After vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris repeatedly refused to answer a direct question during Wednesday night's debate on whether a Biden/Harris administration would seek to pack the courts should they be elected to the White House, Biden again hedged on Wednesday, saying, “You’ll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over."
"You’ll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over," Biden told reporters in Phoenix.
"You know the moment I answer that question, the only headline in every one of your papers will be about that other than focusing on what's happening now," he went on, adding that the question was merely a distraction from issue of whether Trump SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett should be confirmed so close to an election (an unquestionably constitutional procedure, but one Democrats have criticized as “stealing” a court seat).
Joe Biden AGAIN refuses to say whether he supports packing the Supreme Court.
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 8, 2020
"You'll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over... The moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that."
Give me a break.
So bogus. pic.twitter.com/PQY80WEMyy
Court-packing – or rather, expanding the Supreme Court to include more justices and then nominating certain ideologically minded justices to those new vacant seats – has been suggested by many Democrats who, if Biden is elected and they take control of the Senate, would have a clearer path to achieving that goal. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez touted that “We should leave all options on the table, including the number of justices that are on the Supreme Court,” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “nothing is off the table” if Senate Republicans move forward with confirming Barrett.