House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) attempted to push forward on Wednesday with his constitutional amendment to permanently cap the Supreme Court at nine justices — which was ultimately blocked from passage by Democrats.
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This stunt by Johnson is virtually certain to go nowhere, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Wednesday.
Mattingly noted that “it takes more than just a … majority vote for that to actually occur,” because the measure needed two-thirds of the House to pass, as well as the same margin in the Senate and ratification by three-quarters of states. “So … is it your sense in the legal community that there’s a real threat of the Court being expanded right now?”
“So first of all, it’s almost impossible at this point to amend the Constitution,” said Honig. “I don’t think there is any real chance of that happening.”
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That said, he continued, “I also don’t think there’s any real chance that the Supreme Court will be expanded.”
The issue of reforming the Court due to decades of Republican control “was a big issue in the 2020 election,” Honig noted. “Joe Biden had been opposed to this for 40 years. But then in 2020, he said, actually, I’m open to it now. He became president and did essentially nothing to push it along during his four years.”
“So I think the reality is, we’ve been at nine for 157 years, and I think we’re going to be at nine for a long time moving forward,” he concluded.
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