Former Democrat Senator Harry Reid (NV) warned during a CNN interview on Saturday that Democrats need to be very careful when it comes to trying to alter the Supreme Court, including proposals to pack the court with leftist judges or trying to subject the justices to term limits.
CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Reid about whether he thought it was a good idea to pack the court, a push being made by the far-Left.
“I think it’s — we should be very, very careful in doing so. I have no problem with the commission, but I think that the commission is going to come back and disappoint a lot of people because I think they’re going to come back and say, we should just kind of leave it alone,” Reid said. “I think it would be inappropriate at this time after that long history we’ve had in the country [to] have term limits for judges. I think that we better be very, very careful in saying that we need to expand the Supreme Court. I think we better be very, very, careful.”
Even Harry Reid thinks packing SCOTUS is going too far: “We better be very, very careful in saying that we need to expand the Supreme Court. I think we better be very, very careful." pic.twitter.com/Di7yNX98Cn
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 10, 2021
Reid’s remarks come after President Joe Biden announced on Friday that he created a commission to study expanding the Supreme Court. The New York Times reported that Biden did so because he was “under pressure from activists.” The commission, which is being led by two former Obama officials, is comprised of members who are overwhelmingly on the political Left, leading George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley to warn that it was “not a good sign” for how things are likely to go.
Reid’s push for Democrats to exercise caution before doing anything radical to the court system comes after Reid eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominees under former President Barack Obama, a move that then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned Democrats would come to regret. Just a few short years later, they did regret it after President Donald Trump got to select three Supreme Court justices and got to reshape the federal judiciary with scores of conservative judges.
Court packing is politically controversial, and the majority of Americans oppose it, including socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), leftist Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and even former leftist Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project (A3P), warned that Biden’s move was “alarming” and must “be met with the harshest of denunciations from both sides of the aisle” because packing the Supreme Court would lead to “irreversible damage.”
“Packing the Supreme Court would destroy centuries of hard work from Democrat- and Republican-appointed justices to insulate the high court from partisan politics,” Davis warned. “It also raises serious red flags as to what unconstitutional actions President Biden is planning that a more favorable Supreme Court might tolerate.”