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The results of the election on Tuesday has caused liberals all over the country to panic. Now they’re grasping at straws and plotting radical procedural maneuvers to hold on to as much power as possible, including changing the Supreme Court.
CNN legal analyst Bakari Sellers has stirred controversy by suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor should resign during the lame duck Congress and be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris. Speaking on-air, Sellers noted that the health and age of Sotomayor, a 70-year-old liberal justice with type 1 diabetes, could open a narrow window for President Joe Biden to secure a liberal replacement before the new Republican Senate majority assumes office in January.
🚨Democrats are now trying to bully Justice Sotomayor off the Supreme Court to replace her with…Kamala Harris?
Bakari Sellers: “I hope that Joe Biden makes the next ten weeks as consequential as he can. I don’t care about drawing outside the lines or what Republicans may think… pic.twitter.com/VTwnkIAYKX
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) November 8, 2024
Sellers’ proposal comes at a critical moment, writes Newsweek. The Supreme Court’s current 6-3 conservative tilt, solidified by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing during the Trump administration, underscores the stakes of future appointments. Biden’s chance to appoint a new justice hinges on a potential resignation by Sotomayor, as the Senate remains under Democratic control until January.
“Harris has the legal pedigree to sit on the Supreme Court,” Sellers stated, acknowledging that appointing a former attorney general and U.S. senator with no judicial experience would not be unprecedented. He highlighted that John Roberts became chief justice without prior judicial tenure, though Roberts had substantial experience arguing before the court.
Politico noted that two months from now, Republicans will be in control of the U.S. Senate. They’ll have at least 53 seats. And as soon as DONALD TRUMP is sworn in on Jan. 20, they’ll be revving up the old conveyor belt of conservative judicial nominees, tilting the courts further in their favor for decades.
For Democrats, this is a hair-on-fire moment. And though the discourse in the media is presently dominated by recriminations about how this all happened, another arguably more urgent conversation is blowing up largely outside of public view: whether to push for 70-year-old Supreme Court Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR to step down while Dems still have the power to approve her replacement.
This isn’t simply some flight of fancy happening among progressive activists online. It’s a conversation members of the Senate are actively engaged in.
One senator Playbook spoke with last night told us that the topic has come up repeatedly this week in talks with their colleagues. Inevitably, those conversations end up with a recognition of two realities: (1) It’d be a risky play with the party already trying to figure out how to handle a crowded lame-duck session, and (2) no senator seems to be offering to be the person to put his or her neck on their line publicly (or even privately) by pushing for Sotomayor to step aside.
If Sotomayor were to step down, “she can sort of resign conditionally on someone being appointed to replace her,” the Democratic senator told Politico. Discussions have progressed to the point where a potential replacement is being floated: D.C. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was previously on President Joe Biden’s shortlist for the Supreme Court.
However, the nomination would likely face fierce opposition from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a key figure in blocking Democratic judicial nominees in the past. The Republican leader would use every procedural tool available to prevent a lame-duck nomination.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed this sentiment, underscoring that Sotomayor’s potential retirement is a “personal decision.”
This isn’t the first time that liberals have pressured Sotomayor to retire. The Supreme Court justice has experienced some health problems over the years. In February 2018, a medic from Grand Junction, Colorado, accompanied Sotomayor on a trip she made to southern Florida, according to the records.
[Read more: Trump Offered Deal Of A Lifetime]
