Impeach, expand, investigate: How Democrats in Congress are trying to rein in the Supreme Court

Two centuries after the constitution’s authors warned against an “elected king” in the executive office, the Supreme Court kicked off the week of the Fourth of July with a sweeping decision on presidential immunity that Justice Sonia Sotomayor said will create “a king above the law.”

Democrats in Congress have introduced several pieces of legislation to overhaul the Supreme Court, from codes of ethics to attempts to block precedent-shredding decisions that will have profound effects on government and society. They’re likely to fail.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to file articles of impeachment against the justices, citing a court that has “become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control,” she announced this week.

The immunity ruling “represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent progressive Democrat on the influential House Oversight Committee, did not specify which justices would be targeted for impeachment.

A now-deleted response from Representative Veronica Escobar said “count me in.”

The only successful impeachment of a Supreme Court justice was against Samuel Chase in 1804 on charges that he used his seat for political gain, and to “prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partisan.” He was later acquitted in the Senate.

AOC’s fellow New York Representative Joe Morrelle is introducing a new constitutional amendment that would explicitly state that presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution in an attempt to reverse the high court’s ruling.

Morrelle, the top Democrat on a House committee with federal election