Democrats Must Unpack the Courts Now
After 6 years of McConnell’s court-packing, we must restore balance to the federal judiciary
Unable to win a majority of votes nationally or in most states, Republicans have resorted to gerrymandering, voter suppression and the federal court system to promote their racist, misogynistic, anti-labor, monopolist and pro-billionaire policies.
Because the courts stand as the final arbiters of all law, they’re now openly supporting gerrymandering and voter suppression, from the Supreme Court on down. This has created a crisis for American democracy.
Donald Trump bragged that President Obama “left me 128 judges to fill” as if Obama was just sloppy. The actual number was 105, but Obama didn’t “leave” them; he’d appointed genuinely qualified people, many women and minorities, to fill every single one of those judicial slots, and Mitch McConnell simply blocked them in the senate for the last two years of the Obama presidency.
McConnell even blocked Obama’s appointment of a brilliant Black attorney, Myra Selby, to the Seventh Circuit Court just to keep the seat open for Amy Coney Barrett, a notorious rightwinger and shill for big corporations and antiabortion freaks. McConnell gave Barrett that stolen seat for her first job as a federal judge, and, when…
