Vice President Kamala Harris said she has ''great concern about the integrity of the [Supreme] Court overall'' in a video recorded for NBC News' ''Meet the Press'' with Chuck Todd.
"I think this is an activist court," Harris said in the interview, to be aired in full on Sunday. ''We had an established right for almost half a century, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body as an extension of what we have decided to be, the privacy rights to which all people are entitled. And this court took that constitutional right away, and we are suffering as a nation because of it."
A June poll by Gallup found that just 25% of the nation had faith in the high court, a drop from 36% in 2021, and the same month as the court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade that made abortion legal nationwide, sending the issue back to the individual states to decide.
''That causes me great concern about the integrity of the court overall,'' she said. ''Especially as someone whose life was inspired by people like [Justice] Thurgood Marshall, the work on that court of [Chief Justice] Earl Warren to bring a unanimous court to pass Brown v. Board of Education [of Topeka, striking down segregation in education in 1954].
''This is the court that once [had sitting] Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall, [and] Sandra Day O'Connor. It's a very different court.''
The Gallup Poll found confidence rating slipping from 30% of Democrats in 2021 to 13% in June and falling from 40% of independents last year to 25% in June.
While confidence in the court fell among those groups, it rose slightly among Republicans, from 37% to 39% for that period.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order following the court's ruling on July 8 to safeguard access to women's reproductive services, including contraception and abortion, protecting patient privacy and promoting the safety of clinics, including their staff, patients and care providers.
''Let's be clear about something from the very start. This was not a decision driven by the Constitution,'' Biden said when he signed the order. ''Let me say it again: This was not a decision driven by the Constitution. And despite what those justices in the majority said, this was not a decision driven by history.''
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