAGA radicals want, is to take America into the twilight zone, something more akin to the autocratic fervor we saw in Europe in the early 20th century than the America we all know and love.
So, the stakes for our country this year are immense. Here in the Senate, Democrats will continue bringing to the floor the issues that matter to Americans most, and work ferociously to defend them. And while it’s tempting to reduce elections nowadays to a form of reality TV, the truth is that the stakes are much higher – it’s the battle for two radically different visions of our country.
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