Last week, former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder made a statement that if he were president, though he’s not running, and the Democrats controlled Congress, he would “seriously consider adding two seats to the Supreme Court” to counteract Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “power-grabbing antics.”
Presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is advocating expanding the court to 15 justices. Under his proposal, five appointees would be Republican-selected judges and five would be Democrats. The other five would be consensus picks of the ten, which has to be unanimous.
Buttigieg has said his plan would be intended to prevent the court from becoming a “nakedly partsian institution.”
There is precedent for adding justices to the court.
Jefferson did it to ensure that a politically hostile judiciary did not thwart the goals of the party controlling Congress and the presidency. The Congress has added justices on several occasions, but the number of seats on the Supreme Court has remained unchanged since 1869.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, has proposed a constitutional amendment setting the composition of the court at nine, but that is not in the Constitution yet.
The Alabama Political Reporter asked Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, about this recently when he was addressing the Alabama Republican Assembly at their annual meeting in Prattville.
Brooks confirmed that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent a Democratic president and Congress from doing just that.
Brooks predicted that if Democrats hold their control of the U.S. House of Representatives and win the Presidency then after the 2020 election they would need either a 60 vote supermajority in the U.S. Senate or with just a simple majority (and Brooks predicted this) they would change the Senate rules to pass this and rest of their progressive agenda with a simple majority vote.
2016 Trump Victory Chair Perry O. Hooper Jr. expressed similar concerns in a written statement.
“The radical left has the misguided belief that it is on the rise in America, and its adherents are incredibly confident about their ability to gain and then abuse power,” former state Representative Hooper warned. “Leading Democrats are promising that, if elected in 2020, they will, among other abuses, pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices and abolish the electoral college — allowing them to marginalize Americans who do not support their radical agenda and impose it on an unwilling nation.”
“Having failed to lock in lasting change of power during the Obama era and the Mueller Report exonerating President Trump, Democrats now hope to create a situation where the Supreme Court has power over the executive and legislative branches by adding up to six liberal Justices,” Hooper predicted. “It is disheartening to see leading Democratic politicians so brazenly discuss undermining the independence of the judiciary in this manner, and all because they don’t like judicial outcomes and can’t stand losing.
“If they succeed in abolishing the electoral college, Democrats could write off voters in large parts of the country and focus on turning out large numbers of their liberal supporters in big cities and populous liberal states such as New York and California,” Hooper warned. “Unburdened by the need to moderate their platform to appeal to everyday voters, they would be free to pursue full socialism without constraint. Votes cast in Alabama and other conservative smaller states who oppose spending tens of trillions on a Green New Deal, a government take-over of the health-care, energy and transportation sectors of the economy will no longer count since there will be no electors.”
Hooper criticized Democratic efforts to lower the voting age to 16.
Hooper said, “Other schemes being proposed by the Democratic leadership to minimize Trump’s America is lowering the voting age to 16: “I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said according to The Hill “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school””
“Speaker Pelosi is also pushing the fraudulently named ‘For the Peoples Act,'” Hooper added. “Among numerous other constitutional problems, including violations of the First Amendment’s free-speech protections, this bill would put the administration of elections, voter-qualification decisions, and the drawing of congressional districts into federal hands, in direct contradiction to several constitutional provisions. Unfortunately, our own liberal Senator, Doug Jones, is supporting her in this effort.”
“It is apparent that Democrats are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and will not let a little thing such as the Constitution stand in the way of turning the country into a socialist wasteland,” Hooper concluded.
The 2020 Alabama presidential primary is less than 11 months away on March 3.
