Nadler Threatens to Expand SCOTUS if Trump Fills Ginsburg Vacancy During Lame Duck Session

Here's Fox News with more on Nadler's threat:

Rep. Jerry Nadler punched back at Republicans proposing to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before the next term by suggesting Democrats add seats to the bench if they win control of the Senate in November.

“If Sen. McConnell and @SenateGOP were to force through a nominee during the lame duck session—before a new Senate and President can take office—then the incoming Senate should immediately move to expand the Supreme Court,” Nadler wrote on Twitter.

“Filling the SCOTUS vacancy during a lame duck session, after the American people have voted for new leadership, is undemocratic and a clear violation of the public trust in elected officials. Congress would have to act and expanding the court would be the right place to start,” the New York Democrat continued.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., just hours after the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that a Trump nominee to the court “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said "nothing is off the table" if Republicans move forward with confirming a justice immediately.

“Let me be clear: if Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year. Nothing is off the table," he said on a caucus call with Senate Democrats Saturday, a source on the call told Fox News.  He added that "Everything Americans value is at stake."

“The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life,” McConnell said in a statement.

“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise,” McConnell continued. “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”

McConnell added that “by contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.”

Business Insider with more:

As a member of the House of Representatives, Nadler does not have the ability to vote on Supreme Court nominees, but as a leading voice on judicial matters on Capitol Hill, his voice holds immense sway.

Nadler, a New York Democrat, is not generally known for pushing for dramatic institutional changes. He was elected to the House in 1992 and has been chairman of the Judiciary Committee since 2019.

In the hypothetical scenario Nadler suggested, Joe Biden could potentially be elected to the presidency, along with an incoming Democratic-controlled Senate set to take over in January; a lame duck Republican-controlled Senate could push through a conservative nominee in November or December anyway.

Another complication: Mark Kelly, the Democratic nominee for the Arizona Senate seat currently held by Republican Martha McSally, could be sworn in by late November if he wins the race, which could tank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's efforts to fill Ginsburg's seat. Kelly and McSally are running in a special election for the seat held by the late Sen. John McCain.

The democrats are not the party of tolerance, love, compassion, or any of the other b.s. that they always spew.

They are the party of petulance.

They are the party of making threats.

They are the party that will destroy America with their overeaching hand of governance. 

A video from an NPR interview with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows her discussing the very idea of expanding the Supreme Court, which she called a "bad idea," saying that it would make the court appear partisan.

Here's more on that interview from Breitbart:

The video shows Ginsberg being asked about the number of justices on SCOTUS and she said, “There is no fixed number in the Constitution. So this court has had as few as five, as many as ten. Nine seems to be a good number, and it’s been that way for a long time.”

She added, “I have heard there are some on the Democrat side who would like to increase the number of judges.”  She mentioned that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wanted to stack SCOTUS, and she made clear she thought “it was a bad idea.”

Ginsberg addressed the problem of the court appearing partisan, then said, “If anything would make the court appear partisan, it would be…one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, it was only to enlarge the number of justices so we would have more people vote the way we wanted them to.'”