Packing the U.S. Supreme Court with left-wing ideologues has become a major facet of Democrats’ campaign rhetoric as of late. And it appears their 2028 presidential frontrunner is throwing her support behind the radical effort.
On Wednesday, former Vice President Kamala Harris became the latest Democrat to seemingly advocate for “expanding” the high court’s number of justices as a means of toppling the court’s conservative majority. While speaking on a call with the group known as Win with Black Women, the California leftist suggested her party should hold a “no bad idea brainstorm” in which participants consider implementing radical proposals such as court-packing and granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. once Democrats retake power.
“And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College; we talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court,” Harris said. “Let’s talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. These are the things I think that we’ve gotta do. We’ve got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps.”
“Look, we gotta fight fire with fire. These folks are playing to win. We gotta play to win too,” she added.
The comments came as part of remarks Harris gave in response to the Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, in which the high court found that Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-black district to be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” The ruling also neutralized states’ ability to use race in redistricting — a policy long supported by Democrats as a way of netting them seats to which they were not otherwise entitled.
Harris claimed that, by upholding a colorblind Constitution, the court’s Callais majority is “backdooring racism behind politics to get to this decision and to justify then what is happening in particular right now in all the southern states.” She further argued that “this is obviously a time for us to fight.”
Harris is one of many Democrats to suggest expanding the Supreme Court since Callais‘ release.
[READ: Any Vote For Democrats Is Now A Vote For Their Plan To Overthrow SCOTUS]
While not officially declared, Harris has not ruled out another run at the White House in 2028. The failed 2024 Democrat presidential nominee is largely seen as the prospective frontrunner in the race, according to RealClearPolling.
Wednesday’s discussion is arguably the most direct example of Harris embracing court-packing. The California native notably played coy when pressed on the issue throughout her prior presidential campaigns.
During the 2020 Democrat primary, Harris would not rule out packing SCOTUS if elected president, telling Politico that America is “on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” and that, “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that” (emphasis added). She separately said she’s “open” to adding as many as four new justices when asked about the idea during a 2019 campaign event.
Harris’ 2024 campaign site included a section claiming that “she supports ‘common-sense Supreme Court reforms,'” as The Federalist previously reported. While the then-vice president backed President Biden’s calls to impose term limits and a code of conduct on justices, she dodged a question about whether she supports packing the Supreme Court during a CNN town hall later that year.
