Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Pro-Trump Lawyer Slammed for Claim That Biden's Pledge to Nominate Black Woman to SCOTUS Is Unconstitutional

Pro-Trump Lawyer Slammed for Claim That Biden's Pledge to Nominate Black Woman to SCOTUS Is Unconstitutional
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Earlier this week, news broke that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire from the Supreme Court in six months at the most, prompting the revival of footage from the 2020 campaign trail, where then-candidate Joe Biden vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.

In a joint press conference between President Biden and Justice Breyer, Biden reiterated that promise, saying once again that he will nominate one of the many qualified Black women jurists across the country to the nation's highest court.


Biden told reporters at the joint presser:

“While I've been studying candidates' backgrounds and writings, I've made no decision except one: The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.”

Conservatives predictably went ballistic, insisting that Biden was appointing a Justice based solely on race and gender, failing to acknowledge that only white men had been nominated to Supreme Court seats for nearly 200 years before Justice Thurgood Marshall was confirmed to the Court in 1967.

Enter Jonathan Turley, the pro-Trump lawyer whom you may remember as the one to testify in Trump's defense during House hearings for the former President's first impeachment. Or perhaps you remember him peddling conspiracy theories about the validity of the 2020 election. Then again, maybe you remember him balking at Biden's 2020 warning that Trump might seek to delay the presidential election, only to grasp at straws for a defense when Trump did just that.

Now, Turley has once again entered the chat, this time to suggest that Biden considering only Black women for this next Supreme Court pick is unconstitutional, citing Supreme Court rulings on education and private businesses.

But these pledges are nothing new. Ronald Reagan vowed ahead of the 1980 election that "one of the first" Supreme Court nominations he'd put forth would be a woman. Even more recently, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, Trump boasted at a rally that he would nominate a woman to replace her.

Turley displayed impressive elasticity in his attempts to refute these arguments, claiming that both Reagan and Trump had men on their nominee shortlists and that only Biden said point-blank he would solely consider Black women.

The President of the United States, however, has the sole power to nominate Supreme Court Justices, and there are only nine in the entire nation at any given time. Employment protections are applied across an array of sectors with countless employers, whose effects are localized to a limited set of clients.

A Supreme Court ruling, on the other hand, directly impacts practically every American in the United States. For centuries, the Supreme Court has issued rulings— Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, and soon, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, to name a few—that have directly affected Black women, yet not a single Black woman has ever signed off on any of these decrees.

People didn't buy Turley's argument.

Others also pointed out that there were decades and decades where race was a prohibitive factor in Supreme Court nominations.

Apparently it's beyond comprehension for some that committing to nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court isn't mutually exclusive from nominating the best person for the job.

More from People

Vivian Wilson
@vivllainous/Instagram

Elon Musk's Trans Daughter Just Made Her Drag Debut At An Anti-ICE Fundraiser—And Fans Are Obsessed

Elon Musk's disowned trans daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson has made a name for herself online for mercilessly dragging the father who once said she was "dead" to him because she was "killed by the woke mind virus."

But recently she took it to a new level, leveraging her fame in her first drag performance at a Los Angeles anti-ICE fundraiser.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Trump Administration Fast-Tracks Eliminating National Suicide Hotline's LGBTQ+ Youth Support

On Wednesday morning, news broke that the administration of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump was eliminating certain suicide and self harm resources provided through the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The lifeline offered callers options to speak to people who specialize in meeting their needs. But the Trump administration decided this was a service that LGBTQ+ young people don't deserve.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trump Blasted For Announcing New Additions To The White House Lawn As Global Tensions Escalate

President Donald Trump was criticized after announcing that two new flagpoles would be added to the North and South Lawns of the White House—not the greatest look amid heightened global unease as tensions between Israel and Iran ramp up.

According to the Associated Press, Trump watched as a crane installed the newest flagpole on the South Lawn, remarking, “It’s such a beautiful pole.” He later returned to the site to salute as the American flag was raised for the first time.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of Donald Trump from CNN supercut
CNN

Trump Mocked For 'Two Weeks' Iran Deadline With Supercut Of All His 'Two Weeks' Promises

President Donald Trump has a history of promising to resolve problems within "two weeks," and a new viral supercut mocks him for all the times he's said as much—including right now with tensions in the Middle East higher than ever.

Trump said Thursday he will decide within two weeks whether to involve U.S. forces directly in the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, citing what he called a “substantial chance” for renewed nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

Keep ReadingShow less
red flag with pole on seashore
Seoyeon Choi on Unsplash

People Break Down The 'Silent Red Flags' Folks Tend To Ignore In Relationships

A red flag has come to mean any warning sign in life, in addition to the literal red flags that are placed on beaches or industrial sites to warn people of danger.

People will respond to situations by saying, "That’s a red flag." But before that language evolved, they'd just call them "warning signs."

Keep ReadingShow less