The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled against President Joe Biden’s signature plan to forgive student loans. After a great fight between the SCOTUS and the Biden Administration, in a 6-3 ruling against student loan forgiveness, SCOTUS ruled that Biden did not have the authority to forgive student loans.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), rather than just advocating for a different pathway to her preferred policy of student loan forgiveness, had to launch into an attack on the institution of our independent judiciary branch.
Rather than stick to her disagreement over policies with the conservative justices of the court, AOC took to the airwaves to share her conspiratorial musings that the justices—especially Samuel Alito—was somehow compromised because he accepted a lavish trip from the billionaire megadonor, Paul Singer.
AOC Shares Her Selective Rage at Megadonor-Funded Excursions
As it turns out, Paul Singer is also the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, which cowrote a brief for the court alongside the Libertarian CATO Institute, in which they outlined why Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan was unconstitutional.
According to the deranged theories of AOC’s partisan mind, Singer compromised Alito and the other conservatives on the court by providing them with lavish gifts to get them to rule in favor of the conservative opposition to Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan.
Never mind the fact that the Republican Party has (foolishly, in my opinion) always opposed addressing the burgeoning student loan crisis.
Or that Alito happens to come from the very Libertarian wing of the Republican Party, of which both the Manhattan Institute and CATO Institute are a part. So, it is highly unlikely that Singer had to do any backdoor swaying with Alito and the other conservative justices to get them to oppose Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
Of course, AOC and the Democratic Party are mum about the excessive, lavish vacations that Democratic Party megadonors, such as the Pritzker Family of Illinois, have provided to the Liberal members of the Supreme Court over the years.
That’s considered acceptable by AOC and her fellow Democrats.
AOC: Hypocrisy You Can Trust
As an aside, this is the latest example of just how disingenuous and partisan the Democrats have become since the Trump years. It’s hypocritical in the extreme and downright toxic.
Speaking of which, there was a time, not very long ago, when AOC’s attacks on the Supreme Court—as well as her specific, public attacks on individual justices—would have been looked down upon not only by her political enemies, but also from the leadership of her own party.
The Separation of Powers is a sacrosanct element of our constitution.
And while that might seem trite, considering how far the republic has fallen, I still think that standard should be preserved whenever possible. It’s just unseemly for an elected representative to be attacking the Supreme Court justices—especially when AOC is making unfounded accusations against those justices with whom she happens to disagree. Further, as Americans lose faith in their institutions, AOC’s attacks only further diminishes “our democracy” by contributing to that distrust of our government.
If she is truly concerned about the outcome Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan then she should offer legislative pathways forward.
To be fair, it sounds like the New York congresswoman, along with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), wants the Biden Administration to forgive up to $10,000 per student loan under the conditions of the Higher Education Act (HEA). This is something that both AOC and Omar have advocated for even before the Biden Administration took their plan to the SCOTUS.
But if this is such a clear-cut pathway forward, then why is AOC even kvetching about conservative Supreme Court justices voting exactly as they’d be expected to?
This All About Raw Power
It’s because the Left is fearful that, after having enjoyed a relatively firm grip on the SCOTUS, the Left’s sway over that institution is waning. For the first time in decades, the Left finds itself in a true minority on the SCOTUS bench.
Unlike conservatives, who became accustomed to being the minority on the bench, the Left will not go quietly into that goodnight of minority status on the bench. Democrats have always looked at their majority control over the bench as the ultimate stopgap against Republican Party pushback in the federal executive and legislative branches.
After all, justices are unelected and enjoy lifetime membership status on the bench until they either retire or die. The court checks the other two branches—and often the two branches defer to the judiciary. Imagine if the Supreme Court during the Obamacare fight in 2012 had the same makeup as it does today. There’d be no way the Affordable Care Act would have survived the way it did. And that’s just one example of how conducive to the Left’s agenda that the court has been.
As we experienced last year with the SCOTUS’ surprise decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and are seeing with the Biden Administration’s aggressive student loan forgiveness plan, without their vice-grip on the court, the Democrats’ best-laid plans can be utterly stymied by the court.
Conservatives should count their lucky stars, then, that former President Donald Trump was in office when he was.
Thanks to his presence in the Oval Office, rather than Hillary Clinton, the forty-fifth president was singularly able to place some of the most Right-leaning—and young—conservatives on the bench.
This, in turn, has helped to ensure that the court has become a stopgap for the conservative agenda and an impediment for the Liberal one.
That is the real reason that AOC is running around theorizing that there was some vast, Right-wing conspiracy to unduly overturn Biden’s plans for student loan forgiveness. It is the reason for why not only AOC has been waging a monthslong campaign against the Supreme Court but why the Biden Administration has been attacking the court.
More ominously, the loss of Liberal control over the court is why the Democrats have been openly discussing ideas like packing the court in order to create an imbalance that permanently favors the Democrats. Republicans should not feed into the false accusations lobbed by elected Democrats who are simply angry at having lost their hold over the court.
Republicans Should Be Ready for Renewed Democrat Attacks on the Court
Beyond that, Republicans must brace for the inevitable assault on the integrity of the independent judiciary that the Democrats, as AOC’s running commentary shows, will subject the court to out of anger over the court’s Rightward turn.
The Republicans never once did anything like what the incorrigible Democrats have done as it relates to attacking a court that opposes their preferred policies and laws. Conservatives must be prepared for a new round of ideological warfare from the irate Left, that seeks to weaken and undermine the SCOTUS in order to create a legal environment that is favorable to the Left.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor and conservative writer, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
Joe Biden Is Starting To Scare Everyone
