(Headline USA) The White House clarified this weekend that President Joe Biden does not support adding seats to the Supreme Court, despite his party members’ attempts to do so in light of the court’s recent decision striking down Roe v. Wade.
“So, I know I’ve…I was asked this question yesterday, and I’ve been asked it before — and I think the president himself…about expanding the court,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Saturday. “That is something that the president does not agree with. That is not something that he wants to do.”
A number of high-profile Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have revamped their attempts to expand the Supreme Court, calling the justices’ Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision “illegitimate.”
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. There is no other recourse. We must expand the court.
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) May 3, 2022
Warren agreed: “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,” she told ABC News 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.”
Ocasio-Cortez went one step further and suggested that Congress impeach at least two of the court’s conservative justices for “lying” to lawmakers.
“We [cannot] allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land,” Ocasio-Cortez told NBC News on Sunday.
“I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense. This is something that should be very seriously considered.”
Ocasio-Cortez seems to be referring to justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom said during their confirmation hearings that they believed Roe was “settled law.” They never said, however, that they would refrain from voting against it.