Hank Johnson: Tip Over Supreme Court by Adding Four Seats

A group of “progressive” Democrats rallied behind a bill Monday introduced last year by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) to add four seats to the Supreme Court, with the goal of packing the vacancies with liberal justices and shifting the Court to the left.

Johnson, infamous for arguing that a growing population on the island would cause the U.S. territory of Guam to “tip over and capsize,” wants to tip the balance of the Court over from a nominal 6-3 conservative majority to a 7-6 liberal majority.

The Hill reported that eight Democrats held a press conference on Capitol Hill to back Johnson’s court-packing legislation:

The eight lawmakers cited recent Supreme Court decisions that rolled back Miranda rights, threw out a New York gun control law and allowed religion to surface in schools — as well as the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned the right to abortion in Roe — in saying there was a need to add new justices to the court.

…

The Supreme Court isn’t susceptible to the popular vote the way Congress is, Johnson said, and it has used that fact to amass power. “It’s making decisions that usurp the power of the legislative and executive branches,” he said.

Facing Republican opposition and some Democratic skepticism, the bill has little chance of becoming law, but it illustrates the deep anger among progressive Democrats about the court’s direction under three conservative justices nominated by former President Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Last year, House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) backed Johnson’s bill to pack the Court, ahead of deliberations by a presidential commission to study the issue. That commission’s report ultimately cautioned against the idea.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.