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      McConnell: ‘Highly unlikely’ I would let Biden fill supreme court seat in 2024

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      The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday it was “highly unlikely” he would allow Joe Biden to fill a supreme court vacancy arising in 2024, the year of the next presidential election, if Republicans regained control of the chamber.“I think it’s highly unlikely – in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host.McConnell blocked Barack Obama from filling a vacancy in 2016, denying Merrick Garland, now attorney general, even a hearing after he was nominated to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia.McConnell said that was because no new justice should be seated in an election year – a position he reversed with alacrity in 2020, on the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg two months before polling day.Ginsburg, a liberal lion, was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. Major cases are coming up on abortion rights, gun control, affirmative action and more.McConnell claimed then, and repeated to Hewitt, that no new justice should be seated in an election year when the White House and the Senate are controlled by different parties.“I think in the middle of a presidential election,” McConnell said, “if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled.“So I think it’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party if it controlled, if it were different from the president would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election. What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president. And that’s why we went ahead with it.”Asked what would happen if a vacancy arose in 2023 with Republicans in control of the Senate, McConnell said: “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”He also said keeping Scalia’s seat open – to be filled under Donald Trump by Neil Gorsuch – “is the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate”.McConnell’s hardball tactics have contributed to his status as a hate figure among progressives. On Monday, much online reaction to his remarks focused on beseeching Stephen Breyer, a liberal and at 82 the oldest justice on the current court, to retire while Biden is in the White House and Democrats hold the Senate.Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said: “Exactly as I wrote last week. McConnell will NOT fill a Breyer seat if he’s majority leader, even if he has to wait two years with the seat open.”Jeet Heer, a columnist for the Nation, wrote: “Can someone send this to USA supreme court justice Stephen Breyer. Thanks!”The conservative hold on the court was strengthened in 2018 when Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on civil rights issues, stepped down and was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, once an official in the White House of George W Bush.Kavanaugh faced and denied allegations of sexual assault during a stormy confirmation but McConnell said he was “stronger than mule piss” in support and the process was duly completed.Breyer, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, has shown little inclination to follow Kennedy’s example and step aside for a younger justice.Last month, he angered some on the left by telling high school and middle school students the key to working with conservatives was to talk to them more.Among progressives, support is growing for countering conservative dominance of the court by increasing the number of justices. Republicans are stringently opposed.McConnell told Hewitt he wanted to give Breyer “a shout out, though, because he joined what Justice Ginsburg said in 2019, that nine is the right number for the supreme court, and I admire him for that. I think even the liberal justices on the supreme court have made it clear that court packing is a terrible idea.”The number of justices on the court is not fixed in the constitution. More

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      Supreme court justice Stephen Breyer: Democrats must ‘get Republicans talking’

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      The supreme court justice Stephen Breyer has told young Americans Democrats facing Republican intransigence, obstruction and outright attacks on democracy should “get ‘em talking”, in search of compromise and progress.Breyer was speaking to middle- and high-school students on Friday, in an event organised by the National Constitution Center.The same day, Republicans in the Senate deployed the filibuster, by which the minority can thwart the will of the majority, to block the establishment of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January.Thomas Kean, who led the 9/11 panel, told the Guardian the Republican move was “democracy’s loss”.From the White House, Joe Biden faces Republican reluctance to engage on his plans for investment in infrastructure and the pandemic-battered economy. Amid concerted attacks on voting rights in Republican states, federal bills to protect such rights seem unlikely to pass the Senate.“You need that Republican’s support?” Breyer told the listening students. “Talk to them … You say, ‘What do you think? My friend, what do you think?’ Get ’em talking. Once they start talking eventually they’ll say something you agree with.”Democrats do not agree with Trump’s lie that his election defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud, which fuelled the deadly attack on the Capitol. Nor do they agree with Republican attempts to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court ruling which safeguards a woman’s right to abortion.The court has a 6-3 conservative majority, after Republicans ripped up precedent to block Barack Obama’s final appointment then installed three justices under Trump, in the last case reversing their own position on appointments in the last year of a presidency.Breyer was speaking less than two weeks after the court agreed to hear a major challenge to abortion rights.The case, which the justices will hear in their next term, beginning in October, involves an attempt by Mississippi to revive a law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.In 2019 the conservative Clarence Thomas, who has backed abortion restrictions, urged the court to feel less bound to upholding precedent. Asked about the value of adhering to past rulings, Breyer said the court should overturn precedent only in the “rare case where it’s really necessary” and said law is about stability.“The law might not be perfect but if you’re changing it all the time people won’t know what to do, and the more you change it the more people will ask to have it changed, and the more the court hears that, the more they’ll change it.”Many on the left seek change on the court, in the form of Breyer’s retirement. After the death of the progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87 last September, Breyer, at 82, is the oldest judge on the panel. Ginsburg was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, a strict Catholic widely seen as likely to favour overturning precedent on abortion.Brett Kavanaugh, another conservative justice, was installed by Republicans after Anthony Kennedy retired, a move supported by the Trump White House. Kennedy was conservative but a swing vote on key rulings regarding individual rights. Kavanaugh, once an aide to President George W Bush, is more reliably rightwing.Breyer told the students, aged between 11 and 18, that as part of his daily routine he watches reruns of M*A*S*H, a hit sitcom that ran from 1972 to 1983. He also rides a stationary bike and meditates.Questioned about deepening polarisation some fear may tear the US apart, Breyer said he was “basically optimistic”. For all of its flaws, he said, American democracy is “better than the alternatives”.He also urged his listeners to put “unfortunate things” in historical context.“It’s happened before,” he said. “This is not the first time that people have become discouraged with the democratic process. This is not the first time that we’ve had real racism in this country. It used to be slavery before that.” More

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      Should Biden reform the supreme court? Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      Last week, the US supreme court agreed to hear a case that could significantly roll back abortion rights. This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Christopher Kang, former deputy counsel to President Obama, about calls to restructure the highest federal court in the country

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      Christopher Kang spent several years working in the White House when Barack Obama was in office. Now he is the co-founder and chief counsel of Demand Justice, an organisation pushing for Congress to pass a bill that would allow the addition of four seats to the US supreme court, diluting the majority conservatives currently have on the bench. Jonathan questions the consequences of such an act, whether there is another way to restore balance, and the politics behind such a radical move. More

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      Trump’s revenge: tilting of supreme court to the right poised to bear fruit

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      Donald Trump’s presidency was capricious and chaotic, but there was one issue on which he focused with laser-like discipline: tilting the judiciary to the right.Now America is about to reap that harvest. In the next year the supreme court is set to consider healthcare, voting, LGBTQ rights, guns and, most explosively, abortion. The cases provide a vivid demonstration of how, after being rejected at the ballot box, conservative partisans could push their agenda through the courts instead.“Next year’s supreme court term is shaping up to be the revenge of Donald Trump,” said Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School.It was always said that, long after the tweets and leaks were forgotten, Trump’s judicial legacy would endure. He appointed 234 judges, including 54 appellate judges, outpacing Barack Obama’s first term total of 172 and George W Bush’s 204.The blitz included three supreme court justices, most recently Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg following the liberal linchpin’s death, handing conservatives a 6-3 majority.Just after Barrett’s arrival and Joe Biden’s victory, the court heard arguments in a new challenge to Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act. A decision is expected soon. If the court’s conservatives overturn Obamacare, they would succeed where Republicans in Congress failed.That outcome is seen as unlikely, but the right is expected to fare better in two cases brought by Democrats contending that voting restrictions in Arizona are racially discriminatory. A ruling, expected soon, could make it harder to challenge dozens of other Republican-led voting measures in the wake of last year’s election.Another looming case involves a Roman Catholic adoption agency in Philadelphia that argues it is entitled to discriminate against potential foster parents on the basis of sexual orientation. Arguments at a hearing last November again implied that the conservative majority will rule in favour of the agency.The supreme court’s 2020-21 term offers further flashpoints. The nine justices will review a challenge to New York’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public. It will be the court’s first major gun rights case in more than a decade, even as Biden pushes for Congress to tackle America’s firearm violence epidemic.And, it emerged this week, America’s highest court will also consider a bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The eventual ruling could undercut the seminal 1973 Roe v Wade decision that enshrined a woman’s right to abortion nationwide.Fallone believes the move is a sign that the court’s conservatives are no longer worried about Chief Justice John Roberts casting a decisive vote against them. “The only reason to take this case would be to overturn Roe,” he said. “They’re pretty confident they can succeed without it.”Despite holding the White House and both chambers of Congress, Democrats have few options in the short term. Fallone, who unsuccessfully ran for the Wisconsin supreme court as a Democrat, added: “I don’t really think realistically that there is much that the Democrats can do about the court. The conservative majority is going to be emboldened next term.“They’ve been waiting for that moment for a long time and it’s finally going to arise. The second amendment case involving the New York law against carrying firearms openly in public is also setting up next term to be a big win for conservatives potentially as well.”A commission established by Biden to study potential changes to the supreme court held its first meeting on Wednesday. It has six months to issue a report on reforms including possibly expanding the number of justices to 13, an idea championed by some liberal activists and Democratic members of Congress.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “From the gun violence prevention case to the abortion case, the Republican super majority on the supreme court is showing that it is full steam ahead with its ultra-conservative agenda regardless of what the country thinks.“Ultimately we have to grapple with the need for structural reform of the supreme court. We’re just starting to build the education and activism around this and gaining momentum in Congress. As the supreme court continues to take these grossly political steps, unfortunately they’re going to make the argument for us about why the supreme court needs to be reformed.”A bill to expand the court was introduced in Congress last month but Democratic moderates have expressed scepticism. Kang insisted: “Sooner or later, this is going to be a question that comes to the Democrats about how we’re going to preserve our democracy. The need to add supreme court seats, regrettably, is going to become very clear within the next couple of years.”Republicans have opposed the idea of expanding the number of justices, sometimes described as “court packing” and last seriously attempted by the Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. They deny that they are using the courts as a workaround to subvert democracy and impose a form of minority rule.Curt Levey, president of the rightwing advocacy group the Committee for Justice, said: “I don’t see Biden’s narrow victory as an endorsement of abortion on demand, which is pretty much the current regime or, for that matter, as an endorsement of draconian restrictions on handguns. So I guess I don’t really see it as being out of step.“I think the opposite was true for many decades where the supreme court represented elite opinion that was out of touch with the majority. Perhaps for the first time, the supreme court is more in line with the American people generally. I certainly understand why the left is upset that they’ve lost an institution that helped them to implement their agenda.”In fact Biden won the national popular vote by 7m ballots. About six in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center, although the partisan split over the issue has deepened in recent years.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, director of democracy policy at the grassroots movement Indivisible, said: “Most people in the United States think that abortion should be legal and easy to access so it’s not really a political winner for Republicans, especially among suburban women, to go at women’s bodily autonomy like this legislatively.“If the courts do it, then they get what they want and they don’t face any blowback for it because it wasn’t them that did it. They didn’t pass a law that says abortion is bad; they got the supreme court to do it. And so that’s what this 40-year project has been about: stacking the courts with people that are conservative loyalists and who will do the unpopular dirty work of Republicans that they can’t get done legislatively.”It is a very long game. A recent article in the Atlantic magazine noted that Trump’s judges will not reach the peak of their influence until the early 2040s, when they are likely to lead nearly every appeals court at the same time.Hatcher-Mays warned: “The lower courts also have been hijacked, frankly, by people who are loyal not just to conservative values but Republican political outcomes. That was Trump’s big legacy. Not every case goes to the supreme court; a lot of them are decided at the lower level; a lot of those people that he picked are Trumpian-type judges. So that’s really, really scary.” More

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      US supreme court to hear case over right to carry concealed guns outside

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      The US supreme court stepped back into the gun control debate on Monday, saying it would take up a case focused on whether people can carry concealed guns outside the home in New York.The case could lead to the most consequential ruling on the scope of the second amendment in more than a decade.The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Corlett, is backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA). It seeks an unfettered right to carry concealed handguns in public. A state firearms licensing officer granted the two plaintiffs “concealed carry” permits but restricted them to hunting and target practice, prompting the legal challenge.It will come before a conservative-leaning court. The court’s 6-3 rightwing majority, entrenched by three appointments under Donald Trump, is seen as sympathetic to an expansive view of second amendment rights.The debate over gun control in the US has intensified amid a spate of mass shootings, including one at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis on 15 April in which a gunman killed eight people and then himself and two in less than a week in March, one in Georgia and the other in Colorado, that left 18 dead.In 2008, the supreme court recognized an individual’s right to keep guns at home for self-defense. In 2010 the court applied that right to the states. The plaintiffs in the New York case want that right to be extended beyond the home.Lower courts threw out out their case, rejecting the argument that the New York restrictions violated the second amendment right to keep and bear arms.A ruling invalidating the New York law could imperil laws in other states with criteria for concealed-carry licenses. Seven other states and the District of Columbia give authorities more discretion to deny concealed firearm permits.A ruling against New York could also force lower courts to cast a skeptical eye on new or existing gun control laws.Gun control advocates are concerned the conservative supreme court justices could create a standard for gun control that will threaten measures already implemented, such as expanded criminal background checks for gun buyers and “red flag” laws targeting the firearms of people deemed dangerous by the courts.Republicans and gun rights advocates have pressed the justices to take up a new case and further extend gun rights. Last year, the court sidestepped a ruling in an NRA-supported challenge to a New York City restriction on transporting firearms outside the home, because the city had rolled back the regulation. More

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      ‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court

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      Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.But McDonald has specific reasons for wanting a Black woman on the court, too.When Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in 2013 that federal oversight of voting in certain southern states was no longer needed because “things have changed dramatically” since the civil rights era, McDonald said, he revealed a blindness to something African American women have no choice but to see.“I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts had really understood racism, he would never have voted to gut the Voting Rights Act,” McDonald said, adding that hundreds of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans in recent months suggest things have not “changed dramatically” since 1965.“Myself, as an African American woman, having that representation on the supreme court will be huge,” McDonald said, “especially in the sense of having someone that really understands racism.”The gradual diversification of US leadership, away from the overwhelming preponderance of white men, towards a mix that increasingly reflects the populace, was accelerated by the election last November of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, as vice-president.Black women have been overlooked in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the benchNow enthusiasm is building around a similarly historic leap that activists, academics and professionals expect is just around the corner: the arrival on the court of a justice who would personify one of the most historically marginalized groups.“Black women have been overlooked for decades and decades in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the bench,” said Leslie Davis, chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “We should be able to look at our highest court in the land and see the reflection of some of the folks who have made America great. And that absolutely includes Black women.”Out of 115 justices in its history, the supreme court has counted two African American justices, one Latina and just five women. The court has no vacant seats but calls are growing for Stephen Breyer, a liberal who turns 83 this year, to retire. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s campaign commitment to nominating a Black woman “absolutely” holds.“This is a big moment in the making,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way, which recently launched the Her Fight Our Fight campaign to support and promote women of color in government and public service roles.“The presumption is that whomever Biden nominates, the first Black woman to the supreme court would be filling both the shoes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall,” said Jealous.The late Ginsburg, a pioneering lawyer for women’s rights, was succeeded last fall by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Marshall was succeeded in 1991 by the George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, who “is anathema to everything that the civil rights community stands for”, Jealous said.“It would be both glorious and a relief to have a Black woman on the supreme court who actually represents the values of the civil rights community, and the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.”Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a civil rights historian, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of constitutional law, said having qualified federal judges who “reflect the broad makeup of the American public” would strengthen democracy and faith in the courts.“It’s an important historical moment that signifies equal opportunity,” Brown-Nagin said. “That anyone who is qualified has the chance to be considered for nomination, notwithstanding race, notwithstanding gender. That is where we are. In some ways, we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves, right?”Brown-Nagin pointed out that a campaign was advanced in the 1960s to nominate Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge, but some Democratic allies of President Lyndon Johnson opposed such a nomination because they saw it as too politically risky.“This moment could have happened 50 years ago,” Brown-Nagin said.Daniel L Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance For Justice, said to call the moment “overdue” did not capture it.“It is stunning that in the entire history of the republic, that no African American woman has sat on the highest court in the country,” Goldberg said. “For way too long in our nation’s history, the only people who were considered suitable and qualified for the court happened to be white males.”The first Black woman supreme court justice is likely to be nominated at a time when a renewed push for racial justice brings renewed focus on the court, which has played a key role in enforcing desegregation and reinforcing anti-discrimination laws.I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firmThe killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer outside Minneapolis last weekend during the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has sharpened cries for a national answer to serial injustice at the local level – precisely the kind of conflict that typically lands before the supreme court.“As we sit here today, and watch the trial of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, that precipitated a summer of protests for the lives of Black people to matter – it feels that it is time for there to be a Black woman on the supreme court, because of the moment that we are in right now,” said McDonald, the Utah activist.Davis said it was “imperative” the country make strides toward racial justice after the invasion of the Capitol in January by white supremacists intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election, goaded on by a former president.“That shows that there are folks who are intentional about not seeing diversity, equity and inclusion thrive,” Davis said. “Now is the time for us as a country to recognize that until we value the voices of everyone, including Black women, we are silencing a very important part of the fabric of America.”‘A significant pool’The percentage of Black women who are federal judges – a common stepping-stone to a high court nomination – is extraordinarily small.According to the federal judicial center, the US circuit courts count only five African American women among sitting judges out of 179. There are 42 African American women judges at the district court level, out of 677.Those numbers are partly owing to Republican obstruction of Black women nominated by Barack Obama, including former seventh circuit nominee Myra Selby. She was denied a hearing in the Senate for the entirety of 2016 – a year later Republicans filled the seat with Donald Trump’s nominee: Amy Coney Barrett.“There is a significant pool of lawyers, law professors, public officials who would be viable nominees for the federal courts,” said Brown-Nagin. “The problem is not the pool.”Last month, Brown-Nagin co-signed a letter to the Senate judiciary committee supporting the nomination of district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court of appeals for the DC district, sometimes informally referred to as the second-highest court in the land.“Her resumé virtually screams that she is an ideal nominee for an appellate court or even the supreme court, and that is because she has the combination of educational and professional experience on the federal courts that feasibly fits the mold of typical supreme court nominees,” Brown-Nagin said.“I would say it goes beyond what we’ve seen, frankly, in recent nominees to the court.”Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said he would like to see a nominee “who cut their teeth defending the people, not corporations”.“I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firm, the NAACP legal defense fund, with a courageous commitment to defending the rights of all Americans,” he said.McDonald said having a Black woman on the supreme court would mean American history had “come full circle”.“I feel in my heart that it’s time,” she said. “Everything takes its time. And everything happens at its time. I was raised in a church, so I’m just going to say it like that.” More

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      Supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett reportedly signs $2m book deal

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      The former attorney general William Barr and supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett have reportedly signed book deals – with Barrett paid a reported $2m for a volume on how judges should not bring their personal feelings into the way they rule.Barrett was appointed to the court in a hurried, politicized and bitter process last year, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of progressive values.Barrett is a strict Catholic and her presence on the 6-3 conservative court has given rightwing campaigners hope it will soon strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right to abortion.An unnamed source who spoke to Politico said Barrett’s advance was “eye-raising”. A spokesperson for the court did not comment.Barr, who was also attorney general under George HW Bush, is also a strict Catholic conservative. Politico reported that he had begun work on his memoir about working for Donald Trump.Legal analysts decried Barr’s actions in service of the 45th president, including a highly selective handling of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow and support for Trump’s authoritarian impulses in response to protests for racial justice last summer.Barr resigned in December, over the president’s lies about voter fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.One legal professional who clashed publicly with Barr and Trump, former New York prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, is reported to have sold a book for “a lot of money”.A source told Politico Berman’s book would be “part Paul Giamatti and Billions” – a reference to a hit TV series about corporate crime in New York – “and then sort of the Trump show in the southern district [of New York]”.Books about Trump’s time in power have proved lucrative, ever since in January 2018 the Guardian broke news of Fire and Fury, the first of two White House tell-alls by the reporter Michael Wolff.The Russia investigation has been retold in print by members of the special counsel’s team including Andrew Weissmann and Peter Strzok.Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is reportedly working on a book and former vice-president Mike Pence has signed a deal for two volumes. But Politico said a number of former Trump aides are struggling to find buyers.Peter Navarro, formerly a senior adviser to Trump on economics and trade, told the website: “The reports of my publishing death are greatly exaggerated. I have a major publishing agreement with an attractive advance and my book will be out shortly after Labor Day.”It was not immediately clear if Navarro would again co-operate with Ron Vara, an anti-China policy hand he has quoted liberally in previous books but who turned out both not to exist and to have for his name an anagram of “Navarro”. More

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      Democrats plan to unveil legislation to expand the US supreme court by four seats

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterDemocrats are planning to introduce a bill to expand the supreme court – proposing to add four justices to the US’s highest court.Senator Ed Markey, and representatives Jerrold Nadler, Hank Johnson and Mondaire Jones plan to present their legislation Thursday at a news conference. The measure would expand the number of justices from nine to 13, according to Reuters, which reviewed a copy of the bill in advance of it being released publicly. Although Joe Biden announced a commission to study supreme court expansion and reform, the politically incendiary question of changing the court is unlikely to be approved.Progressives have been pushing to expand the supreme court, after Donald Trump’s three appointees tilted the judicial body sharply to the right. One of the positions that Trump filled was a seat that Republicans had blocked his predecessor, Barack Obama, from filling in 2016 – arguing that the winner of that year’s election should choose whom to nominate for the vacant. But last year, Republicans reversed course – rushing to approve ultra-conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett weeks before the 2020 election.Discussions over reforming the court have taken on new urgency in recent months as the court is poised to address key questions on voting rights, reproductive rights and environmental protections.Who agrees that we should expand the Supreme Court?— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) April 15, 2021
      Republicans and many moderate Democrats have opposed the idea of expanding the court, or what they sometimes call “court packing”.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said the idea of expanding the court was “a direct assault on our nation’s independent judiciary and yet another sign of the Far Left’s influence over the Biden administration”.Biden has not taken a clear position on expansion. In the past, he has said he’s “not a fan” of the idea.Last week, he created a bipartisan, 36-member commission aimed at studying the history of the court and analyzing the potential consequences to altering its size. The commission is lead by Bob Bauer, the former White House counsel for Obama, and Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor who served as deputy assistant attorney general in Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel. But it is unclear what the impact for the commission would be – as it is not required to produce definitive recommendations. More