Associated Press Redefines Packing the Supreme Court as ‘Depoliticizing’ It

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

The Associated Press described Democrats’ proposal to “pack” the Supreme Court with liberal justices in new seats as merely an effort to “depoliticize” it in a report on Saturday.

For more than a year, Democrats have proposed “packing” the Supreme Court by adding more justices, increasing the total from the current nine to at least eleven, and then filling the seats with liberals.

Those calls have become louder and more intense in the days since the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), have refused to say whether they would pack the courts. On Friday, Biden went further, telling an interviewer that voters do not deserve to know his view before the election.

Court-packing is traditionally unpopular — so much so that Democrats opposed the idea when their own president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, proposed it in the 1930s.

Left-wing pundits have attempted to reframe the issue as merely “depoliticizing” the existing court.

The AP article in question was about the Senate race between Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) and incumbent Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT). The issue of court-packing came up during a recent debate:

The AP originally reported: “Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts.”

The AP later updated its article to note “to make clear that it is Bullock’s opinion, rather than a fact, that adding justices to the Supreme Court would depoliticize the court.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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