Democrats Trash Findings From Biden's Supreme Court Reform Commission

Democratic lawmakers on Friday trashed a draft report released by President Joe Biden’s recently formed Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, saying its findings fall short of the kinds of reforms needed to restore integrity to the court.

“This report is a disappointment to anyone who’d hoped for a hard-hitting effort to address the Supreme Court’s deep troubles,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

“The White House Commission on the Supreme Court ‘draft’ misses the mark,” reads a joint statement from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Hank Johnson (Ga.) and Mondaire Jones (N.Y.).

“After years of Republicans upending precedent, breaking their own rules, and stealing seats on the Supreme Court, we must restore legitimacy and integrity to the Court and undo the damage Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have inflicted on our democracy,” they said.

Biden created the commission in April as a way to compromise with progressives who were pushing for his support in reforming the conservative-led court, whether by expanding its number of seats, imposing term limits for justices or instituting other reforms. Biden opposed expanding the court during his 2020 presidential campaign.

The draft report released Thursday doesn’t make specific recommendations. The stated goal of the panel, which will submit a final report to Biden next month, is to “provide an analysis of the principal arguments” for and against Supreme Court reforms. But the draft report’s language and structure strongly suggest opposition to the idea of adding new seats to the court, and each paragraph in the report presenting the arguments for court expansion is finished with a rebuttal in opposition to the idea.