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President Joe Biden does not support expanding the Supreme Court despite it ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, his press secretary said over the weekend.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made the comments while speaking to reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One en route to Germany for this year’s G-7 summit.
“So, I know I was asked this question yesterday, and I’ve been asked it before, and I think the president himself, about expanding the court,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is something that the president does not agree with. That is not something that he wants to do.”
END THE FILIBUSTER AND EXPAND THE SUPREME COURT, LIBERAL LAWMAKERS SAY AFTER DOBBS
The Supreme Court is currently made up of six conservatives (Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) and three liberals (Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor).
In the aftermath of the court’s latest rulings, specifically its decision to overturn Roe, a growing chorus of liberal Democrats have begun calling for expanding the number of justices on the bench.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for expanding the court over the weekend, as did Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
“A stolen, illegitimate, and far-right Supreme Court majority appears set to destroy the right to abortion, an essential right which protects the health, safety, and freedom of millions of Americans,” Markey tweeted Friday. “There is no other recourse. We must expand the court.”
“This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision,” Warren said in an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
“They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” she continued. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court, and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court.”
Longtime Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, who covers the nation’s highest bench for NPR, said Friday that the latest rulings could boost liberals’ efforts to expand the court.
“In this decision, the court spent all its political capital,” Totenberg said. “The idea of adding Supreme Court justices, which I thought didn’t have a leg to stand on, I think at some point may have traction.”
During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, then-candidate Biden said multiple times he did not support packing the court, vowing in an interview with Iowa Starting Line that Democrats would “live to rue that day.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
During a primary debate, the then-Democratic front-runner warned that adding more justices to the nation’s highest bench was capable of backfiring, saying: “I would not get into court-packing. We add three justices. Next time around, we lose control, they add three justices. We begin to lose any credibility the court has at all.”
Facing pressure from liberals following a few months in office, however, Biden signed an executive order creating a commission to look into the matter. The commission would be “comprised of a bipartisan group of experts on the Court and the Court reform debate,” the White House said at the time.
Republicans and legal purists, meanwhile, have decried the idea as “court-packing,” warning it would undo the Supreme Court’s historical insulation from politics.
