This was one of the few times I’ve seen a CNN host push back on a Democrat politician.
CNN’s Dana Bash was shocked when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded that the Biden administration “ignore” a federal court ruling over the abortion pill, mifepristone.
“What you just heard me ask the secretary about was something that you called on the Biden administration to do, which is just to simply ignore the court ruling. That’s a pretty stunning position, if you think about it in the abstract about the notion of just ignoring a judge’s position, so my question is when this case is resolved by the Supreme Court, should the administration follow that decision if that decision ends up banning this abortion drug?” Bash asked.
“I want to take a step back and dig into the grounds around ignoring this preliminary ruling as well. There is an extraordinary amount of precedent for this. There is a term known as agency non-acquiescence, and this has been used in for focusing, this is a first, that this is precedent setting. It is not. The Trump administration also did this very thing. But also it has happened before, the idea of consistency and governance until there is a higher court ruling is not an unprecedented thing to happen,” she said.
AOC believed that the courts are making “a mockery of our system, a mockery of our democracy and a mockery of our law.”
“I think one of the things that I think one of the things that we need to examine is the grounds of that ruling. But I do not believe that the courts have the authority to, have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
AOC isn’t alone. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also wants Biden to ignore the courts.
“I believe the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ignore this ruling, which is why I’m again calling on President Biden and the FDA to do just that,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Friday. “The FDA, doctors, and pharmacies can and must go about their jobs like nothing has changed and keep mifepristone accessible to women across America. If they don’t, the consequences of banning the most common method of abortion in every single state will be devastating.”
According to a report from Politico the White House isn’t going to touch it. They are afraid of the blowback.
“They’re able to present themselves right now as the adults in the room who care about the rule of law,” a source told Politico. “But that posture would come under pressure if they jumped out of the gate and said they wouldn’t abide by the ruling.”
AOC says the White House shouldn’t have to abide by court rulings it disagrees with because the courts lose their legitimacy when they make rulings she doesn’t like. pic.twitter.com/JLB09ZhUud
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) April 8, 2023
