MILWAUKEE — As Republicans break camp at the conclusion of their national convention, the presidential campaign has taken a turn that no Hollywood scriptwriter would have dared imagine, opening a cavernous gap in moods inside the two major parties. Suddenly, Republicans are as sky-high and confident as Democrats are down and discouraged.

Within the past month, cascading events have changed the dynamic and possibly the ultimate trajectory of the election. Leaving his convention, former president Donald Trump is in a stronger position politically than at any point in the campaign, or for that matter in any of the three campaigns he has run since he was first a candidate in 2016.

Meanwhile, many Democrats despair that President Biden could lead them to a broad defeat that could leave the White House, House and Senate in Republican control. But they also worry that, even if the president yields to calls to step aside, a possible replacement, whether Vice President Harris or one of several governors talked about as possible candidates, would carry significant risks as well.

This campaign has long been something of a contradiction: static but potentially volatile. It has had stability as seen in most national and many swing-state polls. While those polls have shown Trump with a narrow advantage over Biden, the margins have been small and relatively stable — until now.

Despite that, the campaign has always had an element of instability due to a sour electorate, with voters broadly unhappy about their choice of candidates, which leaves questions about how many will actually vote. Then there’s the potential impact of unpredictable events and known unknowns. The past month has brought that part of the campaign to the forefront.

This cycle of events began with the disastrous June 27 debate performance by Biden. Next came the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, a victory for Trump that probably assures that he will not face trial before the election in the federal case that brought charges for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Last Saturday came the shocking assassination attempt against Trump and his clenched-fist response as he was led offstage, bloodied, by Secret Service agents. On Monday, a federal judge in Florida dismissed charges related to his handling of classified documents. And starting later that day, Republicans produced a convention here in Milwaukee that highlighted a party that has been reshaped in Trump’s image and with delegates fully united behind their nominee.

The contrast between the state of the parties at midsummer was sharpened further this week with reports of Democratic disunity. Senior Democratic leaders — Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — had warned Biden that he could take down his whole party by staying in the race. And then, on Wednesday, came the news that Biden had been diagnosed with covid-19, forcing him off the campaign trail.

Judgments about the two candidates and the current state of the race are telling.

“If the Democrats persist in nominating Joe Biden, at this point they’re essentially conceding the presidency to Donald Trump,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “Trump waving his fist in the face of an assassin is the very picture of strength. You put that alongside Joe Biden’s vacant stare during the debate and he is the very picture of weakness.”

A Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment of the state of the campaign offered a similar if less harsh view. Republicans today, this strategist said, remind him of Democrats in 2008 when Barack Obama was running his first campaign. Republicans, he said, are “psyched, 100 percent behind their guy … and they think they’re going to win.”

Democrats need a shot in the arm, he added, “to reset and get that feeling back. That means getting a new nominee, any nominee.” If that happens, he said, “I think we will be excited and get absolutely pumped up and feel we can be competitive again.”

Still, however good the past few weeks have been for Trump or bad for Biden, the basic contours of this election haven’t entirely disappeared. Trump, for all his current strengths, remains a candidate with flaws and vulnerabilities.

The average of national polls now gives Trump a lead of between two and three percentage points, representing a small shift in his direction since the June 27 CNN debate in Atlanta. A CBS/YouGov poll released Thursday showed Trump at 52 percent, Biden at 47 percent, Trump’s largest lead of the campaign. A July 3 poll showed Trump at 50 percent, Biden at 48 percent.

Electoral college projections, based only in part on polling, show a deteriorating map for Biden, with states such as Virginia, New Hampshire and Minnesota that the president won in 2020 and counted as almost certainly in his column now seen as potentially competitive, though more evidence is needed to make a fuller assessment.

Biden has been dismissive of the public polls and of reports that some private polls show movement in Trump’s direction. His campaign continues to say it sees a path to victory, one that runs through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Winning those three states would put Biden at 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed, which includes a single vote from one of Nebraska’s congressional districts. The Post’s average of polls shows Wisconsin tied, Trump with a lead of less than a percentage point in Pennsylvania and Trump with a lead of three points in Michigan.

The final months will be focused on two overriding questions. The most immediate is whether Biden decides to step aside. The Democratic National Convention is now a month away, which leaves limited time for the party to find another candidate and to unify around that person if Biden decides to end his candidacy.

Party officials are starting to put in place the mechanisms for an early virtual roll call of delegates that could take place in early August — before delegates arrive in Chicago. That virtual roll call, seen by party leaders as necessary to ensure that their nominee qualifies for all state ballots, could be used to nominate Biden — or a possible successor. If Biden is not a candidate by then, the party will face the choice of open competition or a quick consolidation around Harris.

The second question is whether, after a generally successful convention, Trump reverts to past practices and behavior — as a candidate given to wild claims, grievances, lies about the 2020 election being stolen and sometimes rambling discourse that can put a focus on the fact that he is, at 78, only a few years younger than Biden.

His Thursday night acceptance speech, a lengthy and often meandering address, included touches that his advisers hoped to see, such as pledges to unify the country. His description of the assassination attempt was moving, and to many in the audience emotional. But his speech contained many more flashes of the Trump the country had long ago come to know.

When he got to the issues, including immigration, the speech included oft-used distortions and falsehoods repeated from the campaign trail. He also made some extravagant promises, from claiming he will “end every single international crisis that the current administration has created,” to an assertion that “incomes … will skyrocket” if he is elected.

With so much focus on Biden’s debate performance and the turmoil within the Democratic Party about his future as a candidate, Trump has enjoyed a month with little scrutiny. The assassination attempt brought him sympathy and admiration in the eyes of many voters. His convention amounted to a four-night infomercial for the candidate and nightly criticism of Biden’s record on inflation, immigration and national security.

Republican strategists argue that the smartest course for Trump from here is to be steady rather than provocative, calm rather than inflammatory, a steady-as-you-go campaign that keeps attention on Biden’s record and avoids unforced errors. But Trump is nothing if not predictable. He has never before exhibited such sustained restraint and message discipline, and his record remains the single most powerful motivator for Democratic voters to turn out in November.

Democrats will have their own convention to prosecute the case against Trump, and they have been preparing for months. The Biden campaign has sought to elevate Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s controversial policy blueprint for a second Trump term. Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, even though many who served in his first administration and are seen as likely candidates for a future second one have been instrumental in its drafting.

The turmoil surrounding Biden’s candidacy comes at a time when the candidate and his party should be putting the final touches on their own convention and making the case against Trump. Instead, they are caught up in an unprecedented internal debate that is costing them time, energy and unity. What they will need is not just unity but enthusiasm that can produce the high levels of voter turnout that brought victories in 2018 and 2020, and that turned back the anticipated Republican wave in 2022.

Trump can expect some gains from his convention, but if history is a guide, those can fade. At some point, after the Democratic convention, the campaign should settle back into familiar patterns, with two nominees and two parties locked in competition for the White House.

When that happens, the question will be whether Democrats will be able to rebound from what has become a low point in the campaign and make the contest as competitive as was predicted when it began.

Former president Donald Trump gave two speeches on Thursday evening as he accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in Milwaukee.

The first was a quiet one, almost demure. Reading from a teleprompter, Trump described last Saturday’s attempt on his life and celebrated the retired firefighter who was killed. The teleprompter kept Trump pointed in the desired direction but had the odd effect of draining some of the energy. When he is reading his speech, Trump’s delivery tends to be flat — useful for rattling off campaign promises but not helpful when building to an emotional point.

The second speech, which began immediately after the recitation of Saturday’s events, was vintage Trump. It was riffing about the audience and joking about his allies and bragging about his record. It ran way too long and drained the crowd’s energy. It was a standard Trump campaign presentation with standard timing and standard campaign rhetoric.

News reports suggested that Trump’s acceptance speech would be something different. It would mark a new tone, one centered on a spirit of unity in the wake of the attack. “Getting shot in the face changes a man,” one Trump ally insightfully offered — ignoring that Trump’s injury was to his ear and that the aforementioned ally was former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Trump, reflecting upon his brush with death, would seek to end America’s deep political divisions.

The day after the shooting, he made this point on social media.

“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United,” Trump wrote, “and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”

And then, two days later, he offered another thought that provided insight into his views on unity.

“The Radical Left Democrats are desperately trying to ‘Play the Ref’ by calling for an illegal and unConstitutional attack on our SACRED United States Supreme Court,” he wrote. “The reason that these Communists are so despondent is that their unLawful Witch Hunts are failing everywhere.”

Even before that not-very-uniting post, it was clear that Trump’s “unity” message did not mean he was embracing an opportunity to reconsider his divisive politics. It was, instead, a potential opportunity to absorb the sympathy being expressed by Democrats in the moment and use it to demand that they be nicer to him. Nor was he alone in this. Asked a tough question on Monday, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. complained about the insolence of the reporter’s query “even today, even 48 hours later,” as though the question had not been about immigration but about restricting the weapon used by the shooter.

Trump isn’t new at this. He has been seeking public office for nearly a decade now. As such, he has a record. He has called for unity more than once in the past. And each time he has done so, he has quickly made clear that his vision of unity was that his opponents would stop criticizing him and start letting him do what he wants.

During the acceptance speech on Thursday, Trump offered up the promised call for unity — such as it was.

“We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what’s been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”

He turned away from the prompter to add another point.

“Especially since that is not true,” Trump added. “In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.” (He would, at another point in the speech, claim that the 2020 election was won through “cheating.”)

After then mentioning the (dubious) dismissal this week of the classified-documents case against him, Trump demanded that his opponents leave him alone. You know, because of unity.

“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch hunts,” he said, “which I have been going through for approximately eight years. And they should do that without delay and allow an election to proceed that is worthy of our people.”

Unity, then, means nothing more than the abandonment of the criminal indictments obtained against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, something not in the control of “Democrats.” There was no reaching across the aisle, just Trump trying to pull people over to his side.

Nor was there even an effort to demonstrate reciprocity on the point. He criticized Democrats — and “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” — for issuing subpoenas “because they’re destroying our country.” He railed against America’s “failed and even incompetent leadership,” obviously in reference to President Biden.

News reports seized on a claim that Trump would be so removed from partisan bickering that he wouldn’t even mention Biden’s name. Then Trump mentioned Biden’s name.

“I say it often: If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States — think of it the 10 worst added them up — they will not have done the damage that Biden has done,” Trump said. Seemingly then remembering his pledge, Trump then promised he wouldn’t say the name again.

There was never any reason to take the assertions about Trump’s changed tone seriously. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” Trump told one sympathetic reporter, which wasn’t false. It’s just that Trump was obviously not interested in or capable of doing so. If Trump wanted to be a unifying figure in American politics, he has had lots of opportunities over the past nine years to give it a try.

An acceptance speech is not a normal political speech. It is a unique moment for a candidate to speak to Americans, to voters, and explain why his or her candidacy is worth their support. To deploy inspiring language and craft memorable framing. Trump gave the same speech he always gives, with that slow, teleprompter-driven prologue about the assassination attempt tacked on.

The attempt on his life became another bargaining chip in another deal, one weakened by the lack of evidence that the shooter was motivated by partisan animus. Trump played the chip anyway, demanding that his critics and prosecutors step back in recognition that something significant was different. But in leveraging the shooting as he did, he made clear that nothing was different at all.

MILWAUKEE — Soon after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, many of his prominent supporters placed blame not on the gunman who pulled the trigger but on President Biden, other Democrats or journalists who have described the former president as a threat to democracy.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) claimed that “Joe Biden sent the orders” because the president said days earlier that “it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s eye.” Kari Lake, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, said the shooting followed an “eight-year smear” campaign by journalists. And Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said Biden’s words portraying Trump as a fascist “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Two days later, Trump named Vance as his running mate.

Trump didn’t go as far in his Thursday night speech accepting the Republican nomination, but he accused Democrats of trying to “demonize political disagreement” and called on the party to stop “labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”

“I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country,” Trump said.

As comments like those from Collins, Lake and Vance spiraled across the internet, many election officials watched with incredulity and frustration. For years, they felt ignored as they described how Trump’s relentless verbal attacks on the nation’s election systems and those who run them resulted in threats of violence and terrorizing harassment. Now, Trump’s prominent supporters were paying attention to the potential ramifications of rhetoric but without acknowledging how their words had contributed to the nation’s toxic divisions.

“The hardest thing to swallow is how suddenly the tables have completely turned and there’s no accountability for the comments that have opened the door for so many threats in the past several years,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D), who has experienced threats and has helped train and equip election officials to respond to violence.

Two Republicans who help run elections in Arizona expressed disbelief as members of their party sought to blame everyone but themselves for the combustible political environment.

“The same people who are deflecting and projecting are the same people who have been fanning the flame of extremism,” said one Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “They project that message to their followers — without any, any, any recognition that their guy has really been the worst actor in all of this.”

An expert who works with hundreds of election officials from around the nation described the moment as Orwellian, with those who spent years attacking democratic institutions now warning of the dangers of extreme rhetoric. The expert spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sentiments often privately conveyed among election officials since the shooting at Trump’s rally Saturday.

Since the 2020 election, investigators and prosecutors have cited rhetoric from the right for allegedly motivating attacks and threats that have sent some election officials into hiding and prompted others to institute serious security measures, including arming themselves. Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, an assertion that many of his followers believe. In December, fewer than a third of Republicans believed Biden’s win was legitimate, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland.

Even those who fill election jobs that once drew little attention — like truck drivers who transport ballots or workers who test election equipment — are under the magnifying glass by fraud-hunting MAGA Republicans inspired by Trump’s false claims that the last election was stolen from him. The realities of their experiences are frequently brushed aside or ignored by many of the same Republicans who were quick to blame rhetoric from the left for the attack on Trump.

Some of those vilifying Democrats for their language for years have engaged in incendiary talk. Collins — who blamed Biden’s “bull’s eye” comment for the assassination attempt — posted a video on social media in January 2022 that featured him holding a rifle and explaining why he believes Trump, not Biden, won Georgia in 2020.

At the end of the video, Collins fires the gun at what’s labeled a voting machine and says: “Send me to Washington. I’ll fix this election. I’ll get to the bottom of 2020. And I will fight for Trump’s America First agenda.” A spokesman for Collins did not respond to a request for comment.

Lake, one of nation’s most outspoken election deniers, still hasn’t accepted that she lost Arizona’s 2022 race for governor, and she continues to baselessly accuse election officials of costing her a victory. Those officials say they have received numerous violent threats. This spring, Lake told supporters to get ready for an “intense” election as she runs for the Senate.

“We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case,” she said in April, as the crowd roared in approval. Earlier in the speech, she said she expected her supporters would be “ready for action,” particularly because so many of them were veterans or had law enforcement backgrounds.

In a statement, the Lake campaign stood by her criticism of Democrats, The Post and other media outlets and said she “has never advocated for political violence and is focused on unifying Arizonans.” Lake rejected the idea that Republicans need to change their tone in an interview this week with a British journalist, saying, “I actually think the tone has always been good.”

Vance, once a Trump critic, embraced the former president when he ran for the Senate and latched on to his false claims about elections, suggesting he would not have certified the 2020 results if he had been vice president. He has contended that rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were unjustly prosecuted, and in 2021, he said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was a “far more reputable source of information” than MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

A spokesman for Vance declined to comment. Vance, in his speech Wednesday accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, praised Trump for calling for unity after the assassination attempt even though his opponents had called him an authoritarian who had to be stopped. A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) said calling out election conspiracy theories is not partisan and is not responsible for political violence. The secretary’s office said the FBI notified it in the spring that the agency is investigating at least 10 cases involving threats against Griswold.

“It’s a false equation,” she said, “to say that standing up against attacks against democracy and providing some type of accountability for lies is the same thing as a call for violence. It is not.”

The Republican comments about how elections are conducted have come as many election workers have fielded volumes of harassing and threatening phone calls, emails and social media posts, many cloaked in anonymity. Some of the messages call for public executions of election workers. Others accuse them of being unpatriotic or treasonous simply for doing their jobs. The hostile environment has prompted many election workers to leave their posts. Many who remain have come to view the treatment as routine.

“Our election officials have experienced the consequences of the violent and threatening rhetoric that Trump and his followers have been spewing for years,” said Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House of Representatives’ first impeachment of Trump. “They receive threats, they can’t do their jobs — many have left their jobs. False claims are made about them on a regular basis.

“All of this is the direct result of this climate of intimidation that Trump and those around him have created. And they are experiencing this moment as one of hypocrisy and gaslighting — although, like all of us, they condemn the shooting.”

Some Republicans have “been in denial about the reality” of the consequences of their rhetoric, said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D).

“They’ve seen it as a political tool to get the base riled up … and enthusiastic,” she said. “And frankly, it’s created a monster — and so here we are.”

Election officials worry the assassination attempt could inspire other violent acts. Some are quietly reassessing their security plans while holding no expectations that the climate will improve in the near term.

“Maybe this will be a wake-up moment for everyone to realize that this isn’t the kind of society that we want to live in,” said Scott McDonell (D), the county clerk in Dane County, Wis. “My fear is that people may calm down for a little bit, but then return to where it was before.”

President Biden is seriously considering endorsing a set of proposals that would reform the Supreme Court, including legislation to establish term limits and impose a binding code of ethics on the justices. It is a major shift for Biden, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who through his long political career has generally opposed attempts to make substantive changes to the high court.

Biden is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders.

Each of the proposals would face steep obstacles in a deeply divided Congress. While many Democrats and some outside experts say there is enough evidence of ethics breaches by the justices and partisan activity around the court to warrant reform, many Republicans say those critics are simply unhappy with the court’s strongly conservative decisions.

It is for that reason that retired federal judge Thomas B. Griffith, who served on a bipartisan commission appointed by Biden that studied potential changes but did not reach consensus, is skeptical.

“I’m suspicious of any efforts at so-called reform of the court that seem to be rooted and grounded in disappointment with decisions of the court,” said Griffith, a judicial appointee of President George W. Bush who emphasized that he had not seen any specific proposals Biden is considering.

Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton and also sat on the commission, said it was “terribly important” for Biden to legitimize what she believes would be much-needed change.

“We have the most powerful, least accountable Supreme Court of any Western democracy,” she said. “Now it’s up to Congress to actually go forward on the reform effort. And yes, it will be difficult, and it may take multiple sessions, but it needs to begin.”

Here’s what Biden has said in the past about Supreme Court accountability and what others have proposed.

Biden in 2019: ‘We’ll live to rue that day’

Democratic calls for an overhaul reached a boiling point in 2016 after then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to consider President Barack Obama’s pick to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia, citing the upcoming presidential election even though it was nearly eight months away.

The seat remained empty until President Donald Trump was inaugurated 10 months later. He nominated Neil M. Gorsuch, maintaining the court’s 5-4 conservative split.

Democrats were equally enraged when McConnell went on to push Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination through just two months before the 2020 presidential election. Biden, then the Democratic nominee, pleaded with Senate Republicans to wait until the winner of the election was inaugurated. But Barrett was confirmed as the successor to the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Oct. 26, eight days before the election, creating a 6-3 conservative supermajority.

Despite growing calls for reform from members of his party, Biden told Iowa Starting Line in 2019 that he did not support efforts to expand the Supreme Court, “because we’ll live to rue that day,” he said.

Three months later, during a Democratic primary debate, Biden said: “I would not get into court-packing. We add three justices; next time around, we lose control, they add three justices. We begin to lose any credibility the court has at all.”

He told the New York Times editorial board that he did not support term limits, either.

And he did not publicly shift from that position after Barrett’s nomination.

What other Democrats have pushed

As many as 15 other Democrats running for president in 2020 — including the current vice president, a cabinet official and two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — either supported or said they were open to imposing term limits on the justices and expanding the court, according to a Washington Post tally that year.

Pete Buttigieg, who became Biden’s transportation secretary, backed expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 15 justices. Under that plan, Democrats and Republicans would each name five justices, and those 10 would name an additional five.

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., also expressed support for term limits.

“We need to reform the Supreme Court in a way that will strengthen its independence and restore the American people’s trust in it as a check to the Presidency and the Congress,” his campaign website said.

Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), who oversee judicial nominations as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said they were open to expanding the court. But, like then-Sen. Kamala D. Harris, they didn’t get into any specifics of how they would do it. Booker and Harris also said they were open to imposing term limits.

What Biden did as president

On Oct. 22, 2020 — the same day Republican senators advanced Barrett’s nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Biden announced on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that if he were elected president he would create a bipartisan commission to study the issue of making structural changes to the court.

The commission submitted its 294-page report in December 2021. Members presented arguments for and against the proposals, including expanding the size of the Supreme Court, establishing term limits for the justices and imposing a code of conduct on the justices. The report did not take a position on those ideas but did note that “there is profound disagreement among commissioners” about court expansion.

The commission concluded that while Congress has broad authority to establish and change the size of the Supreme Court, it would be hard to ensure that the issue doesn’t become politicized.

“We were charged not with coming up with recommendations but with plumbing the issues deeply and issuing a report,” Gertner said.

Griffith, who published an op-ed in The Post shortly after the report was finalized criticizing term limits and court expansion, said the proposals that Biden is said to be considering would encroach on judicial independence. “We need to be doing everything we can to preserve judicial independence and not give in to the temptation to believe that judges are just partisans in robes,” he said. “The judiciary is, in many ways, the crown jewel of our democratic republic. … I think that’s a very dangerous path to go down.”

What Democrats in Congress have tried

Democratic lawmakers have held hearings, proposed legislation and introduced articles of impeachment that, in their view, would hold the Supreme Court accountable. None have gained support from Republicans, however, or seem likely to garner the votes needed for passage anytime soon.

In July 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance legislation that would impose a binding code of ethics on the nine justices. The action came after news reports revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted but did not disclose decades of luxury vacations and private jet travel funded by Republican donor and Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the federal courts, is the lead sponsor of the bill, known as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act. It would require the court to strengthen its recusal requirements and bring its hospitality and financial disclosure rules in line with those of Congress, among other parts of government.

Whitehouse is also the lead sponsor of the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act, which would create 18-year terms, adding a new justice to the bench every two years.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), a ranking subcommittee member on the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced several companion bills in the House and the Judiciary Act of 2023, which would expand the Supreme Court by adding four seats.

The Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024, introduced by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) in April, would authorize the creation of an inspector general’s office to investigate allegations of misconduct in the judicial branch.

On July 10, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced articles of impeachment against Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who drew headlines this spring after reports that politically charged flags were flown on his properties. Alito, who like Thomas is a staunch conservative, has said he had nothing to do with the flags and that his wife raised them.

Ocasio-Cortez said impeachment, which almost certainly will not advance, was necessary “to contain the threat this poses to our democracy and the hundreds of millions of Americans harmed by the crisis of corruption unfurling within the court.”