Rage Politics: Hakeem Jeffries Will Take A Baseball Bat To The Supreme Court

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has struggled to pander to the mob to secure power in the midterm elections, including brandishing a baseball bat on social media to show his radical bona fides.

With Democratic Socialists chanting “you’re next” when seeing Jeffries, he continues to struggle to stay in front of the mob.

This week, he doubled down on his pledge to throw the Supreme Court to the mob if they make him the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

After the recent gains by far-left candidates in states like Minnesota and the near victory of Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Jeffries came out to reaffirm his intent to radically change the highest court. According to the Washington Times, Jeffries declared, “There’s a variety of different options that are on the table, and I think that we can’t foreclose any single one of them.” He added that the “conservative, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has become basically a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party.”

He promised to make far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) the driving force behind changing the Court, including possible 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and expanding the Court to create an instant liberal majority.

Notably, none of these figures were claiming that the Court was fundamentally flawed until it ruled against them, particularly in cases that impacted their political power such as declaring racial gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

What is interesting is that the liberal justices reject this narrative, reminding citizens that the Court has delivered major losses to the Trump Administration. Indeed, President Trump has routinely attacked conservative justices for ruling against him and his Administration.

In addition, polls show that the majority of the public supports virtually all of the recent major rulings, including the ban on racial gerrymandering.

It is only the Democrats who oppose those rulings and are now demanding a hostile takeover of the Court.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has called for packing the Court because it does not follow her views and those of “widely held public opinion.” I have pushed back on that rationale, given the Court’s function as a countermajoritarian institution. However, these polls even challenge the flawed rationale for court packing.

So Jeffries is promising that the work of James Madison will be undone by the likes of Jamie Raskin and Elizabeth Warren. To have these calls on our 250th anniversary is crushingly ironic.  Other leading Democrats have lined up to pledge to fundamentally change the Court, which has played a key role in making this the oldest and most stable republic in history.

It is simply about power. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

I have called it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. Democratic leaders are pledging to “just do it” to appease the mob. Of course, some of these measures would be challenged if done without constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court would then have to rule on the effort to pack or limit its members. The expansion can be done by legislative vote. Although most Americans oppose court packing, Democrats view control of the Court as essential to pushing through a radical agenda to change the political system to their advantage.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.

In Federalist 10, Madison discussed the destructive impact of factions in forcing through opportunistic changes to advance their interests:

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

We are witnessing the same factional politics being pushed by leaders who believe that they can ride a rage wave into power. They have a greater likelihood of causing lasting damage to our system than guaranteeing their own lasting power. History is not on their side. Today’s revolutionaries are often tomorrow’s reactionaries in an age of rage.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”