Democrats’ plan to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court by filling it with left-wing ideologues is a “direct threat,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa warned in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday.
The speech responded to recent plans by Democrats to increase the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine to 13, which Grassley called out as wanting to add “new activist justices who will rule the way that they want, not the way the Constitution commands.”
Grassley’s floor speech came on the heels of various calls by Democrats to pack the Supreme Court.
The Democrats openly revealed their court packing plan with the Judiciary Act of 2021, which aimed to expand the number of Supreme Court seats from nine to 13. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chair of the House Judiciary Committee at the time, claimed, “We are not packing the Supreme Court, we are unpacking it.”
Democrats renewed their court-packing threats in April this year after “the high court handed down a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday that nuked states’ ability to use race in the redistricting process,” The Federalist reported. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed willingness to embrace court-packing once back in control of Congress, saying, “everything is on the table — everything — to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.”
Former Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris also helped to reignite the left’s desire to pack the Supreme Court after she suggested it on a podcast with leftist advocacy group “Win With Black Women” last month. Only days later, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on Supreme Court court-packing. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., claimed that the Supreme Court ought to have 13 justices because there are 13 federal circuits.
Grassley believes the true reason why Democrats want to increase the number of justices is the same as always: “[House Democrats] aren’t upset about judicial ethics or institutional integrity. They’re upset because the Supreme Court is doing its job – applying the Constitution as written rather than applying it as House Democrats wish it was written.”
Grassley pointed to the left’s shouts for new justices, but under a Democratic president, as proof of their desire to hijack the Supreme Court to serve their whims. “Four new justices are the exact amount they think they need to secure a liberal majority on the Court,” he said, “… [but] the fact that House Democrats aren’t calling for new justices today [under Trump] tells you everything you need to know about their motive.”
Activists who value the legitimacy of the Supreme Court are working to put an end to Democrats’ court packing threats once and for all. The Keep Nine Coalition, established in 2017 and comprised of both Democrat and Republican former elected officials, has spearheaded the effort to make expanding the court unconstitutional. They are one of the groups behind a constitutional amendment that would cap the number of Supreme Court justices at nine. The amendment passed a House subcommittee vote last week — although not a single Democrat on the committee supported it — and is on its way to the House floor.
As Grassley stated in his speech, expanding the number of justices “might make sense if the Supreme Court hadn’t operated with nine Justices since 1869 – for over 150 years! And it also might make sense if we hadn’t had 10 federal circuits since all the way back in 1929 – nearly 100 years ago!” He added, “Additional circuits haven’t been a reason to add justices for nearly a century. It still isn’t today.”
Democrats’ calls to pack the Supreme Court are further proof that they will stop at nothing to smear the conservative justices seeking to uphold the Constitution. Their intimidation tactics are nothing new, either. Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., publicly threatened Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in 2020. At a pro-abortion rally, Schumer said if the did not bend to his pro-abortion agenda and produce rulings accordingly, “you will pay the price,” and “you won’t know what hit you.”
Such rhetoric laid the groundwork for violence and threats against justices. Not long after Schumer made his speech about the Dobbs decision, a crazed attempted assassin, Nicholas Roske, decided Kavanaugh deserved to die because of a leaked draft opinion that suggested the Supreme Court intended to overrule Roe v. Wade. Roske believed that killing a conservative justice would change the court’s opinions for “decades to come.”
More recently, Sen. Raphael Warnock’s, D-Ga., claimed on June 6 that the Callais majority rule against racist redistricting “committ[ed] violence against the ways in which ordinary people can have a voice in our system.”
When Democrats claim America is falling apart and the only way to fix it is to break the rules, it shows one simple truth: “House Democrats can’t get their preferred outcomes through the democratic process, [so] they want to rig the Supreme Court to ensure they never lose,” Grassley said, but thankfully, for now, “that’s not how our democracy works.”
