Ed Markey Demands Supreme Court Expansion — Many Times
By Brendan McDonald | June 28, 2022, 8:28 EDT
Ed Markey seems to have finally found an issue he likes more than the climate.
On Friday, June 24, Ed Markey responded to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health that overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey on Twitter:
“If this extremist Court will dismantle something as fundamental as the right for an American to make decisions about their own body, then we are on a slippery slope to the undoing of other fundamental rights. But Congress can act. We can expand the Court and protect our rights.”
This isn’t the first time Markey has called for the Supreme Court to be expanded.
When Politico reported the leaked Supreme Court decision draft that would overturn Roe v. Wade on May 2, Markey demanded that the Supreme Court be expanded, calling the Supreme Court majority “stolen,” “illegitimate,” and “far-right.”
“There is no other recourse,” Markey concluded. “We must expand the court.”
Markey repeated the demand with the same justification in tweets on May 3, May 5, May 10, May 11, May 13, June 3, and June 24 (times two).
On May 17, 2022, Markey tweeted, “our democracy is badly damaged when two presidents, each of whom lost the popular vote, have nominated five Supreme Court justices. The Court is wildly out of step with the will of the people.”
Markey concluded that the solution was to add four more seats to the Supreme Court.
On June 23, 2022, Markey tweeted, “today, the far-right Court has gone out of its way to expand the Second Amendment and undermine public safety, while shrinking the Fifth Amendment and taking away Miranda rights. We cannot allow this overtly political Court to stand in the way of our safety. Expand the Court.”
Also, on June 23, Markey tweeted, “a new low for the high Court. With each far-right decision issued by a stolen, illegitimate majority—we see why. It’s time to expand the Court and reclaim it for the American people.” Markey linked to an article about the Supreme Court’s sinking approval rating.
At an anti-gun rally in response to the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde on May 26, Markey called for more gun control legislation.
Towards the end of his speech, however, Markey cautioned that the Supreme Court might be a roadblock to any future gun control legislation, calling the Court both “illegitimate,” and “far-right.”
To ensure that any gun control legislation passed by Congress remains in place, “we have to expand the Supreme Court to get back the two stolen seats that the Republicans and Donald Trump took from the American people,” Markey told the crowd.
On September 18, 2020, the day Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Markey said that if Mitch McConnell tried to fill her seat, “we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.”
On April 15, 2021, Markey became the only United States senator to support the Judiciary Act of 2021, which proposed an expansion of the Supreme Court to thirteen members. That would add four new members to the existing nine.
In a statement on that same date, Markey claimed that “Republicans stole the Court’s majority, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation completing their crime spree.”
Markey continued by saying, “of all the damage Donald Trump did to our Constitution, this stands as one of his greatest travesties. Senate Republicans have politicized the Supreme Court, undermined its legitimacy, and threatened the rights of millions of Americans, especially people of color, women, and our immigrant communities.”
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