(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) House Democrats have slowed the progress of what is purported to be a bipartisan bill to bring in additional security for the Supreme Court justices.
The Senate passed the emergency bill, but it was met with a lack of enthusiasm. Many of the House leadership have said they have yet to read the bill, which is a single page.
Representatives are now considering a different bill that would extend security to the clerks of the Supreme Court, of which there are about 40.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-N.Y., said Democrats are “certainly going to look” at the bill but did not provide a time to expect the vote, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
House Democrat Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he had yet to read the bill.
“I assume the appropriate committee will review it,” said Jeffries, who is favored to become the next Democrat speaker.
The laziness of House Democrats looks incredibly bad, in the face of the eruption of protests outside of the Supreme Court and at the private residences of some of the justices.
Some of the protests have become violent, with a crisis pregnancy center in Wisconsin being firebombed.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who coauthored the original legislation alongside a Democrat, insisted that taxpayer-funded police protection should not be given to clerks, as one of them likely leaked the court’s draft majority opinion causing the protests.
“This partisan bill in the House ignores the good faith work that was being done here in the Senate to build consensus, and expands this legislation to include divisive provisions like potentially extending police protection to the very person who leaked the draft opinion,” Cornyn said.
A Senate aide said that with the addition of security for Court clerks, the bill would have “no chance of passing in the Senate.”
