Former Vice President Kamala Harris faced swift Republican backlash after urging Democrats to consider expanding the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College when they are next in power.
“Let’s invite ideas, for example, that are about Supreme Court reform, including the notion of expanding the court,” Harris said on a call with the left-wing nonprofit Emerge.
“Let’s invite a discussion about how do we push for statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.; how are we thinking about the Electoral College,” Harris added.
“We’ve got to neutralize this red state cheating,” Harris continued. “There’s a brutality at play on the other side, and a ruthlessness. And we need to play to win.”
Harris is likely talking about redistricting that is taking place in several red states this year to glean more Republican seats in Congress – something Democrat-run states did years ago to eliminate most or all GOP-held seats in their congressional districts.
Also, several red states are redrawing race-based congressional boundaries after the Supreme Court found them unconstitutional last month.
And Democrats suffered some recent setbacks in the redistricting battle, including losing four likely seats in Virginia after the state Supreme Court ruled a ballot referendum to make the change violated the state constitution.
“What they have done with this decision, by saying that the politics of redistricting is okay, is they are back-dooring racism through politics,” Harris also said on the call, per Fox News. “What they are doing is intentionally about trying to suppress the voice of the people.”
Republicans immediately pounced on Harris’ ideas, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) calling her and her Democrat Party “institutional arsonists.”
“It’s a dangerous thing, a dangerous gambit,” the speaker said. “You don’t just blow up the system when you lose.”
“For the former vice president of the United States and a candidate for president to suggest that you should pack the Supreme Court or destroy these institutions because they lost is I just think outrageous,” he added.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., in an interview with Fox, called Harris’ remarks “totally insane.”
“That’s why we can’t let her become president,” he said. “People … rejected her before; they’ll reject her again.”
Even some Democrats pushed back on Harris’ ideas. “I think that’s putting the cart before the horse,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., told Fox News.
“Right now I’m focusing on lowering costs, health care, ending a runaway war that’s costing Americans tens of billions of dollars. Those are the things that my constituents are talking to me about,” he said.
Harris is calling for Democratic retaliation as Republicans appear to be the clear winners in the redistricting battles leading up to the midterms.
The GOP could gain more than a dozen seats due to several Republican-led states that have drawn new congressional maps, while Democratic gains have so far been limited to California and Utah.
Earlier in May, Tennessee restructured its only black-majority district, which had been represented for decades by a white Democrat, allowing Republicans to secure a seat that had long been out of their reach.
Other GOP states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, are also in the process of eliminating their black-majority districts in compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.
As radical left as Harris’ ideas are, some Democrats have gone even further, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who used a Civil War reference for her party to regain power.
Speaking amid growing Democratic outrage over recent court defeats in Virginia and the Supreme Court, declaring that “the North” needed to confront Southern Republican-led states over what she described as attacks on democracy and minority representation.
“It is time for the North to pull up to the South and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant they just awakened. What they thought was the final blow is actually just the opening silo,” she added.