Liberal lawmakers are scrambling to pack the Supreme Court with progressive judges – tampering with a branch of government meant as a coequal and critical check and balance of Congress and the White House.
It’s a desperate race for control of the high court before Joe Biden is potentially defeated and Donald Trump returns to power again and is able to tilt the court with younger conservative judges.
The court is already under unprecedented attack, leading with Biden’s State of the Union swipe at the judges who were sitting there in the House chamber.
And some Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, continue to advocate for expanding the Supreme Court to pack it with more favorable justices.
“At a time when the American people’s confidence in the nation’s highest court has fallen to a record low and congressional Republicans have already employed their far-right judicial playbook…Congress must take action to once again expanding the court,” a statement by Markey, Warren and others said.
And in Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey has done her own political tampering with the state Supreme Judicial Court, picking her former romantic partner to a lifetime seat.
Democrats nationally are even pressing one of their own – Justice Sonia Sotomayor – to retire before the November election to ensure the seat stays in control of a liberal judge.
They are afraid she will retire next year or during the term when Trump is possibly president again.
Sotomayor, one of three remaining liberals on the court, will turn 70 in June and as prognosticator Nate Silver pointed out, “there is clearly a chance Sotomayor will die or become unable to carry out her duties before Democrats again control both the presidency and the Senate.”
Silver also notes that two Democratic senators, Richard Blumenthal and Sheldon Whitehouse, have “not so subtly encouraged her to find the exit door.”
“If you’re someone who even vaguely cares about progressive political outcomes – someone who would rather not see a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court even if you don’t agree with liberals on every issue – you should want Sotomayor to retire and be replaced by a younger liberal justice. And – here’s the mean part – if you don’t want that you deserve what you get.”
Yikes. Progressives can be pretty mean.
But the meanness just shows how crucial the battle for the Supreme Court can be.
These are lifetime appointments meant to be above the average political fray. The Supreme Court’s decisions are the final word and not subject to appeal.
Federal judges do not have to run for re-election every two or four years. And they shouldn’t be influenced or tampered with by any politician.
The court is about to make some critical decisions this year, including whether Trump is immune to prosecution. And that is leading to more court tampering.
Several retired generals and admirals wrote a brief to the court warning of the danger to democracy if Trump is successful in his immunity argument.
They wrote that Trump’s case “has the potential to severely undermine the Commander-in-Chief’s legal and moral authority to lead the military forces, as it would signal that they but not he must obey the rule of law.”
Oral arguments in the case are set for April 25. Until the court makes a ruling, Trump’s election interference case is on hold.
Biden is also attempting to make an end run around the high court this week, proposing to cancel billions of dollars more of student debt. This came after the court soundly rejected Biden’s original plan for student debt relief.
