Bill seeks to add four to Supreme Court
A group of congressional Democrats introduced legislation Thursday to add four seats to the Supreme Court, a longshot bid designed to counter the court’s rightward tilt during the Trump administration and criticized by Republicans as a power grab that would reduce the public’s trust in the judiciary.
President Joe Biden last week created a commission to spend the next six months examining the politically incendiary issues of expanding the court and instituting term limits for justices.
“Some people say we’re packing the court. We’re not packing it. We’re unpacking it,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler.
Nadler, D-N.Y., said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the GOP had “packed the court over the last couple of years. This is a reaction to that.”
But the bill’s introduction had an inauspicious start. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she might not bring it up for a vote if it advanced out of committee,
saying the issue first should be studied by Biden’s panel. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was noncommittal as well.