CV NEWS FEED // Democrats in Congress plan to introduce a bill Thursday which would add four new justices to the Supreme Court of the United States — bringing the total number of justices to 13.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, introduced the bill, together with House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY.
The move comes amid what some have called a “civil war” between the far left-wing of the Democratic Party on the one hand and top Democrats such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Joe Biden himself on the other.
The more radically progressive contingent among Democrat officials have been calling for such hardball tactics as court-packing for some time, while more traditional Democrats have called for a more united and moderate attitude.
News of the new court packing plan in Congress, however, has some critics convinced that the civil war inside the Democratic Party is over, and the far-Left won.
“The moderate left is gone,” tweeted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Wednesday. “This is who they are now.”
Total Reversal for Democrats from Biden Down
This new proposed legislation comes less than a week after the Biden administration called for a study into the merits of increasing the size of the Supreme Court, which has had nine members since 1869.
As CatholicVote reported, “Many Republicans denounced the move, accusing Democrats of opportunism, and of trying to use the Democrat-controlled White House to rig future Supreme Court decisions in favor of progressive outcomes:”
It is not only Republicans, however, who oppose adding justices to the Supreme Court. Democrats, not least among them Joe Biden himself, have spoken adamantly against it themselves, especially during periods when Republicans held the White House.
Last year, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denounced the suggestion that Democrats should explore expanding the court. “If anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that,” Ginsburg said. “One side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”
After a landslide election victory in 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt unveiled a plan to pack the Supreme Court, but it would be widely denounced by both parties and ultimately rejected by the Senate in a 70-22 vote.
In 2005, Joe Biden also vehemently denounced Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the court, calling it a “power grab” by a president “corrupted by power.”
Reacting to Biden’s exploration of court-packing last week, Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, asserted that he had “once again cowered to the radical left.”