Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Marsha Blackburn on Thursday stood before the U.S. Supreme Court building to slam a proposal to add justices to the court.
A week earlier, Democrat senators gathered in the same spot to announce a bill calling for the addition of four more justices.
“The bottom line is there is a movement to change America as we know it, by the most partisan people in this town,” Graham, R-S.C., said. “That includes fundamentally changing the makeup of the court, which would set in motion the end of the rule of law as we know it.”
Last week, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., announced their bill.
The measure, though, is already facing difficulties. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she has no intention of taking it to the House floor. In addition, The National Review reported Wednesday that Markey has yet to gain a Senate co-sponsor on the initiative.
Graham on Thursday warned Democrats that when Republicans eventually are in control of Congress again, “we would be forced to change the number” if a measure to expand the court does pass.
The court would become a political football, destroying its independence,” said Graham. “The American people would lose faith in the institution.”
Conservatives do care about the court, he added, and want to make sure its justices “do not become legislators in a robe.”
“Their goal is to add to the court judges who will do our job, creating laws, not interpreting laws,” Graham said.
He also decried several other Democrat agenda items, including the push for statehood for the District of Columbia, the H.R. 1 voting reform measure, and the push to remove the filibuster so the left’s bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority vote rather than the currently required 60 votes.
“Making D.C. a state is the biggest assault on the Senate in my lifetime and comes at the expense of Texas and South Carolina and every other state,” Graham said. “It’s a horribly bad idea.”
H.R. 1, he continued, is a push to nationalize the nation’s vote and a federal take over of the election system.
Further, eliminating the filibuster means taking away a tool that Republicans have “to make sure that extreme ideas like turning the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 can’t happen without a Republican buy-in,” Graham said. “It is a check and balance on the desire to federalize the elections through H.R. 1. It is the end of making D.C. a state unless you can give some Republicans to agree that’s a good idea.”
Cruz, R-Texas, said there is a reason the Democrats don’t want to take their agenda items, such as packing the Supreme Court, to the voters.
“The voters will tell them to jump in a lake,” Cruz said. “Instead, they’re trying to rig the game. They’re trying to fix the system…they’re behaving like corrupt politicians.”
He further pointed out that it wasn’t that long ago, in 2017, Republicans controlled the House and Senate and had a Republican president, Donald Trump, in the White House, but never tried to “rig the game” like the Democrats are now that they are in charge.
“They love to portray Trump as some crazy autocrat,” said Cruz, adding that there was nothing to prevent Republicans from doing what the Democrat leaders are doing now, except for respect for the rule of law and “basic decency.”
Blackburn, R-Tenn., added that the media would “just lose it” if Republicans were trying to pack the Supreme Court.
“One of the things that we do know is that the Democrats are trying to pack the court to turn it into a super legislative body, so they can have people that are going to rubberstamp everything they believe,” Blackburn said.
“If they are successful, you will not see life protected. You will see government-run healthcare. You are not going to see your rights protected. I guarantee you they will come to take away your guns. These are things you can count on. This is their agenda…they want to radically change this country and radically change our institutions.”
