The Dispatch reports that congressional Democrats are making plans to "reform" the Supreme Court and counteract recent abortion and voting rights decisions should they obtain unified control of Congress while retaining the White House. This is according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who appeared on a panel last Thursday during the Democratic convention where he addressed these issues.
If Democrats capture the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, Whitehouse said, Senate Democrats would be "virtually certain" to pass a "Supreme Court reform" bill by a simple majority, evading the current 60-vote requirement for legislation. The senator said Democrats would tie their Supreme Court legislation—imposing 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and establishing ethics and recusal rules—to an omnibus package that would include a bill creating a national right to abortion and other top Democratic priorities.
"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 at an event hosted in Chicago by the Brennan Center for Justice. "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." . . . .
While Vice President Harris has not publicly endorsed this plan, the Biden-Harris administration has endorsed the broad strokes of such reforms, including term limits for justices. This apparently leads Senator Whitehouse to conclude that a Harris-Walz administration would support his plan.
