Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke out on Thursday to slam the efforts being made by some Democrats to pack the Supreme Court, calling it a “hostage-taking” move aimed to ensure there is a “sword dangling” over the justices as they try to decide cases in the future.
McConnell said this just before a group of House and Senate Democrats were set to unveil a new bill aimed at packing the court, increasing the number of justices from nine to thirteen.
“It’s not just about whether this insane bill becomes law,” McConnell said, according to Fox News. “Part of the point here are the threats themselves. The left wants a sword dangling over the justices when they weigh the facts in every case. As the Democrat leader threatened just two years ago, Democrats want the justices to know that they will, quote, ‘pay the price,’ end quote, for rulings that Democrats don’t like.”
The bill to pack the Supreme Court is being supported by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY).
“Our democracy is hanging by a thread. And the far-right majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is cutting it,” Jones said. “The majority’s doctrine is clear: if a law suppresses the right to vote, it is constitutional; if a law protects the right to vote, especially for Black and brown voters, it is unconstitutional. The American people have had enough.”
“Republicans stole the Court’s majority, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation completing their crime spree,” Markey added. “Of all the damage Donald Trump did to our Constitution, this stands as one of his greatest travesties.”
Not stopping there, Markey went on to say that the Senate needs to “abolish the filibuster to ensure we can pass it.”
Earlier this week, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that created a commission with a mandate to study whether he should attempt to pack the court. In the wake of this signing, McConnell called the order “an attempt to clothe” an attack on the Supreme Court in “fake legitimacy.”
“But alas, the far left cannot even wait for the fake theatrics of the fake study to play out,” McConnell said on Thursday. “Today Democrats in the Senate and the House have announced that they will once again threaten judicial independence from the steps of the court.”
McConnell then ripped into the way the media is treating what Democrats are doing.
“If Republicans had introduced a bill to add four Supreme Court seats for the last president to full, there would have been weeks of wall-to-wall outrage on every newspaper and cable TV channel,” McConnell said. “Now it seems the main strategies are to either shrug off and look the other way or to actively pay along and somehow lend credence.”
