Kamala Harris 'Aligned' With Supreme Court Packing Plan, Democrat Senator Says

Despite her best efforts to moderate her politics ahead of the general election, Vice President Kamala Harris' previous progressive record and even her own Democrat allies in Congress are beginning to prove that her policy agenda isn't as moderate as she claims. According to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Harris campaign would likely agree to back a Supreme Court reform bill that would place term limits on justices and allow Democrats to circumvent President Trump's appointments during his first term.

During the Democratic National Convention last week, Sen. Whitehouse and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) outlined how Democrats would put forth a progressive agenda if they won Congress and maintained control of the White House. According to Dispatch Politics, Whitehouse assured those in attendance that he is "virtually certain" that Democrats would pass a "Supreme Court reform" bill by circumventing the filibuster and getting the legislation through via an omnibus spending package. The Democrat lawmakers would also try to include access to abortion and other top priorities in the package if they controlled both chambers of Congress.

"To get around the filibuster, we're going to have to have a process that allows very substantial debate from the Senate minority," Whitehouse said. "We are not going to want to give the Republicans multiple stalls, multiple filibusters on this, so the bill that gets around the filibuster will be virtually certain to include permanent reproductive rights, permanent restored voting rights, getting rid of corrupting billionaire dark money, and Supreme Court reform. If you've got a bill like that moving, that's going to have spectacular tailwinds behind it."

As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris proposed an unprecedented list of reforms for the judiciary last month. The president demanded that Congress pass a Constitutional amendment, the No One Is Above the Law Amendment, that reverses the court's Trump v United States decision, granting the president immunity for "official acts." He called on Congress to enact 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices and demanded that an enforceable ethics code, imposed on the judiciary by Congress, be put into place.

In response to these calls, Sen. Whitehouse said that the Harris campaign has not officially endorsed his bill putting these proposals into action but did say they "aligned" with the legislation. "They have not gone so far as to say, 'We endorse your bill.' They have said that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about," he said. The Rhode Island senator's bill would only take effect after the upcoming presidential election, but he added that the bill's exact language wasn't set in stone. "Everything is subject to the will of the Senate and the House and the input from the president as we do these things," he explained. "The point of that is that we want to make it seem a little bit less like it's an immediate targeting."

Vice President Harris' support of Whitehouse's legislation proves that she is willing to go after the bedrock institutions of the American government and reshape them to her will. The Democrats' court-packing plan would be an existential threat to the court's neutrality. If enacted, it would surely destroy the judiciary into a body fueled by political power rather than a deep respect for the Constitution.

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