Tipsheet

Adam Schiff Goes for Mental Gymnastics to Fundraise Off of Efforts to 'Unpack' the Supreme Court

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 03, 2023 4:30 PM

It was inevitable that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to be handing down decisions that sent Democrats into an apoplectic fit. You win some, you lose some, with Democrats losing a lot lately, considering there's a 6-3 conservative majority. Such outrage has led inevitably to fundraising efforts, including from, as Mike Miller at our sister site of RedState highlighted, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is running to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). 

"Expanding the size of the Supreme Court isn’t extreme or unprecedented — but the opinions of this Court certainly are," he tweeted last Friday, after the Court had handed down opinions that effectively ended affirmative action and struck down President Joe Biden's student loan debt plan. 

Schiff certainly has some gall. 

While the Court has changed a handful of times, it has had nine justices since 1869, over 150 years ago. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had tried to expand the Court, but it ultimately didn't pan out. A History.com post says it was "met with instant opposition" and quotes Barbara A. Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, as pointing out that "Congress and the people viewed FDR’s ill-considered proposal as an undemocratic power grab."

Another History.com post points to court packing as one of the controversies during FDR's presidency. As it turns out, FDR was able to shape the Court through more legitimate means. "Still, during his long tenure, F.D.R. had the chance to name eight new Supreme Court justices, laying the groundwork for a different judicial environment," History.com noted.

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Just like today's Democrats are trying to do, FDR tried to go forward with such a plan in order to get more favorable rulings on his policies.

In soliciting donations, Schiff's tweet also says that as a senator, he'll "keep up the fight to expand, reform, and unpack the Supreme Court." Miller had a great response to such a claim. "Uh-huh, and Trump colluded with Russia, and Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plot. Please tell us more," he wrote, in reference to how Schiff was censured last month by the House for continuously spreading such Russia collusion lies. 

He had raised the same points in another thread from last Thursday, going into a little depth, though that doesn't exactly make it any better. 

Such mental gymnastics, is a narrative that Democrats have depended on before, as Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has tried to argue when introducing the Judiciary Act of 2021 in April of that year. As Schiff's tweet mentions in part, a lot of it is to do with Merrick Garland not receiving a hearing. What Democrats leave out, though, is that historical precedence indicates that when the president is not of the same party as the party controlling the Senate, Supreme Court nominees don't get a hearing in an election, hence why it went the direction it did with Garland. It's also why Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in an election year. 

Considering how it's been going with Garland as attorney general, it's no wonder that many are relieved he's not on the Court today. 

Schiff continued on in his thread, lamenting how the 6-3 Court, in part, "is chipping away at clean air and water." The case in question, Sackett v. EPA, actually turned out to be a unanimous decision. 

Although his last tweet in the thread came on Thursday, before the Biden administration's student loan debt plan was also struck down, Schiff is frightfully clear in his priorities. That entails nuking the filibuster, another way in which Democrats are looking to usurp precedence to get what they want. 

When Democrats warn you about what's at stake in electing them, believe them. Schiff is likely to win that seat, but there are other seats where a Democratic victory is not so inevitable.