Democrats are calling for the removal of justices in the wake of the overturn of the abortion law.
There were calls for justice Clarence Thomas to be impeached.
The senators questioned whether the justices lied about their opinions.
There have been calls for the impeachment of a sitting justice of the Supreme Court because of the many controversial opinions that have arisen.
The impeachment of Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-tenured member of the Supreme Court, had been supported by Democrats. The demands for his removal centered on the revelation of more than two dozen text messages Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, exchanged with onetime White House chief of staff MarkMeadows as she sought to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election.
The calls increased after Thomas joined with other justices in the Supreme Court's conservative bloc to overturn the abortion decision. Some justices are facing calls to be impeached because they may have misled the Senate about their views on abortion.
"I think lying under oath is an impeachable offense," she said during a recent interview.
Eyebrows were raised on both sides of the aisle after the reversal of the abortion law. The decision was not consistent with what the two justices said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were adamant on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents.
Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said he was alarmed that the Supreme Court chose to reject the stability that the ruling had provided for two generations.
Same-sex marriage, access to birth control and gay sex should be reconsidered by the court, according to the concurring opinion by Thomas.
The petition calling for Thomas' impeachment continued to gain support despite the nationwide protests. More than 300,000 people signed the petition organized by MoveOn.
The procedure for impeaching a Supreme Court justice is the same as the procedure for removing a president.
The articles of impeachment need to be drafted. The majority of the House is needed to impeach a Supreme Court justice. A majority is needed in the Senate to convict.
The current political climate makes it almost certain that Thomas won't be removed from his appointment. Six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court are Republican.
There are grounds for impeachment of Thomas.
When the Supreme Court turned away election challenges, Thomas dissented. The decision to not hear the cases was described by Thomas as "baffling" and "inexplicable".
There was no serious impeachment effort in Congress in the year 2019.
Lifetime appointment for federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, ends with retirement or death.
According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, the impeachment of federal judges is rare. According to the study, the House had impeached only 15 judges since 1803, and only eight of those proceedings resulted in convictions by the Senate.
It takes more than 200 years for the history of impeaching a Supreme Court justice to return to American history.
Justice Samuel Chase was the first member of the Supreme Court to be impeached when the House accused him of refusing to dismiss biased jurors in two politically sensitive trials.
Chase showed no willingness to tone down his bitter partisan rhetoric after Jeffersonian Republicans gained control of Congress, according to the official Senate website. The impeachment effort was supported by the President.
According to the Senate website, Chase was spared removal from the Supreme Court after his legal team convinced enough senators that his conduct did not warrant it. Chase served on the Supreme Court until his death.
The Senate voted to convict Thomas Porteous in 2010 after he was impeached by the House. Judges have resigned in the face of impeachment threats.
More than 2,000 text messages were turned over to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. The messages show how eager Thomas was to help Trump overturn his electoral defeat.
In some of the messages, Thomas elevated the conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, who has since faced sanctions over her lead role in furthering the baseless claims of election fraud.
Sidney and her team are getting a lot of evidence. Don't make a plan. In a November 2020 text, Thomas said to release the Kraken and save America from the left.
Thomas suggested that Mark buck up his team on the inside. The lower level Insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the threat to America. They can be strengthened by you.
It's not clear if the 29 messages sent by Thomas, eight byMeadows, reflected the extent of their communication.
Justice Thomas faced calls for his retirement or resignation even before his wife's text messages withMeadows became public, as media outlets illuminated his wife's political activism.
The pressure on Thomas to step down from the Supreme Court was heightened by the text correspondence.
The Minnesota Democrat wrote that Clarence Thomas should be impeached.
Thomas was threatened with impeachment if he wouldn't quit.
The New York Democrat wrote that Clarence Thomas should resign on the social networking site. His vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information and his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations could be grounds for impeachment.
Lawmakers have called for Justice Thomas to step down from certain cases.
The text message correspondence raises a serious question about the conflict of interest for Justice Thomas.
"I think that he would consider a case where his wife is frequently contacting the chief of staff for the president and giving advice on matters that are going to be ultimately litigated by the court," he said. He should not be involved in those cases for the sake of the court.
Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, called on Thomas to disqualify himself from cases involving the Capitol-riot investigation because his "conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt."
President Joe Biden did not want Justice Thomas to be involved in such cases.
Kevin McCarthy said that it was up to Thomas to decide if he should be involved in the investigations.
Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work.
Clarence Thomas linked his service on the Supreme Court to his wife's political activism.
We love being with each other. We share the same beliefs. Defending liberty is our focus. Thomas said that he admires her and that he loves her for that.
There was a previous version of this story published.
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